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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16579-8.txt b/16579-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..126e0d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/16579-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8535 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of On The Art of Reading, by Arthur Quiller-Couch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: On The Art of Reading + +Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: August 22, 2005 [EBook #16579] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ART OF READING *** + + + + +Produced by James Tenison + + + + + + +CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS +LONDON: + +BENTLEY HOUSE NEW YORK. +TORONTO, BOMBAY +CALCUTTA. MADRAS: + +MACMILLAN TOKYO: +MARUZEN COMPANY LTD + +All rights reserved + +Copyrighted in the United States of +America by G. P. Putnam's Sons + +All rights reserved + + +On The Art of Reading + +By + +Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch + +CAMBRIDGE + +AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1939 + + + +TO +H. F. S. and H. M. C. + +First edition 1920 +reprinted 1920,1921 +Pocket edition 1924 +reprinted 1925, 1928, 1933, 1939 + + + + +PREFACE + +The following twelve lectures have this much in common with a +previous twelve published in 1916 under the title "On the Art of +Writing"--they form no compact treatise but present their central +idea as I was compelled at the time to enforce it, amid the dust +of skirmishing with opponents and with practical difficulties. + +They cover--and to some extent, by reflection, chronicle--a +period during which a few friends, who had an idea and believed +in it, were fighting to establish the present English Tripos at +Cambridge. In the end we carried our proposals without a vote: +but the opposition was stiff for a while; and I feared, on +starting to read over these pages for press, that they might be +too occasional and disputatious. I am happy to think that, on the +whole, they are not; and that the reader, though he may wonder at +its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from +polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century +theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead +controversies afford the driest. + +And after all, and though it be well worth while to strive that +the study of English (of our own literature, and of the art of +using our own language, in speech or in writing, to the best +purpose) shall take an honourable place among the Schools of a +great University, that the other fair sisters of learning shall + + Ope for thee their queenly circle ... + +it is not in our Universities that the general redemption of +English will be won; nor need a mistake here or there, at Oxford +or Cambridge or London, prove fatal. We make our discoveries +through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where +there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve. A youth +who can command means to enter a University can usually command +some range in choosing which University it shall be. If Cambridge +cannot supply what he wants, or if our standard of training be +low in comparison with that of Oxford, or of London or of +Manchester, the pressure of neglect will soon recall us to our +senses. + +_The real battle for English lies in our Elementary Schools, and +in the training of our Elementary Teachers._ It is there that the +foundations of a sound national teaching in English will have to +be laid, as it is there that a wrong trend will lead to incurable +issues. For the poor child has no choice of Schools, and the +elementary teacher, whatever his individual gifts, will work +under a yoke imposed upon him by Whitehall. I devoutly trust that +Whitehall will make the yoke easy and adaptable while insisting +that the chariot must be drawn. + +I foresee, then, these lectures condemned as the utterances of a +man who, occupying a Chair, has contrived to fall betwixt two +stools. My thoughts have too often strayed from my audience in a +University theatre away to remote rural class-rooms where the +hungry sheep look up and are not fed; to piteous groups of +urchins standing at attention and chanting "The Wreck of the +Hesperus" in unison. Yet to these, being tied to the place and +the occasion, I have brought no real help. + +A man has to perform his task as it comes. But I must say this in +conclusion. Could I wipe these lectures out and re-write them in +hope to benefit my countrymen in general, I should begin and end +upon the text to be found in the twelfth and last--that a liberal +education is not an appendage to be purchased by a few: that +Humanism is, rather, a _quality_ which can, and should, condition +all our teaching; which can, and should, be impressed as a +character upon it all, from a poor child's first lesson in +reading up to a tutor's last word to his pupil on the eve of a +Tripos. + +ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH +July 7, 1920. + + + + +CONTENTS + +LECTURE + +I INTRODUCTORY +II APPREHENSION VERSUS COMPREHENSION +III CHILDREN'S READING (I) +IV " " (II) +V ON READING FOR EXAMINATIONS +VI ON A SCHOOL OF ENGLISH +VII THE VALUE OF GREEK AND LATIN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE +VIII ON READING THE BIBLE (I) +IX " " (II) +X " " (III) +XI OF SELECTION +XI ON THE USE OF MASTERPIECES + +INDEX + + + + +LECTURE I + +INTRODUCTORY + +WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1916 + + +I + +In the third book of the "Ethics", and in the second chapter, +Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in +themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were +committed involuntarily, through ignorance, instances 'the man +who did not know a subject was forbidden, like Aeschylus with the +Mysteries,' and 'the man who only meant to show how it worked, +like the fellow who let off the catapult' ([Greek: e deixai +Boulemos apheinai, os o ton katapelten]). + +I feel comfortably sure, Gentlemen, that in a previous course of +lectures "On the Art of Writing", unlike Aeschylus, I divulged no +mysteries: but I am troubled with speculations over that man and +the catapult, because I really was trying to tell you how the +thing worked; and Aristotle, with a reticence which (as Horace +afterwards noted) may lend itself to obscurity, tells us neither +what happened to that exponent of ballistics, nor to the engine +itself, nor to the other person. My discharge, such as it was, at +any rate provoked another Professor (_emeritus,_ learned, +sagacious, venerable) to retort that the true business of a Chair +such as this is to instruct young men how to _read_ rather than +how to write. Well, be it so. I accept the challenge. + +I propose in this and some ensuing lectures to talk of the Art +and Practice of Reading, particularly as applied to English +Literature: to discuss on what ground and through what faculties +an Author and his Reader meet: to enquire if, or to what extent, +Reading of the best Literature can be taught; and supposing it to +be taught, if or to what extent it can be examined upon; with +maybe an interlude or two, to beguile the way. + +II + +The first thing, then, to be noted about the reading of English +(with which alone I am concerned) is that for Englishmen it has +been made, by Act of Parliament, compulsory. + +The next thing to be noted is that in our schools and Colleges +and Universities it has been made, by Statute or in practice, all +but impossible. + +The third step is obvious--to reconcile what we cannot do with +what we must: and to that aim I shall, under your patience, +direct this and the following lecture. I shall be relieved at all +events, and from the outset, of the doubt by which many a +Professor, here and elsewhere, has been haunted: I mean the doubt +whether there really _is_ such a subject as that of which he +proposes to treat. Anything that requires so much human ingenuity +as reading English in an English University _must_ be an art. + +III + +But I shall be met, of course, by the question 'How is the +reading of English made impossible at Cambridge?' and I pause +here, on the edge of my subject, to clear away that doubt. + +It is no fault of the University. + +The late Philip Gilbert Hamerton, whom some remember as an +etcher, wrote a book which he entitled (as I think, too +magniloquently) "The Intellectual Life." He cast it in the form +of letters--'To an Author who kept very Irregular Hours,' 'To a +Young Etonian who thought of becoming a Cotton-spinner,' 'To a +Young Gentleman who had firmly resolved never to wear anything +but a Grey Coat' (but Mr Hamerton couldn't quite have meant +that). 'To a Lady of High Culture who found it difficult to +associate with persons of her Own Sex,' 'To a Young Gentleman of +Intellectual Tastes, who, without having as yet any Particular +Lady in View, had expressed, in a General Way, his Determination +to get Married: The volume is well worth reading. In the first +letter of all, addressed 'To a Young Man of Letters who worked +Excessively,' Mr Hamerton fishes up from his memory, for +admonishment, this salutary instance: + + A tradesman, whose business affords an excellent outlet for + energetic bodily activity, told me that having attempted, in + addition to his ordinary work, to acquire a foreign language + which seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been obliged to + abandon it on account of alarming cerebral symptoms. This man + has immense vigour and energy, but the digestive functions, in + this instance, are sluggish. However, when he abandoned study, + the cerebral inconveniences disappeared, and have never + returned since. + +IV + +Now we all know, and understand, and like that man: for the +simple reason that he is every one of us. + +You or I (say) have to take the Modern Languages Tripos, Section +A (English), in 1917[1]. First of all (and rightly) it is +demanded of us that we show an acquaintance, and something more +than a bowing acquaintance, with Shakespeare. Very well; but next +we have to write a paper and answer questions on the outlines of +English Literature from 1350 to 1832--almost 500 years--, and +next to write a paper and show particular knowledge of English +Literature between 1700 and 1785--eighty-five years. Next comes a +paper on passages from selected English verse and prose writings +--the Statute discreetly avoids calling them literature--between +1200 and 1500, exclusive of Chaucer; with questions on language, +metre, literary history and literary criticism: then a paper on +Chaucer with questions on language, metre, literary history and +literary criticism: lastly a paper on writing in the Wessex +dialect of Old English, with questions on the cornet, flute, +harp, sackbut, language, metre and literary history. + +Now if you were to qualify yourself for all this as a scholar +should, and in two years, you would certainly deserve to be +addressed by Mr Hamerton as 'A Young Man of Letters who worked +Excessively'; and to work excessively is not good for anyone. +Yet, on the other hand, you are precluded from using, for your +'cerebral inconveniences,' the heroic remedy exhibited by Mr +Hamerton's enterprising tradesman, since on that method you would +not attain to the main object of your laudable ambition, a +Cambridge degree. + +But the matter is very much worse than your Statute makes it out. +Take one of the papers in which some actual acquaintance with +Literature is required the Special Period from 1700 to 1785; then +turn to your "Cambridge History of English Literature", and you +will find that the mere bibliography of those eighty-five years +occupies something like five or six hundred pages--five or six +hundred pages of titles and authors in simple enumeration! The +brain reels; it already suffers 'cerebral inconveniences.' But +stretch the list back to Chaucer, back through Chaucer to those +alleged prose writings in the Wessex dialect, then forward from +1785 to Wordsworth, to Byron, to Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson, +Browning, Meredith, even to this year in which literature still +lives and engenders; and the brain, if not too giddy indeed, +stands as Satan stood on the brink of Chaos-- + + Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith + He had to cross-- + +and sees itself, with him, now plumbing a vast vacuity, and anon +nigh-foundered, 'treading the crude consistence.' + +The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to +_know_ it in any reputable sense of the word--let alone your +learning to write English--is, in short, impossible. And the +framers of the Statute, recognising this, have very sensibly +compromised by setting you to work on such things as 'the +Outlines of English Literature'; which are not Literature at all +but are only what some fellow has to say about it, hastily +summarising his estimates of many works, of which on a generous +computation he has probably read one-fifth; and by examining you +on (what was it all?) 'language, metre, literary history and +literary criticism,' which again are not Literature, or at least +(as a Greek would say in his idiom) escape their own notice being +Literature. For English Literature, as I take it, is _that which +sundry men and women have written memorably in English about +Life._ And so I come to my subject--the art of reading _that,_ +which is Literature. + +V + +I shall take leave to leap into it over another man's back, or, +rather over two men's backs. No doubt it has happened to many of +you to pick up in a happy moment some book or pamphlet or copy of +verse which just says the word you have unconsciously been +listening for, almost craving to speak for yourself, and so sends +you off hot-foot on the trail. And if you have had that +experience, it may also have happened to you that, after ranging, +you returned on the track 'like faithful hound returning,' in +gratitude, or to refresh the scent; and that, picking up the book +again, you found it no such wonderful book after all, or that +some of the magic had faded by process of the change in yourself +which itself had originated. But the word was spoken. + +Such a book--pamphlet I may call it, so small it was--fell into +my hands some ten years ago; "The Aims of Literary Study"--no +very attractive title--by Dr Corson, a distinguished American +Professor (and let me say that, for something more than ten--say +for twenty--years much of the most thoughtful as well as the most +thorough work upon English comes to us from America). I find, as +I handle again the small duodecimo volume, that my own thoughts +have taken me a little wide, perhaps a little astray, from its +suggestions. But for loyalty's sake I shall start just where Dr +Corson started, with a passage from Browning's, "A Death in the +Desert," supposed (you will remember)-- + + Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene + +narrating the death of St John the Evangelist, John of Patmos; +the narrative interrupted by this gloss: + + [This is the doctrine he was wont to teach, + How divers persons witness in each man, + Three souls which make up one soul: _first,_ to wit, + A soul of each and all the bodily parts, + Seated therein, which works, and is _What Does,_ + And has the use of earth, and ends the man + Downward: but, tending upward for advice, + Grows into, and again is grown into + By the next soul, which, seated in the brain, + Useth the first with its collected use, + And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,--is _What Knows_: + Which, duly tending upward in its turn, + Grows into, and again is grown into + By the last soul, that uses both the first, + Subsisting whether they assist or no, + And, constituting man's self, is _What Is_-- + And leans upon the former + +(Mark the word, Gentlemen; '_leans_ upon the former'--leaning +back, as it were felt by him, on this very man who had leaned +on Christ's bosom, being loved) + + And leans upon the former, makes it play, + As that played off the first: and, tending up, + Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man + Upward in that dread point of intercourse, + Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him. + _What Does, What Knows, What Is;_ three souls, one man. + I give the glossa of Theotypas.] + +_What Does, What Knows, What Is_--there is no mistaking what +Browning means, nor in what degrees of hierarchy he places this, +that, and the other.... Does it not strike you how curiously men +to-day, with their minds perverted by hate, are inverting that +order?--all the highest value set on _What Does--What Knows_ +suddenly seen to be of importance, but only as important in +feeding the guns, perfecting explosives, collaring trade--all in +the service of _What Does,_ of 'Get on or Get Out,' of +'Efficiency'; no one stopping to think that 'Efficiency' is--must +be--a relative term! Efficient for what?--for _What Does, What +Knows_ or perchance, after all, for _What Is_? No! banish the +humanities and throw everybody into practical science: not into +that study of natural science, which can never conflict with the +'humanities' since it seeks discovery for the pure sake of truth, +or charitably to alleviate man's lot-- + + Sweetly, rather, to ease, loose and bind + As need requires, this frail fallen humankind ... + +--but to invent what will be commercially serviceable in besting +your neighbour, or in gassing him, or in slaughtering him neatly +and wholesale. But still the whisper (not ridiculous in its day) +will assert itself, that _What Is_ comes first, holding and +upheld by God; still through the market clamour for a 'Business +Government' will persist the voice of Plato murmuring that, after +all, the best form of government is government by good men: and +the voice of some small man faintly protesting 'But I don't want +to be governed by business men; because I know them and, without +asking much of life, I have a hankering to die with a shirt on my +back.' + +VI + +But let us postpone _What Is_ for a moment, and deal with _What +Does_ and _What Knows._ They too, of course, have had their +oppositions, and the very meaning of a University such as +Cambridge--its _fons,_ its _origo,_ its [Greek: to ti en einai]-- +was to assert _What Knows_ against _What Does_ in a medieval +world pranced over by men-at-arms, Normans, English, Burgundians, +Scots. Ancillary to Theology, which then had a meaning vastly +different from its meaning to-day, the University tended as +portress of the gate of knowledge--of such knowledge as the +Church required, encouraged, or permitted--and kept the flag of +intellectual life, as I may put it, flying above that gate and +over the passing throngs of 'doers' and mailed-fisters. The +University was a Seat of Learning: the Colleges, as they sprang +up, were Houses of Learning. + +But note this, which in their origin and still in the frame of +their constitution differentiates Oxford and Cambridge from all +their ancient sisters and rivals. These two (and no third, I +believe, in Europe) were corporations of Teachers, existing for +Teachers, governed by Teachers. In a Scottish University the +students by vote choose their Rector: but here or at Oxford no +undergraduate, no Bachelor, counts at all in the government, both +remaining alike _in statu pupillari_ until qualified as Masters-- +_Magistri._ Mark the word, and mark also the title of one who +obtained what in those days would be the highest of degrees (but +yet gave him no voting strength above a Master). He was a +Professor-'Sanctae Theologiae Professor.' To this day every +country clergyman who comes up to Cambridge to record his +_non-placet,_ does so by virtue of his capacity to teach what he +learned here--in theory, that is. Scholars were included in +College foundations on a sort of pupil-teacher-supply system: +living in rooms with the lordly masters, and valeting them for +the privilege of 'reading with' them. We keep to this day the +pleasant old form of words. Now for various reasons--one of +which, because it is closely germane to my subject, I shall +particularly examine--Oxford and Cambridge, while conserving +almost intact their medieval frame of government, with a hundred +other survivals which Time but makes, through endurance, more +endearing, have, insensibly as it were, and across (it must be +confessed) intervals of sloth and gross dereliction of duty, +added a new function to the cultivation of learning--that of +furnishing out of youth a succession of men capable of fulfilling +high offices in Church and State. + +Some may regret this. I think many of us must regret that a +deeper tincture of learning is not required of the average +pass-man, or injected into him perforce. But speaking roughly about +fact, I should say that while we elders up here are required-- +nay, presumed to _know_ certain things, we aim that our young men +shall be of a certain kind; and I see no cause to disown a +sentence in the very first lecture I had the honour of reading +before you--'The man we are proud to send forth from our Schools +will be remarkable less for something he can take out of his +wallet and exhibit for knowledge, than for _being_ something, +and that something recognisable for a man of unmistakable +intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust to +choose the better and reject the worse.' + +The reasons which have led our older Universities to deflect +their functions (whether for good or ill) so far from their first +purpose are complicated if not many. Once admit young men in +large numbers, and youth (I call any Dean or Tutor to witness) +must be compromised with; will construe the laws of its seniors +in its own way, now and then breaking them; and will inevitably +end, by getting something of its own way.. The growth of +gymnastic, the insensible gravitation of the elderly towards +Fenner's--there to snatch a fearful joy and explain that the walk +was good for them; the Union and other debating societies; +College rivalries; the festivities of May Week; the invasion of +women students: all these may have helped. But I must dwell +discreetly on one compelling and obvious cause--the increased and +increasing unwieldiness of Knowledge. And that is the main +trouble, as I guess. + +VII + +Let us look it fair in the face: because it is the main practical +difficulty with which I propose that, in succeeding lectures, we +grapple. Against Knowledge I have, as the light cynic observed of +a certain lady's past, only one serious objection--that there is +so much of it. There is indeed so much of it that if with the +best will in the world you devoted yourself to it as a mere +scholar, you could not possibly digest its accumulated and still +accumulating stores. As Sir Thomas Elyot wrote in the 16th +century (using, you will observe, the very word of Mr Hamerton's +energetic but fed-up tradesman), 'Inconveniences always doe +happen by ingurgitation and excessive feedings.' An old +schoolmaster and a poet--Mr James Rhoades, late of Sherborne-- +comments in words which I will quote, being unable to better +them: + + This is no less true of the mind than of the body. I do not + know that a well-informed man, as such, is more worthy of + regard than a well-fed one. The brain, indeed, is a nobler + organ than the stomach, but on that very account is the less + to be excused for indulging in repletion. The temptation, I + confess, is greater, because for the brain the banquet stands + ever spread before our eyes, and is, unhappily, as + indestructible as the widow's meal and oil. + + Only think what would become of us if the physical food, + by which our bodies subsist, instead of being consumed by + the eater, was passed on intact by every generation to the + next, with the superadded hoards of all the ages, the earth's + productive power meanwhile increasing year by year + beneath the unflagging hand of Science, till, as Comus + says, she + + would be quite surcharged with her own weight + And strangled with her waste fertility. + + Should we rather not pull down our barns, and build + smaller, and make bonfires of what they would not hold? + And yet, with regard to Knowledge, the very opposite of + this is what we do. We store the whole religiously, and that + though not twice alone, as with the bees in Virgil, but + scores of times in every year, is the teeming produce + gathered in. And then we put a fearful pressure on + ourselves and others to gorge of it as much as ever we can + hold. + +_Facit indignatio versus._ My author, gathering heat, puts it +somewhat dithyrambically: but there you have it, Gentlemen. + +If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and +groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still +putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the +difficulty by specialising, you produce a brain bulging out +inordinately on one side, on the other cut flat down and mostly +paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold that the +Creator has an idea, of a man, so long shall I be sure that no +uneven specialist realises it. The real tragedy of the Library at +Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but +that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate. + +VIII + +The old schoolmaster whom I quoted just now goes on: + + I believe, if the truth were known, men would be + astonished at the small amount of learning with which a + high degree of culture is compatible. In a moment of enthusiasm + I ventured once to tell my 'English set' that if they could + really master the ninth book of "Paradise Lost", so as to rise + to the height of its great argument and incorporate all its + beauties in themselves, they would at one blow, by virtue + of that alone, become highly cultivated men.... More and + more various learning might raise them to the same height + by different paths, but could hardly raise them higher. + +Here let me interpose and quote the last three lines of that +Book--three lines only; simple, unornamented, but for every man +and every woman who have dwelt together since our first parents, +in mere statement how wise! + + Thus they in mutual accusation spent + The fruitless hours, _but neither self-condemning;_ + And of their vain contest appear'd no end. + +A parent afterwards told me (my schoolmaster adds) that his son +went home and so buried himself in the book that food and sleep +that day had no attraction for him. Next morning, I need hardly +say, the difference in his appearance was remarkable: he had +outgrown all his intellectual clothes. + +The end of this story strikes me, I confess, as rapid, and may be +compared with that of the growth of Delian Apollo in the Homeric +hymn; but we may agree that, in reading, it is not quantity so +much that tells, as quality and thoroughness of digestion. + +IX + +_What Does--What Knows--What Is...._ + +I am not likely to depreciate to you the value of _What Does,_ +after spending my first twelve lectures up here, on the art and +practice of Writing, encouraging you to _do_ this thing which I +daily delight in trying to do: as God forbid that anyone should +hint a slightening word of what our sons and brothers are doing +just now, and doing for us! But Peace being the normal condition +of man's activity, I look around me for a vindication of what is +noblest in _What Does_ and am content with a passage from George +Eliot's poem "Stradivarius", the gist of which is that God +himself might conceivably make better fiddles than Stradivari's, +but by no means certainly; since, as a fact, God orders his best +fiddles of Stradivari. Says the great workman, + + 'God be praised, + Antonio Stradivari has an eye + That winces at false work and loves the true, + With hand and arm that play upon the tool + As willingly as any singing bird + Sets him to sing his morning roundelay, + Because he likes to sing and likes the song.' + Then Naldo: ''Tis a pretty kind of fame + At best, that comes of making violins; + And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go + To purgatory none the less.' + But he: + ''Twere purgatory here to make them ill; + And for my fame--when any master holds + 'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine, + He will be glad that Stradivari lived, + Made violins, and made them of the best. + The masters only know whose work is good: + They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill + I give them instruments to play upon, + God choosing me to help Him.' + 'What! Were God + At fault for violins, thou absent?' + 'Yes; + He were at fault for Stradivari's work.' + 'Why, many hold Giuseppe's + violins As good as thine.' + 'May be: they are different. + His quality declines: he spoils his hand + With over-drinking. But were his the best, + He could not work for two. My work is mine, + And heresy or not, if my hand slacked + I should rob God--since He is fullest good-- + Leaving a blank instead of violins. + I say, not God Himself can make man's best + Without best men to help him.... + 'Tis God gives skill, + But not without men's hands: He could not make + Antonio Stradivari's violins + Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel.' + +So much then for _What Does_: I do not depreciate it. + +X + +Neither do I depreciate--in Cambridge, save the mark!--_What +Knows._ All knowledge is venerable; and I suppose you will find +the last vindication of the scholar's life at its baldest in +Browning's "A Grammarian's Funeral": + + Others mistrust and say, 'But time escapes: + Live now or never!' + He said, 'What's time? Leave Now for dog and apes! + Man has Forever.' + Back to his book then; deeper drooped his head: + Calculus racked him: + Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: + Tussis attacked him.... + So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, + Ground he at grammar; + Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: + While he could stammer + He settled Hoti's business--let it be!-- + Properly based Oun-- + Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, + Dead from the waist down. + Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: + Hail to your purlieus, + All ye highfliers of the feathered race, + Swallows and curlews! + Here's the top-peak; the multitude below + Live, for they can, there: + This man decided not to Live but Know-- + Bury this man there. + +Nevertheless Knowledge is not, cannot be, everything; and indeed, +as a matter of experience, cannot even be counted upon to +educate. Some of us have known men of extreme learning who yet +are, some of them, uncouth in conduct, others violent and +overbearing in converse, others unfair in controversy, others +even unscrupulous in action--men of whom the sophist Thrasymachus +in Plato's "Republic" may stand for the general type. Nay, some +of us will subscribe with the old schoolmaster whom I will quote +again, when he writes: + + To myself personally, as an exception to the rule that + opposites attract, a very well-informed person is an object of + terror. His mind seems to be so full of facts that you cannot, + as it were, see the wood for the trees; there is no room for + perspective, no lawns and glades for pleasure and repose, no + vistas through which to view some towering hill or elevated + temple; everything in that crowded space seems of the same + value: he speaks with no more awe of "King Lear" than of the + last Cobden prize essay; he has swallowed them both with the + same ease, and got the facts safe in his pouch; but he has no + time to ruminate because he must still be swallowing; nor does + he seem to know what even Macbeth, with Banquo's murderers + then at work, found leisure to remember--that good digestion + must wait on appetite, if health is to follow both: + +Now that may be put a trifle too vivaciously, but the moral is +true. Bacon tells us that reading maketh a full man. Yes, and too +much of it makes him too full. The two words of the Greek upon +knowledge remain true, that the last triumph of Knowledge is +_Know Thyself._ So Don Quixote repeats it to Sancho Panza, +counselling him how to govern his Island: + + First, O son, thou hast to fear God, for in fearing Him is + wisdom, and being wise thou canst not err. + + But secondly thou hast to set thine eyes on what thou art, + endeavouring to _know thyself--which is the most difficult_ + _knowledge that can be conceived._ + +But to know oneself is to know that which alone can know _What +Is._ So the hierarchy runs up. + +XI + +_What Does, What Knows, What Is...._ +I have happily left myself no time to-day to speak of _What Is_: +happily, because I would not have you even approach it +towards the end of an hour when your attention must be languishing. +But I leave you with two promises, and with two sayings from which +as this lecture took its start its successors will proceed. + +The first promise is, that _What Is,_ being the spiritual element +in man, is the highest object of his study. + +The second promise is that, nine-tenths of what is worthy to be +called Literature being concerned with this spiritual element, +for that it should be studied, from firstly up to ninthly, before +anything else. + +And my two quotations are for you to ponder: + +(1) This, first: + + That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is + mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact beyond which we cannot + go.... Spirit to spirit--as in water face answereth to face, so + the heart of man to man. + +(2) And this other, from the writings of an obscure Welsh +clergyman of the 17th century: + + You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself + floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens + and crowned with the stars. + + + +[Footnote 1: The reader will kindly turn back to p.1, and observe +the date at the head of this lecture. At that time I was engaged +against a system of English teaching which I believed to be +thoroughly bad. That system has since given place to another, +which I am prepared to defend as a better.] + + + + +LECTURE II + +APPREHENSION VERSUS COMPREHENSION + +WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1916 + + +I + +Let us attempt to-day, Gentlemen, picking up the scent where we +left at the conclusion of my first lecture, to hunt the Art of +Reading (as I shall call it), a little further on the line of +common-sense; then to cast back and chase on a line somewhat more +philosophical. If these lines run wide and refuse to unite, we +shall have made a false cast: if they converge and meet, we shall +have caught our hare and may proceed, in subsequent lectures, to +cook him. + +Well, the line of common-sense has brought us to this point-- +that, man and this planet being such as they are, for a man to +read all the books existent on it is impossible; and, if +possible, would be in the highest degree undesirable. Let us, for +example, go back quite beyond the invention of printing and try +to imagine a man who had read all the rolls destroyed in the +Library of Alexandria by successive burnings. (Some reckon the +number of these MSS at 700,000.) Suppose, further, this man to be +gifted with a memory retentive as Lord Macaulay's. Suppose lastly +that we go to such a man and beg him to repeat to us some chosen +one of the fifty or seventy lost, or partially lost, plays of +Euripides. It is incredible that he could gratify us. + +There was, as I have said, a great burning at Alexandria in 47 +B.C., when Caesar set the fleet in the harbour on fire to prevent +its falling into the hands of the Egyptians. The flames spread, +and the great library stood but 400 yards from the quayside, with +warehouses full of books yet closer. The last great burning was +perpetrated in A.D. 642. Gibbon quotes the famous sentence of +Omar, the great Mohammedan who gave the order: 'If these writings +of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and +need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and +ought to be destroyed,' and goes on: + + The sentence was executed with blind obedience; the + volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four + thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible + multitude that six months were barely sufficient for the + consumption of this precious fuel.... The tale has been + repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious + indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the + learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own + part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the + consequences. + +Of the consequence he writes: + + Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be + enriched with a repository of books: but, if the ponderous + mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed + consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may allow, with + a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of + mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries, + which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; + but, when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of + ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather + than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious + and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great + historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a + mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing + compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the + Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember that the + mischances of time and accident have spared the classic + works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the + first place of genius and glory; the teachers of ancient + knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared + the writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be + presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in + art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of + modern ages. + +I certainly do not ask you to subscribe to all that. In fact when +Gibbon asks us to remember gratefully 'that the mischances of +time and accident have spared the classic works to which the +suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and +glory,' I submit with all respect that he talks nonsense. Like +the stranger in the temple of the sea-god, invited to admire the +many votive garments of those preserved out of shipwreck, I ask +'at ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata perierunt?'-- +or in other words 'Where are the trousers of the drowned?' 'What +about the "Sthenoboea" of Euripides, the "Revellers" of Ameipsias-- +to which, as a matter of simple fact, what you call the suffrage of +antiquity did adjudge the first prize, above Aristophanes' best?' + +But of course he is equally right to this extent, that the fire +consumed a vast deal of rubbish: solid tons more than any man +could swallow,--let be, digest--'read, mark, learn and inwardly +digest.' And that was in A.D. 642, whereas we have arrived at +1916. Where would our voracious Alexandrian be to-day, with all +the literature of the Middle Ages added to his feast and on top +of that all the printed books of 450 years? 'Reading,' says +Bacon, 'maketh a Full Man.' Yes, indeed! + +Now I am glad that sentence of Bacon falls pat here, because it +gives me, turning to his famous Essay "Of Studies", the +reinforcement of his great name for the very argument which I am +directing against the fallacy of those teachers who would have +you use 'manuals' as anything else than guides to your own +reading or perspectives in which the authors are set out in the +comparative eminence by which they claim priority of study or +indicate the proportions of a literary period. Some of these +manuals are written by men of knowledge so encyclopaedic that (if +it go with critical judgment) for these purposes they may be +trusted. But to require you, at your stage of reading, to have +even the minor names by heart is a perversity of folly. For later +studies it seems to me a more pardonable mistake, but yet a +mistake, to hope that by the employ of separate specialists you +can get even in 15 or 20 volumes a perspective, a proportionate +description, of what English Literature really is. But worst of +all is that Examiner, who--aware that you must please him, to get +a good degree, and being just as straight and industrious as +anyone else--assumes that in two years you have become expert in +knowledge that beats a lifetime, and, brought up against the +practical impossibility of this assumption, questions you--not on +a little selected first-hand knowledge--but on massed information +which at the best can be but derivative and second-hand. + +Now hear Bacon. + + Studies serve for Delight-- + +(Mark it,--he puts delight first) + + Studies serve for Delight, for Ornament, and for Ability. + Their Chiefe use for Delight, is in Privatenesse and + Retiring[1]; for Ornament, is in Discourse; and for Ability, + is in the Judgement and Disposition of Businesse.... To spend + too much Time in Studies is Sloth; to use them too much for + Ornament is Affectation; to make judgement wholly by their + Rules is the Humour of a Scholler. They perfect Nature, and + are perfected by Experience: for Naturall Abilities are like + Naturall Plants, they need Proyning by Study. And Studies + themselves doe give forth Directions too much at Large, + unless they be bounded in by experience. + +Again, he says: + + Some Bookes are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed, + and Some Few to be Chewed and Digested: that is, some + Bookes are to be read onely in Parts; Others to be read but + not Curiously; and some Few are to be read wholly, and with + Diligence and Attention. Some Bookes also may be read by + Deputy, and Extracts made of them by Others. But that + would be onely in the lesse important Arguments, and the + Meaner Sort of Bookes: else distilled Bookes are like + Common distilled Waters, Flashy Things. + +So you see, Gentlemen, while pleading before you that Reading is +an Art--that its best purpose is not to accumulate Knowledge but +to produce, to educate, such-and-such a man--that 'tis a folly to +bite off more than you can assimilate--and that with it, as with +every other art, the difficulty and the discipline lie in +selecting out of vast material, what is fit, fine, applicable--I +have the great Francis Bacon himself towering behind my shoulder +for patron. + +Some would push the argument further than--here and now, at any +rate--I choose to do, or perhaps would at all care to do. For +example, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, whom I quoted to you three +weeks ago, instances in his book "The Intellectual Life" an +accomplished French cook who, in discussing his art, comprised +the whole secret of it under two heads--the knowledge of the +mutual influences of ingredients, and the judicious management of +heat: + + Amongst the dishes for which my friend had a deserved + reputation was a certain _gâteau de foie_ which had a very + exquisite flavour. The principal ingredient, not in quantity + but in power, was the liver of a fowl; but there were several + other ingredients also, and amongst these a leaf or two of + parsley. He told me that the influence of the parsley was a + good illustration of his theory about his art. If the parsley + were omitted, the flavour he aimed at was not produced at all; + but, on the other hand, if the quantity of the parsley was in + the least excessive, then the _gâteau_ instead of being a + delicacy for gourmets became an uneatable mess. Perceiving that + I was really interested in the subject, he kindly promised a + practical evidence of his doctrine, and the next day + intentionally spoiled the dish by a trifling addition of + parsley. He had not exaggerated the consequences; the delicate + flavour entirely departed, and left a nauseous bitterness in + its place, like the remembrance of an ill-spent youth. + +I trust that none of you are in a position to appreciate the full +force of this last simile; and, for myself, I should have taken +the chef's word for it, without experiment. Mr Hamerton proceeds +to draw his moral: + + There is a sort of intellectual chemistry which is quite as + marvellous as material chemistry and a thousand times more + difficult to observe. One general truth may, however, be + relied upon.... It is true that everything we learn affects the + _whole_ character of the mind. + + Consider how incalculably important becomes the + question of _proportion_ in our knowledge, and how that which + we are is dependent as much upon our ignorance as our + science. What we call ignorance is only a smaller proportion-- + what we call science only a larger. + +Here the argument begins to become delicious: + + The larger quantity is recommended as an unquestionable + good, but the goodness of it is entirely dependent _on the + mental product that we want._ Aristocracies have always + instinctively felt this, and have decided that a gentleman + ought not to know too much of certain arts and sciences. The + character which they had accepted as their ideal would have + been destroyed by indiscriminate additions to those + ingredients of which long experience had fixed the exact + proportions.... + + The last generation of the English country aristocracy + was particularly rich in characters whose unity and charm + was dependent upon the limitations of their culture, and + which would have been entirely altered, perhaps not for the + better, by simply knowing a science or a literature that was + dosed to them. + +If anything could be funnier than that, it is that it is, very +possibly, true. Let us end our quest-by-commonsense, for the +moment, on this; that to read all the books that have been +written---in short to keep pace with those that are being +written--is starkly impossible, and (as Aristotle would say) +about what is impossible one does not argue. We _must_ select. +Selection implies skilful practice. Skilful practice is only +another term for Art. So far plain common-sense leads us. On this +point, then, let us set up a rest and hark back. + +II + +Let us cast back to the three terms of my first lecture--_What +does, What knows, What is._ + +I shall here take leave to recapitulate a brief argument much +sneered at a few years ago when it was still fashionable to +consider Hegel a greater philosopher than Plato. Abbreviating it +I repeat it, because I believe in it yet to-day, when Hegel (for +causes unconnected with pure right and wrong) has gone somewhat +out of fashion for a while. + +As the tale, then, is told by Plato, in the tenth book of "The +Republic", one Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian, was slain in +battle; and ten days afterwards, when they collected the dead for +burial, his body alone showed no taint of corruption. His +relatives, however, bore it off to the funeral pyre; and on the +twelfth day, lying there, he returned to life, and he told them +what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he related +concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but what had impressed him as most wonderful of all +was the great spindle of Necessity, reaching up to Heaven, with +the planets revolving around it in graduated whorls of width and +spread: yet all concentric and so timed that all complete the +full circle punctually together--'The Spindle turns on the knees +of Necessity; and on the rim of each whorl sits perched a Siren +who goes round with it, hymning a single note; the eight notes +together forming one harmony.' + +Now as--we have the divine word for it--upon two great +commandments hang all the law and the prophets, so all +religions, all philosophies, hang upon two steadfast and +faithful beliefs; the first of which Plato would show by the +above parable. + +It is, of course, that the stability of the Universe rests upon +ordered motion--that the 'firmament' above, around, beneath, +stands firm, continues firm, on a balance of active and +tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks +'by What?' or 'by Whom?' Philosophy inclines rather to ask 'How?' +Natural Science, allowing that for the present these questions +are probably unanswerable, contents itself with mapping and +measuring what it can of the various forces. But all agree about +the harmony; and when a Galileo or a Newton discovers a single +rule of it for us, he but makes our assurance surer. For +uncounted centuries before ever hearing of Gravitation men knew +of the sun that he rose and set, of the moon that she waxed and +waned, of the tides that they flowed and ebbed, all regularly, at +times to be predicted; of the stars that they swung as by +clockwork around the pole. Says the son of Sirach: + + At the word of the Holy One they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches. + +So evident is this calculated harmony that men, seeking to +interpret it by what was most harmonious in themselves or in +their human experience, supposed an actual Music of the Spheres +inaudible to mortals: Plato as we see (who learned of Pythagoras) +inventing his Octave of Sirens, perched on the whorls of the +great spindle and intoning as they spin. + +Dante (Chaucer copying him in "The Parlement of Fowls") makes the +spheres nine: and so does Milton: + + then listen I + To the celestial _Sirens_ harmony, + That sit upon the nine infolded Sphears, + And sing to those that hold the vital shears, + And turn the Adamantine spindle round + On which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie + To lull the daughters of _Necessity_, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measur'd motion draw + After the heavenly tune.... + +If the sceptical mind object to the word _law_ as begging the +question and postulating a governing intelligence with a +governing will--if it tell me that when revolted Lucifer uprose +in starlight-- + + and at the stars, + Which are the brain of heaven, he look'd, and sank. + Around the ancient track march'd, rank on rank, + The army of unalterable law-- + +he was merely witnessing a series of predictable or invariable +recurrences, I answer that he may be right, it suffices for my +argument that they _are_ recurrent, are invariable, can be +predicted. Anyhow the Universe is not Chaos (if it were, by the +way, we should be unable to reason about it at all). It stands +and is renewed upon a harmony: and what Plato called 'Necessity' +is the Duty--compulsory or free as you or I can conceive it--the +Duty of all created things to obey that harmony, the Duty of +which Wordsworth tells in his noble Ode. + + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong: + And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and + strong. + +III + +Now the other and second great belief is, that the Universe, the +macrocosm, cannot be apprehended at all except as its rays +converge upon the eye, brain, soul of Man, the microcosm: on you, +on me, on the tiny percipient centre upon which the immense +cosmic circle focuses itself as the sun upon a burning-glass--and +he is not shrivelled up! Other creatures, he notes, share in his +sensations; but, so far as he can discover, not in his percipience +--or not in any degree worth measuring. So far as he can discover, +he is not only a bewildered actor in the great pageant but 'the +ring enclosing all,' the sole intelligent spectator. Wonder of +wonders, it is all meant for _him_! + +I doubt if, among men of our nation, this truth was ever more +clearly grasped than by the Cambridge Platonists who taught your +forerunners of the 17th century. But I will quote you here two +short passages from the work of a sort of poor relation of +theirs, a humble Welsh parson of that time, Thomas Traherne-- +unknown until the day before yesterday--from whom I gave you one +sentence in my first lecture. He is speaking of the fields and +streets that were the scene of his childhood: + + Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had from the + womb, and that divine light wherewith I was born are the + best unto this day, wherein I can see the Universe.... The + corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be + reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from + everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street + were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of + the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one + of the gates transported and ravished me.... Boys and girls + tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I + knew not that they were born or should die.... + + The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people + were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as + much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. + The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars; + and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and + enjoyer of it. + +Then: + + News from a foreign country came, + As if my treasure and my wealth lay there; + So much it did my heart inflame, + 'Twas wont to call my Soul into mine ear; + Which thither went to meet + The approaching sweet, + And on the threshold stood + To entertain the unknown Good.... + + What sacred instinct did inspire + My Soul in childhood with a hope to strong? + What secret force moved my desire + To expect new joys beyond the seas, so young? + Felicity I knew + Was out of view, + + And being here alone, + I saw that happiness was gone + From me! For this + I thirsted absent bliss, + And thought that sure beyond the seas, + Or else in something near at hand-- + I knew not yet (since naught did please + I knew) my Bliss did stand. + + But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by: + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The Ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The Heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky, + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious Soul, that was the King + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing! + +And then comes the noble sentence of which I promised you that it +should fall into its place: + + You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth + in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and + crowned with the stars. + +Man in short--you, I, any one of us--the heir of it all! + +_Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes deos!_ + +Our best privilege to sing our short lives out in tune with the +heavenly concert--and if to sing afterwards, then afterwards! + +IV + +But how shall Man ever attain to understand and find his proper +place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of +which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus? +His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music +the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres +nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco +White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world +in the dark, nor glimpse any of the scores of others until it +falls dark: + + If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life? + +Yet the Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to man save +in so far as _he_ apprehends it: and lacking him (so far as he +knows) it utterly lacks the compliment of an audience. Is all the +great orchestra designed for nothing but to please its Conductor? +Yes, if you choose: but no, as I think. And here my other +quotation: + + That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is + mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact.... Spirit to spirit-- + as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. + +Yes and, all spirit being mutually attractive, far more than +this! I preach to you that, through help of eyes that are dim, of +ears that are dull, by instinct of something yet undefined--call +it soul--it wants no less a name--Man has a native impulse and +attraction and yearning to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit of adoption (as St Paul says) whereby we +cry _Abba, Father!_ + +And because ye are Sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of +His Son into your hearts, crying _Abba, Father._ + +That is to say, we know we have something within us correspondent +to the harmony, and (I make bold to say) unless we have deadened +it with low desires, worthy to join in it. Even in his common +daily life Man is for ever seeking after harmony, in avoidance of +chaos: he cultivates habits by the clock, he forms committees, +governments, hierarchies, laws, constitutions, by which (as he +hopes) a system of society will work in tune. But these are +childish imitations, underplay on the great motive: + + The Kingdom of God is within you. + +Quid aliud est anima quam Deus in corpore humano hospitans? + +V + +Gentlemen, you may be thinking that I have brought you a long way +round, that the hour is wearing late, and that we are yet far +from the prey we first hunted on the line of common-sense. But be +patient for a minute or two, for almost we have our hand on the +animal. + +If the Kingdom of God, or anything correspondent to it, be within +us, even in such specks of dust as we separately are, why that, +and that only, can be the light by which you or I may hope to +read the Universal: that, and that only, deserves the name of +'_What Is_.' Nay, I can convince you in a moment. Let me recall a +passage of Emerson quoted by me on the morning I first had the +honour to address an audience in Cambridge: + + It is remarkable (says he) that involuntarily we always read + as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the + romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures ... anywhere + make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but + rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most + at home. All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of + a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. + +It is remarkable, as Emerson says; and yet, as we now +see, quite simple. A learned man may patronise a less learned +one: but the Kingdom of God cannot patronise the Kingdom +of God, the larger the smaller. There _are_ large and small. +Between these two mysteries of a harmonious universe and +the inward soul are granted to live among us certain men +whose minds and souls throw out filaments more delicate +than ours, vibrating to far messages which they bring home, +to report them to us; and these men we call prophets, poets, +masters, great artists, and when they write it, we call their +report literature. But it is by the spark in us that we read it: +and not all the fire of God that was in Shakespeare can dare +to patronise the little spark in me. If it did, I can see--with +Blake--the angelic host + + throw down their spears + And water heaven with their tears. + +VI + +To nurse that spark, common to the king, the sage, the +poorest child--to fan, to draw up to a flame, to 'educate' +_What Is_--to recognise that it is divine, yet frail, tender, +sometimes easily tired, easily quenched under piles of +book-learning--to let it run at play very often, even more +often to let it rest in what Wordsworth calls + + a wise passiveness + +passive--to use a simile of Coventry Patmore--as a photographic +plate which finds stars that no telescope can discover, simply by +waiting with its face turned upward--to mother it, in short, as +wise mothers do their children--this is what I mean by the Art of +Reading. + +For all great Literature, I would lastly observe, is gentle +towards that spirit which learns of it. It teaches by +_apprehension_ not by _comprehension_--which is what many +philosophers try to do, and, in trying, break their jugs and +spill the contents. Literature understands man and of what he is +capable. Philosophy, on the other hand, may not be 'harsh and +crabbed, as dull fools suppose,' but the trouble with most of its +practitioners is that they try to _comprehend_ the Universe. Now +the man who could comprehend the Universe would _ipso facto_ +comprehend God, and be _ipso facto_ a Super-God, able to dethrone +him, and in the arrogance of his intellectual conceit full ready +to make the attempt. + + + +[Footnote 1: Do you remember, by the by, Samuel Rogers's lines +on Lady Jane Grey? They have always seemed to me very beautiful: + + Like her most gentle, most unfortunate, + Crown'd but to die--who in her chamber sate + Musing with Plato, though the horn was blown, + And every ear and every heart was won, + And all in green array were chasing down the sun!] + + + + +LECTURE III + +CHILDREN'S READING (I) + +WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1917 + + +I have often wished, Gentlemen, that some more winning name could +be found for the thing we call Education; and I have sometimes +thought wistfully that, had we made a better thing of it, we +should long ago have found a more amiable, a blither, name. + +For after all it concerns the child; and is it quite an accident +that, weaning him away from lovely things that so lovelily call +themselves 'love,' 'home,' 'mother,' we can find no more alluring +titles for the streets into which we entrap him than 'Educational +Facilities,' 'Local Examinations,' 'Preceptors,' 'Pedagogues,' +'Professors,' 'Matriculations,' 'Certificates,' 'Diplomas,' +'Seminaries,' Elementary or Primary, and Secondary Codes,' +'Continuation Classes,' 'Reformatories,' 'Inspectors,' 'Local +Authorities,' 'Provided' and 'Non-Provided,' 'Denominational' and +'Undenominational,' and 'D.Litt.' and 'Mus. Bac.'? Expressive +terms, no doubt!--but I ask with the poet + + Who can track + A Grace's naked foot amid them all? + +Take even such words as should be perennially beautiful by +connotation-words such as 'Academy,' 'Museum.' Does the one (O, +"Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy!") call up visions +of that green lawn by Cephissus, of its olives and plane trees +and the mirrored statues among which Plato walked and held +discourse with his few? Does the other as a rule invite to haunts +(O God! O Montreal!) where you can be secure of communion with +Apollo and the Nine? Answer if the word Academy does not first +call up to the mind some place where small boys are crammed, the +word Museum some place where bigger game are stuffed? + +And yet 'academy,' 'museum,' even 'education' are sound words if +only we would make the things correspond with their meanings. The +meaning of 'education' is a leading out, a drawing-forth; not an +_imposition_ of something on somebody--a catechism or an uncle-- +upon the child; but an eliciting of what is within him. Now, if +you followed my last lecture, we find that which is within him to +be no less, potentially, than the Kingdom of God. + +I grant that this potentiality is, between the ages of four and +sixteen, not always, perhaps not often, evident. The boy--in +Bagehot's phrase 'the small apple-eating urchin whom we know'-- +has this in common with the fruit for which he congenitally sins, +that his very virtues in immaturity are apt, setting the teeth on +edge, to be mistaken for vices. A writer, to whom I shall recur, +has said: + + If an Englishman who had never before tasted an apple + were to eat one in July, he would probably come to the + conclusion that it was a hard, sour, indigestible fruit, + `conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity,' fit only to be + consigned to perdition (on a dust heap or elsewhere). But if + the same man were to wait till October and then eat an apple + from the same tree, he would find that the sourness had + ripened into wholesome and refreshing acidity; the hardness + into firmness of fibre which, besides being pleasant to the + palate, makes the apple 'keep' better than any other fruit; + the indigestibility into certain valuable dietetic qualities, + and so on.... + +In other words--trench, manure, hoe and water around your young +tree, and patiently allow the young fruit to develop of its own +juice from the root; your own task being, as the fruit forms, but +to bring in all you can of air and sunshine upon it. It must, as +every mother and nurse knows, be coaxed to realise itself, to +develop, to grow from its individual root. It may be coaxed and +trained. But the main secret lies in encouraging it to grow, and, +to that end, in pouring sunshine upon it and hoeing after each +visitation of tears parentally induced. + +Every child wants to grow. Every child wants to learn. During his +first year or so of life he fights for bodily nutriment, almost +ferociously. From the age of two or thereabouts he valiantly +essays the conquest of articulate speech, using it first to +identify his father or his mother amid the common herd of +Gentiles; next, to demand a more liberal and varied dietary; +anon, as handmaid of his imperious will to learn. This desire, +still in the nursery, climbs--like dissolution in Wordsworth's +sonnet--from low to high: from a craving to discover +experimentally what the stomach will assimilate and what reject, +up to a kingly debonair interest in teleology. Our young +gentleman is perfectly at ease in Sion. He wants to know why +soldiers are (or were) red, and if they were born so; whence +bread and milk is derived, and would it be good manners to thank +the neat cow for both; why mamma married papa, and--that having +been explained and thoughtfully accepted as the best possible +arrangement--still thoughtfully, not in the least censoriously, +'why the All-Father has not married yet?' He falls asleep +weighing the eligibility of various spinsters, church-workers, in +the parish. + +His brain teeming with questions, he asks them of impulse and +makes his discoveries with joy. He passes to a school, which is +supposed to exist for the purpose of answering these or cognate +questions even before he asks them: and behold, he is not happy! +Or, he is happy enough at play, or at doing in class the things +that should not be done in class: his master writes home that he +suffers in his school work 'from having always more animal +spirits than are required for his immediate purposes.' What is the +trouble? You cannot explain it by home-sickness: for it attacks +day boys alike with boarders. You cannot explain it by saying +that all true learning involves 'drudgery,' unless you make that +miserable word a mendicant and force it to beg the question. +'Drudgery' is _what you feel to be drudgery_-- + + Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, + Makes that and th' action fine. + +--and, anyhow, this child learned one language--English, a most +difficult one--eagerly. Of the nursery through which I passed +only one sister wept while learning to read, and that was over a +scholastic work entitled "Reading Without Tears." + +Do you know a chapter in Mr William Canton's book "The Invisible +Playmate" in which, as Carlyle dealt in "Sartor Resartus" with an +imaginary treatise by an imaginary Herr Teufelsdröckh, as Matthew +Arnold in "Friendship's Garland" with the imaginary letters of an +imaginary Arminius (Germany in long-past happier days lent the +world these playful philosophical spirits), so the later author +invents an old village grandpapa, with the grandpapa-name of +Altegans and a prose-poem printed in scarecrow duodecimo on +paper-bag pages and entitled "Erster Schulgang," 'first +school-going,' or 'first day at school'? + +The poem opens with a wonderful vision of children; delightful as +it is unexpected; as romantic in presentment as it is commonplace +in fact. All over the world--and all under it too, when their +time comes--the children are trooping to school. The great globe +swings round out of the dark into the sun; there is always +morning somewhere; and for ever in this shifting region of the +morning-light the good Altegans sees the little ones afoot--- +shining companies and groups, couples and bright solitary +figures; for they all seem to have a soft heavenly light about +them. + +He sees them in country lanes and rustic villages; on lonely +moorlands ... he sees them on the hillsides ... in the woods, on +the stepping-stones that cross the brook in the glen, along the +seacliffs and on the water-ribbed sands; trespassing on the +railway lines, making short cuts through the corn, sitting in the +ferry-boats; he sees them in the crowded streets of smoky cities, +in small rocky islands, in places far inland where the sea is +known only as a strange tradition. + +The morning-side of the planet is alive with them: one hears +their pattering footsteps everywhere. And as the vast continents +sweep `eastering out of the high shadow which reaches beyond the +moon' ... and as new nations with _their_ cities and villages, +their fields, woods, mountains and sea-shores, rise up into the +morning-side, lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet +again fresh troops of these school-going children of the dawn. + +What are weather and season to this incessant panorama of +childhood? The pigmy people trudge through the snow on +moor and hill-side; wade down flooded roads; are not to be +daunted by wind or rain, frost or the white smother of 'millers and +bakers at fisticuffs.' Most beautiful picture of all, he sees them +travelling schoolward by the late moonlight which now and again in +the winter months precedes the tardy dawn. + +That vision strikes me as being poetically true as well as +delightful: by which I mean that it is not sentimental: we know +that it ought to be true, that in a world well-ordered according +to our best wishes for it, it would be _naturally_ true. It +expresses the natural love of Age, brooding on the natural eager +joy of children. But that natural eager joy is just what our +schools, in the matter of reading, conscientiously kill. + +In this matter of reading-of children's reading--we stand, just +now, or halt just now, between two ways. The parent, I believe, +has decisively won back to the right one which good mothers never +quite forsook. There was an interval, lasting from the early +years of the last century until midway in Queen Victoria's reign +and a little beyond, when children were mainly brought up on the +assumption of natural vice. They might adore father and mother, +and yearn to be better friends with papa: but there was the old +Adam, a quickening evil spirit; there were his imps always in the +way, confound them! I myself lived, with excellent grandparents, +for several years on pretty close terms with Hell and an +all-seeing Eye; until I grew so utterly weary of both that I have +never since had the smallest use for either. Some of you may have +read, as a curious book, the agreeable history called "The +Fairchild Family," in which Mr Fairchild leads his naughty +children afield to a gallows by a cross-road and seating them +under the swinging corpse of a malefactor, deduces how easily +they may come to this if they go on as they have been going. The +authors of such monitory or cautionary tales understood but one +form of development, the development of Original Sin. You stole a +pin and proceeded, by fatal steps, to the penitentiary; you threw +a stick at a pheasant, turned poacher, shot a gamekeeper and +ended on the gallows. You were always Eric and it was always +Little by Little with you.... Stay! memory preserves one gem from +a Sunday school dialogue, one sharp-cut intaglio of childhood +springing fully armed from the head of Satan: + + Q. Where hast thou been this Sabbath morning? + A. I have been coursing of the squirrel. + Q. Art not afraid so to desecrate the Lord's Day with idle + sport? + A. By no means: for I should tell you that I am an Atheist. + +I forget what happened to that boy: but doubtless it was, as it +should have been, something drastic. + +The spell of prohibition, of repression, lies so strong upon +these authors that when they try to break away from it, to appeal +to something better than fear in the child, and essay to amuse, +they become merely silly. For an example in verse: + + If Human Beings only knew + What sorrows little birds go through, + I think that even boys + Would never think it sport or fun + To stand and fire a frightful gun + For nothing but the noise. + +For another (instructional and quite a good _memoria technica_ so +far as it goes): + + William and Mary came next to the throne: + When Mary died, there was William alone. + +Now for a story of incident.--It comes from the book "Reading +Without Tears," that made my small sister weep. She did not weep +over the story, because she did not claim to be an angel. + +Did you ever hear of the donkey that went into the sea with the +little cart?... A lady drove the cart down to the beach. She had +six children with her. Three little ones sat in the cart by her +side. Three bigger girls ran before the cart. When they came to +the beach the lady and the children got out. + +Very good so far. It opens like the story of Nausicaa ["Odyssey," +Book vi, lines 81-86]. + +The lady wished the donkey to bathe its legs in the sea, to make +it strong and clean. But the donkey did not like to go near the +sea. So the lady bound a brown shawl over its eyes, and she bade +the big girls lead it close to the waves. Suddenly a big wave +rushed to the land. The girls started back to avoid the wave, and +they let go the donkey's rein. + +The donkey was alarmed by the noise the girls made, and it went +into the sea, not knowing where it was going because it was not +able to see. The girls ran screaming to the lady, crying out, +'The donkey is in the sea!' + +There it was, going further and further into the sea, till the +cart was hidden by the billows. The donkey sank lower and lower +every moment, till no part of it was seen but the ears; for the +brown shawl was over its nose and mouth. Now the children began +to bawl and to bellow! But no one halloed so loud as the little +boy of four. His name was Merty. He feared that the donkey was +drowned.... + +Two fishermen were in a boat far away. They said 'We hear howls +and shrieks on the shore. Perhaps a boy or girl is drowning. Let +us go and save him: So they rowed hard, and they soon came to the +poor donkey, and saw its ears peeping out of the sea. The donkey +was just going to sink when they lifted it up by the jaws, and +seized the bridle and dragged it along. The children on the shore +shouted aloud for joy. The donkey with the cart came safe to +land. The poor creature was weak and dripping wet. The fishermen +unbound its eyes, and said to the lady, 'We cannot think how this +thing came to be over its eyes.' The lady said she wished she had +not bound up its eyes, and she gave the shillings in her purse to +the fishermen who had saved her donkey. + +Now every child knows that a donkey may change into a Fairy +Prince: that is a truth of imagination. But to be polite and say +nothing of the lady, every child knows that so donkey would be +ass enough to behave as in this narrative. And the good parents +who, throughout the later 18th century and the 19th, inflicted +this stuff upon children, were sinning against the light. +Perrault's Fairy Tales, and Madame D'Aulnoy's were to their hand +in translations; "Le Cabinet des Fées", which includes these and +M. Galland's "Arabian Nights" and many another collection of +delectable stories, extends on my shelves to 41 volumes (the last +volume appeared during the fury of the French Revolution!). The +brothers Grimm published the first volume of their immortal tales +in 1812, the second in 1814. A capital selection from them, +charmingly rendered, was edited by our Edgar Taylor in 1823; and +drew from Sir Walter Scott a letter of which some sentences are +worth our pondering. + +He writes: + + There is also a sort of wild fairy interest in [these tales] + which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken + the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the + good-boy stories which have been in later years composed + for them. In the latter case their minds are, as it were, put + into the stocks ... and the moral always consists in good + moral conduct being crowned with temporal success. Truth + is, I would not give one tear shed over Little Red Riding + Hood for all the benefit to be derived from a hundred + histories of Jemmy Goodchild. + +Few nowadays, I doubt, remember Gammer Grethel. She has been +ousted by completer, maybe far better, translations of the +Grimms' "Household Tales". But turning back, the other day, to +the old volume for the old sake's sake (as we say in the West) I +came on the Preface--no child troubles with a Preface--and on +these wise words: + + Much might be urged against that too rigid and philosophic (we + might rather say, unphilosophic) exclusion of works of fancy + and fiction from the libraries of children which is advocated + by some. Our imagination is surely as susceptible of + improvement by exercise as our judgment or our memory. + +And that admirable sentence, Gentlemen, is the real text of my +discourse to-day. I lay no sentimental stress upon Wordsworth's +Ode and its doctrine that 'Heaven lies about us in our infancy.' +It was, as you know, a favourite doctrine with our Platonists of +the 17th century: and critics who trace back the Ode "Intimations +of Immortality" to Henry Vaughan's + + Happy those early days, when I + Shined in my Angel-infancy. + +might connect it with a dozen passages from authors of that +century. Here is one from "Centuries of Meditations" by that poor +Welsh parson, Thomas Traherne, whom I quoted to you the other +day: + + Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had from the + womb, and that divine light wherewith I was born are the + best unto this day, wherein I can see the Universe. By the + Gift of God they attended me into the world, and by His + special favour I remember them till now.... Certainly Adam + in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions + of the world, than I when I was a child. + +And here is another from John Earle's Character of 'A Child' in +his "Microcosmography": + + His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein + he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember; and + sighs to see what innocence he has out-liv'd. He is the + Christian's example, and the old man's relapse: the one + imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his + simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, + he had got Eternity without a burthen, and exchang'd but one + Heaven for another. + +Bethinking me again of 'the small apple-eating urchin whom we +know,' I suspect an amiable fallacy in all this: I doubt if when +he scales an apple-bearing tree which is neither his own nor his +papa's he does so under impulse of any conscious yearning back to +Hierusalem, his happy home, + + Where trees for evermore bear fruit. + +At any rate, I have an orchard, and he has put up many excuses, +but never yet that he was recollecting Sion. + +Still the doctrine holds affinity with the belief which I firmly +hold and tried to explain to you with persuasion last term: +that, boy or man, you and I, the microcosms, do--sensibly, +half-sensibly, or insensibly--yearn, through what we feel to be +best in us, to 'join up' with the greater harmony; that by poetry +or religion or whatnot we have that within us which craves to be +drawn out, 'e-ducated,' and linked up. + +Now the rule of the nursery in the last century rested on +Original Sin, and consequently and quite logically tended not to +educate, but to repress. There are no new fairy-tales of the days +when your grandmothers wore crinolines--I know, for I have +searched. Mothers and nurses taught the old ones; the Three Bears +still found, one after another, that 'somebody has been sleeping +in my bed'; Fatima continued to call 'Sister Anne, do you see +anyone coming?' the Wolf to show her teeth under her nightcap and +snarl out (O, great moment!) 'All the better to eat you with, my +dear.' But the Evangelicals held field. Those of our grandfathers +and grandmothers who understood joy and must have had fairies for +ministers--those of our grandmothers who played croquet through +hoop with a bell and practised Cupid's own sport archery--those +of our grandfathers who wore jolly peg-top trousers and Dundreary +whiskers, and built the Crystal Palace and drove to the Derby in +green-veiled top-hats with Dutch dolls stuck about the brim--_tot +circa unum caput tumultuantes deos_--and those splendid uncles +who used to descend on the old school in a shower of gold-- +half-a-sovereign at the very least--all these should have trailed +fairies with them in a cloud. But in practice the evangelical +parent held the majority, put away all toys but Noah's Ark on +Sundays, and voted the fairies down. + +I know not who converted the parents. It may have been that +benefactor of Europe, Hans Christian Andersen, born at Odensee in +Denmark in April 1805. He died, near Copenhagen, in 1875, having +by a few months outlived his 70th birthday. I like to think that +his genius, a continuing influence over a long generation, did +more than anything else to convert the parents. The schools, +always more royalist than the King, professionally bleak, +professionally dull, professionally repressive rather than +educative, held on to a tradition which, though it had to be on +the sly, every intelligent mother and nurse had done her best to +evade. The schools made a boy's life penitential on a system. +They discovered athletics, as a safety-valve for high spirits +they could not cope with, and promptly made that safety-valve +compulsory! They went on to make athletics a religion. Now +athletics are not properly a religious exercise, and their +meaning evaporates as soon as you enlist them in the service of +repression. They are being used to do the exact opposite of that +for which God meant them. Things are better now: but in those +times how many a boy, having long looked forward to it, rejoiced +in his last day at school? + +I know surely enough what must be in your minds at this point: I +am running up my head hard against the doctrine of Original Sin, +against the doctrine that in dealing with a child you are dealing +with a 'fallen nature,' with a human soul 'conceived in sin,' +unregenerate except by repression; and therefore that repression +and more repression _must_ be the only logical way with your +Original Sinners. + +Well, then, I am. I have loved children all my life; studied them +in the nursery, studied them for years--ten or twelve years +intimately--in elementary schools. I know for a surety, if I have +acquired any knowledge, that the child is a 'child of God' rather +than a 'Child of wrath'; and here before you I proclaim that to +connect in any child's mind the Book of Joshua with the Gospels, +to make its Jehovah identical in that young mind with the Father +of Mercy of whom Jesus was the Son, to confuse, as we do in any +school in this land between 9.5 and 9.45 a.m., that bloodthirsty +tribal deity whom the Hohenzollern family invokes with the true +God the Father, is a blasphemous usage, and a curse. + +But let me get away to milder heresies. If you will concede for a +moment that the better way with a child is to draw out, to +_educate,_ rather than to repress, what is in him, let us observe +what he instinctively wants. Now first, of course, he wants to +eat and drink, and to run about. When he passes beyond these +merely animal desires to what we may call the instinct of growth +in his soul, how does he proceed? I think Mr Holmes, whom I have +already quoted, very fairly sets out these desires as any +grown-up person can perceive them. The child desires + + (1) to talk and to listen; + (2) to act (in the dramatic sense of the word); + (3) to draw, paint and model; + (4) to dance and sing; + (5) to know the why of things + (6) to construct things. + +Now I shall have something to say by and by on the amazing +preponderance in this list of those instincts which Aristotle +would have called _mimetic._ This morning I take only the least +imitative of all, the desire to know the why of things. + +Surely you know, taking only this, that the master-key admitting +a child to all, or almost all, palaces of knowledge is his ability +to _read._ When he has grasped that key of his mother-tongue he +can with perseverance unlock all doors to all the avenues of +knowledge. More--he has the passport to heavens unguessed. + +You will perceive at once that what I mean here by 'reading' is +the capacity for silent reading, taking a book apart and +mastering it; and you will bear in mind the wonder that I +preached to you in a previous lecture--that great literature +never condescends, that what yonder boy in a corner reads of a +king is happening to _him._ Do you suppose that in an elementary +school one child in ten reads thus? Listen to a wise ex-inspector, +whose words I can corroborate of experience: + + The first thing that strikes the visitor who enters an + ordinary elementary school while a reading lesson is in + progress is that the children are not reading at all, in the + accepted sense of the word. They are not reading to + themselves, not studying, not mastering the contents of the + book, not assimilating the mental and spiritual nutriment that + it may be supposed to contain. They are standing up one by + one and reading aloud to their teacher. + +Ah! but I have seen far worse than that. I have visited and +condemned rural schools where the practice was to stand a class +up--- say a class of thirty children--and make them read in +unison: which meant, of course, that the front row chanted out +the lesson while the back rows made inarticulate noises. I well +remember one such exhibition, in a remote country school on the +Cornish hills, and having my attention arrested midway by the +face of a girl in the third row. She was a strikingly beautiful +child, with that combination of bright auburn, almost flaming, +hair with dark eyebrows, dark eyelashes, dark eyes, which of +itself arrests your gaze, being so rare; and those eyes seemed to +challenge me half scornfully and ask, 'Are you really taken in by +all this?' Well, I soon stopped the performance and required each +child to read separately: whereupon it turned out that, in the +upper standards of this school of 70 or 80 children, one only-- +this disdainful girl--could get through half a dozen easy +sentences with credit. She read well and intelligently, being +accustomed to read to herself, at home. + +I daresay that this bad old method of block-reading is dead by +this time. + +Reading aloud and _separately_ is excellent for several purposes. +It tests capacity: it teaches correct pronunciation by practice, +as well as the mastery of difficult words: it provides a good +teacher with frequent opportunities of helping the child to +understand what he reads. + +But as his schooling proceeds he should be accustomed more and +more to read to himself: for that, I repeat, is the master-key. + + + + +LECTURE IV + +CHILDREN'S READING (II) + +WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1917 + + +I + +In our talk, Gentlemen, about Children's Reading we left off upon +a list, drawn up by Mr Holmes in his book 'What Is, and What +Might Be,' of the things that, apart from physical nourishment +and exercise, a child instinctively desires. + +He desires + (1) to talk and to listen; + (2) to act (in the dramatic sense of the word); + (3) to draw, paint and model; + (4) to dance and sing; + (5) to know the why of things; + (6) to construct things. + +Let us scan through this catalogue briefly, in its order. + +No. (1). _To talk and to listen_--Mr Holmes calls this _the +communicative instinct._ Every child wants to talk with those +about him, or at any rate with his chosen ones--his parents, +brothers, sisters, nurse, governess, gardener, boot-boy (if he +possess these last)--with other children, even if his dear papa +is poor: to tell them what he has been doing, seeing, feeling: +and to listen to what they have to tell him. + +Nos. (2), (3), (4). _To act_--our author calls this the +'dramatic instinct': _to draw, paint and model_--this the +'artistic instinct'--_to dance and sing_--this the 'musical +instinct.' But obviously all these are what Aristotle would call +'mimetic' instincts: 'imitative' (in a sense I shall presently +explain); even as No. (2)--acting--like No. (1)--talking and +listening--comes of craving for sympathy. In fact, as we go on, +you will see that these instincts overlap and are not strictly +separable, though we separate them just now for convenience. + +No. (5). _To know the why of things_--the 'inquisitive instinct.' +This, being the one which gives most trouble to parents, parsons, +governesses, conventional schoolmasters--to all grown-up persons +who pretend to know what they don't and are ashamed to tell what +they do--is of course the most ruthlessly repressed. + + 'The time is come,' the Infant said, + 'To talk of many things: + Of babies, storks and cabbages + And-- + +--having studied the Evangelists' Window facing the family pew-- + + And whether cows have wings.' + +The answer, in my experience, is invariably stern, and 'in the +negative': in tolerant moments compromising on 'Wait, like a good +boy, and see.' + +But we singled out this instinct and discussed it in our last +lecture. + +No. (6). _To construct things_--the 'constructive instinct.' I +quote Mr Holmes here: + + After analysis comes synthesis. The child pulls his toys + to pieces in order that he may, if possible, reconstruct + them. The ends that he sets before himself are those which + Comte Set before the human race--_savoir pour prévoir, afin + de pouvoir: induire pour déduire, afin de construire._ The + desire to make things, to build things up, to control ways + and means, to master the resources of nature, to put his + knowledge of her laws and facts to practical use, is strong in + his soul. Give him a box of bricks, and he will spend hours + in building and rebuilding houses, churches.... Set him on a + sandy shore with a spade and a pail, and he will spend hours + in constructing fortified castles with deep encircling moats. + +Again obviously this constructive instinct overlaps with the +imitative ones. Construction, for example, enters into the art of +making mud-pies and has also been applied in the past to great +poetry. If you don't keep a sharp eye in directing this instinct, +it may conceivably end in an "Othello" or in a "Divina Commedia." + +II + +Without preaching on any of the others, however, I take three of +the six instincts scheduled by Mr Holmes--the three which you +will allow to be almost purely imitative. + +They are: + + Acting, + Drawing, painting, modelling, + Dancing and singing. + +Now let us turn to the very first page of Aristotle's "Poetics," +and what do we read? + + Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and dithyrambic poetry, + and the greater part of the music of the flute and of the + lyre, are all, in general, modes of imitation.... + + For as their are persons who represent a number of things + by colours and drawings, and others vocally, so it is with + the arts above mentioned. They all imitate by rhythm, + language, harmony, singly or combined. + +Even dancing (he goes on) + + imitates character, emotion and action, by rhythmical + movement. + +Now, having touched on mud-pies, let me say a few words upon +these aesthetic imitative instincts of acting, dancing, singing +before I follow Aristotle into his explanation of the origin of +Poetry, which I think we may agree to be the highest subject of +our Art of Reading and to hold promise of its highest reward. + +Every wise mother sings or croons to her child and dances him on +her knee. She does so by sure instinct, long before the small +body can respond or his eyes--always blue at first and +unfathomably aged--return her any answer. It lulls him into the +long spells of sleep so necessary for his first growth. By and +by, when he has found his legs, he begins to skip, and even +before he has found articulate speech, to croon for himself. Pass +a stage, and you find him importing speech, drama, dance, +incantation, into his games with his playmates. Watch a cluster +of children as they enact "Here we go gathering nuts in May"-- +eloquent line: it is just what they are doing!--or "Here come +three Dukes a-riding," or "Fetch a pail of water," or "Sally, +Sally Waters": + + Sally, Sally Waters, + Sitting in the sand, + Rise, Sally--rise, Sally, + For a young man. + +Suitor presented, accepted [I have noted, by the way, that this +game is more popular with girls than with boys]; wedding ceremony +hastily performed--so hastily, it were more descriptive to say +'taken for granted'--within the circle; the dancers, who join +hands and resume the measure, chanting + + Now you are married, we wish you joy-- + First a girl and then a boy + +--the order, I suspect, dictated by exigencies of rhyme rather +than of Eugenics, as Dryden confessed that a rhyme had often +helped him to a thought. And yet I don't know; for the incantation +goes on to redress the balance in a way that looks scientific: + + Ten years after, son and daughter, + And now-- + +[Practically!] + + And now, Miss Sally, come out of the water. + +The players end by supplying the applause which, in these days of +division of labour, is commonly left to the audience. + +III + +Well, there you have it all: acting, singing, dancing, choral +movement--enlisted ancillary to the domestic drama: and, when you +start collecting evidence of these imitative instincts blent in +childhood the mass will soon amaze you and leave you no room to +be surprised that many learned scholars, on the supposition that +uncivilised man is a child more or less--and at least so much of +child that one can argue through children's practice to his--have +found the historical origin of Poetry itself in these primitive +performances: 'communal poetry' as they call it. I propose to +discuss with you (may be neat term) in a lecture not belonging to +this 'course' the likelihood that what we call specifically 'the +Ballad,' or 'Ballad Poetry,' originated thus. Here is a wider +question. Did all Poetry develop out of this, historically, as a +process in time and in fact? These scholars (among whom I will +instance one of the most learned--Dr Gummere) hold that it did: +and I may take a passage from Dr Gummere's "Beginnings of Poetry" +(p. 95) to show you how they call in the practice of savage races +to support their theory. The Botocudos of South America are-- +according to Dr Paul Ehrenreich who has observed them[1]--an +ungentlemanly tribe, 'very low in the social scale.' + + The Botocudos are little better than a leaderless horde, and + pay scant respect to their chieftain; they live only for their + immediate bodily needs, and take small thought for the + morrow, still less for the past. No traditions, no legends, are + abroad to tell them of their forbears. They still use gestures + to express feeling and ideas; while the number of words which + imitate a given sound `is extraordinarily great' An action or + an object is named by imitating the sound peculiar to it; and + sounds are doubled to express greater intensity.... To speak is + _aõ_; to speak loudly or to sing, is _aõ-aõ._ And now for their + aesthetic life, their song, dance, poetry, as described by this + accurate observer. 'On festal occasions the whole horde meets + by night round the camp fire for a dance. Men and women + alternating ... form a circle; each dancer lays his arms about + the necks of his two neighbours, and the entire ring begins to + turn to the right or to the left, while all the dancers stamp + strongly and in rhythm the foot that is advanced, and drag + after it the other foot. Now with drooping heads they press + closer and closer together; now they widen the circle. + Throughout the dance resounds a monotonous song to which + they stamp their feet. Often one can hear nothing but a + continually repeated _kalanî aha!_...Again, however, short + improvised songs, in which we are told the doings of the day, + the reasons for rejoicing, what not, as "Good hunting," or "Now + we have something to eat," or "Brandy is good."' + +'As to the aesthetic value' of these South American utterances, +Dr Gummere asks in a footnote, 'how far is it inferior to the +sonorous commonplaces of our own verse--say "The Psalm of Life?"' +I really cannot answer that question. Which do you prefer, +Gentlemen?--'Life is real, life is earnest,' or 'Now we have +something to eat'? I must leave you to settle it with the Food +Controller. + +The Professor goes on: + + 'Now and then, too, an individual begins a song, and is + answered by the rest in chorus.... _They never sing without + dancing, never dance without singing, and have but one word + to express both song and dance._' + + As the unprejudiced reader sees [Dr Gummere proceeds] + this clear and admirable account confirms the doctrine of + early days revived with fresh ethnological evidence in the + writings of Dr Brown and of Adam Smith, that dance, poetry + and song were once a single and inseparable function, and is + in itself fatal to the idea of rhythmic prose, of solitary + recitation, as foundations of poetry.... All poetry is + communal, holding fast to the rhythm of consent as to the + one sure fact. + +IV + +Now I should tell you, Gentlemen, that I hold such utterances as +this last--whatever you may think of the utterances of the +Botocudos--to be exorbitant: that I distrust all attempts to +build up (say) "Paradise Lost" historically from the yells and +capers of recondite savages. 'Life is real, life is earnest' may +be no better aesthetically (I myself think it a little better) +than 'Now we have something to eat' 'Brandy is good' may rival +Pindar's [Greek: Arioton men udor], and indeed puts what it +contains of truth with more of finality, less of provocation +(though Pindar at once follows up [Greek: Arioton men udor] with +exquisite poetry): but you cannot--truly you cannot--exhibit the +steps which lead up from 'Brandy is good' to such lines as + + Thus with the year + Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, + Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. + +I bend over the learned page pensively, and I seem to see a +Botocudo Professor--though not high 'in the social scale,' they +may have such things--visiting Cambridge on the last night of the +Lent races and reporting of its inhabitants as follows: + + They pay scant heed to their chiefs: they live only for their + immediate bodily needs, and take small thought for the + morrow. On festal occasions the whole horde meets by night + round the camp fire for a dance. Each dancer lays his arms + about the necks of his two neighbours, stamping strongly + with one foot and dragging the other after it. Now with + drooping heads they press closer and closer together; now + they widen the circle. Often one can hear nothing but a + continually repeated _kalanî aha,_ or again one hears short + improvised songs in which we are told the doings of the day, + the reasons for rejoicing, what not, as 'Good hunting,' 'Good + old--'[naming a tribal God], or in former times '_Now_ we shall + be but a short while,' or '_Woemma!_' Now and then, too, an + individual begins a song and is answered by the rest in + chorus--such as + + For he is an estimable person + Beyond possibility of gainsaying. + + The chorus twice repeats this and asseverates that they + are following a custom common to the flotilla, the + expeditionary force, and even their rude seats of learning. + +And Dr Gummere, or somebody else, comments: 'As the unprejudiced +reader will see, this clear and admirable account confirms our +hypothesis that in communal celebration we have at once the +origin and model of three poems, "The Faerie Queene," "Paradise +Lost" and "In Memoriam," recorded as having been composed by +members of this very tribe.' + +Although we have been talking of instincts, we are not concerned +here with the steps by which the child, or the savage, following +an instinct attains to _write_ poetry; but, more modestly, with +the instinct by which the child _likes_ it, and the way in which +he can be best encouraged to read and improve this natural +liking. Nor are we even concerned here to define Poetry. It +suffices our present purpose to consider Poetry as the sort of +thing the poets write. + +But obviously if we find a philosopher discussing poetry without +any reference to children, and independently basing it upon the +very same imitative instincts which we have noted in children, we +have some promise of being on the right track. + +V + +So I return to Aristotle. Aristotle (I shall in fairness say) +does not anticipate Dr Gummere, to contradict or refute him; he +may even be held to support him incidentally. But he sticks to +business, and this is what he says ("Poetics," C. IV): + + Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, and + these natural causes. First the instinct to imitate is + implanted in man from his childhood, and in this he differs + from other animals, being the most imitative of them all. Man + gets his first learning through imitation, and all men delight + in seeing things imitated. This is clearly shown by + experience.... + + To imitate, then, being instinctive in our nature, so too + we have an instinct for harmony and rhythm, metre being + manifestly a species of rhythm: and man, being born to these + instincts and little by little improving them, out of his early + improvisations created Poetry. + +Combining these two instincts, with him, we arrive at _harmonious +imitation._ Well and good. But what is it we imitate in poetry?-- +noble things or mean things? After considering this, putting mean +things aside as unworthy, and voting for the nobler--which must +at the same time be true, since without truth there can be no +real nobility--Aristotle has to ask `In what way true? True to +ordinary life, with its observed defeats of the right by the +wrong? or true, as again instinct tells good men it should be, +_universally_?' So he arrives at his conclusion that a true thing +is not necessarily truth of fact in a world where truth in fact +is so often belied or made meaningless--not the record that +Alcibiades went somewhere and suffered something--but truth to +the Universal, the superior demand of our conscience. In such a +way only we know that "The Tempest" or "Paradise Lost" or "The +Ancient Mariner" or "Prometheus Unbound" can be truer than any +police report. Yet we know that they are truer in essence, and in +significance, since they appeal to eternal verities--since they +imitate the Universal--whereas the police report chronicles +(faithfully, as in duty bound, even usefully in its way) events +which may, nay must, be significant somehow but cannot at best be +better to us than phenomena, broken ends and shards. + +VI + +I return to the child. Clearly in obeying the instinct which I +have tried to illustrate, he is searching to realise himself; +and, as educators, we ought to help this effort--or, at least, +not to hinder it. + +Further, if we agree with Aristotle, in this searching to realise +himself through imitation, what will the child most nobly and +naturally imitate? He will imitate what Aristotle calls 'the +Universal,' the superior demand. And does not this bring us back +to consent with what I have been preaching from the start in this +course--that to realise ourselves in _What Is_ not only in degree +transcends mere knowledge and activity, _What Knows_ and _What +Does,_ but transcends it in kind? It is not only what the child +unconsciously longs for: it is that for which (in St Paul's +words) 'the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain +together until now'; craving for this (I make you the admission) +as emotionally, as the heart may be thrilled, the breast surge, +the eyes swell with tears, at a note drawn from the violin: +feeling that somewhere, beyond reach, we have a lost sister, and +she speaks to our soul. + +VII + +Who, that has been a child, has not felt this surprise of beauty, +the revelation, the call of it? + + The sounding cataract + Haunted me like a passion ... + +--yes, or a rainbow on the spray against a cliff; or a vista of +lawns between descending woods; or a vision of fish moving in a +pool under the hazel's shadow? Who has not felt the small +surcharged heart labouring with desire to express it? + +I preach to you that the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +of all Theology, is one, and stands on one rock: _the very +highest Universal Truth is something so simple that a child may +understand it._ This, surely, was in Jesus' mind when he said `I +thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast +hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed +them unto babes.' + +For as the Universe is one, so the individual human souls, that +apprehend it, have no varying values intrinsically, but one equal +value. They vary but in power to apprehend, and this may be more +easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I shall even dare to quote of this Universal Truth, +the words I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley +concerning divine Love: 'I see now that if God's love reach up to +every star and down to every poor soul on earth, it must be +vastly simple; so simple that all dwellers on Earth may be +assured of it--as all who have eyes may be assured of the planet +shining yonder at the end of the street--and so vast that all +bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts.' I believe this to be strictly and +equally true of the appeal which Poetry makes to each of us, +child or man, in his degree. As Johnson said of Gray's "Elegy," +it 'abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and +with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.' It exalts +us through the best of us, by telling us something new yet not +strange, something that we _recognise,_ something that we too +have known, or surmised, but had never the delivering speech to +tell. 'There is a pleasure in poetic pains,' says Wordsworth: +but, Gentlemen, if you have never felt the travail, yet you have +still to understand the bliss of deliverance. + +VIII + +If, then, you consent with me thus far in theory, let us now +drive at practice. You have (we will say) a class of thirty or +forty in front of you. We will assume that they know _a-b, ab,_ +can at least spell out their words. You will choose a passage for +them, and you will not (if you are wise) choose a passage from +"Paradise Lost": your knowledge telling you that "Paradise Lost" +was written, late in his life, by a great _virtuoso,_ and older +men (of whom I, sad to say, am one) assuring you that to taste +the Milton of "Paradise Lost" a man must have passed his +thirtieth year. You take the early Milton: you read out this, for +instance, from "L'Allegro": + + Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee + Jest and youthful Jollity, + Quips, and Cranks, and wanton wiles, + Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles + Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, + And love to live in dimple sleek; + Sport that wrinkled Care derides, + And Laughter holding both his sides.... + +Go on: just read it to them. They won't know who Hebe was, but +you can tell them later. The metre is taking hold of them (in my +experience the metre of "L'Allegro" can be relied upon to grip +children) and anyway they can see `Laughter holding both his +sides': they recognise it as if they saw the picture. Go on +steadily: + + Come, and trip it as ye go, + On the light fantastick toe; + And in thy right hand lead with thee + The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; + And, if I give thee honour due, + Mirth, admit me of thy crew-- + +Do not pause and explain what a Nymph is, or why Liberty is the +'Mountain Nymph'! Go on reading: the Prince has always to break +through briers to kiss the Sleeping Beauty awake. Go on with the +incantation, calling him, persuading him, that he is the Prince +and she is worth it. Go on reading-- + + Mirth, admit me of thy crew, + To live with her, and live with thee, + In unreprovéd pleasures free; + To hear the lark begin his flight, + And singing startle the dull night, + From his watch-towre in the skies, + Till the dappled dawn doth rise. + +At this point--still as you read without stopping to explain, the +child certainly feels that he is being led to something. He knows +the lark: but the lark's 'watch-towre'--he had never thought of +that: and 'the dappled dawn'-yes that's just _it,_ now he comes +to think: + + Then to come, in spite of sorrow, + And at my window bid good-morrow, + Through the sweet-briar or the vine + Or the twisted eglantine; + While the cock with lively din + Scatters the rear of Darkness thin; + And to the stack, or the barn door, + Stoutly struts his dames before: + Oft listening how the hounds and horn + Cheerily rouse the slumbering Morn, + From the side of some hoar hill, + Through the high wood echoing shrill: + Sometime walking, not unseen, + By hedgerow elms on hillocks green, + Right against the eastern gate, + Where the great sun begins his state, + Robed in flames and amber light, + The clouds in thousand liveries dight; + While the ploughman, near at hand, + Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, + And the milkmaid singeth blithe, + And the mower whets his sithe, + And every shepherd tells his tale + Under the hawthorn in the dale. + +Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the +legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to +draw wine for the gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who +the gods were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; +don't explain that 'gris' in this connexion doesn't mean +'grease'; don't trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark; +don't prove its electrical properties by tearing up paper into +little bits and attracting them with the mouth-piece of your pipe +rubbed on your sleeve. Don't insist philologically that when +every shepherd 'tells his tale' he is not relating an anecdote +but simply keeping tally of his flock. + +Just go on reading, as well as you can; and be sure that when the +children get the thrill of it, for which you wait, they will be +asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to +answer. + +IX + +This advice, to be sure, presupposes of the teacher himself some +capacity of reading aloud, and reading aloud is not taught in our +schools. In our Elementary Schools, in which few of the pupils +contemplate being called to Holy Orders or to the Bar, it is +practised, indeed, but seldom taught as an art. In our Secondary +and Public Schools it is neither taught nor practised: as I know +to my cost--and you, to yours, Gentlemen, on whom I have had to +practise. + +But let the teacher take courage. First let him read a passage +'at the long breath'--as the French say--aloud, and persuasively +as he can. Now and then he may pause to indicate some particular +beauty, repeating the line before he proceeds. But he should be +sparing of these interruptions. When Laughter, for example, is +already 'holding both his sides' it cannot be less than +officious, a work of supererogation, to stop and hold them for +him; and he who obeys the counsel of perfection will read +straight to the end and then recur to particular beauties. Next +let him put up a child to continue with the tale, and another and +another, just as in a construing class. While the boy is reading, +the teacher should _never_ interrupt: he should wait, and return +afterwards upon a line that has been slurred or wrongly +emphasised. When the children have done reading he should invite +questions on any point they have found puzzling: it is with the +operation of poetry on _their_ minds that his main business lies. +Lastly, he may run back over significant points they have missed. + +'And is that all the method?'-Yes, that is all the method. 'So +simple as that?'-Yes, even so simple as that, and (I claim) even +so wise, seeing that it just lets the author--Chaucer or +Shakespeare or Milton or Coleridge--have his own way with the +young plant--just lets them drop 'like the gentle rain from +heaven,' and soak in. + + The moving Moon went up the sky, + And no where did abide: + Softly she was going up, + And a star or two beside. + +Do you really want to chat about _that_? Cannot you trust it? + + The stars were dim, and thick the night, + The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; + From the sails the dew did drip-- + Till clomb above the eastern bar + The hornéd Moon, with one bright star + Within the nether tip. + +_Must_ you tell them that for the Moon to hold a star anywhere +within her circumference is an astronomical impossibility? Very +well, then; tell it. But tell it afterwards, and put it away +quietly. For the quality of Poetry is not strained. Let the rain +soak; then use your hoe, and gently; and still trust Nature; by +which, I again repeat to you, all spirit attracts all spirit as +inevitably as all matter attracts all matter. + +'Strained.' I am glad that memory flew just here to the word of +Portia's: for it carries me on to a wise page of Dr Corson's, and +a passage in which, protesting against the philologers who cram +our children's handbooks with irrelevant information that but +obscures what Chaucer or Shakespeare _mean,_ he breaks out in +Chaucer's own words: + + Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde, + And turnen substaunce into accident! + +(Yes, and make the accident the substance!)--as he insists that +the true subject of literary study is the author's meaning; and +the true method a surrender of the mind to that meaning, with +what Wordsworth calls 'a wise passiveness': + + The eye--it cannot choose but see; + We cannot bid the ear be still; + Our bodies feel, where'er they be, + Against or with our will. + + Nor less I deem that there are Powers + Which of themselves our minds impress; + That we can feed this mind of ours + In a wise passiveness. + + Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum + Of things for ever speaking, + That nothing of itself will come, + But we must still be seeking? + +X + +I have been talking to-day about children; and find that most of +the while I have been thinking, if but subconsciously, of poor +children. Now, at the end, you may ask 'Why, lecturing here at +Cambridge, is he preoccupied with poor children who leave school +at fourteen and under, and thereafter read no poetry?'...Oh, yes! +I know all about these children and the hopeless, wicked waste; +these with a common living-room to read in, a father tired after +his day's work, and (for parental encouragement) just the two +words 'Get out!' A Scots domine writes in his log: + + I have discovered a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my + qualifying class to draw a graph of the attendance at a village + kirk. 'And you must explain away any rise or fall,' I said. + + Margaret Steel had a huge drop one Sunday, and her explanation + was 'Special Collection for Missions.' Next Sunday the + Congregation was abnormally large: Margaret wrote 'Change of + Minister.'... Poor Margaret! When she is fourteen, she will go + out into the fields, and in three years she will be an ignorant + country bumpkin. + +And again: + + Robert Campbell (a favourite pupil) left the school to-day. He + had reached the age-limit.... Truly it is like death: I stand + by a new made grave, and I have no hope of a resurrection. + Robert is dead. + +Precisely because I have lived on close terms with this, and the +wicked waste of it, I appeal to you who are so much more +fortunate than this Robert or this Margaret and will have far +more to say in the world, to think of them--how many they are. I +am not sentimentalising. When an Elementary Schoolmaster spreads +himself and tells me he looks upon every child entering his +school as a potential Lord Chancellor, I answer that, as I +expect, so I should hope, to die before seeing the world a +Woolsack. Jack cannot ordinarily be as good as his master; if he +were, he would be a great deal better. You have given Robert a +vote, however, and soon you will have to give it to Margaret. Can +you not give them also, in their short years at school, something +to sustain their souls in the long Valley of Humiliation? + +Do you remember this passage in "The Pilgrim's Progress"--as the +pilgrims passed down that valley? + + Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a + Boy feeding his Father's Sheep. The Boy was in very mean + Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured + Countenance, and as he sate by himself he Sung. Hark, said + Mr Greatheart, to what the Shepherd's Boy saith. + +Well, it was a very pretty song, about Contentment. + + He that is down need fear no fall + He that is low, no Pride: + He that is humble ever shall + Have God to be his Guide. + +But I care less for its subject than for the song. Though life +condemn him to live it through in the Valley of Humiliation, I +want to hear the Shepherd Boy singing. + + + +[Footnote 1: The reference given is _Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie_, +XIX. 30 ff.] + + + + +LECTURE V + +ON READING FOR EXAMINATIONS + +WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1917 + + +I + +You, Gentlemen, who so far have followed with patience this +course of lectures, advertised, maybe too ambitiously, as 'On the +Art of Reading,' will recall to your memory, when I challenge it +across the intervals of Vacation, that three propositions have +been pretty steadily held before you. + +The _first_: (bear me out) that, man's life being of the length +it is, and his activities multifarious as they are, out of the +mass of printed matter already loaded and still being shot upon +this planet, he _must_ make selection. There is no other way. + +The _second_: that--the time and opportunity being so brief, the +mass so enormous, and the selection therefore so difficult--he +should select the books that are best for him, and take them +_absolutely,_ not frittering his time upon books written about +and around the best: that--in their order, of course--the primary +masterpieces shall come first, and the secondary second, and so +on; and mere chat about any of them last of all. + +My _third_ proposition (perhaps more discutable) has been that, +the human soul's activities being separated, so far as we can +separate them, into _What Does, What Knows, What Is_--to _be_ +such-and-such a man ranks higher than either _knowing_ or _doing_ +this, that, or the other: that it transcends all man's activity +upon phenomena, even a Napoleon's: all his housed store of +knowledge, though it be a Casaubon's or a Mark Pattison's: that +only by learning to _be_ can we understand or reach, as we have +an instinct to reach, to our right place in the scheme of things: +and that, any way, all the greatest literature commands this +instinct. To be Hamlet--to feel yourself Hamlet--is more +important than killing a king or even knowing all there is to be +known about a text. Now most of us have been Hamlet, more or +less: while few of us, I trust, have ever murdered a monarch: and +still fewer, perhaps, can hope to know all that is to be known of +the text of the play. But for value, Gentlemen, let us not rank +these three achievements by order of their rarity. Shakespeare +means us to feel--to _be_--Hamlet. That is all: and from the play +it is the best we can get. + +II + +Now in talking to you, last term, about children I had perforce +to lay stress on the point that, with all this glut of literature, +the mass of children in our commonwealth who leave school at +fourteen go forth starving. + +But you are happier. You are happier, not in having your +selection of reading in English done for you at school (for you +have in the Public Schools scarce any such help): but happier (1) +because the time of learning is so largely prolonged, and (2) +because this most difficult office of sorting out from the mass +what you should read as most profitable has been tentatively +performed for you by us older men for your relief. For example, +those of you-'if any,' as the Regulations say--who will, a week +or two hence, be sitting for Section A of the Medieval and Modern +Languages Tripos, have been spared, all along, the laborious +business of choosing what you should read or read with particular +attention for the good of your souls. Is Chaucer your author? +Then you will have read (or ought to have read) "The Parlement of +Fowls," the "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales, "The Knight's +Tale," "The Man of Law's Tale," "The Nun Priest's Tale," "The +Doctor's Tale," "The Pardoner's Tale" with its Prologue, "The +Friar's Tale." You were not dissuaded from reading "Troilus;" you +were not forbidden to read all the Canterbury Tales, even the +naughtiest; but the works that I have mentioned have been +'prescribed' for you. So, of Shakespeare, we do not discourage +you (at all events, intentionally) from reading "Macbeth," +"Othello," "As You Like It," "The Tempest," any play you wish. In +other years we 'set' each of these in its turn. But for this Year +of Grace we insist upon "King John," "The Merchant of Venice," +"King Henry IV, Part I," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Hamlet," +"King Lear," 'certain specified works'--and so on, with other +courses of study. Why is this done? Be fair to us, Gentlemen. We +do it not only to accommodate the burden to your backs, to avoid +overtaxing one-and-a-half or two years of study; not merely to +guide you that you do not dissipate your reading, that you shall +--with us, at any rate--know where you are. We do it chiefly, and +honestly--you likewise being honest--to give you each year, in +each prescribed course, a sound nucleus of knowledge, out of +which, later, your minds can reach to more. We are not, in the +last instance, praiseworthy or blameworthy for your range. I +think, perhaps, too little of a man's _range_ in his short while +here between (say) nineteen and twenty-two. For anything I care, +the kernel may be as small as you please. To plant it wholesome, +for a while to tend it wholesome, then to show it the sky and +that it is wide--not a hot-house, nor a brassy cupola over a man, +but an atmosphere shining up league on league; to reach the +moment of saying 'All this now is yours, if you have the +perseverance as I have taught you the power, _coelum nactus es, +hoc exorna_': this, even in our present Tripos, we endeavour to +do. + +III + +All very well. But, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning asked, + + Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers? + +'Yes,' I hear you ingeminate; 'but what about Examinations? We +thank you, sirs, for thus relieving and guiding us: we +acknowledge your excellent intentions. But in practice you hang +up a bachelor's gown and hood on a pole, and right under and just +in front of it you set the examination-barrier. For this in +practice we run during three years or so, and to this all the +time you are exhorting, directing us--whether you mean it or not, +though we suspect that you cannot help yourselves.' Yes; and, as +labouring swimmers will turn their eyes even to a little boat in +the offing, I hear you pant 'This man at all events--always so +insistent that good literature teaches _What Is_ rather than +_What Knows_--will bring word that we may float on our backs, +bathe, enjoy these waters and be refreshed, instead of striving +through them competitive for a goal. He _must_ condemn literary +examinations, nine-tenths of which treat Literature as matter of +Knowledge merely.' + +IV + +I am sorry, Gentlemen: I cannot bring you so much of comfort as +all that. I have a love of the past which, because it goes down +to the roots, has sometimes been called Radicalism: I could never +consent with Bacon's gibe at antiquity as _pessimum augurium,_ +and Examinations have a very respectable antiquity. Indeed no +University to my knowledge has ever been able in the long run to +do without them: and although certain Colleges--King's College +here, and New College at Oxford--for long persevered in the +attempt, the result was not altogether happy, and in the end they +have consigned with custom. + +Of course Universities have experimented with the _process._ Let +me give you two or three ancient examples, which may help you to +see (to vary Wordsworth) that though 'the Form decays, the +function never dies.' + +(1) I begin with most ancient Bologna, famous for Civil Law. At +Bologna the process of graduation--of admission to the _jus +docendi,_ 'right to teach'--consisted of two parts, the Private +Examination and the Public (_conventus_): + + The private Examination was the real test of + competence, the so-called public Examination being in + practice a mere ceremony. Before admission to each of these + tests the candidate was presented by the Consiliarius of his + Nation to the Rector for permission to enter it, and swore + that he had complied with all the statutable conditions, that + he would give no more than the statutable fees or + entertainments to the Rector himself, the Doctor, or his + fellow-students, and that he would obey the Rector. Within a + period of eight days before the Examination the candidate + was presented by 'his own' Doctor or by some other Doctor + or by two Doctors to the Archdeacon, the presenting Doctor + being required to have satisfied himself by private + examination of his presentee's fitness. Early on the morning + of the Examination, after attending a Mass of the Holy + Ghost, the candidate appeared before the assembled College + and was assigned by one of the Doctors present two passages + (_puncta_) in the Civil or Canon Law as the case might be. He + then retired to his house to study the passages, in doing which + it would appear that he had the assistance of the presenting + Doctor. Later in the day the Doctors were summoned to the + Cathedral, or some other public building, by the Archdeacon, + who presided over but took no active part in the ensuing + examination. The candidate was then introduced to the + Archdeacon and Doctors by the presenting Doctor or Promotor + as he was styled. The Prior of the College then administered a + number of oaths in which the candidate promised respect to + that body and solemnly renounced all the rights of which the + College had succeeded in robbing all Doctors of other Colleges + not included in its ranks. The candidate then gave a lecture or + exposition of the two prepared passages: after which he was + examined upon them by two of the Doctors appointed by the + College. Other Doctors might ask supplementary questions of + Law (which they were required to swear that they had not + previously communicated to the candidate) arising more + indirectly out of the passages selected, or might suggest + objections to the answers. With a tender regard for the + feelings of their comrades at this 'rigorous and tremendous + Examination' (as they style it) the Statutes required the + Examiner to treat the examinee as _his own son._ + +But, knowing what we do of parental discipline in the Middle +Ages, we need not take this to enjoin a weak excess of leniency. + + The Examination concluded, the votes of the Doctors present + were taken by ballot and the candidate's fate determined by the + majority, the decision being announced by the Archdeacon. + +(2) Let us pass to the great and famous University of Paris. At +Paris + + In 1275, if not earlier, a preliminary test (or 'Responsions') + was instituted to ascertain the fitness of those who wanted to + take part in the public performance. At these 'Responsions' + which took place in the December before the Lent in which the + candidate was to determine, he had to dispute in Grammar and + Logic with a Master. If this test was passed in a satisfactory + manner, the candidate was admitted to the _Examen + Baccalariandorum,_ Examination for the Baccalaureate, which + was conducted by a board of Examiners appointed by each Nation + for its own candidates. The duty of the Examiners was twofold, + firstly to ascertain by inspecting the _schedules_ given by + his Masters that the candidate had completed the necessary + residence and attended Lectures in the prescribed subjects, and + secondly to examine him in the contents of his books. If he + passed this Examination, he was admitted to determine. + + Determination was a great day in the student's University + life. It retained much of its primitive character of a + student's festivity. It was not, it would seem, till the middle + of the fifteenth century that the student's Master was required + to be officially present at it. The Speech-day of a Public + School if combined with considerably more than the license of + the Oxford Encaenia or degree day here in May week would + perhaps be the nearest modern equivalent of these medieval + exhibitions of rising talent. Every effort was made to attract + to the Schools as large an audience as possible, not merely of + Masters or fellow-students, but if possible of ecclesiastical + dignitaries and other distinguished persons. The friends of a + Determiner who was not successful in drawing a more + distinguished audience, would run out into the streets and + forcibly drag chance passers-by into the School. Wine was + provided at the Determiner's expense in the Schools: and the + day ended in a feast [given in imitation of the Master's + Inception-banquets], even if dancing or torch-light processions + were forborne in deference to authority. + +I may add here in parenthesis that the thirstiness, always so +remarkable in the medieval man whether it make him strange to you +or help to ingratiate him as a human brother, seems to have +followed him even into the Tripos. 'It was not only after a +University exercise,' says the historian (Rashdall, Vol. II, p. +687), 'but during its progress that the need of refreshment was +apt to be felt.... Many Statutes allude--some by way of +prohibition, but not always--to the custom of providing wine for +the Examiners or Temptator [good word] before, during, or after +the Examination. At Heidelberg the Dean of the Faculty might +order in drinks, the candidate not. At Leipsic the candidate is +forbidden to treat [_facere propinam_] the Examiners _before_ the +Examination: which seems sound. At Vienna (medical school) he is +required to spend a florin "_pro confectionibus_".' + +V + +Now when we come to England--that is, to Oxford and Cambridge, +which ever had queer ways of their own--we find, strange to say, +for centuries no evidence at all of any kind of examination. As +for _competitive_ examinations like the defunct Mathematical and +Classical Triposes here--with Senior Wranglers, Wooden Spoons and +what lay between--of all European Universities, Louvain alone +used the system and may have invented it. At Louvain the +candidates for the Mastership were placed in three classes, in +each of which the names were arranged in order of merit. The +first class were styled _Rigorosi_ (Honour-men), the second +_Transibiles_ (Pass-men), the third _Gratiosi_ (Charity-passes); +while a fourth class, not publicly announced, contained the names +of those who could not be passed on any terms. '_Si autem (quod +absit!),_' says the Statute, '_aliqui inveniantur refutabiles, +erant de quarto ordine._' 'These competitive examinations'--I +proceed in the historian's words--'contributed largely to raise +Louvain to the high position as a place of learning and education +which it retained before the Universities were roused from their +15th century torpor by the revival of Learning.' Pope Adrian VI +was one of its famous _Primuses,_ and Jansen another. The College +which produced a _Primus_ enjoyed three days' holiday, during +which its bell was rung continuously day and night. + +At Oxford and Cambridge (I repeat) we find in their early days no +trace of any examination at all. To be sure--and as perhaps you +know--the first archives of this University were burned in the +'Town and Gown' riots of 1381 by the Townsmen, whose descendants +Erasmus describes genially as 'combining the utmost rusticity +with the utmost malevolence.' But no student will doubt that +Cambridge used pretty much the same system as Oxford, and the +system was this:--When a candidate presented himself before the +Chancellor for a License in Arts, he had to swear that he had +heard certain books[1], and nine Regent Masters (besides his own +Master, who presented him) were required to depose to their +knowledge (_de scientia_) of his sufficiency: and five others to +their credence (_de credulitate_), says the Statute. Only in the +School of Theology was no room allowed to credulity: there all +the Masters had to depose 'of their knowledge,' and one black +ball excluded. + +VI + +Well, you may urge that this method has a good deal to be said +for it. I will go some way to meet you too: but first you must +pay me the compliment of supposing me a just man. Being a just +man, and there also being presumed in me some acquaintance with +English Literature--not indeed much--not necessarily much--but +enough to distinguish good writing from bad or, at any rate, real +writing from sham, and at least to have an inkling of what these +poets and prose-writers were trying to do--why then I declare to +you that, after two years' reading with a man and talk with him +about literature, I should have a far better sense of his +industry, of his capacity, of his performance and (better) of his +promise, than any examination is likely to yield me. In short I +could sign him up for a first, second or third class, or as +_refutabilis,_ with more accuracy and confidence than I could +derive from taking him as a stranger and pondering his three or +four days' performance in a Tripos. For some of the best men +mature slowly: and some, if not most, of the best writers write +slowly because they have a conscience; and the most original +minds are just those for whom, in a _literary_ examination, it is +hardest to set a paper. + +But the process (you will admit) might be invidious, might lend +itself to misunderstanding, might conceivably even lead to +re-imposition of an oath forbidding the use of a knife or other +sharp implement. And among Colleges rivalry is not altogether +unknown; and dons, if unlike other men in outward aspect, +sometimes resemble them in frailty; and in short I am afraid we +shall have to stick to the old system for a while longer. I am +sorry, Gentlemen: but you see how it works. + +VII + +Yet--and I admit it--the main objection abides: that, while +Literature deals with _What Is_ rather than with _What Knows,_ +Examinations by their very nature test mere Knowledge rather than +anything else: that in the hands of a second-rate examiner they +tend to test knowledge alone, or what passes for knowledge: and +that in the very run of this world most examiners will be +second-rate men: which, if we remind ourselves that they receive +the pay of fifth-rate ones is, after all, considerably better than +we have a right to expect. + +We are dealing, mind you, with _English_ Literature--our own +literature. In examining upon a foreign literature we can +artfully lay our stress upon Knowledge and yet neither raise nor +risk raising the fatal questions 'What is it all _about_?' 'What +is it, and why is it _it_?'-since merely to translate literally a +chorus of the "Agamemnon," or an ode of Pindar's, or a passage +from Dante or Molière is a creditable performance; to translate +either well is a considerable feat; and to translate either +perfectly is what you can't do, and the examiner knows you can't +do, and you know the examiner can't do, and the examiner knows +you know he can't do. But when we come to a fine thing in our own +language--to a stanza from Shelley's "Adonais" for instance: + + He has outsoared the shadow of our night; + Envy and calumny and hate and pain, + And that unrest which men miscall delight, + Can touch him not and torture not again; + From the contagion of the world's slow stain + He is secure, and now can never mourn + A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; + Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, + With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. + +what can you do with _that_? How can you examine on _that_? Well, +yes, you can request the candidate, to 'Write a short note on the +word _calumny_ above,' or ask 'From what is it derived?' 'What +does he know of "Blackwood's Magazine?"' 'Can he quote any +parallel allusion in Byron?' You can ask all that: but you are +not getting within measurable distance of _it._ Your mind is not +even moving on the right plane. Or let me turn back to some light +and artless Elizabethan thing--say to the Oenone duet in Peele's +"Arraignment of Paris": + + _Oenone._ Fair and fair and twice so fair, + As fair as any may be: + The fairest shepherd on our green, + A love for any lady. + _Paris_ Fair and fair and twice so fair, + As fair as any may be: + Thy love is fair for thee alone, + And for no other lady. + _Oenone._ My love is fair, my love is gay, + As fresh as bin the flowers in May, + And of my love my roundelay, + My merry merry merry roundelay + Concludes with Cupid's curse: + They that do change old love for new, + Pray gods they change for worse.... + My love can pipe, my love can sing, + My love can many a pretty thing, + And of his lovely praises ring + My merry merry merry roundelays + 'Amen' to Cupid's curse: + They that do change old love for new + Pray gods they change for worse. + _Ambo._ Fair and fair and twice so fair, + As fair as any may be: + The fairest shepherd on our green, + A love for any lady.... + +How can anyone examine on _that_? How can anyone solemnly +explain, in a hurry, answering one of five or six questions +selected from a three hours' paper, just why and how that hits +him? And yet, if it hit him not, he is lost. If even so simple a +thing as that--a thing of silly sooth--do not hit him, he is all +unfit to traffic with literature. + +VIII + +You see how delicate a business it is. Examination in Literature, +being by its very nature so closely tied down to be a test of +_Knowledge,_ can hardly, save when used by genius, with care, be +any final test of that which is better than Knowledge, of that +which is the crown of all scholarship, of _understanding._ + +But do not therefore lose heart, even in your reading for +strict purposes of examination. Our talk is of reading. Let +me fetch you some comfort from the sister and correlative, +but harder, art of writing. + +I most potently believe that the very best writing, in verse or +in prose, can only be produced in moments of high excitement, or +rather (as I should put it) in those moments of still and solemn +awe into which a noble excitement lifts a man. Let me speak only +of prose, of which you may more cautiously allow this than of +verse. I think of St Paul's glorious passage, as rendered in the +Authorised Version, concluding the 15th chapter of his First +Epistle to the Corinthians. First, as you know, comes the long, +swaying, scholastic, somewhat sophisticated argument about the +evidence of resurrection; about the corn, 'that which thou +sowest,' the vivification, the change in vivification, and the +rest. All this, almost purely argumentative, should be read +quietly, with none of the _bravura_ which your prize reader +lavishes on it. The argument works up quietly--at once tensely +and sinuously, but very quietly--to conviction. Then comes the +hush; and then the authoritative voice speaking out of it, awful +and slow, 'Behold, I shew you a mystery' ... and then, all the +latent emotion of faith taking hold and lifting the man on its +surge, 'For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised +incorruptible' ... and so, incorruption tolling down corruption, +the trumpet smashes death underfoot in victory: until out of the +midst of tumult, sounds the recall; sober, measured, claiming the +purified heart back to discipline. 'Therefore, my beloved +brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the +work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in +vain in the Lord.' + +I think of that triumphant passage. I think of the sentences with +which Isaak Walton ends his life of Donne. I think of the last +pages of Motley's "Dutch Republic," with its eulogy on William +the Silent so exquisitely closing: + + As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave + nation, and when he died the little children cried in the + streets. + +I think of two great prose passages in Thackeray's "Esmond"; of +Landor's "Dream of Boccaccio" ... and so on: and I am sure that, +in prose or in verse, the best that man can utter flows from him +either in moments of high mental excitement or in the hush of +that _Altitudo_ to which high excitement lifts him. + +But, first now, observe how all these passages--and they are the +first I call to mind--rise like crests on a large bulk of a wave +--St Paul's on a labouring argument about immortality; Motley's +at the conclusion of a heavy task. Long campaigning brings the +reward of Harry Esmond's return to Castlewood, long intrigue of +the author's mind with his characters closes that febrile chapter +in which Harry walks home to break the news of the death of the +Duke of Hamilton--in the early morning through Kensington, where +the newsboys are already shouting it: + + The world was going to its business again, although dukes + lay dead and ladies mourned for them.... So day and night pass + away, and to-morrow comes, and our place knows us not. + Esmond thought of the courier now galloping on the north + road to inform him, who was Earl of Arran yesterday, that he + was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand great + schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant + heart, beating but a few hours since, and now in a little dust + quiescent. + +And on top of this let me assure you that in writing, or learning +to write, solid daily practice is the prescription and 'waiting +upon inspiration' a lure. These crests only rise on the back of +constant labour. Nine days, according to Homer, Leto travailed +with Apollo: but he was Apollo, lord of Song. I _know_ this to be +true of ordinary talent: but, supposing you all to be geniuses, I +am almost as sure that it holds of genius. Listen to this: + + Napoleon I used to say that battles were won by the sudden + flashing of an idea through the brain of a commander at a + certain critical instant. The capacity for generating this + sudden electric spark was military genius.... Napoleon seems + always to have counted upon it, always to have believed that + when the critical moment arrived the wild confusion of the + battlefield would be illuminated for him by that burst of + sudden flame. But if Napoleon had been ignorant of the + prosaic business of his profession, _to which he attended more + closely than any other commander,_ would these moments of + supreme clearness have availed him, or would they have come + to him at all? + +My author thinks not: and I am sure he is right. So, in writing, +only out of long preparation can come the truly triumphant flash: +and I ask you to push this analogy further, into the business of +reading, even of reading for examination. You learn to discipline +yourselves, you acquire the art of marshalling, of concentrating, +driving your knowledge upon a point: and--for you are young--that +point is by no means the final point. Say that it is only an +examination, and silly at that. Still you have been learning the +art, you have been training yourself to be, for a better purpose, +effective. + +IX + +Yet, and when this has been granted, the crucial question abides +and I must not shirk it 'you say that the highest literature +deals with _What Is_ rather than with _What Knows._ It is all +very fine to assure us that testing our knowledge _about_ +Literature and _around_ Literature, and on this side or that side +of Literature, is healthy for us in some oblique way: but can you +examiners examine, or can you not, on Literature in what you call +its own and proper category of _What Is_?' + +So I hear the question--the question which beats and has beaten, +over and over again, good men trying to construct Schools of +English in our Universities. + +With all sense of a responsibility, of a difficulty, that has +lain on my mind for these five years, I answer, Gentlemen, 'Yes, +we ought: yes, we can: and yes, we will.' + +But, for the achievement, we teachers must first know how to +teach. When that is learned, Examination will come as a +consequent, easy, almost trivial matter. I will, for example-- +having already allowed how _hard_ it is to examine on literature +--take the difficulty at its very extreme. I will select a piece +of poetry, and the poet shall be Keats--on whom, if on any one, +is felt the temptation to write gush and loose aesthetic chatter. +A pupil comes to read with me, and I open at the famous "Ode to a +Grecian Urn." + +(1) We read it through together, perhaps twice; at the +second attempt getting the emphasis right, and some, at any +rate, of the modulations of voice. So we reach a working +idea of the Ode and what Keats meant it to be. + +(2) We then compare it with his other Odes, and observe that it +is (a) regular in stanza form, (b) in spite of its outburst in +the 3rd stanza--'More happy love! more happy, happy love' etc.-- +much severer in tone than, e.g., the "Ode to a Nightingale" or +the "Ode to Psyche," (c) that the emotion is not luscious, but +simple, (d) that this simplicity is Hellenic, so far as Keats can +compass it, and (e) eminently well-suited to its subject, which +is a carven urn, gracious but severe of outline; a moment of joy +caught by the sculptor and arrested, for time to perpetuate; yet +--and this is the point of the Ode--conveying a sense that +innocent gaiety is not only its own excuse, but of human things +one of the few eternal--and eternal just because it is joyous and +fleeting. + +(3) Then we go back and compare this kind of quiet immortal +beauty with the passionate immortality hymned in the "Nightingale +Ode" + + Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! + No hungry generations tread thee down... + +with all the rest of that supreme stanza: from which (with some +passages my reading supplies to illustrate the difference) we +fall to contrasting the vibrating thrill of the "Nightingale" +with the happy grace of the "Grecian Urn" and, allowing each to +be appropriate, dispute for a while, perhaps, over the merits of +classical calm and romantic thrill. + +(4) From this we proceed to examine the Ode in detail line by +line: which examination brings up a whole crowd of questions, +such as + +(a) We have a thought enounced in the first stanza. Does the Ode +go on to develop and amplify it, as an Ode should? Or does +Pegasus come down again and again on the prints from which he +took off? If he do this, and the action of the Ode be dead and +unprogressive, is the defect covered by beauty of language? Can +such defect ever be so covered? + +(b) Lines 15 and 16 anticipate lines 21-24, which are saying the +same thing and getting no forwarder. + +(c) We come to the lines + + What little town by river or sea shore, + Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, + Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? + +with the answering lines + + And, little town, thy streets for evermore + Will silent be; and not a soul to tell + Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. + +and we note Sir Sidney Colvin's suggestion that this breaks in +upon an arrest of art as though it were an arrest on reality: and +remember that he raised a somewhat similar question over "The +Nightingale"; and comparing them, discuss truth of emotion +against truth of reality. + +We come to the last stanza and lament 'O Attic shape! Fair +attitude' for its jingle: but note how the poet recovers himself +and brings the whole to a grand close. + +I have, even yet, mentioned but a few of the points. For one, I +have omitted its most beautiful vowel-play, on which teacher and +pupil can dwell and learn together. And heaven forbid that as a +teacher I should _insist_ even on half of those I have indicated. +A teacher, as I hold, should watch for what his pupil divines of +his own accord; but if, trafficking with works of inspiration, he +have no gift to catch that inspiration nor power to pass it on, +then I say 'Heaven help him! but he has no valid right on earth +to be in the business.' + +And if a teacher have all these chances of teaching--mind you, of +_accurate_ teaching--supplied him by a single Ode of Keats, do +you suppose we cannot set in an Examination paper one intelligent +question upon it, in its own lawful category? + +Gentlemen, with the most scrupulous tenderness for aged and even +decrepit interests, we have been trying to liberate you from +certain old bad superstitions and silently laying the stones of a +new School of English, which we believe to be worthy even of +Cambridge. + +Our proposals are before the University. Should they be passed, +still everything will depend on the loyalty of its teachers to +the idea; and on that enthusiasm which I suppose to be the nurse +of all studies and know to be the authentic cherishing nurse of +ours. We may even have conceded too much to the letter, but we +have built and built our trust on the spirit 'which maketh +alive.' + + +[Footnote 1: Why had he to swear this under pain of +excommunication, when the lecturer could so easily keep a +roll-call? But the amount of oathtaking in a medieval University was +prodigious. Even College servants were put on oath for their +duties: Gyps invited their own damnation, bed-makers kissed the +book. Abroad, where examinations were held, the Examiner swore +not to take a bribe, the Candidate neither to give one, nor, if +unsuccessful, to take his vengeance on the Examiner with a knife +or other sharp instrument. At New College, Oxford, the +matriculating undergraduate was required to swear in particular +not to dance in the College Chapel.] + + + + +LECTURE VI + +ON A SCHOOL OF ENGLISH + +WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1917 + + +I + +It is now, Gentlemen, five years less a term since, feeling (as +they say of other offenders) my position acutely, I had the +honour of reading an Inaugural before this University and the +impudence to loose, in the course of it, a light shaft against a +phrase in the very Ordinance defining the duties of this Chair. + +'It shall be the duty of the Professor,' says the Ordinance, 'to +deliver courses of lectures on English Literature from the age of +Chaucer onwards, and otherwise to promote, so far as may be in +his power, the study in the University of the subject of English +Literature.' + +That was the phrase at which I glanced--'the subject of English +Literature'; and I propose that we start to-day, for reasons that +will appear, by subjecting this subject to some examination. + +II + +'The _Subject_ of English Literature.' Surely--for a start--there +is no such thing; or rather, may we not say that everything is, +has been or can be, a subject of English Literature? Man's loss +of Paradise has been a subject of English Literature, and so has +been a Copper Coinage in Ireland, and so has been Roast +Sucking-pig, and so has been Holy Dying, and so has been Mr Pepys's +somewhat unholy living, and so have been Ecclesiastical Polity, +The Grail, Angling for Chub, The Wealth of Nations, The Sublime +and the Beautiful, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, +Prize-Fights, Grecian Urns, Modern Painters, Intimations of +Immortality in early Childhood, Travels with a Donkey, Rural +Rides and Rejected Addresses--_all_ these have been subjects of +English Literature: as have been human complots and intrigues as +wide asunder as "Othello" and "The School for Scandal"; persons +as different as Prometheus and Dr Johnson, Imogen and Moll +Flanders, Piers the Plowman and Mr Pickwick; places as different +as Utopia and Cranford, Laputa and Reading Gaol. "Epipsychidion" +is literature: but so is "A Tale of a Tub." + +Listen, for this is literature: + + If some king of the earth have so large an extent of + dominion, in north, and south, so that he hath winter and + summer together in his dominions, so large an extent east and + west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, + much more hath God mercy and judgement together: He + brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he + can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; + though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or + conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and + frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, + smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, + not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the + spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as + the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions + invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons[1]. + +But listen again, for this also is literature: + + A sweet disorder in the dress + Kindles in clothes a wantonness: + A lawn about the shoulders thrown + Into a fine distraction: + An erring lace, which here and there + Enthrals the crimson stomacher: + A cuff neglectful, and thereby + Ribbons to flow confusedly: + A winning wave, deserving note, + In the tempestuous petticoat: + A careless shoe-string, in whose tie + I see a wild civility: + Do more bewitch me than when art + Is too precise in every part. + +Here again is literature: + + When I was a child, at seven years old, my friends on a + holiday filled my pockets with coppers. I went directly to a + shop where they sold toys for children; and being charmed with + the sound of a whistle that I met by the way in the hands of + another boy, I voluntarily offered him all my money for one. + I then came home and went whistling all over the house, much + pleased with my whistle but disturbing all the family. My + brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain I + had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it + was worth ... The reflection gave me more chagrin than the + whistle gave me pleasure. [BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.] + +Of a bridal, this is literature: + + Open the temple gates unto my love, + Open them wide that she may enter in! + +But so also is Suckling's account of a wedding that begins + + I tell thee, Dick, where I have been. + +This is literature: + + And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and + a covert from the tempest; + As rivers of water in a dry place, + As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. + +But so is this literature: + + One circle cannot touch another circle on the outside at + more points than one. + For, if it be possible, let the circle ACK touch the circle + ABC at the points A, C. Join AC. + Then because the two points A, C are in the + circumference of the circle ACK the line which joins them + falls within that circle. + But the circle ACK is without the circle ABC. Therefore + the straight line AC is without the circle ABC. + But because the two points A, C are in the circumference of + ABC therefore the straight line AC falls within that circle. + _Which is absurd._ + Therefore one circle cannot touch another on the outside at + more points than one. + +All thoughts, as well as all passions, all delights + + _votum, timor, ira, voluptas_-- + +whatsoever, in short, engages man's activity of soul or body, may +be deemed the subject of literature and is transformed into +literature by process of recording it in memorable speech. It is +so, it has been so, and God forbid it should ever not be so! + +III + +Now this, put so, is (you will say) so extremely, obvious that it +must needs hide a fallacy or at best a quibble on a word. I shall +try to show that it does not: that it directly opposes plain +truth to a convention accepted by the Ordinance, and that the +fallacy lies in that convention. + +A convention may be defined as something which a number of men +have agreed to accept in lieu of the truth and to pass off for +the truth upon others: I was about to add, preferably when they +can catch them young: but some recent travel in railway trains +and listening to the kind of stuff men of mature years deliver +straight out of newspapers for the products of their own digested +thought have persuaded me that the ordinary man is as susceptible +at fifty, sixty, or even seventy as at any earlier period of +growth, and that the process of incubation is scarcely less +rapid. + +I am not, to be sure, concerned to deny that there may be +conventions useful enough to society, serving it to maintain +government, order, public and private decency, or the commerce on +which it must needs rest to be a civilised society at all-- +commerce of food, commerce of clothing, and so on, up to commerce +in knowledge and ideas. Government itself--any form of it--is a +convention; marriage is a convention; money of course is a +convention, and the alphabet itself I suppose to contain as many +conventions as all the old Courts of Love and Laws of Chivalry +put together, and our English alphabet one tremendous fallacy, +that twenty-six letters, separately or in combination are capable +of symbolising all the sounds produced by an Englishman's organs +of speech, let alone the sounds he hears from foreigners, dogs, +guns, steam-engines, motor-horns and other friends and enemies to +whom we deny the franchise. Also of course it ignores the whole +system of musical notes--another convention--which yet with many +of the older bards could hardly be separated from the words they +used, though now only the words survive and as literature. + +IV + +But every convention has a fallacy somewhere at the root; whether +it be useful and operative, as many a legal fiction is operative, +for good; or senile, past service yet tyrannous by custom, and so +pernicious; or merely foolish, as certain artistic conventions +are traceable, when a Ruskin comes to judgment, back to nothing +better than folly: and it becomes men of honest mind, in dealing +with anything recognisable as a convention, to examine its +accepted fallacy, whether it be well understood or ill understood; +beneficent or pernicious or merely foolish or both foolish and +pernicious: and this is often most handily done by tracing its +history. + +Now I shall assume that the framers of the Ordinance regulating +the duties of this Chair knew well enough, of their own reading, +that English Literature deals with a vast variety of subjects: +and that, if any piece of writing miss to deal with its +particular subject, so closely that theme and treatment can +scarcely be separated, by so much will it be faulty as literature. +Milton is fairly possessed with the story of Man's fall, Boswell +possessed with Johnson, Shelley with hatred of tyranny in all its +manifestations, Mill again with the idea of Liberty: and it is +only because we had knowledge presented to us at an age when we +thought more attentively of apples, that we still fail to +recognise in Euclid and Dr Todhunter two writers who are excellent +because possessed with a passion for Geometry. + +I infer, then, that the framers of the Ordinance, when they +employed this phrase 'the study of the subject of English +Literature,' knew well enough that no such thing existed in +nature, but adopted the convention that English Literature could +be separated somehow from its content and treated as a subject +all by itself, for teaching purposes: and, for purposes of +examination, could be yoked up with another subject called +English Language, as other Universities had yoked it. + +V + +I believe the following to be a fair account of how these +examinations in English Language and Literature came to pass, and +how a certain kind of student came to pass these Examinations. At +any rate since the small revolution has happened in my life-time +and most of it since I was able to observe, the account here is +drawn from my own observation and may be checked and corrected by +yours. + +Thirty-five or forty years ago--say in the late seventies or +early eighties--some preparatory schools, and others that taught +older boys but ranked below the great Public Schools in repute, +taught so much of English Literature as might be comprised, at a +rough calculation, in two or three plays of Shakespeare, edited +by Clark and Aldis Wright; a few of Bacon's Essays, Milton's +early poems, Stopford Brooke's little primer, a book of extracts +for committal to memory, with perhaps Chaucer's "Prologue" and a +Speech of Burke. In the great Public Schools _no_ English +Literature was studied, save in those which had invented 'Modern +Sides,' to prepare boys specially for Woolwich or Sandhurst or +the Indian Civil Service; for entrance to which examinations were +held on certain prescribed English Classics, and marks mainly +given for acquaintance with the editors' notes. + +In the Universities, the study of English Classics was not +officially recognised at all. + +Let us not hastily suppose that this neglect of English rested +wholly on unreason, or had nothing to say for itself. Teachers +and tutors of the old Classical Education (as it was called) +could plead as follows: + + 'In the first place,' they would say, 'English Literature is + too _easy_ a study. Our youth, at School or University, starts + on his native classics with a liability which in any foreign + language he has painfully to acquire. The voices that + murmured around his cradle, the voice of his nurse, of his + governess, of the parson on Sundays; the voices of village + boys, stablemen, gamekeepers and farmers--friendly or + unfriendly--of callers, acquaintances, of the children he met + at Children's Parties; the voices that at the dinner-table + poured politics or local gossip into the little pitcher with + long ears--all these were English voices speaking in English: + and all these were all the while insensibly leading him up the + slope from the summit of which he can survey the promised + land spread at his feet as a wide park; and he holds the key of + the gates, to enter and take possession. Whereas,' the old + instructors would continue, 'with the classics of any foreign + language we take him at the foot of the steep ascent, spread a + table before him (_mensa, mensa, mensam_ ...) and coax or drive + him up with variations upon amo, "I love" or [Greek: tupto], + "I beat," until he, too, reaches the summit and beholds the + landscape: + + But O, what labour! + O Prince, what pain!' + +Now so much of truth, Gentlemen, as this plea contains was +admitted last term by your Senate, in separating the English +Tripos, in which a certain linguistic familiarity may be not +rashly presumed of the student, from the Foreign Language +Triposes, divided into two parts, of which the first will more +suspiciously test his capacity to construe the books he professes +to have studied. I may return to this and to the alleged +_easiness_ of studies in a School of English. Let us proceed just +now with the reasoned plea for neglect. + +These admirable old schoolmasters and dons would have hesitated, +maybe, to say flatly with Dogberry that 'to write and read comes +by nature ... and for your writing and reading, let that appear +when there is no need of such vanity.' But in practice their +system so worked, and in some of the Public Schools so works +to this day. Let me tell you that just before the war an +undergraduate came to me from the Sixth Form of one of the best +reputed among these great schools. He wished to learn to write. +He wished (poor fellow) to write me an essay, if I would set him +a subject. He had never written an essay at school. 'Indeed,' +said I, 'and there is no reason why you should, if by "essay" you +mean some little treatise about "Patriotism" or "A Day in the +Country." I will choose you no such subject nor any other upon +any book which you have never read. Tell me, what is your +Tripos?' He said 'the History Tripos.' 'Then,' said I, 'since +History provides quite a large number of themes, choose one and I +will try to correct your treatment of it, without offence to your +opinions or prejudice to your facts.' 'But,' he confessed, 'at +So-and-so'--naming the great Public School--'we never _wrote_ out +an account of anything, or set down our opinions on anything, to +be corrected. We just construed and did sums: And when he brought +me his first attempt, behold, it was so. He could not construct a +simple sentence, let alone putting two sentences together; while, +as for a paragraph, it lay beyond his farthest horizon. In short, +here was an instance ready to hand for any cheap writer engaged +to decry the old Classical Education. + +What would the old schoolmasters plead in excuse? Why this, as I +suggest--'You cite an extreme instance. But, while granting +English Literature to be great, we would point out that an +overwhelming majority of our best writers have modelled their +prose and verse upon the Greek and Roman classics, either +directly or through tradition. Now we have our own language +_gratis,_ so to speak. Let us spend our pains, then, in acquiring +Latin and Greek, and the tradition. So shall we most intimately +enjoy our own authors; and so, if we wish to write, we shall have +at hand the clues they followed, the models they used.' + +Now I have as you know, Gentlemen, a certain sympathy with this +plea, or with a part of it: nor can so much of truth as its +argument contains be silenced by a 'What about Shakespeare?' or a +'What about Bunyan?' or a 'What about Burns?' I believe our +imaginary pleader for the Classics could put up a stout defence +upon any of those names. To choose the forlornest hope of the +three, I can hear him demonstrating, to his own satisfaction if +not to yours, that Bunyan took his style straight out of the +Authorised Version of our Bible; which is to say that he took it +from the styles of forty-seven scholars, _plus_ Tyndale's, _plus_ +Coverdale's, _plus_ Cranmer's--the scholarship of fifty scholars +expressed and blended. + +But, as a theory, the strict classical argument gives itself +away, as well by its intolerance as by its obvious distrust of +the genius of our own wonderful language. I have in these five +years, and from this place, Gentlemen, counselled you to seek +back ever to those Mediterranean sources which are the well-heads +of our civilisation: but always (I hope) on the understanding +that you use them with a large liberty. They are effete for us +unless we add and mingle freely the juice of our own natural +_genius._ + +And in practice the strict classical theory, with its implied +contempt of English, has been disastrous: disastrous not only +with the ordinary man--as with my Sixth Form boy who could not +put two sentences together, and had read no English authors; but +disastrous even to highly eminent scholars. Listen, pray, to this +passage from one of them, Frederick Paley, who condescended +(Heaven knows why) to turn the majestic verse of Pindar into +English Prose-- + +_From the VIIIth Isthmian:_ + + And now that we are returned from great sorrows, let us + not fall into a dearth of victories, nor foster griefs; but as + we have ceased from our tiresome troubles, we will publicly + indulge in a sweet roundelay. + +_From the IVth Pythian:_ + + It had been divinely predicted to Pelias, that he should die + by the doughty sons of Aeolus and an alarming oracle had come + to his wary mind, delivered at the central point of tree-clad + mother-earth, 'that he must by all means hold in great caution + the man with one shoe, when he shall have come from a homestead + on the hills.' + + And he accordingly came in due time, armed with two spears, + a magnificent man. The dress he wore was of a double kind, + the national costume of the Magnesians.... Nor as yet had + the glossy clusters of his hair been clipped away, but + dangled brightly adown his back. + + Forward he went at once and took his stand among the + people.... Him then they failed to recognise: but some of the + reverent-minded went so far as to say, 'Surely this cannot be + Apollo!' + +It needs no comment, I think. Surely _this_ cannot be Apollo! + +Frederick Paley flourished--if the word be not exorbitant for so +demure a writer--in the middle of the last century (he was born +in the year of Waterloo and died in the year after Queen +Victoria's first jubilee). Well, in that period there grew up a +race of pioneers who saw that English Literature--that proud park +and rolling estate--lay a tangled, neglected wilderness for its +inheritors, and set themselves bravely to clear broad ways +through it. Furnivall and Skeat, Aldis Wright, Clark, Grosart, +Arber, Earle, Hales, Morris, Ellis and the rest--who can rehearse +these names now but in deepest respect? Oh, believe me, +Gentlemen! they were wonderful fighters in a cause that at first +seemed hopeless. If I presume to speak of foibles to-day, you +will understand that I do so because, lightly though I may talk +to you at times, I have a real sense of the responsibilities of +this Chair. I worship great learning, which they had: I loathe +flippant detraction of what is great; I have usually a heart for +men-against-odds and the unpopular cause. But these very valiant +fighters had, one and all, some very obvious foibles: and +because, in the hour of success, these foibles came to infect the +whole teaching of English in this country, and to infect it +fatally for many years, I shall dare to point them out. + +VI + +(a) To begin with, then, these valiant fighters, intent on +pushing their cause to the front, kept no sense of proportion. +All their geese were swans, and "Beowulf" a second "Iliad." I +think it scarcely too much to say that, of these men, all so +staunch in fighting for the claims of English Literature, not one +(with the exception of Dr Hales) appears to have had any critical +judgment whatever, apart from the rhyme, verse and inflectional +tests on which they bestowed their truly priceless industry. +Criticism, as Sainte-Beuve, Matthew Arnold or Pater understood +and practised it, they merely misprized. + +(b) I think it was of true scholarly desire to vindicate English +Literature from the charge of being 'too easy,' that--as their +studies advanced--they laid more and more stress on Middle-English +and Old English writings than on what our nations of England and +Scotland have written since they learned to write. I dare to think +also that we may attribute to this dread of 'easiness' their +practice of cumbering simple texts with philological notes; on +which, rather than on the text, we unhappy students were carefully +examined. For an example supplied to Dr Corson--I take those three +lines of Cowper's "Task" (Bk I, 86-88): + + Thus first necessity invented stools, + Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, + And luxury th' accomplish'd SOFA last. + +Now in these three lines the word '_accomplish'd_' is the only one +that needs even the smallest explanation. 'But,' says Dr Corson, +'in two different editions of "The Task" in my library, prepared +for the use of the young, no explanation is given of it, but in +both the Arabic origin of 'sofa' is given. In one the question is +asked what other words in English have been derived from the +Arabic.' ('Abracadabra' would be my little contribution.) + +(c) These valiant fighters--having to extol what Europe had, +wrongly enough, forgotten to count among valuable things--turned +aggressively provincial, parted their beards in the Anglo-Saxon +fashion; composed long sentences painfully innocent of any +word not derivable from Anglo-Saxon, sentences in which the +'impenetrability of matter' became the 'un-go-throughsomeness of +stuff (but that may have happened in a parody), and in general +comported themselves like the Anglo-Saxons they claimed for their +forbears; rightly enough for anything anyone cared, but wrongly +enough for the rest of us who had no yearning toward that kinship +and went on spelling Alfred with an A. + +(d) They were--I suppose through opposition--extremely irascible +men; like farmers. Urbanity was the last note in their gamut, the +City--_urbs quam dicunt Romam_--the last of places in their ken. +There was no engaging them in dialectic, an Athenian art which +they frankly despised. If you happened to disagree with them, +their answer was a sturdy Anglo-Saxon brick. If you politely asked +your way to Puddlehampton, and to be directed to Puddlehampton's +main objects of interest, the answer you would get (see "Notes and +Queries" _passim_) would be, 'Who is this that comes out of +Nowhere, enquiring for Puddlehampton, unacquainted with Stubbs? Is +it possible at this time of day that the world can contain anyone +ignorant of the published Transactions of the Wiltshire Walking +Club, Vol. III, p. 159--"Puddlehampton, its Rise and Decline, with +a note on Vespasian?"' + +(e) These pioneers--pushing the importance of English, but +occupied more and more with origins and with bad authors, simply +could not see the vital truth; that English Literature is a +continuing thing, ten times more alive to-day than it was in the +times they studied and belauded. The last word upon them is that +not a man of them could write prose in the language they thrust +on our study. To them, far more than to the old classical +scholars, English was a shut book: a large book, but closed and +clasped, material to heighten a desk for schoolmasters and +schoolmistresses. + +But schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, like chickens and curses, +come home to roost. Once set up your plea for a Tripos of English +Language and Literature on the lower plea that it will provide +for what _they_ call a 'felt want,' and sooner or later you give +English Language and Literature into _their_ hands, and then you +get the fallacy full-flowered into a convention. English +Literature henceforth is a 'subject,' divorced from life: and +what they have made of it, let a thousand handbooks and so-called +histories attest. But this world is not a wilderness of +class-rooms. English Language? They cannot write it, at all events. +They do not (so far as I can discover) try to write it. They talk +and write about it; how the poor deceased thing outgrew infantile +ailments, how it was operated on for _umlaut,_ how it parted with +its vermiform appendix and its inflexions one by one, and lost +its vowel endings in muted e's. + + And they went and told the sexton, + And the sexton toll'd the bell. + +But when it comes to _writing_; to keeping bright the noble +weapon of English, testing its poise and edge, feeling the grip, +handing it to their pupils with the word, 'Here is the sword of +your fathers, that has cloven dragons. So use it, that we who +have kept it bright may be proud of you, and of our pains, and of +its continuing valiance':--why, as I say, they do not even _try._ +Our unprofessional forefathers, when they put pen to paper, did +attempt English prose, and not seldom achieved it. But take up +any elaborate History of English Literature and read, and, as you +read, ask yourselves, 'How can one of the rarest delights of life +be converted into _this_? What has happened to merry Chaucer, +rare Ben Jonson, gay Steele and Prior, to Goldsmith, Jane Austen, +Charles Lamb?' + + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces! + +gone into the professional stock-pot! And the next news is that +these cooks, of whom Chaucer wrote prophetically + + Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde, + And turnen substaunce into accident! + +have formed themselves into professional Associations to protect +'the study of the subject of English Literature' and bark off any +intruder who would teach in another way than theirs. + +VII + +But I say to you that Literature is not, and should not be, the +preserve of any priesthood. To write English, so as to make +Literature, may be _hard._ But English Literature is _not_ a +mystery, _not_ a Professors' Kitchen. + +And the trouble lies, not in the harm professionising does to +schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, but in the harm it does 'in +widest commonalty spread' among men and women who, as Literature +was written for them, addressed to them, ought to find in it, all +their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well +of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace +in calamity, an inmate by the hearth, ever sociable, never +intrusive--to be sought and found, to be found and dropped at +will: + + Men, when their affairs require, + Must themselves at whiles retire; + Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk, + And not ever sit and talk-- + +to be dropped at will and left without any answering growl of +moroseness; to be consulted again at will and found friendly. + +For this is the trouble of _professionising_ Literature. We exile +it from the business of life, in which it would ever be at our +shoulder, to befriend us. Listen, for example, to an extract from +a letter written, a couple of weeks ago, by somebody in the +Charity Commission: + + Sir, + With reference to previous correspondence in this matter, I + am to say that in all the circumstances of this case the + Commissioners are of the opinion that it would be desirable + that a public enquiry in connection with the Charity should + be held in the locality. + +And the man--very likely an educated man--having written _that,_ +very likely went home and read Chaucer, Dante, or Shakespeare, or +Burke for pleasure! That is what happens when you treat +literature as a 'subject,' separable from life and daily +practice. + +VIII + +I declare to you that Literature was _not_ written for +schoolmasters, nor for schoolmistresses. I would not exchange it +for a wilderness of schoolmasters. It should be delivered from +them, who, with their silly _Ablauts_ and 'tendencies,' can +themselves neither read nor write. For the proof? Having the +world's quintessential store of mirth and sharp sorrow, wit, +humour, comfort, farce, comedy, tragedy, satire; the glories of +our birth and state, piled all at their elbows, only one man of +the crowd--and he M. Jusserand, a Frenchman--has contrived to +draw out of the mass one interesting well-written history of the +'subject.' + +IX + +Is there, then, no better way? Yes there is a better way: for the +French have it, with their language and literature. In France, as +Matthew Arnold noted, a generation ago, the ordinary journey-man +work of literature is done far better and more conscientiously +than with us. In France a man feels it almost a personal stain, +an unpatriotic _lâche,_ to write even on a police-order anything +so derogatory to the tradition of his language as our Cabinet +Ministers read out as answers to our House of Commons. I am told +that many a Maire in a small provincial town in N.E. France, even +when overwhelmed--_accablé_--with the sufferings of his +town-folk, has truly felt the iron enter into his soul on being +forced to sign a document written out for him in the invaders' +French. + +Cannot we treat our noble inheritance of literature and language +as scrupulously, and with as high a sense of their appertaining +to our national honour, as a Frenchman cherishes _his_ language, +_his_ literature? Cannot we study to leave our inheritance---as +the old Athenian put it temperately, 'not worse but a little +better than we found it'? + +I think we can, and should. I shall close to-day, Gentlemen, with +the most modest of perorations. In my first lecture before you, +in January 1913, I quoted to you the artist in "Don Quixote" who, +being asked what animal he was painting, answered diffidently +'That is as it may turn out.' + +The teaching of our language and literature is, after all, a new +thing and still experimental. The main tenets of those who, aware +of this, have worked on the scheme for a School of English in +Cambridge, the scheme recently passed by your Senate and +henceforth to be in operation, are three:-- + +_The first._ That literature cannot be divorced from life: that +(for example) you cannot understand Chaucer aright, unless you +have the background, unless you know the kind of men for whom +Chaucer wrote and the kind of men whom he made speak; that is the +_national_ side with which all our literature is concerned. + +_The second._ Literature being so personal a thing, you cannot +understand it until you have some personal under-standing of the +men who wrote it. Donne is Donne; Swift, Swift; Pope, Pope; +Johnson, Johnson; Goldsmith, Goldsmith; Charles Lamb, Charles +Lamb; Carlyle, Carlyle. Until you have grasped those men, as men, +you cannot grasp their writings. That is the _personal_ side of +literary study, and as necessary as the other. + +_The third._ That the writing and speaking of English is a living +art, to be practised and (if it may be) improved. That what these +great men have done is to hand us a grand patrimony; that they +lived to support us through the trial we are now enduring, and to +carry us through to great days to come. So shall our sons, now +fighting in France, have a language ready for the land they shall +recreate and repeople. + + + +[Footnote 1: Donne's _Sermon II preached at Pauls upon Christmas +Day, in the Evening._ 1624.] + + + + +LECTURE VII + +THE VALUE OF GREEK AND LATIN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE + +WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1918 + + +I + +I have promised you, Gentlemen, for to-day some observations on +_The Value of Greek and Latin in English Literature_: a mild, +academic title, a _camouflage_ title, so to say; calculated to +shelter us for a while from the vigilance of those hot-eyed +reformers who, had I advertised _The Value of Greek and Latin in +English Life_ might even now be swooping from all quarters of the +sky on a suggestion that these dry bones yet were flesh: for +the eyes I dread are not only red and angry, but naturally +microscopic--and that indeed, if they only knew it, is their +malady. Yet 'surely' groaned patient job, 'there _is_ a path +which the vulture's eye hath not seen!' + +You, at any rate, know by this time that wherever these +lectures assert literature they assert life, perhaps even too +passionately, allowing neither the fact of death nor the +possibility of divorce. + +II + +But let us begin with the first word, '_Value_'--'The _Value_ of +Greek and Latin in English Literature.' What do I mean by +'Value'? Well, I use it, generally, in the sense of 'worth'; but +with a particular meaning, or shade of meaning, too. And, this +particular meaning is not the particular meaning intended (as I +suppose) by men of commerce who, on news of a friend's death, +fall a-musing and continue musing until the fire kindles, and +they ask 'What did So-and-so die worth?' or sometimes, more +wisely than they know, 'What did poor old So-and-so die worth?' +or again, more colloquially, 'What did So-and-so "cut up" for?' +Neither is it that which more disinterested economists used to +teach; men never (I fear me) loved, but anyhow lost awhile, who +for my green unknowing youth, at Thebes or Athens--growing older +I tend to forget which is, or was, which--defined the Value of a +thing as its 'purchasing power' which the market translates into +'price.' For--to borrow a phrase which I happened on, the other +day, with delight, in the Introduction to a translation of +Lucian--there may be forms of education less paying than the +commercial and yet better worth paying for; nay, above payment or +computation in price[1]. + +No: the particular meaning I use to-day is that which artists use +when they talk of painting or of music. To see things, near or +far, in their true perspective and proportions; to judge them +through distance; and fetching them back, to reproduce them in +art so proportioned comparatively, so rightly adjusted, that they +combine to make a particular and just perspective: that is to +give things their true _Values._ + +Suppose yourself reclining on a bank on a clear day, looking up +into the sky and watching the ascent of a skylark while you +listen to his song. That is a posture in which several poets of +repute have placed themselves from time to time: so we need not +be ashamed of it. Well, you see the atmosphere reaching up and +up, mile upon mile. There are no milestones planted there. But, +wave on wave perceptible, the atmosphere stretches up through +indeterminate distances; and according as your painter of the sky +can translate these distances, he gives his sky what is called +_Value._ + +You listen to the skylark's note rising, spiral by spiral, on +'the very jet of earth': + + As up he wings the spiral stair, + A song of light, and pierces air + With fountain ardour, fountain play, + To reach the shining tops of day: + +and you long for the musical gift to follow up and up the +delicate degrees of distance and thread the notes back as the +bird ascending drops them--on a thread, as it were, of graduated +beads, half music and half dew: + + That was the chirp of Ariel + You heard, as overhead it flew, + The farther going more to dwell + And wing our green to wed our blue; + But whether note of joy, or knell, + Not his own Father-singer knew; + Nor yet can any mortal tell, + Save only how it shivers through; + The breast of us a sounded shell, + The blood of us a lighted dew. + +Well in music, in painting, this graduating which gives right +proportion and, with proportion, a sense of distance, of +atmosphere, is called _Value._ Let us, for a minute or two, assay +this particular meaning of Value upon life and literature, and +first upon life, or, rather upon one not negligible facet of +life. + +I suppose that if an ordinary man of my age were asked which has +better helped him to bear the burs of life--religion or a sense +of humour--he would, were he quite honest, be gravelled for an +answer. Now the best part of a sense of humour, as you know +without my telling you, consists in a sense of proportion; a +habit, abiding and prompt at command, of seeing all human, +affairs in their just perspective, so that its happy possessor at +once perceives anything odd or distorted or overblown to be an +excrescence, a protuberance, a swelling, literally a _humour_: +and the function of Thalia, the Comic Spirit, as you may read in +Meredith's "Essay on Comedy," is just to prick these humours. I +will but refer you to Meredith's "Essay," and here cite you the +words of an old schoolmaster: + +It would seem to be characteristic of the same mind to appreciate +the beauty of ideas in just proportion and harmonious relation to +each other, and the absurdity of the same ideas when distorted or +brought into incongruous juxtaposition. The exercise of this +sense of humour ... compels the mind to form a picture to itself, +accompanied by pleasurable emotion; and what is this but setting +the imagination to work, though in topsy-turvy fashion? Nay, in +such a case, imagination plays a double part, since it is only by +instantaneous comparison with ideal fitness and proportion +that it can grasp at full force the grotesqueness of their +contraries[2]. + +Let us play with an example for one moment. A child sees such an +excrescence, such an offence upon proportion, in an immoderately +long nose. He is apt to call attention to it on the visage of a +visitor: it intrigues him in Perrault's 'Prince Charming' and +many a fairy tale: it amuses him in Lear's "Book of Nonsense": + + There was an old man with a Nose, + Who said 'If you choose to suppose + That my nose is too long + You are certainly wrong'-- + +This old man he detects as lacking sense of proportion, sense of +humour. Pass from the child to the working-man as we know him. A +few weeks ago, a lady--featured, as to nose, on the side of +excess--was addressing a North Country audience on the Economic +Position of Women after the War. Said she, 'There won't be men to +go round.' Said a voice 'Eh, but they'll _have to,_ Miss!' Pass +from this rudimentary criticism to high talent employed on the +same subject, and you get "Cyrano de Bergerac." Pass to genius, +to Milton, and you find the elephant amusing Adam and Eve in +Paradise, and doing his best: + + the unwieldy elephant, + To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed + His lithe proboscis. + +Milton, like the elephant, jokes with difficulty, but he, too, is +using all his might. + +I have illustrated, crudely enough, how a sense of things in +their right values will help us on one side of our dealings with +life. But truly it helps us on every side. This was what Plato +meant when he said that a philosopher must see things as they +relatively are within his horizon--[Greek: o synoptikos +dialektikos]. And for this it was that an English poet praised +Sophocles as one + + Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole. + +And this of course is what Dean Inge meant when, the other day, +in a volume of "Cambridge Essays on Education," he reminded us, +for a sensible commonplace, that 'The wise man is he who knows +the relative values of things.' + +IV + +Applying this to literature, I note, but shall not insist here on +the fact--though fact it is--that the Greek and Roman 'classical' +writers (as we call them) laid more stress than has ever been +laid among the subsequent tribes of men upon the desirability of +getting all things into proportion, of seeing all life on a scale +of relative values. And the reason I shall not insist on this is +simply that better men have saved me the trouble. + +I propose this morning to discuss the value of the classics to +students of English literature from, as the modern phrase goes, a +slightly different angle. + +Reclining and looking up into that sky which is not too grandiose +an image for our own English Literature, you would certainly not +wish, Gentlemen, to see it as what it is not--as a cloth painted +on the flat. No more than you would choose the sky overarching +your life to be a close, hard, copper vault, would you choose +this literature of ours to resemble such a prison. I say nothing, +for the moment, of the thrill of comparing ours with other +constellations--of such a thrill as Blanco White's famous sonnet +imagines in Adam's soul when the first night descended on Eden +and + + Hesperus with the host of heaven came, + And lo! Creation widen'd in man's view. + Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd + Within thy beams, O sun!... + +No: I simply picture you as desiring to realise _our own_ +literature, its depths and values, mile above mile deeper and +deeper shining, with perchance a glimpse of a city celestial +beyond, or at whiles, on a ladder of values, of the angels--the +messengers--climbing and returning. + +V + +Well, now, I put it to you that without mental breeding, without +at least some sense of ancestry, an Englishman can hardly have +this perception of value, this vision. I put to you what I +posited in an earlier course of lectures, quoting Bagehot, that +while a knowledge of Greek and Latin is not necessary to a writer +of English, he should at least have a firm conviction that those +two languages existed. I refer you to a long passage which, in +one of those lectures, I quoted from Cardinal Newman to the +effect that for the last 3000 years the Western World has +been evolving a human society, having its bond _in a common +civilisation_--a society to which (let me add, by way of +footnote) Prussia today is firmly, though with great difficulty, +being tamed. There are, and have been, other civilisations in the +world --the Chinese, for instance; a huge civilisation, +stationary, morose, to us unattractive; 'but _this_ +civilisation,' says Newman, 'together with the society which is +its creation and its home, is so distinctive and luminous in its +character, so imperial in its extent, so imposing in its +duration, and so utterly without rival upon the face of the +earth, that the association may fitly assume for itself the title +of "Human Society," and its civilisation the abstract term +"Civilisation".' + +He goes on: + + Looking, then, at the countries which surround the + Mediterranean Sea as a whole, I see them to be, from time + immemorial, the seat of an association of intellect and mind + such as deserves to be called the Intellect and Mind of the + Human Kind. + +But I must refer you to his famous book "The Idea of a +University" to read at length how Newman, in that sinuous, +sinewy, Platonic style of his, works it out--the spread, through +Rome, even to our shores, of the civilisation which began in +Palestine and Greece. + +VI + +I would press the point more rudely upon you, and more +particularly, than does Newman. And first, for Latin-- + +I waive that Rome occupied and dominated this island during 400 +years. Let that be as though it had never been. For a further +1000 years and more Latin remained the common speech of educated +men throughout Europe: the 'Universal Language.' Greek had been +smothered by the Turk. Through all that time--through the most of +what we call Modern History, Latin reigned everywhere. Is this a +fact to be ignored by any of you who would value 'values'? + +Here are a few particulars, by way of illustration. More wrote +his "Utopia," Bacon wrote all the bulk of his philosophical work, +in Latin; Newton wrote his "Principia" in Latin. Keble's Lectures +on Poetry (if their worth and the name of Keble may together save +me from bathos) were delivered in Latin. Our Vice-Chancellor, our +Public Orator still talk Latin, securing for it what attention +they can: nor have + + The bigots of this iron time + _Yet_ call'd their harmless art a crime. + +But there is a better reason why you should endeavour to +understand the value of Latin in our literature; a filial reason. +Our fathers built their great English prose, as they built their +oratory, upon the Latin model. Donne used it to construct his +mighty fugues: Burke to discipline his luxuriance. Says Cowper, +it were + + Praise enough for any private man, + That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, + And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own. + +Well then, here is a specimen of Chatham's language: from his +speech, Romanly severe, denouncing the Government of the day for +employing Red Indians in the American War of Independence. He is +addressing the House of Lords: + + I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers + of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church--I conjure + them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of + their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned + bench to defend and support the justice of their country. I + call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of + their lawn; upon the learned judges to interpose the purity of + their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the + honour of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your + ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit + and humanity of my country to vindicate the national + character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the + tapestry that adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of this + noble lord [Lord Suffolk] frowns with indignation at the + disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleet: + against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended + and established the honour, the liberties, the religion--the + _Protestant religion_--of this country, against the arbitrary + cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than + Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose + among us--to turn forth into our settlements, among our + ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless + cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child! + to send forth the infidel savage---against whom? against your + Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate + their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these + horrible hell-hounds of savage war!--hell-hounds, I say, of + savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate + the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman + example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage + hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of + the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to + us by every tie that should sanctify humanity.... + + My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; + but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said + less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed + my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal + abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles. + +That was Chatham. For Wolfe--he, as you know, was ever reading +the classics even on campaign: as Burke again carried always a +Virgil in his pocket. _Abeunt studia in mores._ Moreover can we +separate Chatham's Roman morality from Chatham's language in the +passage I have just read? No: we cannot. No one, being evil, can +speak good things with that weight; _'for out of the abundance of +the heart the mouth speaketh.'_ We English (says Wordsworth) + + We must be free or die, who speak the tongue + That Shakespeare spake.... + +You may criticise Chatham's style as too consciously Ciceronian. +But has ever a Parliamentary style been invented which conveys a +nobler gravity of emotion? `Buskined'?--yes: but the style of a +man. 'Mannered'?--yes, but in the grand manner. 'Conscious'?-- +yes, but of what? Conscious of the dignity a great man owes to +himself, and to the assembly he addresses. He conceives that +assembly as 'the British Senate'; and, assuming, he communicates +that high conception. The Lords feel that they are listening as +Senators, since it is only thus a Senate should be addressed, as +nothing less than a Senate should be addressed thus. + +Let me read you a second passage; of _written_ prose: + + Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, + went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than + to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what + we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable + fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of + infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, + is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is + to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this aide of the + grave; there are no voices, O Rhodopè! that are not soon mute, + however tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of + passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at + last[3]. + +Latin--all Latin--down to its exquisite falling close! And I say +to you, Gentlemen, that passages such as these deserve what +Joubert claimed of national monuments, _Ce sont les crampons qui +unissent une génération à une autre. Conservez ce qu'ont vu vos +pères,_ 'These are the clamps that knit one generation to +another. Cherish those things on which your fathers' eyes have +looked.' + +_Abeunt studia in mores._ + +If, years ago, there had lacked anything to sharpen my suspicion +of those fork-bearded professors who derived our prose from the +stucco of Anglo-Saxon prose, it would have been their foolish +deliberate practice of composing whole pages of English prose +without using one word derivative from Latin or Greek. Esau, when +he sold his birthright, had the excuse of being famished. These +pedants, with a full board, sought frenetically to give it away-- +board and birthright. _'So when this corruptible shall have put +on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality'_ +--almost, I say, these men had deserved to have a kind of speech +more to their taste read over their coffins. + +VII + +What, in the next place, can I say of Greek, save that, as Latin +gave our fathers the model of prose, Greek was the source of it +all, the goddess and genius of the well-head? And, casting about +to illustrate, as well as may be, what I mean by this, I hit on a +minor dialogue of Plato, the "Phaedrus," and choose you a short +passage in Edward FitzGerald's rendering: + + When Socrates and Phaedrus have discoursed away the noon-day + under the plane trees by the Ilissus, they rise to depart + toward the city. But Socrates (pointing perhaps to some images + of Pan and other sylvan deities) says it is not decent to leave + their haunts without praying to them, and he prays: + + 'O auspicious Pan, and ye other deities of this place, grant to + me to become beautiful _inwardly,_ and that all my outward + goods may prosper my inner soul. Grant that I may esteem wisdom + the only riches, and that I may have so much gold as temperance + can handsomely carry. + + 'Have we yet aught else to pray for, Phaedrus? For myself I + seem to have prayed enough.' + + _Phaedrus_: 'Pray as much for me also: for friends have all + in common.' + + _Socrates_: 'Even so be it. Let us depart' + +To this paternoster of Socrates, reported more than four +centuries before Christ taught the Lord's Prayer, let me add an +attempted translation of the lines that close Homer's hymn to the +Delian Apollo. Imagine the old blind poet on the beach chanting +to the islanders the glorious boast of the little island--how it +of all lands had harboured Leto in her difficult travail; how she +gave birth to the Sun God; how the immortal child, as the +attendant goddesses touched his lips with ambrosia, burst his +swaddling bands and stood up, sudden, a god erect: + + But he, the Sun-God, did no sooner taste + That food divine than every swaddling band + Burst strand by strand, + And burst the belt above his panting waist-- + All hanging loose + About him as he stood and gave command: + 'Fetch me my lyre, fetch me my curving bow! + And, taught by these, shall know + All men, through me, the unfaltering will of Zeus!' + So spake the unshorn God, the Archer bold, + And turn'd to tread the ways of Earth so wide; + While they, all they, had marvel to behold + How Delos broke in gold + Beneath his feet, as on a mountain-side + Sudden, in Spring, a tree is glorified + And canopied with blossoms manifold. + But he went swinging with a careless stride, + Proud, in his new artillery bedight, + Up rocky Cynthus, and the isles descried-- + All his, and their inhabitants--for wide, + Wide as he roam'd, ran these in rivalry + To build him temples in many groves: + And these be his, and all the isles he loves, + And every foreland height, + And every river hurrying to the sea. + But chief in thee, + Delos, as first it was, is his delight. + Where the long-robed Ionians, each with mate + And children, pious to his altar throng, + And, decent, celebrate + His birth with boxing-match and dance and song: + So that a stranger, happening them among, + Would deem that these Ionians have no date, + Being ageless, all so met; + And he should gaze + And marvel at their ways, + Health, wealth, the comely face + On man and woman--envying their estate-- + And yet + _You_ shall he least be able to forget, + You maids of Delos, dear ones, as ye raise + The hymn to Phoebus, Leto, Artemis, + In triune praise, + Then slide your song back upon ancient days + And men whose very name forgotten is., + And women who have lived and gone their ways: + And make them live agen, + Charming the tribes of men, + Whose speech ye mock with pretty mimicries + So true + They almost woo + The hearer to believe he's singing too! + Speed me, Apollo: speed me, Artemis! + And you, my dears, farewell! Remember me + Hereafter if, from any land that is, + Some traveller question ye-- + 'Maidens, who was the sweetest man of speech + Fared hither, ever chanted on this beach?' + I you beseech + Make answer to him, civilly-- + 'Sir, he was just a blind man, and his home + In rocky Chios. But his songs were best, + And shall be ever in the days to come.' + Say that: and as I quest + In fair wall'd cities far, I'll tell them there + (They'll list, for 'twill be true) + Of Delos and of you. + But chief and evermore my song shall be + Of Prince Apollo, lord of Archery. + God of the Silver Bow, whom Leto bare-- + Leto, the lovely-tress'd. + +Did time permit, I might quote you a chorus of Aeschylus, a +passage from Thucydides or from Aristotle, to illustrate Gibbon's +saying that the Greek language 'gave a soul to the objects of +sense, and a body to the abstractions of metaphysics.' But there +it is, and it has haunted our literature; at first filtering +through Latin, at length breaking from Constantinople in flood +and led to us, to Oxford and Cambridge, by Erasmus, by Grocyn: + + Thee, that lord of splendid lore + Orient from old Hellas' shore. + +To have a sense of Greek, too, is to own a corrective of taste. I +quote another old schoolmaster here--a dead friend, Sidney Irwin: + + What the Greeks disliked was extravagance, caprice, + boastfulness, and display of all kinds.... The Greeks _hated_ all + monsters. The quaint phrase in the "Odyssey" about the Queen + of the Laestrygones--'She was tall as a mountain, and they + hated her'--would have seemed to them most reasonable.... + To read Greek is to have a perpetual witness to the virtue + of pruning--of condensing--a perpetual protest against all + that crowds, and swells, and weakens the writer's purpose. + To forget this is but to 'confound our skill in covetousness.' + We cannot all be writers ... but we all wish to have good + taste, and good taste is born of a generous caution about + letting oneself go. I say _generous,_ for caution is seldom + generous--but it is a generous mood which is in no haste to + assert itself. To consider the thing, the time, the place, the + person, and to take yourself and your own feelings _only fifth_ + is to be armour-proof against bad taste. + +VIII + +They tell us that Greek is going, here. Well, I hold no brief for +compulsory Greek; and I shall say but one word on it. I put it, +rather idly, to a vote in a Cambridge Combination Room, the other +day, and was amazed to find how the votes were divided. The men +of science were by no means unanimous. They owned that there was +much to be said even for compulsory Greek, if only Greek had been +intelligently taught. And with that, of course, I agree: for to +learn Greek is, after all, a baptism into a noble cult. The +Romans knew _that._ I believe that, even yet, if the schools +would rebuild their instruction in Greek so as to make it +interesting, as it ought to be, from the first, we should oust +those birds who croak and chatter upon the walls of our old +Universities. I find the following in FitzGerald's "Polonius": + + An old ruinous tower which had harboured innumerable + jackdaws, sparrows, and bats, was at length repaired. When + the masons left it, the jackdaws, sparrows, and bats came back + in search of their old dwellings. But these were all filled up. + 'Of what use now is this great building?' said they, 'come let + us forsake this useless stone-heap: + +And the beauty of this little apologue is that you can read it +either way. + +IX + +But, although a student of English Literature be ignorant of +Greek and Latin as languages, may he not have Greek and Latin +literature widely opened to him by intelligent translations? The +question has often been asked, but I ask it again. May not _some_ +translations open a door to him by which he can see them through +an atmosphere, and in that atmosphere the authentic ancient gods +walking: so that returning upon English literature he may +recognise them there, too, walking and talking in a garden of +values? The highest poetical speech of any one language defies, +in my belief, translation into any other. But Herodotus loses +little, and North is every whit as good as Plutarch. + + Sigh no more, ladies; ladies, sigh no more! + Men were deceivers ever; + One foot in sea and one on shore, + To one thing constant never + +Suppose that rendered thus: + +I enjoin upon the adult female population ([Greek: gynaikes]), +not once but twice, that there be from this time forward, a total +cessation of sighing. The male is, and has been, constantly +addicted to inconstancy, treading the ocean and the mainland +respectively with alternate feet. + +That, more or less, is what Paley did upon Euripides, and how +would you like it if a modern Greek did it upon Shakespeare? None +the less I remember that my own first awed surmise of what Greek +might mean came from a translated story of Herodotus--the story +of Cleobis and Biton--at the tail of an old grammar-book, before +I had learnt the Greek alphabet; and I am sure that the instinct +of the old translators was sound; that somehow (as Wordsworth +says somewhere) the present must be balanced on the wings of the +past and the future, and that as you stretch out the one you +stretch out the other to strength. + +X + +There is no derogation of new things in this plea I make +specially to you who may be candidates in our School of English. +You may remember my reading to you in a previous lecture that +liberal poem of Cory's invoking the spirit of 'dear divine +Comatas,' that + + Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek. + +Well, I would have your minds, as you read our literature, reach +back to that Dorian shepherd through an atmosphere--his made +ours--as through veils, each veil unfolding a value. So you will +recognise how, from Chaucer down, our literature has panted after +the Mediterranean water-brooks. So through an atmosphere you will +link (let me say) Collins's "Ode to Evening," or Matthew Arnold's +"Strayed Reveller" up to the 'Pervigilium Veneris,' Mr Sturge +Moore's "Sicilian Vine-dresser" up to Theocritus, Pericles' +funeral oration down to Lincoln's over the dead at Gettysburg. +And as I read you just now some part of an English oration in the +Latin manner, so I will conclude with some stanzas in the Greek +manner. They are by Landor--a proud promise by a young writer, +hopeful as I could wish any young learner here to be. The title-- + + _Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra_ + + Tanagra! think not I forget + Thy beautifully storied streets; + Be sure my memory bathes yet + In clear Thermodon, and yet greets + The blithe and liberal shepherd-boy, + Whose sunny bosom swells with joy + When we accept his matted rushes + Upheav'd with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes. + + A gift I promise: one I see + Which thou with transport wilt receive, + The only proper gift for thee, + Of which no mortal shall bereave + In later times thy mouldering walls, + Until the last old turret falls; + A crown, a crown from Athens won, + A crown no god can wear, beside Latona's son. + + There may be cities who refuse + To their own child the honours due, + And look ungently on the Muse; + But ever shall those cities rue + The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, + Offering no nourishment, no rest, + To that young head which soon shall rise + Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies. + + Sweetly where cavern'd Dirce flows + Do white-arm'd maidens chaunt my lay, + Flapping the while with laurel-rose + The honey-gathering tribes away; + And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues + Lisp your Corinna's early songs; + To her with feet more graceful come + The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home. + + O let thy children lean aslant + Against the tender mother's knee, + And gaze into her face, and want + To know what magic there can be + In words that urge some eyes to dance, + While others as in holy trance + Look up to heaven: be such my praise! + Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphic bays. + + + +[Footnote 1: The Works of Lucian of Samosata: translated +by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (Introduction, p. xxix). +Oxford, Clarendon Press.] + +[Footnote 2: "The Training of the Imagination": by James +Rhoades. London, John Lane, 1900.] + +[Footnote 3: Landor: "Æsop and Rhodopè."] + + + + +LECTURE VIII + +ON READING THE BIBLE (I) + +WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1918 + + +I + +'_Read not to Contradict and Confute,_' says Bacon of Studies in +general: and you may be the better disposed, Gentlemen, to +forgive my choice of subject to-day if in my first sentence I +rule _that_ way of reading the Bible completely out of court. You +may say at once that, the Bible being so full of doctrine as it +is, and such a storehouse for exegesis as it has been, this is +more easily said than profitably done. You may grant me that the +Scriptures in our Authorised Version are part and parcel of +English Literature (and more than part and parcel); you may grant +that a Professor of English Literature has therefore a claim, if +not an obligation, to speak of them in that Version; you may-- +having granted my incessant refusal to disconnect our national +literature from our national life, or to view them as +disconnected--accept the conclusion which plainly flows from it; +that no teacher of English can pardonably neglect what is at once +the most majestic thing in our literature and by all odds the most +spiritually living thing we inherit; in our courts at once superb +monument and superabundant fountain of life; and yet you may +discount beforehand what he must attempt. + +For (say you) if he attempt the doctrine, he goes straight down +to buffeted waters so broad that only stout theologians can win +to shore; if, on the other hand, he ignore doctrine, the play is +"Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark left out. He reduces our +Bible to 'mere literature,' to something 'belletristic,' pretty, +an artifice, a flimsy, a gutted thing. + +II + +Now of all ways of dealing with literature that happens to be the +way we should least admire. By that way we disassociate +literature from life; 'what they said' from the men who said it +and meant it, not seldom at the risk of their lives. My pupils +will bear witness in their memories that when we talk together +concerning poetry, for example, by 'poetry' we mean 'that which +the poets wrote,' or (if you like) 'the stuff the poets wrote'; +and their intelligence tells them, of course, that anyone who in +the simple proposition 'Poets wrote Poetry' connects an object +with a subject by a verb does not, at any rate, intend to sunder +what he has just been at pains, however slight, to join together: +he may at least have the credit, whether he be right or wrong, of +asserting his subject and his object to be interdependent. Take a +particular proposition--John Milton wrote a poem called "Paradise +Lost." You will hardly contest the truth of that: but what does +it mean? Milton wrote the story of the Fall of Man: he told it in +some thousands of lines of decasyllabic verse unrhymed; he +measured these lines out with exquisite cadences. The object of +our simple sentence includes all these, and this much beside: +that he wrote the total poem and made it what it is. Nor can that +object be fully understood--literature being, ever and always, so +personal a thing--until we understand the subject, John Milton-- +what manner of man he was, and how on earth, being such a man, he +contrived to do it. We shall never _quite_ know that: but it is +important we should get as near as we can. + +Of the Bible this is yet more evident, it being a translation. +Isaiah did not write the cadences of his prophecies, as we +ordinary men of this country know them: Christ did not speak the +cadences of the Parables or of the Sermon on the Mount, as we +know them. These have been supplied by the translators. By all +means let us study them and learn to delight in them; but Christ +did not suffer for his cadences, still less for the cadences +invented by Englishmen almost 1600 years later; and Englishmen +who went to the stake did not die for these cadences. They were +Lollards and Reformers who lived too soon to have heard them; +they were Catholics of the `old profession' who had either never +heard or, having heard, abhorred them. These men were cheerful to +die for the _meaning_ of the Word and for its _authorship_-- +because it was spoken by Christ. + +III + +There is in fact, Gentlemen, no such thing as 'mere literature.' +Pedants have coined that contemptuous term to express a +figmentary concept of their own imagination or--to be more +accurate, an hallucination of wrath--having about as much +likeness to a _vera causa_ as had the doll which (if you +remember) Maggie Tulliver used to beat in the garret whenever, +poor child, the world went wrong with her somehow. The thoughts, +actions and passions of men became literature by the simple but +difficult process of being recorded in memorable speech; but in +that process neither the real thing recorded nor the author is +evacuated. _Belles lettres, Fine Art_ are odious terms, for which +no clean-thinking man has any use. There is no such thing in the +world as _belles lettres_; if there were, it would deserve the +name. As for _Fine Art,_ the late Professor Butcher bequeathed to +us a translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" with some admirable +appendixes--the whole entitled "Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and +Fine Art." Aristotle never in his life had a theory of Fine Art +as distinct from other art: nor (I wager) can you find in his +discovered works a word for any such thing. Now if Aristotle had +a concept of `fine' art as distinguished from other art, he was +man enough to find a name for it. His omission to do anything of +the sort speaks for itself. + +So you should beware of any teacher who would treat the Bible or +any part of it as 'fine writing,' mere literature. + +IV + +Let me, having said this, at once enter a _caveat,_ a +qualification. Although men do not go to the stake for the +cadences, the phrases of our Authorised Version, it remains true +that these cadences, these phrases, have for three hundred years +exercised a most powerful effect upon their emotions. They do so +by association of ideas by the accreted memories of our race +enwrapping connotation around a word, a name--say the name +_Jerusalem,_ or the name _Sion_: + + And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, + Sing us one of the songs of Sion. + How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? + If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget + her cunning. + +It must be known to you, Gentlemen, that these words can affect +men to tears who never connect them in thought with the actual +geographical Jerusalem; who connect it in thought merely with a +quite different native home from which they are exiles. Here and +there some one man may feel a similar emotion over Landor's + + Tanagra, think not I forget.... + +But the word Jerusalem will strike twenty men twentyfold more +poignantly: for to each it names the city familiar in spirit to +his parents when they knelt, and to their fathers before them: +not only the city which was his nursery and yet lay just beyond +the landscape seen from its window; its connotation includes not +only what the word 'Rome' has meant, and ever must mean, to +thousands on thousands setting eyes for the first time on _The +City_: but it holds, too, some hint of the New Jerusalem, the +city of twelve gates before the vision of which St John fell +prone: + + Ah, my sweet home, Hierusalem, + Would God I were in thee! + Thy Gardens and thy gallant walks + Continually are green: + There grows such sweet and pleasant flowers + As nowhere else are seen. + Quite through the streets with pleasant sound + The flood of Life doth flow; + Upon whose banks on every side + The wood of Life doth grow.... + Our Lady sings Magnificat + With tones surpassing sweet: + And all the virgins bear their part, + Sitting about her feet. + Hierusalem, my happy home, + Would God I were in thee! + Would God my woes were at an end, + Thy joys that I might see! + +You cannot (I say) get away from these connotations accreted +through your own memories and your fathers'; as neither can you +be sure of getting free of any great literature in any tongue, +once it has been written. Let me quote you a passage from +Cardinal Newman [he is addressing the undergraduates of the +Catholic University of Dublin]: + + How real a creation, how _sui generis,_ is the style of + Shakespeare, or of the Protestant Bible and Prayer Book, + or of Swift, or of Pope, or of Gibbon, or of Johnson! + +[I pause to mark how just this man can be to his great enemies. +Pope was a Roman Catholic, you will remember; but Gibbon was an +infidel.] + + Even were the subject-matter without meaning, though in truth + the style cannot really be abstracted from the sense, still the + style would, on _that_ supposition, remain as perfect and + original a work as Euclid's "Elements" or a symphony of + Beethoven. + + And, like music, it has seized upon the public mind: and the + literature of England is no longer a mere letter, printed in + books and shut up in libraries, but it is a living voice, which + has gone forth in its expressions and its sentiments into the + world of men, which daily thrills upon our ears and syllables + our thoughts, which speaks to us through our correspondents and + dictates when we put pen to paper. Whether we will or no, the + phraseology of Shakespeare, of the Protestant formularies, of + Milton, of Pope, of Johnson's Table-talk, and of Walter Scott, + have become a portion of the vernacular tongue, the household + words, of which perhaps we little guess the origin, and the + very idioms of our familiar conversation.... So tyrannous is + the literature of a nation; it is too much for us. We cannot + destroy or reverse it.... We cannot make it over again. It is a + great work of man, when it is no work of God's.... We cannot + undo the past. English Literature will ever _have been_ + Protestant. + +V + +I am speaking, then, to hearers who would read not to contradict +and confute; who have an inherited sense of the English Bible; +and who have, even as I, a store of associated ideas, to be +evoked by any chance phrase from it; beyond this, it may be, +nothing that can be called scholarship by any stretch of the +term. + +Very well, then: my first piece of advice _on reading the Bible_ +is that you do it. + +I have, of course, no reason at all to suppose or suggest that +any member of this present audience omits to do it. But some +general observations are permitted to an occupant of this Chair: +and, speaking generally, and as one not constitutionally disposed +to lamentation [in the book we are discussing, for example, I +find Jeremiah the contributor least to my mind], I do believe +that the young read the Bible less, and enjoy it less--probably +read it less, because they enjoy it less--than their fathers did. + +The Education Act of 1870, often in these days too sweepingly +denounced, did a vast deal of good along with no small amount of +definite harm. At the head of the harmful effects must (I think) +be set its discouragement of Bible reading; and this chiefly +through its encouraging parents to believe that they could +henceforth hand over the training of their children to the State, +lock, stock and barrel. You all remember the picture in Burns of +"The Cotter's Saturday Night": + + The chearfu' supper done, wi' serious face, + They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; + The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, + The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride. + His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, + His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; + Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, + He wales a portion with judicious care, + And 'Let us worship God !' he says, with solemn air. + +But you know that the sire bred on the tradition of 1870, and now +growing grey, does nothing of that sort on a Saturday night: +that, Saturday being tub-night, he inclines rather to order the +children into the back-kitchen to get washed; that on Sunday +morning, having seen them off to a place of worship, he inclines +to sit down and read, in place of the Bible, his Sunday +newspaper: that in the afternoon he again shunts them off to +Sunday-school. Now--to speak first of the children--it is good +for them to be tubbed on Saturday night; good for them also, I +dare say, to attend Sunday-school on the following afternoon; but +not good in so far as they miss to hear the Bible read by their +parents and + + Pure religion breathing household laws. + +'Pure religion'?--Well perhaps that begs the question: and I dare +say Burns' cotter when he waled 'a portion with judicious care,' +waled it as often as not--perhaps oftener than not--to contradict +and confute; that often he contradicted and confuted very +crudely, very ignorantly. But we may call it simple religion +anyhow, sincere religion, parental religion, household religion: +and for a certainty no 'lessons' in day-school or Sunday-school +have, for tingeing a child's mind, an effect comparable with that +of a religion pervading the child's home, present at bedside and +board:-- + + Here a little child I stand, + Heaving up my either hand; + Cold as paddocks the they be, + Here I lift them up to Thee; + For a benison to fall + On our meat and on us all. Amen. + +--permeating the house, subtly instilled by the very accent of +his father's and his mother's speech. For the grown man ... I +happen to come from a part of England [Ed.: Cornwall] where men, +in all my days, have been curiously concerned with religion and +are yet so concerned; so much that you can scarce take up a local +paper and turn to the correspondence column but you will find +some heated controversy raging over Free Will and Predestination, +the Validity of Holy Orders, Original Sin, Redemption of the many +or the few: + + Go it Justice, go it Mercy! + Go it Douglas, go it Percy! + +But the contestants do not write in the language their fathers +used. They seem to have lost the vocabulary, and to have picked +up, in place of it, the jargon of the Yellow Press, which does +not tend to clear definition on points of theology. The mass of +all this controversial stuff is no more absurd, no more frantic, +than it used to be: but in language it has lost its dignity with +its homeliness. It has lost the colouring of the Scriptures, the +intonation of the Scriptures, the Scriptural _habit._ + +If I turn from it to a passage in Bunyan, I am conversing with a +man who, though he has read few other books, has imbibed and +soaked the Authorised Version into his fibres so that he cannot +speak but Biblically. Listen to this: + + As to the situation of this town, it lieth just between the two + worlds, and the first founder, and builder of it, so far as by + the best, and most authentic records I can gather, was one + Shaddai; and he built it for his own delight. He made it the + mirror, and glory of all that he made, even the Top-piece + beyond anything else that he did in that country: yea, so + goodly a town was Mansoul, when first built, that it is said by + some, the Gods at the setting up thereof, came down to see it, + and sang for joy.... + + The wall of the town was well built, yea so fast and firm + was it knit and compact together, that had it not been for the + townsmen themselves, they could not have been shaken, or + broken for ever. + +Or take this: + + Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a Boy + feeding his Father's Sheep. The Boy was in very mean + Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured Countenance, + and as he sate by himself he Sung.... Then said their Guide, + Do you hear him? I will dare to say, that this Boy lives a + merrier Life, and wears more of that Herb called Heart's-ease + in his Bosom, than he that is clad in Silk and Velvet. + +I choose ordinary passages, not solemn ones in which Bunyan is +consciously scriptural. But you cannot miss the accent. + +That is Bunyan, of course; and I am far from saying that the +labouring men among whom I grew up, at the fishery or in the +hayfield, talked with Bunyan's magic. But I do assert that they +had something of the accent; enough to be _like,_ in a child's +mind, the fishermen and labourers among whom Christ found his +first disciples. They had the large simplicity of speech, the +cadence, the accent. But let me turn to Ireland, where, though +not directly derived from our English Bible, a similar scriptural +accent survives among the peasantry and is, I hope, ineradicable. +I choose two sentences from a book of 'Memories' recently written +by the survivor of the two ladies who together wrote the +incomparable 'Irish R.M.' The first was uttered by a small +cultivator who was asked why his potato-crop had failed: + +'I couldn't hardly say' was the answer. 'Whatever it was, God +spurned them in a boggy place.' + +Is that not the accent of Isaiah? + +He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a +large country. + +The other is the benediction bestowed upon the late Miss Violet +Martin by a beggar-woman in Skibbereen: + +Sure ye're always laughing! That ye may laugh in the sight of +the Glory of Heaven! + +VI + +But one now sees, or seems to see, that we children did, in our +time, read the Bible a great deal, if perforce we were taught to +read it in sundry bad ways: of which perhaps the worst was that +our elders hammered in all the books, all the parts of it, as +equally inspired and therefore equivalent. Of course this meant +among other things that they hammered it all in literally: but +let us not sentimentalise over that. It really did no child any +harm to believe that the universe was created in a working week +of six days, and that God sat down and looked at it on Sunday, +and behold it was very good. A week is quite a long while to a +child, yet a definite division rounding off a square job. The +bath-taps at home usually, for some unexplained reason, went +wrong during the week-end: the plumber came in on Monday and +carried out his tools on Saturday at mid-day. These little +analogies really do (I believe) help the infant mind, and not at +all to its later detriment. Nor shall I ask you to sentimentalise +overmuch upon the harm done to a child by teaching him that the +bloodthirsty jealous Jehovah of the Book of Joshua is as +venerable (being one and the same unalterably, 'with whom is no +variableness, neither shadow of turning') as the Father 'the same +Lord, whose property is always to have mercy,' revealed to us in +the Gospel, invoked for us at the Eucharist. I do most seriously +hold it to be fatal if we grow up and are fossilised in any such +belief. (Where have we better proof than in the invocations which +the family of the Hohenzollerns have been putting up, any time +since August 1914--and for years before--to this bloody +identification of the Christian man's God with Joshua's?) My +simple advice is that you not only read the Bible early but read +it again and again: and if on the third or fifth reading it leave +you just where the first left you--if you still get from it no +historical sense of a race _developing_ its concept of God--well +then, the point of the advice is lost, and there is no more to be +said. But over this business of teaching the Book of Joshua to +children I am in some doubt. A few years ago an Education +Committee, of which I happened to be Chairman, sent ministers of +religion about, two by two, to test the religious instruction +given in Elementary Schools. Of the two who worked around my +immediate neighbourhood, one was a young priest of the Church of +England, a medievalist with an ardent passion for ritual; the +other a gentle Congregational minister, a mere holy and humble +man of heart. They became great friends in the course of these +expeditions, and they brought back this report--'It is positively +wicked to let these children grow up being taught that there is +no difference in value between Joshua and St Matthew: that the +God of the Lord's Prayer is the same who commanded the massacre +of Ai.' Well, perhaps it is. Seeing how bloodthirsty old men can +be in these days, one is tempted to think that they can hardly be +caught too young and taught decency, if not mansuetude. But I do +not remember, as a child, feeling any horror about it, or any +difficulty in reconciling the two concepts. Children _are_ a bit +bloodthirsty, and I observe that two volumes of the late Captain +Mayne Reid--"The Rifle Rangers," and "The Scalp Hunters"--have +just found their way into The World's Classics and are advertised +alongside of Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies" and the "De Imitatione +Christi." I leave you to think this out; adding but this for a +suggestion: that as the Hebrew outgrew his primitive tribal +beliefs, so the bettering mind of man casts off the old clouts of +primitive doctrine, he being in fact better than his religion. +You have all heard preachers trying to show that Jacob was a +better fellow than Esau somehow. You have all, I hope, rejected +every such explanation. Esau was a gentleman: Jacob was not. The +instinct of a young man meets that wall, and there is no passing +it. Later, the mind of the youth perceives that the writer of +Jacob's history has a tribal mind and supposes throughout that +for the advancement of his tribe many things are permissible and +even admirable which a later and urbaner mind rejects as +detestably sharp practice. And the story of Jacob becomes the +more valuable to us historically as we realise what a hero he is +to the bland chronicler. + +VII + +But of another thing, Gentlemen, I am certain: that we were badly +taught in that these books, while preached to us as equivalent, +were kept in separate compartments. We were taught the books of +Kings and Chronicles as history. The prophets were the Prophets, +inspired men predicting the future which they only did by chance, +as every inspired man does. Isaiah was never put into relation +with his time at all; which means everything to our understanding +of Isaiah, whether of Jerusalem or of Babylon. We ploughed +through Kings and Chronicles, and made out lists of rulers, with +dates and capital events. Isaiah was all fine writing about +nothing at all, and historically we were concerned with him only +to verify some far-fetched reference to the Messiah in this or +that Evangelist. But there is not, never has been, really fine +literature--like Isaiah--composed about nothing at all: and in +the mere matter of prognostication I doubt if such experts as +Zadkiel and Old Moore have anything to fear from any School of +Writing we can build up in Cambridge. But if we had only been +taught to read Isaiah concurrently with the Books of the Kings, +what a fire it would have kindled among the dry bones of our +studies! + + Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet + Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the + conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's + field. + +Scholars, of course, know the political significance of that +famous meeting. But if we had only known it; if we had only been +taught what Assyria was--with its successive monarchs Tiglath- +pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, Sennacherib; and why Syria and +Israel and Egypt were trying to cajole or force Judah into +alliance; what a difference (I say) this passage would have meant +to us! + +VIII + +I daresay, after all, that the best way is not to bother a boy +too early and overmuch with history; that the best way is to let +him ramp at first through the Scriptures even as he might through +"The Arabian Nights": to let him take the books as they come, +merely indicating, for instance, that Job is a great poem, the +Psalms great lyrics, the story of Ruth a lovely idyll, the Song +of Songs the perfection of an Eastern love-poem. Well and what +then? He will certainly get less of "The Cotter's Saturday Night" +into it, and certainly more of the truth of the East. There he +will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the +flocks of Abraham and Laban: the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt +for corn: the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the +gleaning, and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in +weariness: Saul--great Saul--by the tent-prop with the jewels in +his turban: + + All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart. + +Or consider--to choose one or two pictures out of the tremendous +procession--consider Michal, Saul's royal daughter: how first she +is given in marriage to David to be a snare for him; how loving +him she saves his life, letting him down from the window and +dressing up an image on the bed in his place: how, later, she is +handed over to another husband Phaltiel, how David demands her +back, and she goes: + + And her husband (Phaltiel) went with her along weeping + behind her to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, Go, return. + And he returned. + +Or, still later, how the revulsion takes her, Saul's daughter, as +she sees David capering home before the ark, and how her +affection had done with this emotional man of the ruddy +countenance, so prone to weep in his bed: + + And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, + Michal Saul's daughter-- + +Mark the three words-- + + Michal Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw + King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she + despised him in her heart. + +The whole story goes into about ten lines. Your psychological +novelist nowadays, given the wit to invent it, would make it +cover 500 pages at least. + +Or take the end of David in the first two chapters of the First +Book of Kings, with its tale of Oriental intrigues, plots, +treacheries, murderings in the depths of the horrible palace +wherein the old man is dying. Or read of Solomon and his ships +and his builders, and see his Temple growing (as Heber put it) +like a tall palm, with no sound of hammers. Or read again the end +of Queen Athaliah: + + And when Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the + people, she came to the people into the temple of the Lord.-- + And when she looked, behold, the king stood by a pillar, as the + manner was, and the princes and the trumpeters by the king, and + all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets: + And Athaliah rent her clothes, and cried Treason, Treason.--But + Jehoiada the priest commanded the captains of the hundreds, the + officers of the host, and said unto them, Have her forth + without the ranges.... + + --And they laid hands on her; and she went by the way by the + which the horses came into the king's house: and there was + she slain. + +Let a youngster read this, I say, just as it is written; and how +the true East--sound, scent, form, colour--pours into the +narrative!--cymbals and trumpets, leagues of sand, caravans +trailing through the heat, priest and soldiery and kings going up +between them to the altar; blood at the foot of the steps, blood +everywhere, smell of blood mingled with spices, sandal-wood, dung +of camels! + +Yes, but how--if you will permit the word--how the _enjoyment_ of +it as magnificent literature might be enhanced by a scholar who +would condescend to whisper, of his knowledge, the magical word +here or there, to the child as he reads! For an instance.-- + +No child--no grown man with any sense of poetry--can deny his ear +to the Forty-fifth Psalm; the one that begins 'My heart is +inditing a good matter,' and plunges into a hymn of royal +nuptials. First (you remember) the singing-men, the sons of +Korah, lift their chant to the bridegroom, the King: + + Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty ... And in thy + majesty ride prosperously. + +Or as we hear it in the Book of Common Prayer: + + Good luck have thou with thine honour... + because of the word of truth, of meekness, and + righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee + terrible things.... + + All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia: out of + the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad. + +Anon they turn to the Bride: + + Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; + forget also thine own people, and thy father's house.... + The King's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is + of wrought gold. + + She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: + the virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company. And + the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift. Instead of thy + fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes + in all the earth. + +For whom (wonders the young reader, spell-bound by this), for +what happy bride and bridegroom was this glorious chant raised? +Now suppose that, just here, he has a scholar ready to tell him +what is likeliest true--that the bridegroom was Ahab--that the +bride, the daughter of Sidon, was no other than Jezebel, and +became what Jezebel now is--with what an awe of surmise would two +other passages of the history toll on his ear? + + And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; and + the dogs licked up his blood.... + + And when he (Jehu) was come in, he did eat and drink, and + said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is + a king's daughter. + + And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her + than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands. + + Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, This + is the word of the Lord, which he spake by his servant Elijah + the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat + the flesh of Jezebel ... so that (men) shall not say, This is + Jezebel. + +In another lecture, Gentlemen, I propose to take up the argument +and attempt to bring it to this point. 'How can we, having this +incomparable work, _necessary_ for study by all who would write +English, bring it within the ambit of the English Tripos and yet +avoid offending the experts?' + + + + +LECTURE IX + +ON READING THE BIBLE (II) + +WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1918 + + +I + +We left off last term, Gentlemen, upon a note of protest. We +wondered why it should be that our English Version of the Bible +lies under the ban of school-masters, Boards of Studies, and all +who devise courses of reading and examinations in English +Literature: that among our `prescribed books' we find Chaucer's +"Prologue," we find "Hamlet," we find "Paradise Lost," we find +Pope's "Essay on Man," again and again, but "The Book of Job" +never; "The Vicar of Wakefield" and Gray's "Elegy" often, but +"Ruth" or "Isaiah," "Ecclesiasticus" or "Wisdom" never. + +I propose this morning: + +(1) to enquire into the reasons for this, so far as I can guess +and interpret them; + +(2) to deal with such reasons as we can discover or surmise; + +(3) to suggest to-day, some simple first aid: and in another +lecture, taking for experiment a single book from the Authorised +Version, some practical ways of including it in the ambit of our +new English Tripos. This will compel me to be definite: and as +definite proposals invite definite objections, by this method we +are likeliest to know where we are, and if the reform we seek be +realisable or illusory. + +II + +I shall ask you then, first, to assent with me, that the Authorised +Version of the Holy Bible is, as a literary achievement, one of the +greatest in our language; nay, with the possible exception of the +complete works of Shakespeare, the very greatest. You will +certainly not deny this. + +As little, or less, will you deny that more deeply than any other +book--more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare--far +more deeply--it has influenced our literature. Here let me repeat +a short passage from a former lecture of mine (May 15, 1913, five +years ago). I had quoted some few glorious sentences such as: + + Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall + behold the land that is very far off. + + And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a + covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, + as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.... + + So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, + and this mortal shall have put on immortality ... + +and having quoted these I went on: + + When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, these + rhythms for its dearest beliefs, a literature is surely + established.... Wyclif, Tyndale, Coverdale and others before + the forty-seven had wrought. The Authorised Version, setting + a seal on all, set a seal on our national style.... It has + cadences homely and sublime, yet so harmonises them that + the voice is always one. Simple men--holy and humble men + of heart like Isaak Walton and Bunyan--have their lips + touched and speak to the homelier tune. Proud men, scholars + --Milton, Sir Thomas Browne--practise the rolling Latin + sentence; but upon the rhythms of our Bible they, too, fall + back--'The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may + be too short for our designs.' 'Acquaint thyself with the + Choragium of the stars.' 'There is nothing immortal but + immortality.' The precise man Addison cannot excel one parable + in brevity or in heavenly clarity: the two parts of Johnson's + antithesis come to no more than this 'Our Lord has gone up to + the sound of a trump; with the sound of a trump our Lord has + gone up.' The Bible controls its enemy Gibbon as surely as it + haunts the curious music of a light sentence of Thackeray's. It + is in everything we see, hear, feel, because it is in us, in + our blood. + +If that be true, or less than gravely overstated: if the English +Bible hold this unique place in our literature; if it be at once +a monument, an example and (best of all) a well of English +undefiled, no stagnant water, but quick, running, curative, +refreshing, vivifying; may we not agree, Gentlemen, to require +the weightiest reason why our instructors should continue to +hedge in the temple and pipe the fountain off in professional +conduits, forbidding it to irrigate freely our ground of study? + +It is done so complacently that I do not remember to have met one +single argument put up in defence of it; and so I am reduced to +guess-work. What can be the justifying reason for an embargo on +the face of it so silly and arbitrary, if not senseless? + +III + +Does it reside perchance in some primitive instinct of _taboo_; +of a superstition of fetish-worship fencing off sacred things as +unmentionable, and reinforced by the bad Puritan notion that holy +things are by no means to be enjoyed? + +If so, I begin by referring you to the Greeks and their attitude +towards the Homeric poems. We, of course, hold the Old Testament +more sacred than Homer. But I very much doubt if it be more +sacred to us than the Iliad and the Odyssey were to an old +Athenian, in his day. To the Greeks--and to forget this is the +fruitfullest source of error in dealing with the Tragedians or +even with Aristophanes--to the Greeks, their religion, such as it +was, mattered enormously. They built their Theatre upon it, as we +most certainly do not; which means that it had sunk into their +daily life and permeated their enjoyment of it, as our religion +certainly does not affect _our_ life to enhance it as amusing or +pleasurable. We go to Church on Sunday, and write it off as an +observance; but if eager to be happy with a free heart, we close +early and steal a few hours from the working-day. We antagonise +religion and enjoyment, worship and holiday. Nature being too +strong for any convention of ours, courtship has asserted +itself as permissible on the Sabbath, if not as a Sabbatical +institution. + +Now the Greeks were just as much slaves to the letter of their +Homer as any Auld Licht Elder to the letter of St Paul. No one +will accuse Plato of being overfriendly to poetry. Yet I believe +you will find in Plato some 150 direct citations from Homer, not +to speak of allusions scattered broadcast through the dialogues, +often as texts for long argument. Of these citations and +allusions an inordinate number seem to us laboriously trivial-- +that is to say, unless we put ourselves into the Hellenic mind. +On the other hand Plato uses others to enforce or illustrate his +profoundest doctrines. For an instance, in "Phaedo" (§ 96) +Socrates is arguing that the soul cannot be one with the harmony +of the bodily affections, being herself the master-player who +commands the strings: + +'--almost always' [he says] opposing and coercing them in all +sorts of ways throughout life, sometimes more violently with the +pains of medicine and gymnastic; then again more gently;-- +threatening, and also reprimanding the desires, passions, fears, +as if talking to a thing which is not herself; as Homer in the +Odyssey represents Odysseus doing in the words + +[Greek: stethos de plexas kradien enipape mutho: + tetlathi de, kradie; kai kynteron allo pot etles] + + He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart: + Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured. + +Do you think [asks Socrates] that Homer wrote this under the idea +that the soul is a harmony capable of being led by the affections +of the body, and not rather of a nature which should lead and +master them--herself a far diviner thing than any harmony? + +A Greek, then, will use Homer--_his_ Bible--minutely on niceties +of conduct or broadly on first principles of philosophy or +religion. But equally, since it is poetry all the time to him, he +will take--or to instance particular writers, Aristotle and the +late Greek, Longinus will take--a single hexameter to illustrate +a minute trick of style or turn of phrase, as equally he will +choose a long passage or the whole "Iliad," the whole "Odyssey," +to illustrate a grand rule of poetic construction, a first +principle of aesthetics. For an example--'Herein,' says +Aristotle, starting to show that an Epic poem must have Unity of +Subject--'Herein, to repeat what we have said before, we have a +further proof of Homer's superiority to the rest. He did not +attempt to deal even with the Trojan War in its entirety, though +it was a whole story with a definite beginning, middle and end-- +feeling apparently that it was too long a story to be taken in at +one view or else over-complicated by variety of incidents.' And +as Aristotle takes the "Iliad"--_his_ Bible--to illustrate a +grand rule of poetical construction, so the late writer of his +tradition--Longinus--will use it to exhibit the core and essence +of poetical sublimity; as in his famous ninth chapter, of which +Gibbon wrote: + + The ninth chapter ... {of the [Greek: PERI UPSOUS] or "De + Sublimitate" of Longinus} is one of the finest monuments of + antiquity. Till now, I was acquainted only with two ways of + criticising a beautiful passage: the one, to show, by an exact + anatomy of it, the distinct beauties of it, and whence they + sprung; the other, an idle exclamation, or a general + encomium, which leaves nothing behind it. Longinus has + shown me that there is a third. He tells me his own feelings + upon reading it; and tells them with so much energy, that he + communicates them. I almost doubt which is more sublime, + Homer's Battle of the Gods, or Longinus's Apostrophe to + Terentianus upon it. + +Well, let me quote you, in translation, a sentence or two from +this chapter, which produced upon Gibbon such an effect as almost +to anticipate Walter Pater's famous definition, 'To feel the +virtue of the poet, of the painter, to disengage it, to set it +forth--these are the three stages of the critic's duty.' + +'Elsewhere,' says Longinus, 'I have written as follows: +_Sublimity is the echo of a great soul._' + +'Sublimity is the echo of a great soul.'--It was worth repeating +too--was it not? + + For it is not possible that men with mean and servile ideas and + aims prevailing throughout their lives should produce anything + that is admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we + expect to fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are deep + and grave.... Hear how magnificently Homer speaks of the higher + powers: 'As far as a man seeth with his eyes into the haze of + distance as he sitteth upon a cliff of outlook and gazeth over + the wine-dark sea, even so far at a bound leap the neighing + horses of the Gods.' + +'He makes' [says Longinus] 'the vastness of the world the +measure of their leap.' Then, after a criticism of the Battle of +the Gods (too long to be quoted here) he goes on: + + Much superior to the passages respecting the Battle of the + Gods are those which represent the divine nature as it really + is--pure and great and undefiled; for example, what is said of + Poseidon. + + Her far-stretching ridges, her forest-trees, quaked in dismay, + And her peaks, and the Trojans' town, and the ships of Achaia's + array, + Beneath his immortal feet, as onward Poseidon strode. + Then over the surges he drave: leapt, sporting before the God, + Sea-beasts that uprose all round from the depths, for their king + they knew, + And for rapture the sea was disparted, and onward the car-steeds + flew[1]. + +Then how does Longinus conclude? Why, very strangely--very +strangely indeed, whether you take the treatise to be by that +Longinus, the Rhetorician and Zenobia's adviser, whom the Emperor +Aurelian put to death, or prefer to believe it the work of an +unknown hand in the first century. The treatise goes on: + + Similarly, the legislator of the Jews [Moses], no ordinary + man, having formed and expressed a worthy conception of + the might of the Godhead, writes at the very beginning of his + Laws, 'God said'--What? 'Let there be light, and there was + light' + +IV + +So here, Gentlemen, you have Plato, Aristotle, Longinus--all +Greeks of separate states--men of eminence all three, and two of +surpassing eminence, all three and each in his time and turn +treating Homer reverently as Holy Writ and yet enjoying it +liberally as poetry. For indeed the true Greek mind had no +thought to separate poetry from religion, as to the true Greek +mind reverence and liberty to enjoy, with the liberty of mind +that helps to enjoy, were all tributes to the same divine thing. +They had no professionals, no puritans, to hedge it off with a +_taboo_: and so when the last and least of the three, Longinus, +comes to _our_ Holy Writ--the sublime poetry in which Christendom +reads its God--his open mind at once recognises it as poetry and +as sublime. 'God said, Let there be light: and there was light.' +If Longinus could treat this as sublime poetry, why cannot we, +who have translated and made it ours? + +V + +Are we forbidden on the ground that our Bible is directly +inspired? Well, inspiration, as Sir William Davenant observed and +rather wittily proved, in his Preface to "Gondibert," 'is a +dangerous term.' It is dangerous mainly because it is a relative +term, a term of degrees. You may say definitely of some things +that the writer was inspired, as you may certify a certain man to +be mad--that is, so thoroughly and convincingly mad that you can +order him under restraint. But quite a number of us are (as they +say in my part of the world) 'not exactly,' and one or two of us +here and there at moments may have a touch even of inspiration. +So of the Bible itself: I suppose that few nowadays would contend +it to be all inspired _equally._ 'No' you may say, 'not all +equally: but all of it _directly,_ as no other book is.' + +To that I might answer, 'How do you _know_ that direct +inspiration ceased with the Revelation of St John the Divine, and +closed the book? It may be: but how do you know, and what +authority have you to say that Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," for +example, or Browning's great Invocation of Love was not directly +inspired? Certainly the men who wrote them were rapt above +themselves: and, if not directly, Why indirectly, and how?' + +But I pause on the edge of a morass, and spring back to firmer +ground. Our Bible, as we have it, is a translation, made by +forty-seven men and published in the year 1611. The original--and +I am still on firm ground because I am quoting now from "The +Cambridge History of English Literature"--'either proceeds from +divine inspiration, as some will have it, or, according to +others, is the fruit of the religious genius of the Hebrew race. +From either point of view the authors are highly gifted +individuals' [!]-- + + highly gifted individuals, who, notwithstanding their + diversities, and the progressiveness observable in their + representations of the nature of God, are wonderfully + consistent in the main tenor of their writings, and serve, in + general, for mutual confirmation and illustration. In some + cases, this may be due to the revision of earlier productions + by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive + conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and + profounder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier + conception often lends itself, without wrenching, to the + deeper interpretation and the completer exposition. The Bible + is not distinctively an intellectual achievement. + +In all earnest I protest that to write about the Bible in such a +fashion is to demonstrate inferentially that it has never +quickened you with its glow; that, whatever your learning, you +have missed what the unlearned Bunyan, for example, so admirably +caught--the true _wit_ of the book. The writer, to be sure, is +dealing with the originals. Let us more humbly sit at the feet of +the translators. 'Highly gifted individuals,' or no, the sort of +thing the translators wrote was 'And God said, Let there be +light,' 'A sower went forth to sow,' 'The Kingdom of Heaven is +like unto leaven, which a woman took,' 'The wages of sin is +death,' 'The trumpet shall sound,' 'Jesus wept,' 'Death is +swallowed up in victory.' + +Let me quote you for better encouragement, as well as for +relief, a passage from Matthew Arnold on the Authorised +Version: + + The effect of Hebrew poetry can be preserved and transferred + in a foreign language as the effect of other great + poetry cannot. The effect of Homer, the effect of Dante, is + and must be in great measure lost in a translation, because + their poetry is a poetry of metre, or of rhyme, or both; and + the effect of these is not really transferable. A man may make + a good English poem with the matter and thoughts of Homer + and Dante, may even try to reproduce their metre, or rhyme: + but the metre and rhyme will be in truth his own, and the + effect will be his, not the effect of Homer or Dante. Isaiah's, + on the other hand, is a poetry, as is well known, of + parallelism; it depends not on metre and rhyme, but on a + balance of thought, conveyed by a corresponding balance of + sentence; and the effect of this can be transferred to another + language.... Hebrew poetry has in addition the effect of + assonance and other effects which cannot perhaps be + transferred; but its main effect, its effect of parallelism of + thought and sentence, can. + +I take this from the preface to his little volume in which Arnold +confesses that his 'paramount object is to get Isaiah enjoyed.' + +VI + +Sundry men of letters besides Matthew Arnold have pleaded for a +literary study of the Bible, and specially of our English +Version, that we may thereby enhance our enjoyment of the work +itself and, through this, enjoyment and understanding of the rest +of English Literature, from 1611 down. Specially among these +pleaders let me mention Mr F. B. Money-Coutts (now Lord Latymer) +and a Cambridge man, Dr R. G. Moulton, now Professor of Literary +Theory and Interpretation in the University of Chicago. Of both +these writers I shall have something to say. But first and +generally, if you ask me why all their pleas have not yet +prevailed, I will give you my own answer--the fault as usual lies +in ourselves--in our own tameness and incuriosity. + +There is no real trouble with the _taboo_ set up by professionals +and puritans, if we have the courage to walk past it as Christian +walked between the lions; no real tyranny we could not overthrow, +if it were worth while, with a push; no need at all for us to +`wreathe our sword in myrtle boughs.' What tyranny exists has +grown up through the quite well-meaning labours of quite +well-meaning men: and, as I started this lecture by saying, I have +never heard any serious reason given why we should not include +portions of the English Bible in our English Tripos, if we +choose. + + Nos te, + Nos facimus, Scriptura, deam. + +Then why don't we choose? + +To answer this, we must (I suggest) seek somewhat further back. +The Bible--that is to say the body of the old Hebrew Literature +clothed for us in English--comes to us in our childhood. But how +does it come? + +Let me, amplifying a hint from Dr Moulton, ask you to imagine a +volume including the great books of our own literature all bound +together in some such order as this: "Paradise Lost," Darwin's +"Descent of Man," "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," Walter Map, Mill +"On Liberty," Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," "The Annual +Register," Froissart, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," "Domesday +Book," "Le Morte d'Arthur," Campbell's "Lives of the Lord +Chancellors," Boswell's "Johnson," Barbour's "The Bruce," +Hakluyt's "Voyages," Clarendon, Macaulay, the plays of +Shakespeare, Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," "The Faerie Queene," +Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Bacon's Essays, Swinburne's "Poems +and Ballads," FitzGerald's "Omar Khayyàm," Wordsworth, Browning, +"Sartor Resartus," Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Burke's +"Letters on a Regicide Peace," "Ossian," "Piers Plowman," Burke's +"Thoughts on the Present Discontents," Quarles, Newman's +"Apologia", Donne's Sermons, Ruskin, Blake, "The Deserted +Village," Manfred, Blair's "Grave," "The Complaint of Deor," +Bailey's "Festus," Thompson's "Hound of Heaven." + +Will you next imagine that in this volume most of the author's +names are lost; that, of the few that survive, a number have +found their way into wrong places; that Ruskin for example is +credited with "Sartor Resartus," that "Laus Veneris" and +"Dolores" are ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, "The Anatomy of +Melancholy" to Charles II; and that, as for the titles, these +were never invented by the authors, but by a Committee? + +Will you still go on to imagine that all the poetry is printed as +prose; while all the long paragraphs of prose are broken up into +short verses, so that they resemble the little passages set out +for parsing or analysis in an examination paper? + +This device, as you know, was first invented by the exiled +translators who published the Geneva Bible (as it is called) in +1557; and for pulpit use, for handiness of reference, for 'waling +a portion,' it has its obvious advantages: but it is, after all +and at the best, a very primitive device: and, for my part, I +consider it the deadliest invention of all for robbing the book +of outward resemblance to literature and converting it to the +aspect of a gazetteer--a _biblion a-biblion,_ as Charles Lamb +puts it. + +Have we done? By no means. Having effected all this, let us +pepper the result over with italics and numerals, print it in +double columns, with a marginal gutter on either side, each +gutter pouring down an inky flow of references and cross +references. Then, and not till then, is the outward disguise +complete--so far as you are concerned. It remains only then to +appoint it to be read in Churches, and oblige the child to get +selected portions of it by heart on Sundays. But you are yet to +imagine that the authors themselves have taken a hand in the +game: that the later ones suppose all the earlier ones to have +been predicting all the time in a nebulous fashion what they +themselves have to tell, and indeed to have written mainly with +that object: so that Macaulay and Adam Smith, for example, +constantly interrupt the thread of their discourse to affirm that +what they tell us must be right because Walter Map or the author +of "Piers Plowman" foretold it ages before. + +Now a grown man--that is to say, a comparatively unimpressionable +man--that is again to say, a man past the age when to enjoy the +Bible is priceless--has probably found out somehow that the word +prophet does not (in spite of vulgar usage) mean 'a man who +predicts.' He has experienced too many prophets of that kind-- +especially since 1914--and he respects Isaiah too much to rank +Isaiah among them. He has been in love, belike; he has read the +Song of Solomon: he very much doubts if, on the evidence, Solomon +was the kind of lover to have written that Song, and he is quite +certain that when the lover sings to his beloved: + + Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy + neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools + in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim. + +--he knows, I say, that this is not a description of the Church +and her graces, as the chapter-heading audaciously asserts. But +he is lazy; too lazy even to commend the Revised Version for +striking Solomon out of the Bible, calling the poem The Song of +Songs, omitting the absurd chapter-headings, and printing the +poetry as poetry ought to be printed. The old-fashioned +arrangement was good enough for him. Or he goes to church on +Christmas Day and listens to a first lesson, of which the old +translators made nonsense, and, in two passages at least, stark +nonsense. But, again, the old nonsense is good enough for him; +soothing in fact. He is not even quite sure that the Bible, +looking like any other book, ought to be put in the hands of the +young. + +In all this I think he is wrong. I am sure he is wrong if our +contention be right, that the English Bible should be studied by +us all for its poetry and its wonderful language as well as for +its religion--the religion and the poetry being in fact +inseparable. For then, in Euripides' phrase, we should clothe the +Bible in a dress through which its beauty might best shine. + +VII + +If you ask me How? I answer--first begging you to bear in mind +that we are planning the form of the book for our purpose, and +that other forms will be used for other purposes--that we should +start with the simplest alterations, such as these: + +(1) The books should be re-arranged in their right order, so far +as this can be ascertained (and much of it has been ascertained). +I am told, and I can well believe, that this would at a stroke +clear away a mass of confusion in strictly Biblical criticism. +But that is not my business. I know that it would immensely help +our _literary_ study. + +(2) I should print the prose continuously, as prose is ordinarily +and properly printed: and the poetry in verse lines, as poetry is +ordinarily and properly printed. And I should print each on a +page of one column, with none but the necessary notes and +references, and these so arranged that they did not tease and +distract the eye. + +(3) This arrangement should be kept, whether for the Tripos we +prescribe a book in the Authorised text or in the Revised. As a +rule, perhaps--or as a rule for some years to come--we shall +probably rely on the Authorised Version: but for some books (and +I instance "Job") we should undoubtedly prefer the Revised. + +(4) With the verse we should, I hold, go farther even than the +Revisers. As you know, much of the poetry in the Bible, +especially of such as was meant for music, is composed in +stanzaic form, or in strophe and anti-strophe, with prelude and +conclusion, sometimes with a choral refrain. We should print +these, I contend, in their proper form, just as we should print +an English poem in its proper form. + +I shall conclude to-day with a striking instance of this, with +four strophes from the 107th Psalm, taking leave to use at will +the Authorised, the Revised and the Coverdale Versions. Each +strophe, you will note, has a double refrain. As Dr Moulton +points out, the one puts up a cry for help, the other an +ejaculation of praise after the help has come. Each refrain has a +sequel verse, which appropriately changes the motive and sets +that of the next stanza: + + (i) + +They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; +They found no city to dwell in. +Hungry and thirsty, +Their soul fainted in them. + _Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he delivered them out of their distresses._ +He led them forth by a straight way, +That they might go to a city of habitation. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +For he satisfieth the longing soul, +And filleth the hungry soul with goodness. + + (ii) + +Such as sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, +Being bound in affliction and iron; +Because they rebelled against the words of God, +And contemned the counsel of the most High: +Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; +They fell down, and there was none to help. + _Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he saved them out of their distresses._ +He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, +And brake their bands in sunder. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +For he hath broken the gates of brass, +And cut the bars of iron in sunder. + + (iii) + +Fools because of their transgression, +And because of their iniquities, are afflicted, +Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; +And they draw near unto death's door. + _Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he saveth them out of their distresses._ +He sendeth his word and healeth them, +And delivereth them from their destructions. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +And let them offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, +And declare his works with singing: + + (iv) + +They that go down to the sea in ships, +That do business in great waters; +These see the works of the Lord, +And his wonders in the deep. +For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, +Which lifteth up the waves thereof. +They mount up to the heaven, +They go down again to the depths; +Their soul melteth away because of trouble. +They reel to and fro, +And stagger like a drunken man, +And are at their wits' end. + _Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he bringeth them out of their distresses._ +He maketh the storm a calm, +So that the waves thereof are still. +Then are they glad because they be quiet; +So he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people, +And praise him in the seat of the elders! + + + +[Footnote 1: I borrow the verse and in part the prose of +Professor W. Rhys Roberts' translation.] + + + + +LECTURE X + +ON READING THE BIBLE (III) + +MONDAY, MAY 6, 1918 + + +I + +My task to-day, Gentlemen, is mainly practical: to choose a +particular book of Scripture and show (if I can) not only that it +deserves to be enjoyed, in its English rendering, as a literary +masterpiece, because it abides in that dress, an indisputable +classic for us, as surely as if it had first been composed in +English; but that it can, for purposes of study, serve the +purpose of any true literary school of English as readily, and as +usefully, as the Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales" or "Hamlet" +or "Paradise Lost." I shall choose "The Book of Job" for several +reasons, presently to be given; but beg you to understand that, +while taking it for a striking illustration, I use it but to +illustrate; that what may be done with "Job" may, in degree, be +done with "Ruth," with "Esther," with the "Psalms," "The Song of +Songs," "Ecclesiastes;" with Isaiah of Jerusalem, Ezekiel, sundry +of the prophets; even with St Luke's Gospel or St Paul's letters +to the Churches. + +My first reason, then, for choosing "Job" has already been given. +It is the most striking illustration to be found. Many of the +Psalms touch perfection as lyrical strains: of the ecstacy of +passion in love I suppose "The Song of Songs" to express the very +last word. There are chapters of Isaiah that snatch the very soul +and ravish it aloft. In no literature known to me are short +stories told with such sweet austerity of art as in the Gospel +parables--I can even imagine a high and learned artist in words, +after rejecting them as divine on many grounds, surrendering in +the end to their divine artistry. But for high seriousness +combined with architectonic treatment on a great scale; for +sublimity of conception, working malleably within a structure +which is simple, severe, complete, having a beginning, a middle +and an end; for diction never less than adequate, constantly +right and therefore not seldom superb, as theme, thought and +utterance soar up together and make one miracle, I can name no +single book of the Bible to compare with "Job." + +My second reason is that the poem, being brief, compendious and +quite simple in structure, can be handily expounded; "Job" is +what Milton precisely called it, 'a brief model.' And my third +reason (which I must not hide) is that two writers whom I +mentioned in my last lecture Lord Latymer and Professor R. G. +Moulton--have already done this for me. A man who drives at +practice must use the tools other men have made, so he use them +with due acknowledgment; and this acknowledgment I pay by +referring you to Book II of Lord Latymer's "The Poet's Charter,' +and to the analysis of "Job" with which Professor Moulton +introduces his "Literary Study of the Bible.' + +II + +But I have a fourth reason, out of which I might make an apparent +fifth by presenting it to you in two different ways. Those elders +of you who have followed certain earlier lectures 'On the Art of +Writing' may remember that they set very little store upon metre +as a dividing line between poetry and prose, and no store at all +upon rhyme. I am tempted to-day to go farther, and to maintain +that, the larger, the sublimer, your subject is, the more +impertinent rhyme becomes to it: and that this impertinence +increases in a sort of geometrical progression as you advance +from monosyllabic to dissyllabic and on to trisyllabic rhyme. Let +me put this by a series of examples. + +We start with no rhyme at all: + + Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first born! + Or of the Eternal coeternal beam + May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, + And never but in unapproached light + Dwelt from eternity. + +We feel of this, as we feel of a great passage in "Hamlet" or +"Lear," that here is verse at once capable of the highest +sublimity and capable of sustaining its theme, of lifting and +lowering it at will, with endless resource in the slide and pause +of the caesura, to carry it on and on. We feel it to be adequate, +too, for quite plain straightforward narrative, as in this +passage from "Balder Dead": + + But from the hill of Lidskialf Odin rose, + The throne, from which his eye surveys the world; + And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode + To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven, + High over Asgard, to light home the King. + But fiercely Odin gallop'd, moved in heart; + And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came. + And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang + Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets, + And the Gods trembled on their golden beds-- + Hearing the wrathful Father coming home-- + For dread, for like a whirlwind, Odin came. + And to Valhalla's gate he rode, and left + Sleipner; and Sleipner went to his own stall: + And in Valhalla Odin laid him down. + +Now of rhyme he were a fool who, with Lycidas, or Gray's "Elegy," +or certain choruses of "Prometheus Unbound," or page after page +of Victor Hugo in his mind, should assert it to be in itself +inimical, or a hindrance, or even less than a help, to sublimity; +or who, with Dante in his mind, should assert it to be, in +itself, any bar to continuous and sustained sublimity. But +languages differ vastly in their wealth of rhyme, and differ out +of any proportion to their wealth in words: English for instance +being infinitely richer than Italian in vocabulary, yet almost +ridiculously poorer in dissyllabic, or feminine rhymes. Speaking +generally, I should say that in proportion to its wonderful +vocabulary, English is poor even in single rhymes; that the words +'love,' 'truth,' 'God,' for example, have lists of possible +congeners so limited that the mind, hearing the word 'love,' runs +forward to match it with 'dove' or 'above' or even with 'move': +and this gives it a sense of arrest, of listening, of check, of +waiting, which alike impedes the flow of Pope in imitating Homer, +and of Spenser in essaying a sublime and continuous story of his +own. It does well enough to carry Chaucer over any gap with a +'forsooth as I you say' or 'forsooth as I you tell': but it does +so at a total cost of the sublime. And this (I think) was really +at the back of Milton's mind when in the preface to "Paradise +Lost" he championed blank verse against 'the jingling sound of +like endings.' + +But when we pass from single rhymes to double, of which Dante had +an inexhaustible store, we find the English poet almost a pauper; +so nearly a pauper that he has to achieve each new rhyme by a +trick--which tricking is fatal to rapture, alike in the poet and +the hearer. Let me instance a poem which, planned for sublimity, +keeps tumbling flat upon earth through the inherent fault of the +machine--I mean Myers's "St Paul"--a poem which, finely +conceived, pondered, worked and re-worked upon in edition after +edition, was from the first condemned (to my mind) by the +technical bar of dissyllabic rhyme which the poet unhappily +chose. I take one of its most deeply felt passages--that of +St Paul protesting against his conversion being taken for +instantaneous, wholly accounted for by the miraculous vision +related in the "Acts of the Apostles": + + Let no man think that sudden in a minute + All is accomplished and the work is done;-- + Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it + Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun. + + Oh the regret, the struggle and the failing! + Oh the days desolate and useless years! + Vows in the night, so fierce and unavailing! + Stings of my shame and passion of my tears! + + How have I seen in Araby Orion, + Seen without seeing, till he set again, + Known the night-noise and thunder of the lion, + Silence and sounds of the prodigious plain! + + How have I knelt with arms of my aspiring + Lifted all night in irresponsive air, + Dazed and amazed with overmuch desiring, + Blank with the utter agony of prayer! + + 'What,' ye will say, `and thou who at Damascus + Sawest the splendour, answeredst the Voice; + So hast thou suffered and canst dare to ask us, + Paul of the Romans, bidding us rejoice?' + +You cannot say I have instanced a passage anything short of fine. +But do you not feel that a man who is searching for a rhyme to +Damascus has not really the time to cry 'Abba, father'? Is not +your own rapture interrupted by some wonder 'How will he bring it +off'? And when he has searched and contrived to `ask us,' are we +responsive to the ecstacy? Has he not--if I may employ an +Oriental trope for once--let in the chill breath of cleverness +upon the garden of beatitude? No man can be clever and ecstatic +at the same moment[1]. + +As for triple rhymes--rhymes of the comedian who had a lot o' +news with many curious facts about the square on the hypotenuse, +or the cassiowary who ate the missionary on the plains of +Timbuctoo, with Bible, prayer-book, hymn-book too--they are for +the facetious, and removed, as far as geometrical progression can +remove them, from any "Paradise Lost" or "Regained." + +It may sound a genuine note, now and then: + + Alas! for the rarity + Of Christian charity + Under the sun! + Oh, it was pitiful! + Near a whole city full, + Home she had none! + +But not often: and, I think, never but in lyric. + +III + +So much, then, for rhyme. We will approach the question of metre, +helped or unhelped by rhyme, in another way; and a way yet more +practical. + +When Milton (determined to write a grand epic) was casting about +for his subject, he had a mind for some while to attempt the +story of "Job." You may find evidence for this in a MS preserved +here in Trinity College Library. + +You will find printed evidence in a passage of his "Reason of +Church Government": + +'Time serves not now,' he writes, 'and perhaps I might seem too +profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in +the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to +herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether +that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other +two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a +brief model ...' + +Again, we know "Job" to have been one of the three stories +meditated by Shelley as themes for great lyrical dramas, the +other two being the madness of Tasso and "Prometheus Unbound." +Shelley never abandoned this idea of a lyrical drama on Job; and +if Milton abandoned the idea of an epic, there are passages in +"Paradise Lost" as there are passages in "Prometheus Unbound" +that might well have been written for this other story. Take the +lines + + Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out + To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet + Mortality my sentence, and be earth + Insensible! how glad would lay me down + As in my mother's lap! There I should rest + And sleep secure;... + +What is this, as Lord Latymer asks, but an echo of Job's words?-- + + For now should I have lien down and been quiet; + I should have slept; then had I been at rest: + With kings and counsellers of the earth, + Which built desolate places for themselves ... + There the wicked cease from troubling; + And there the weary be at rest. + +There is no need for me to point out how exactly, though from two +nearly opposite angles, the story of Job would hit the philosophy +of Milton and the philosophy of Shelley to the very heart. What +is the story of the afflicted patriarch but a direct challenge to +a protestant like Milton (I use the word in its strict sense) to +justify the ways of God to man? It is the very purpose, in sum, +of the "Book of Job," as it is the very purpose, in sum, of +"Paradise Lost": and since both poems can only work out the +justification by long argumentative speeches, both poems +lamentably fail as real solutions of the difficulty. To this I +shall recur, and here merely observe that _qui s' excuse s' +accuse_: a God who can only explain himself by the help of +long-winded scolding, or of long-winded advocacy, though he employ +an archangel for advocate, has given away the half of his case by +the implicit admission that there are two sides to the question. +And when we have put aside the poetical ineptitude of a Creator +driven to apology, it remains that to Shelley the Jehovah who, +for a sort of wager, allowed Satan to torture Job merely for the +game of testing him, would be no better than any other tyrant; +would be a miscreant Creator, abominable as the Zeus of the +"Prometheus Unbound." + +Now you may urge that Milton and Shelley dropped Job for hero +because both felt him to be a merely static figure: and that the +one chose Satan, the rebel angel, the other chose Prometheus the +rebel Titan, because both are active rebels, and as epic and +drama require action, each of these heroes makes the thing move; +that Satan and Prometheus are not passive sufferers like Job but +souls as quick and fiery as Byron's Lucifer: + + Souls who dare use their immortality-- + Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in + His everlasting face, and tell him that + His evil is not good. + +Very well, urge this: urge it with all your might. All the while +you will be doing just what I desire you to do, using "Job" +alongside "Prometheus Unbound" and "Paradise Lost" as a +comparative work of literature. + +But, if you ask me for my own opinion why Milton and Shelley +dropped their intention to make poems on the "Book of Job," it is +that they no sooner tackled it than they found it to be a +magnificent poem already, and a poem on which, with all their +genius, they found themselves unable to improve. + +I want you to realise a thing most simple, demonstrable by five +minutes of practice, yet so confused by conventional notions of +what poetry is that I dare say it to be equally demonstrable that +Milton and Shelley discovered it only by experiment. Does this +appear to you a bold thing to say of so tremendous an artist as +Milton? Well, of course it would be cruel to quote in proof his +paraphrases of Psalms cxiv and cxxxvi: to set against the +Authorised Version's + + When Israel went out of Egypt, + The house of Jacob from a people of strange language + +such pomposity as + + When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son + After long toil their liberty had won-- + +or against + + O give thanks.... + To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: + for his mercy endureth for ever. + To him that made great lights: + for his mercy endureth for ever + +such stuff as + + Who did the solid earth ordain + To rise above the watery plain; + _For his mercies aye endure,_ + _Ever faithful, ever sure._ + Who, by his all-commanding might, + Did fill the new-made world with light; + _For his mercies aye endure,_ + _Ever faithful, ever sure._ + +verses yet further weakened by the late Sir William Baker for +"Hymns Ancient and Modern." + +It were cruel, I say, to condemn these attempts as little above +those of Sternhold and Hopkins, or even of those of Tate and +Brady: for Milton made them at fifteen years old, and he who +afterwards consecrated his youth to poetry soon learned to know +better. And yet, bearing in mind the passages in "Paradise Lost" +and "Paradise Regained" which paraphrase the Scriptural +narrative, I cannot forbear the suspicion that, though as an +artist he had the instinct to feel it, he never quite won to +_knowing_ the simple fact that the thing had already been done +and surpassingly well done: he, who did so much to liberate +poetry from rhyme--he--even he who in the grand choruses of +"Samson Agonistes" did so much to liberate it from strict metre +never quite realised, being hag-ridden by the fetish that rides +between two panniers, the sacred and the profane, that this +translation of "Job" already belongs to the category of poetry, +_is_ poetry, already above metre, and in rhythm far on its way to +the insurpassable. If rhyme be allowed to that greatest of arts, +if metre, is not rhythm above both for her service? Hear in a +sentence how this poem uplifts the rhythm of the Vulgate: + + _Ecce, Deus magnus vincens scientiam nostram; numerus annorum_ + _ejus inestimabilis!_ + +But hear, in a longer passage, how our English rhythm swings and +sways to the Hebrew parallels: + + Surely there is a mine for silver, + And a place for gold which they refine. + Iron is taken out of the earth, + And brass is molten out of the stone. + _Man_ setteth an end to darkness, + And searcheth out to the furthest bound + The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death. + He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; + They are forgotten of the foot _that passeth by_; + They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. + As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: + And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. + The atones thereof are the place of sapphires, + And it hath dust of gold. + That path no bird of prey knoweth, + Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it: + The proud beasts have not trodden it, + Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. + He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; + He overturneth the mountains by the roots. + He cutteth out channels among the rocks; + And his eye seeth every precious thing. + He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; + And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. + But where shall wisdom be found? + And where is the place of understanding? + Man knoweth not the price thereof; + Neither is it found in the land of the living. + The deep saith, It is not in me: + And the sea saith, It is not with me. + It cannot be gotten for gold, + Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. + It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, + With the precious onyx, or the sapphire. + Gold and glass cannot equal it: + Neither shall the exchange thereof be jewels of fine gold. + No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal: + Yea, the price of wisdom is above rubies. + The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, + Neither shall it be valued with pure gold. + Whence then cometh wisdom? + And where is the place of understanding? + Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, + And kept close from the fowls of the air. + Destruction and Death say, + We have heard a rumour thereof with our ears. + God understandeth the way thereof, + And he knoweth the place thereof. + For he looketh to the ends of the earth, + And seeth under the whole heaven; + To make a weight for the wind; + Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure. + When he made a decree for the rain, + And a way for the lightning of the thunder: + Then did he see it, and declare it; + He established it, yea, and searched it out. + And unto man he said, + Behold, the fear of the Lord, _that_ is wisdom; + And to depart from evil is understanding. + +Is that poetry? Surely it is poetry. Can you improve it with the +embellishments of rhyme and strict scansion? Well, sundry bold +men have tried, and I will choose, for your judgment, the +rendering of a part of the above passage by one who is by no +means the worst of them--a hardy anonymous Scotsman. His version +was published at Falkirk in 1869: + + His hand on the rock the adventurer puts, + And mountains entire overturns by the roots; + New rivers in rocks are enchased by his might, + And everything precious revealed to his sight; + The floods from o'er-flowing he bindeth at will, + And the thing that is hid bringeth forth by his skill. + + But where real wisdom is found can he shew? + Or the place understanding inhabiteth? No! + Men know not the value, the price of this gem; + 'Tis not found in the land of the living with them. + It is not in me, saith the depth; and the sea + With the voice of an echo, repeats, Not in me. + +(I have a suspicion somehow that what the sea really answered, in +its northern vernacular, was 'Me either.') + + Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place + Understanding hath chosen, since this is the case?... + +Enough! This not only shows how that other rendering can be +spoilt even to the point of burlesque by an attempt, on +preconceived notions, to embellish it with metre and rhyme, but +it also hints that parallel verse will actually resent and abhor +such embellishment even by the most skilled hand. Yet, I repeat, +our version of "Job" is poetry undeniable. What follows? + +Why, it follows that in the course of studying it as literature +we have found experimentally settled for us--and on the side of +freedom--a dispute in which scores of eminent critics have taken +sides: a dispute revived but yesterday (if we omit the blank and +devastated days of this War) by the writers and apostles of _vers +libres._ 'Can there be poetry without metre?' 'Is free verse a +true poetic form?' Why, our "Book of Job" being poetry, +unmistakable poetry, of course there can, to be sure it is. These +apostles are butting at an open door. Nothing remains for them +but to go and write _vers libres_ as fine as those of "Job" in +our English translation. Or suppose even that they write as well +as M. Paul Fort, they will yet be writing ancestrally, not as +innovators but as renewers. Nothing is done in literature by +arguing whether or not this or that be possible or permissible. +The only way to prove it possible or permissible is to go and do +it: and then you are lucky indeed if some ancient writers have +not forestalled you. + +IV + +Now for another question (much argued, you will remember, a few +years ago) 'Is there--can there be--such a thing as a Static +Theatre, a Static Drama?' + +Most of you (I daresay) remember M. Maeterlinck's definition of +this and his demand for it. To summarise him roughly, he contends +that the old drama--the traditional, the conventional drama-- +lives by action; that, in Aristotle's phrase, it represents men +doing, [Greek: prattontas], and resolves itself into a struggle +of human wills--whether against the gods, as in ancient tragedy, +or against one another, as in modern. M. Maeterlinck tells us-- + + There is a tragic element in the life of every day that is far + more real, far more penetrating, far more akin to the true self + that is in us, than is the tragedy that lies in great + adventure.... It goes beyond the determined struggle of man + against man, and desire against desire; it goes beyond the + eternal conflict of duty and passion. Its province is rather to + reveal to us how truly wonderful is the mere act of living, and + to throw light upon the existence of the soul, self-contained + in the midst of ever-restless immensities; to hush the + discourse of reason and sentiment, so that above the tumult may + be heard the solemn uninterrupted whisperings of man and his + destiny. + + To the tragic author [he goes on, later], as to the mediocre + painter who still lingers over historical pictures, it is only + the violence of the anecdote that appeals, and in his + representation thereof does the entire interest of his work + consist.... Indeed when I go to a theatre, I feel as though I + were spending a few hours with my ancestors, who conceived life + as though it were something that was primitive, arid and + brutal.... I am shown a deceived husband killing his wife, a + woman poisoning her lover, a son avenging his father, a father + slaughtering his children, murdered kings, ravished virgins, + imprisoned citizens--in a word all the sublimity of tradition, + but alas how superficial and material! Blood, surface-tears and + death! What can I learn from creatures who have but one fixed + idea, who have no time to live, for that there is a rival, a + mistress, whom it behoves them to put to death? + +M. Maeterlinck does not (he says) know if the Static Drama of his +craving be impossible. He inclines to think--instancing some +Greek tragedies such as "Prometheus" and "Choephori"--that it +already exists. But may we not, out of the East--the slow, the +stationary East--fetch an instance more convincing? + +V + +The Drama of Job opens with a "Prologue" in the mouth of a +Narrator. + +There was a man in the land of Uz, named Job; upright, +God-fearing, of great substance in sheep, cattle and oxen; blest +also with seven sons and three daughters. After telling of their +family life, how wholesome it is, and pious, and happy-- + +The Prologue passes to a Council held in Heaven. The Lord sits +there, and the sons of God present themselves each from his +province. Enters Satan (whom we had better call the Adversary) +from his sphere of inspection, the Earth, and reports. The Lord +specially questions him concerning Job, pattern of men. The +Adversary demurs. 'Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not +set a hedge about his prosperity? But put forth thy hand and +touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face.' +The Lord gives leave for this trial to be made (you will recall +the opening of "Everyman"): + +So, in the midst of his wealth, a messenger came to job and +says-- + + The oxen were plowing, + and the asses feeding beside them: + and the Sabeans fell upon them, + and took them away; + yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, + The fire of God is fallen from heaven, + and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, + and consumed them; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, + The Chaldeans made three bands, + and fell upon the camels, + and have taken them away, + yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, + Thy sons and thy daughters + were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: + and, behold, + there came a great wind from the wilderness, + and smote the four corners of the house, + and it fell upon the young men, + and they are dead; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and + fell down upon the ground, and worshipped; and he said, + Naked came I out of my mother's womb, + and naked shall I return thither: + the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; + blessed be the name of the Lord. + +So the Adversary is foiled, and Job has not renounced God. A +second Council is held in Heaven; and the Adversary, being +questioned, has to admit Job's integrity, but proposes a severer +test: + + Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his + life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and + his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face. + +Again leave is given: and the Adversary smites job with the most +hideous and loathsome form of leprosy. His kinsfolk (as we learn +later) have already begun to desert and hold aloof from him as a +man marked out by God's displeasure. But now he passes out from +their midst, as one unclean from head to foot, and seats himself +on the ash-mound--that is, upon the Mezbele or heap of refuse +which accumulates outside Arab villages. + + 'The dung,' says Professor Moulton, `which is heaped upon + the Mezbele of the Hauran villages is not mixed with straw, + which in that warm and dry land is not needed for litter, + and it comes mostly from solid-hoofed animals, as the + flocks and oxen are left over-night in the grazing places. It + is carried in baskets in a dry state to this place ... and + usually burnt once a month.... The ashes remain.... If the + village has been inhabited for centuries the Mezbele + reaches a height far overtopping it. The winter rains reduce + it into a compact mass, and it becomes by and by a solid + hill of earth.... The Mezbele serves the inhabitants for a + watchtower, and in the sultry evenings for a place of + concourse, because there is a current of air on the height. + There all day long the children play about it; and there the + outcast, who has been stricken with some loathsome malady, and + is not allowed to enter the dwellings of men, lays himself down + begging an alms of the passers-by by day, and by night + sheltering himself among the ashes which the heat of the sun + has warmed.' + +Here, then, sits in his misery 'the forsaken grandee'; and here +yet another temptation comes to him--this time not expressly +allowed by the Lord. Much foolish condemnation (and, I may add, +some foolish facetiousness) has been heaped on Job's wife. As a +matter of fact she is _not_ a wicked woman--she has borne her +part in the pious and happy family life, now taken away: she has +uttered no word of complaint though all the substance be +swallowed up and her children with it. But now the sight of her +innocent husband thus helpless, thus incurably smitten, wrings, +through love and anguish and indignation, this cry from her: + + Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and + die. + +But Job answered, soothing her: + + Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? + shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not + receive evil? + +So the second trial ends, and Job has sinned not with his lips. + +But now comes the third trial, which needs no Council in Heaven +to decree it. Travellers by the mound saw this figure seated +there, patient, uncomplaining, an object of awe even to the +children who at first mocked him; asked this man's history; and +hearing of it, smote on their breasts, and made a token of it and +carried the news into far countries: until it reached the ears of +Job's three friends, all great tribesmen like himself--Eliphaz +the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. +These three made an appointment together to travel and visit Job. +'And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, +they lifted up their voice, and wept.' Then they went up and sat +down opposite him on the ground. But the majesty of suffering is +silent: + + Here I and sorrows sit; + Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.... + +No, not a word.... And, with the grave courtesy of Eastern men, +they too are silent: + + So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and + seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw + that his grief was very great. + +The Prologue ends. The scene is set. After seven days of silence +the real drama opens. + +VI + +Of the drama itself I shall attempt no analysis, referring you +for this to the two books from which I have already quoted. My +purpose being merely to persuade you that this surpassing poem +can be studied, and ought to be studied, as literature, I shall +content myself with turning it (so to speak) once or twice in my +hand and glancing one or two facets at you. + +To begin with, then, you will not have failed to notice, in the +setting out of the drama, a curious resemblance between "Job" and +the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus. The curtain in each play lifts on +a figure solitary, tortured (for no reason that seems good to us) +by a higher will which, we are told, is God's. The chorus of +Sea-nymphs in the opening of the Greek play bears no small +resemblance in attitude of mind to job's three friends. When job +at length breaks the intolerable silence with + + Let the day perish wherein I was born, + And the night which said, There is a man child conceived. + +he uses just such an outburst as Prometheus: and, as he is +answered by his friends, so the Nymphs at once exclaim to +Prometheus + + Seest thou not that thou hast sinned? + +But at once, for anyone with a sense of comparative literature, +is set up a comparison between the persistent West and the +persistent East; between the fiery energising rebel and the +patient victim. Of these two, both good, one will dare everything +to release mankind from thrall; the other will submit, and +justify himself--mankind too, if it may hap--by submission. + +At once this difference is seen to give a difference of form to +the drama. Our poem is purely static. Some critics can detect +little individuality in Job's three friends, to distinguish them. +For my part I find Eliphaz more of a personage than the other +two; grander in the volume of his mind, securer in wisdom; as I +find Zophar rather noticeably a mean-minded greybeard, and Bildad +a man of the stand-no-nonsense kind. But, to tell the truth, I +prefer not to search for individuality in these men: I prefer to +see them as three figures with eyes of stone almost expressionless. +For in truth they are the conventions, all through,--the orthodox +men--addressing Job, the reality; and their words come to this: + + Thou sufferest, therefore must have sinned. + All suffering is, must be a judgment upon sin. + Else God is not righteous. + +They are statuesque, as the drama is static. The speeches follow +one another, rising and falling, in rise and fall magnificently +and deliberately eloquent. Not a limb is seen to move, unless it +be when job half rises from the dust in sudden scorn of their +conventions: + + No doubt but _ye_ are the people, + And wisdom shall die with you! + +or again + + Will ye speak unrighteously for God, + And talk deceitfully for him? + Will _ye_ respect _his_ person? + Will _ye_ contend for God? + +Yet--so great is this man, who has not renounced and will not +renounce God, that still and ever he clamours for more knowledge +of Him. Still getting no answer, he lifts up his hands and calls +the great Oath of Clearance; in effect 'If I have loved gold +overmuch, hated mine enemy, refused the stranger my tent, +truckled to public opinion': + + If my land cry out against me, + And the furrows thereof weep together; + If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, + Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: + Let thistles grow instead of wheat, + And cockle instead of barley. + +With a slow gesture he covers his face: + + The words of Job are ended. + +VII + +They are ended: even though at this point (when the debate seems +to be closed) a young Aramaean Arab, Elihu, who has been +loitering around and listening to the controversy, bursts in and +delivers his young red-hot opinions. They are violent, and at the +same time quite raw and priggish. Job troubles not to answer: the +others keep a chilling silence. But while this young man rants, +pointing skyward now and again, we see, we feel--it is most +wonderfully conveyed--as clearly as if indicated by successive +stage-directions, a terrific thunder-storm gathering; a +thunder-storm with a whirlwind. It gathers; it is upon them; it +darkens them with dread until even the words of Elihu dry on his +lips: + + If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up. + +It breaks and blasts and confounds them; and out of it the Lord +speaks. + +Now of that famous and marvellous speech, put by the poet into +the mouth of God, we may say what may be said of all speeches put +by man into the mouth of God. We may say, as of the speeches of +the Archangel in "Paradise Lost" that it is argument, and +argument, by its very nature, admits of being answered. But, if to +make God talk at all be anthropomorphism, here is anthropomorphism +at its very best in its effort to reach to God. + +There is a hush. The storm clears away; and in this hush the +voice of the Narrator is heard again, pronouncing the Epilogue. +Job has looked in the face of God and reproached him as a friend +reproaches a friend. Therefore his captivity was turned, and his +wealth returned to him, and he begat sons and daughters, and saw +his sons' sons unto the fourth generation. So Job died, being old +and full of years. + +VIII + +Structurally a great poem; historically a great poem; +philosophically a great poem; so rendered for us in noble English +diction as to be worthy in any comparison of diction, structure, +ancestry, thought! Why should we not study it in our English +School, if only for purpose of comparison? I conclude with these +words of Lord Latymer: + + There is nothing comparable with it except the "Prometheus + Bound" of Aeschylus. It is eternal, illimitable ... its scope + is the relation between God and Man. It is a vast liberation, a + great gaol-delivery of the spirit of Man; nay, rather a great + Acquittal. + + + +[Footnote 1: It is fair to say that Myers cancelled the Damascus +stanza in his final edition.] + + + + +LECTURE XI + +OF SELECTION + +WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1918 + + +I + +Let us hark back, Gentlemen, to our original problem, and +consider if our dilatory way have led us to some glimpse of a +practical solution. + +We may re-state it thus: Assuming it to be true, as men of +Science assure us, that the weight of this planet remains +constant, and is to-day what it was when mankind carelessly laid +it on the shoulders of Atlas; that nothing abides but it goes, +that nothing goes but in some form or other it comes back; you +and I may well indulge a wonder what reflections upon this +astonishing fact our University Librarian, Mr Jenkinson, takes to +bed with him. A copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom +is--or I had better say, should be--deposited with him. Putting +aside the question of what he has done to deserve it, he must +surely wonder at times from what other corners of the earth +Providence has been at pains to collect and compact the +ingredients of the latest new volume he handles for a moment +before fondly committing it to the cellars. + + 'Locked up, not lost.' + +Or, to take it in reverse--When the great library of Alexandria +went up in flames, doubtless its ashes awoke an appreciable and +almost immediate energy in the crops of the Nile Delta. The more +leisurable process of desiccation, by which, under modern +storage, the components of a modern novel are released to fresh +unions and activities admits, as Sir Thomas Browne would say, a +wide solution, and was just the question to tease that good man. +Can we not hear him discussing it? 'To be but pyramidally extant +is a fallacy in duration.... To burn the bones of the King of +Edom for lime seems no irrational ferity: but to store the back +volumes of Mr Bottomley's "John Bull" a passionate prodigality.' + +II + +Well, whatever the perplexities of our Library we may be sure +they will never break down that tradition of service, help and +courtesy which is, among its fine treasures, still the first. But +we have seen that Mr Jenkinson's perplexities are really but a +parable of ours: that the question, What are we to do with all +these books accumulating in the world? really _is_ a question: +that their mere accumulation really _does_ heap up against us a +barrier of such enormous and brute mass that the stream of human +culture must needs be choked and spread into marsh unless we +contrive to pipe it through. That a great deal of it is meant to +help--that even the most of it is well intentioned--avails not +against the mere physical obstacle of its mass. If you consider +an Athenian gentleman of the 5th century B.C. connecting (as I +always preach here) his literature with his life, two things are +bound to strike you: the first that he was a man of leisure, +somewhat disdainful of trade and relieved of menial work by a +number of slaves; the second, that he was surprisingly +unencumbered with books. You will find in Plato much about +reciters, actors, poets, rhetoricians, pleaders, sophists, public +orators and refiners of language, but very little indeed about +books. Even the library of Alexandria grew in a time of decadence +and belonged to an age not his. Says Jowett in the end: + + He who approaches him in the most reverent spirit shall reap + most of the fruit of his wisdom; he who reads him by the + light of ancient commentators will have the least + understanding of him. + + We see him [Jowett goes on] with the eye of the mind in + the groves of the Academy, or on the banks of the Ilissus, + or in the streets of Athens, alone or walking with Socrates, + full of those thoughts which have since become the + common possession of mankind. Or we may compare him + to a statue hid away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no + longer existing on earth, a statue which has a look as of the + God himself. Or we may once more imagine him following + in another state of being the great company of heaven + which he beheld of old in a vision. So, 'partly trifling but + with a certain degree of seriousness,' we linger around the + memory of a world which has passed away. + +Yes, 'which has passed away,' and perhaps with no token more +evident of its decease than the sepulture of books that admiring +generations have heaped on it! + +III + +In a previous lecture I referred you to the beautiful opening and +the yet more beautiful close of the "Phaedrus." Let us turn back +and refresh ourselves with that Dialogue while we learn from it, +in somewhat more of detail, just what a book meant to an +Athenian: how fresh a thing it was to him and how little irksome. + +Phaedrus has spent his forenoon listening to a discourse by the +celebrated rhetorician Lysias on the subject of Love, and is +starting to cool his head with a stroll beyond the walls of the +city, when he encounters Socrates, who will not let him go until +he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias regaled him, or, +better still, the manuscript, 'which I suspect you are carrying +there in your left hand under your cloak.' So they bend their way +beside Ilissus towards a tall plane tree, seen in the distance. +Having reached it, they recline. + + 'By Hera,' says Socrates, 'a fair resting-place, full of + summer sounds and scents! This clearing, with the agnus + castus in high bloom and fragrant, and the stream beneath + the tree so gratefully cool to our feet! Judging from the + ornaments and statues, I think this spot must be sacred to + Acheloüs and the Nymphs. And the breeze, how + deliciously charged with balm! and all summer's murmur in + the air, shrilled by the chorus of the grasshoppers! But the + greatest charm is this knoll of turf,--positively a pillow for + the head. My dear Phaedrus, you have been a delectable + guide.' + + 'What an incomprehensible being you are, Socrates,' returns + Phaedrus. 'When you are in the country, as you say, you + really are like some stranger led about by a guide. Upon my + word, I doubt if you ever stray beyond the gates save by + accident.' + + 'Very true, my friend: and I hope you will forgive me for the + reason--which is, that I love knowledge, and my teachers are + the men who dwell in the city, not the trees or country + scenes. Yet I do believe you have found a spell to draw me + forth, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of + fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a + book, and you may lead me all round Attica and over the + wide world.' + +So they recline and talk, looking aloft through that famous pure +sky of Attica, mile upon mile transparent; and their discourse +(preserved to us) is of Love, and seems to belong to that +atmosphere, so clear it is and luminously profound. It ends with +the cool of the day, and the two friends arise to depart. +Socrates looks about him. + +'Should we not, before going, offer up a prayer to these local +deities?' + +'By all means,' Phaedrus agrees. + + _Socrates_ (praying): 'Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who + haunt this place, grant me beauty in the inward soul, and that + the outward and inward may be at one! May I esteem the wise + to be the rich; and may I myself have that quantity of gold + which a temperate man, and he only, can carry.... Anything + more? That prayer, I think, is enough for me.' + + _Phaedrus._ 'Ask the same for me, Socrates. Friends, methinks, + should have all things in common.' + + _Socrates._ 'Amen, then.... Let us go.' + +Here we have, as it seems to me, a marriage, without impediment, +of wisdom and beauty between two minds that perforce have small +acquaintance with books: and yet, with it, Socrates' confession +that anyone with a book under his cloak could lead him anywhere +by the nose. So we see that Hellenic culture at its best was +independent of book-learning, and yet craved for it. + +IV + +When our own Literature awoke, taking its origin from the proud +scholarship of the Renaissance, an Englishman who affected it was +scarcely more cumbered with books than our Athenian had been, two +thousand years before. It was, and it remained, aristocratic: +sparingly expensive of its culture. It postulated, if not a slave +population, at least a proletariat for which its blessings were +not. No one thought of making a fortune by disseminating his work +in print. Shakespeare never found it worth while to collect and +publish his plays; and a very small sense of history will suffice +to check our tears over the price received by Milton for +"Paradise Lost." We may wonder, indeed, at the time it took our +forefathers to realise--or, at any rate, to employ--the energy +that lay in the printing-press. For centuries after its invention +mere copying commanded far higher prices than authorship[1]. +Writers gave 'authorised' editions to the world sometimes for the +sake of fame, often to justify themselves against piratical +publishers, seldom in expectation of monetary profit. Listen, for +example, to Sir Thomas Browne's excuse for publishing "Religio +Medici" (1643): + + Had not almost every man suffered by the press or were not the + tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for + complaint: but in times wherein I have lived to behold the + highest perversion of that excellent invention, the name of his + Majesty defamed, the honour of Parliament depraved, the + writings of both depravedly, anticipatively, counterfeitly + imprinted; complaints may seem ridiculous in private persons; + and men of my condition may be as incapable of affronts, as + hopeless of their reparations. And truly had not the duty I owe + unto the importunity of friends, and the allegiance I must ever + acknowledge unto truth, prevailed with me; the inactivity of + my disposition might have made these sufferings continual, + and time that brings other things to light, should have + satisfied me in the remedy of its oblivion. But because things + evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth + most falsely set forth, in this latter I could not but think + myself engaged. For though we have no power to redress the + former, yet in the other, the reparation being within our + selves, I have at present represented unto the world a full and + intended copy of that piece, which was most imperfectly and + surreptitiously published before. + + This I confess, about seven years past, with some others of + affinity thereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction, I + had at leisurable hours composed; which being communicated + unto one, it became common unto many, and was by transcription + successively corrupted, untill it arrived in a most depraved + copy at the press ... [2] + +V + +The men of the 18th century maintained the old tradition of +literary exclusiveness, but in a somewhat different way and more +consciously. + +I find, Gentlemen, when you read with me in private, that nine +out of ten of you dislike the 18th century and all its literary +works. As for the Women students, they one and all abominate it. +You do not, I regret to say, provide me with reasons much more +philosophical than the epigrammatist's for disliking Doctor Fell. +May one whose time of life excuses perhaps a detachment from +passion attempt to provide you with one? If so, first listen to +this from Mr and Mrs Hammond's book "The Village Labourer," +1760-1832: + + A row of 18th century houses, or a room of normal 18th + century furniture, or a characteristic piece of 18th century + literature, conveys at once a sensation of satisfaction and + completeness. The secret of this charm is not to be found in + any special beauty or nobility of design or expression, but + simply in an exquisite fitness. The 18th century mind was a + unity, an order. All literature and art that really belong to + the 18th century are the language of a little society of men + and women who moved within one set of ideas; who understood + each other; who were not tormented by any anxious or + bewildering problems; who lived in comfort, and, above all + things, in composure. The classics were their freemasonry. + There was a standard for the mind, for the emotions, for + taste: there were no incongruities. + + When you have a society like this, you have what we + roughly call a civilisation, and it leaves its character and + canons in all its surroundings and in its literature. Its + definite ideas lend themselves readily to expression. A + larger society seems an anarchy in contrast: just because + of its escape into a greater world it seems powerless to + stamp itself in wood or stone; it is condemned as an age of + chaos and mutiny, with nothing to declare. + +You do wrong, I assure you, in misprising these men of the 18th +century. They reduced life, to be sure: but by that very means +they saw it far more _completely_ than do we, in this lyrical +age, with our worship of 'fine excess.' Here at any rate, and to +speak only of its literature, you have a society fencing that +literature around--I do not say by forethought or even +consciously--but in effect fencing its literature around, to keep +it in control and capable of an orderly, a nice, even an +exquisite cultivation. Dislike it as you may, I do not think that +any of you, as he increases his knowledge of the technique of +English Prose, yes, and of English Verse (I do not say of English +Poetry) will deny his admiration to the men of the 18th century. +The strength of good prose resides not so much in the swing and +balance of the single sentence as in the marshalling of argument, +the orderly procession of paragraphs, the disposition of parts so +that each finds its telling, its proper, place; the adjustment of +the means to the end; the strategy which brings its full force +into action at the calculated moment and drives the conclusion +home upon an accumulated sense of _justice._ I do not see how any +student of 18th century literature can deny its writers--Berkeley +or Hume or Gibbon--Congreve or Sheridan--Pope or Cowper--Addison +or Steele or Johnson--Burke or Chatham or Thomas Paine--their +meed for this, or, if he be an artist, even his homage. + +But it remains true, as your instinct tells you, and as I have +admitted, that they achieved all this by help of narrow and +artificial boundaries. Of several fatal exclusions let me name +but two. + +In the first place, they excluded the Poor; imitating in a late +age the Athenian tradition of a small polite society resting on a +large and degraded one. Throughout the 18th century--and the +great Whig families were at least as much to blame for this as +the Tories--by enclosure of commons, by grants, by handling of +the franchise, by taxation, by poor laws in result punitive +though intended to be palliative, the English peasantry underwent +a steady process of degradation into serfdom: into a serfdom +which, during the first twenty years of the next century, hung +constantly and precariously on the edge of actual starvation. The +whole theory of culture worked upon a principle of double +restriction; of restricting on the one hand the realm of polite +knowledge to propositions suitable for a scholar and a gentleman, +and, on the other, the numbers of the human family permitted to +be either. The theory deprecated enthusiasm, as it discountenanced +all ambition in a poor child to rise above what Sir Spencer Walpole +called 'his inevitable and hereditary lot'--to soften which and +make him acquiescent in it was, with a Wilberforce or a Hannah +More, the last dream of restless benevolence. + +VI + +Also these 18th century men fenced off the whole of our own +Middle English and medieval literature--fenced off Chaucer and +Dunbar, Malory and Berners--as barbarous and 'Gothic.' They +treated these writers with little more consideration than Boileau +had thought it worth while to bestow on Villon or on Ronsard-- +_enfin Malherbe_! As for Anglo-Saxon literature, one may, safely +say that, save by Gray and a very few others, its existence was +barely surmised. + +You may or may not find it harder to forgive them that they ruled +out moreover a great part of the literature of the preceding +century as offensive to urbane taste, or as they would say, +'disgusting.' They disliked it mainly, one suspects, as one age +revolts from the fashion of another--as some of you, for example, +revolt from the broad plenty of Dickens (Heaven forgive you) or +the ornament of Tennyson. Some of the great writers of that age +definitely excluded God from their scheme of things: others +included God fiercely, but with circumscription and limitation. I +think it fair to say of them generally that they hated alike the +mystical and the mysterious, and, hating these, could have little +commerce with such poetry as Crashaw's and Vaughan's or such +speculation as gave ardour to the prose of the Cambridge +Platonists. Johnson's famous attack, in his "Life of Cowley," +upon the metaphysical followers of Donne ostensibly assails their +literary conceits, but truly and at bottom rests its quarrel +against an attitude of mind, in respect of which he lived far +enough removed to be unsympathetic yet near enough to take +denunciation for a duty. Johnson, to put it vulgarly, had as +little use for Vaughan's notion of poetry as he would have had +for Shelley's claim that it + + feeds on the aëreal kisses + Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses, + +and we have only to set ourselves back in Shelley's age and read +(say) the verse of Frere and Canning in "The Anti-Jacobin," to +understand how frantic a lyrist--let be how frantic a political +figure--Shelley must have appeared to well-regulated minds. + +VII + +All this literature which our forefathers excluded has come back +upon us: and concurrently we have to deal with the more serious +difficulty (let us give thanks for it) of a multitude of millions +insurgent to handsel their long-deferred heritage. I shall waste +no time in arguing that we ought not to wish to withhold it, +because we cannot if we would. And thus the problem becomes a +double one, of _distribution_ as well as of _selection._ + +Now in the first place I submit that this _distribution_ should +be free: which implies that our _selection_ must be confined to +books and methods of teaching. There must be no picking and +choosing among the recipients, no appropriation of certain forms +of culture to certain 'stations of life' with a tendency, +conscious or unconscious, to keep those stations as stationary as +possible. + +Merely by clearing our purpose to this extent we shall have made +no inconsiderable advance. For even the last century never quite +got rid of its predecessor's fixed idea that certain degrees of +culture were appropriate to certain stations of life. With what +gentle persistence it prevails, for example, in Jane Austen's +novels; with what complacent rhetoric in Tennyson (and in spite +of Lady Clara Vere de Vere)! Let me remind you that by allowing +an idea to take hold of our animosity we may be as truly +`possessed' by it as though it claimed our allegiance. The notion +that culture may be drilled to march in step with a trade or +calling endured through the Victorian age of competition and +possessed the mind not only of Samuel Smiles who taught by +instances how a bright and industrious boy might earn money and +lift himself out of his 'station,' but of Ruskin himself, who in +the first half of "Sesame and Lilies," in the lecture "Of Kings' +Treasuries," discussing the choice of books, starts vehemently +and proceeds at length to denounce the prevalent passion for +self-advancement--of rising above one's station in life--quite as +if it were the most important thing, willy-nilly, in talking of +the choice of books. Which means that, to Ruskin, just then, it +was the most formidable obstacle. Can we, at this time of day, do +better by simply turning the notion out of doors? Yes, I believe +that we can: and upon this _credo_: + +_I believe that while it may grow--and grow infinitely--with +increase of learning, the grace of a liberal education, like the +grace of Christianity, is so catholic a thing--so absolutely +above being trafficked, retailed, apportioned, among `stations in +life'--that the humblest child may claim it by indefeasible +right, having a soul._ + +_Further, I believe that Humanism is, or should he, no decorative +appanage, purchased late in the process of education, within the +means of a few: but a quality, rather, which should, and can, +condition all teaching, from a child's first lesson in Reading: +that its unmistakable hall-mark can be impressed upon the +earliest task set in an Elementary School._ + +VIII + +I am not preaching red Radicalism in this: I am not telling you +that Jack is as good as his master: if he were, he would be a +great deal better; for he would understand Homer (say) as well as +his master, the child of parents who could afford to have him +taught Greek. As Greek is commonly taught, I regret to say, +whether they have learnt it or not makes a distressingly small +difference to most boys' appreciation of Homer. Still it does +make a vast difference to some, and should make a vast difference +to all. And yet, if you will read the passage in Kinglake's +"Eöthen" in which he tells--in words that find their echo in many +a reader's memory--of his boyish passion for Homer--and if you +will note that the boy imbibed his passion, after all, through +the conduit of Pope's translation--you will acknowledge that, for +the human boy, admission to much of the glory of Homer's realm +does not depend upon such mastery as a boy of fifteen or sixteen +possesses over the original. But let me quote you a few +sentences: + + I, too, loved Homer, but not with a scholar's love. The most + humble and pious among women was yet so proud a mother that she + could teach her first-born son no Watts's hymns, no collects + for the day; she could teach him in earliest childhood no less + than this--to find a home in his saddle, and to love old Homer, + and all that old Homer sung. True it is, that the Greek was + ingeniously rendered into English, the English of Pope even, + but not even a mesh like that can screen an earnest child from + the fire of Homer's battles. + + I pored over the "Odyssey" as over a story-book, hoping and + fearing for the hero whom yet I partly scorned. But the + "Iliad"--line by line I clasped it to my brain with reverence + as well as with love.... + + The impatient child is not grubbing for beauties, but + pushing the siege; the women vex him with their delays, + and their talking ... but all the while that he thus chafes at + the pausing of the action, the strong vertical light of + Homer's poetry is blazing so full upon the people and + things of the "Iliad," that soon to the eyes of the child they + grow familiar as his mother's shawl.... + + It was not the recollection of school nor college learning, + but the rapturous and earnest reading of my childhood, + which made me bend forward so longingly to the plains of Troy. + +IX + +It is among the books then, and not among the readers, that we +must do our selecting. But how? On what principle or principles? + +Sometime in the days of my youth, a newspaper, "The Pall Mall +Gazette," then conducted by W. T. Stead, made a conscientious +effort to solve the riddle by inviting a number of eminent men to +compile lists of the Hundred Best Books. Now this invitation +rested on a fallacy. Considering for a moment how personal a +thing is Literature, you will promptly assure yourselves that +there is--there can be--no such thing as the Hundred Best Books. +If you yet incline to toy with the notion, carry it on and +compile a list of the Hundred Second-best Books: nay, if you +will, continue until you find yourself solemnly, with a brow +corrugated by responsibility, weighing the claims (say) of +Velleius Paterculus, Paul and Virginia and Mr Jorrocks to +admission among the Hundred Tenth-best Books. There is, in fact +no positive hierarchy among the classics. You cannot appraise the +worth of Charles Lamb against the worth of Casaubon: the worth of +Hesiod against the worth of Madame de Sévigné: the worth of +Théophile Gautier against the worth of Dante or Thomas Hobbes or +Macchiavelli or Jane Austen. They all wrote with pens, in ink, +upon paper: but you no sooner pass beyond these resemblances than +your comparison finds itself working in impari materia. + +Also why should the Best Books be 100 in number, rather than 99 +or 199? And under what conditions is a book a Best Book? There +are moods in which we not only prefer Pickwick to the Rig-Vedas +or Sakuntalà, but find that it does us more good. In our day +again I pay all respect to Messrs Dent's "Everyman's Library." It +was a large conception vigorously planned. But, in the nature of +things, Everyman is going to arrive at a point beyond which he +will find it more and more difficult to recognise himself: at a +point, let us say, when Everyman, opening a new parcel, starts to +doubt if, after all, it wouldn't be money in his pocket to be +Somebody Else. + +X + +And yet, may be, "The Pall Mall Gazette" was on the right scent. +For it was in search of masterpieces: and, however we teach, our +trust will in the end repose upon masterpieces, upon the great +classics of whatever Language or Literature we are handling: and +these, in any language are neither enormous in number and mass, +nor extraordinarily difficult to detect, nor (best of all) +forbidding to the reader by reason of their own difficulty. Upon +a selected few of these--even upon three, or two, or one--we may +teach at least a surmise of the true delight, and may be some +measure of taste whereby our pupil will, by an inner guide, be +warned to choose the better and reject the worse when we turn him +loose to read for himself. + +To this use of masterpieces I shall devote my final lecture. + + + +[Footnote 1: Charles Reade notes this in "The Cloister and the +Hearth," chap. LXI.] + +[Footnote 2: The loose and tautologous style of this Preface is +worth noting. Likely enough Browne wrote it in a passion that +deprived him of his habitual self-command. One phrase alone +reveals the true Browne--that is, Browne true to himself: 'and +time that brings other things to light, should have satisfied me +in the remedy of its oblivion.'] + + + + +LECTURE XII + +ON THE USE OF MASTERPIECES + +WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1918 + + +I + +I do not think, Gentlemen, that we need to bother ourselves today +with any definition of a 'classic,' or of the _stigmata_ by which +a true classic can be recognised. Sainte-Beuve once indicated +these in a famous discourse, "Qu'est-ce qu'un classique": and it +may suffice us that these include Universality and Permanence. +Your true classic is _universal,_ in that it appeals to the +catholic mind of man. It is doubly _permanent_: for it remains +significant, or acquires a new significance, after the age for +which it was written and the conditions under which it was +written, have passed away; and it yet keeps, undefaced by +handling, the original noble imprint of the mind that first +minted it--or shall we say that, as generation after generation +rings the coin, it ever returns the echo of its father-spirit? + +But for our purpose it suffices that in our literature we possess +a number of works to which the title of classic cannot be +refused. So let us confine ourselves to these, and to the +question, How to use them? + +II + +Well, to begin with, I revert to a point which I tried to +establish in my first lecture; and insist with all my strength +that the first obligation we owe to any classic, and to those +whom we teach, and to ourselves, is to treat it _absolutely_: not +for any secondary or derivative purpose, or purpose recommended +as useful by any manual: but at first solely to interpret the +meaning which its author intended: that in short we should +_trust_ any given masterpiece for its operation, on ourselves and +on others. In that first lecture I quoted to you this most wise +sentence: + + That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is + mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact, + +and consenting to this with all my heart I say that it matters +very little for the moment, or even for a considerable while, +that a pupil does not perfectly, or even nearly, understand all +he reads, provided we can get the attraction to seize upon him. +He and the author between them will do the rest: our function is +to communicate and trust. In what other way do children take the +ineffaceable stamp of a gentle nurture than by daily attraction +to whatsoever is beautiful and amiable and dignified in their +home? As there, so in their reading, the process must be gradual +of acquiring an inbred monitor to reject the evil and choose the +good. For it is the property of masterpieces that they not only +raise you to + + despise low joys, low Gains; + Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains: + +they are not only as Lamb wrote of the Plays of Shakespeare +'enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing +from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet +and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach you courtesy, +benignity, generosity, humanity'; but they raise your gorge to +defend you from swallowing the fifth-rate, the sham, the +fraudulent. _Abeunt studia in mores._ I cannot, for my part, +conceive a man who has once incorporated the "Phaedo" or the +"Paradiso" or "Lear" in himself as lending himself for a moment +to one or other of the follies plastered in these late stern +times upon the firm and most solid purpose of this nation--the +inanities, let us say, of a Baby-Week. Or, for a more damnable +instance, I think of you and me with Marvell's great Horatian Ode +sunk in our minds, standing to-day by the statue of Charles I +that looks down Whitehall: telling ourselves of 'that memorable +scene' before the Banqueting House, remembering amid old woes all +the glory of our blood and state, recollecting what is due even +to ourselves, standing on the greatest site of our capital, and +turning to see it degraded, as it has been for a week, to a +vulgar raree-show. Gentlemen, I could read you many poor +ill-written letters from mothers whose sons have died for England, +to prove to you we have not deserved _that,_ or the sort of placard +with which London has been plastered, + + Dum domus Æneae Capitoli immobile saxum + Accolet. + +Great enterprises (as we know) and little minds go ill together. +Someone veiled the statue. That, at least, was well done. + +I have not the information--nor do I want it--to make even a +guess who was responsible for this particular outrage. I know the +sort of man well enough to venture that he never had a liberal +education, and, further, that he is probably rather proud of +it. But he may nevertheless own some instinct of primitive +kindliness: and I wish he could know how he afflicts men of +sensitiveness who have sons at the War. + +III + +Secondly, let us consider what use we can make of even one +selected classic. I refer you back to the work of an old +schoolmaster, quoted in my first lecture: + + I believe, if the truth were known, men would be astonished at + the small amount of learning with which a high degree of + culture is compatible. In a moment of enthusiasm I ventured + once to tell my 'English set' that if they could really master + the ninth book of "Paradise Lost," so as to rise to the height + of its great argument and incorporate all its beauties in + themselves, they would at one blow, by virtue of that alone, + become highly cultivated men.... More and more various learning + might raise them to the same height by different paths, but + could hardly raise them higher. + +I beg your attention for the exact words: 'to rise to the height +of its great argument and _incorporate all its beauties in +themselves._' There you have it--'to incorporate.' Do you +remember that saying of Wordsworth's, casually dropped in +conversation, but preserved for us by Hazlitt?--'It is in the +highest degree unphilosophic to call language or diction the +dress of our thoughts.... It is the _incarnation_ of our +thoughts.' Even so, I maintain to you, the first business of a +learner in literature is to get complete hold of some undeniable +masterpiece and incorporate it, incarnate it. And, I repeat, +there are a few great works for you to choose from: works +approved for you by ancient and catholic judgment. + +IV + +But let us take something far simpler than the Ninth Book of +"Paradise Lost" and more direct than any translated masterpiece +can be in its appeal; something of high genius, written in our +mother tongue. Let us take "The Tempest." + +Of "The Tempest" we may say confidently: + +(1) that it is a literary masterpiece: the last most perfect +'fruit of the noblest tree in our English Forest'; + +(2) that its story is quite simple; intelligible to a child: (its +basis in fact is fairy-tale, pure and simple--as I tried to show +in a previous lecture); + +(3) that in reading it--or in reading "Hamlet," for that matter-- +the child has no sense at all of being patronised, of being +'written down to.' And this has the strongest bearing on my +argument. The great authors, as Emerson says, never condescend. +Shakespeare himself speaks to a slip of a boy, and that boy feels +that he _is_ Ferdinand; + +(4) that, though Shakespeare uses his loftiest, most accomplished +and, in a sense, his most difficult language: a way of talking it +has cost him a life-time to acquire, in line upon line inviting +the scholar's, prosodist's, poet's most careful study; that +language is no bar to the child's enjoyment: but rather casts +about the whole play an aura of magnificence which, with the +assistant harmonies, doubles and redoubles the spell. A child no +more resents this because it is strange than he objects to read +in a fairytale of robbers concealed in oil-jars or of diamonds +big as a roc's egg. When will our educators see that what a child +depends on is imagination, that what he demands of life is the +wonderful, the glittering, possibility? + +Now if, putting all this together and taking confidence from it, +we boldly launch a child upon "The Tempest" we shall come sooner +or later upon passages that _we_ have arrived at finding +difficult. We shall come, for example, to the Masque of Iris, +which Iris, invoking Ceres, thus opens: + + Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas + Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and pease; + Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, + And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep: + Thy banks with pionèd and twillèd brims, + Which spongy April at thy hest betrims-- + To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves, + Whose shadow the dismisséd bachelor loves, + Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard; + And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky hard, + Where thou thyself dost air--the Queen o' th' sky, + Whose watry arch and messenger am I, + Bids thee leave these.... + +The passage is undeniably hard for any child, even when you have +paused to explain who Ceres is, who Iris, who the Queen o' the +sky, and what Iris means by calling herself 'her watery arch and +messenger.' The grammatical structure not only stands on its head +but maintains that posture for an extravagant while. Naturally +(or rather let us say, ordinarily) it would run, 'Ceres, the +Queen o' the sky bids thee leave--thy rich leas, etc.' But, the +lines being twelve-and-a-half in number, we get no hint of there +being any grammatical subject until it bursts on us in the second +half of line eleven, while the two main verbs and the object of +one of them yet linger to be exploded in the last half-line, +'Bids thee leave these.' And this again is as nothing to the +difficulties of interpretation. 'Dismisséd bachelor' may be easy; +'pole-clipt vineyard' is certainly not, at first sight. 'To make +cold nymphs chaste crowns.' What cold nymphs? You have to wait +for another fifty odd lines before being quite sure that +Shakespeare means Naiads (and 'What are Naiads?' says the child) +--'temperate nymphs': + + You nymphs, called Naiads, of the windring brooks, + With your sedged crowns... + +--and if the child demand what is meant by 'pionèd and twillèd +brims,' you have to answer him that nobody knows. + +These difficulties--perhaps for you, certainly for the young +reader or listener--are reserved delights. My old schoolmaster +even indulges this suspicion--'I never can persuade myself that +Shakespeare would have passed high in a Civil Service Examination +on one of his own plays.' At any rate you don't _begin_ with +these difficulties: you don't (or I hope you don't) read the +notes first: since, as Bacon puts it, 'Studies teach not their +own use.' + +As for the child, he is not '_grubbing_ for beauties'; he +magnificently ignores what he cannot for the moment understand, +being intent on _What Is,_ the heart and secret of the adventure. +He _is_ Ferdinand (I repeat) and the isle is 'full of voices.' If +these voices were all intelligible, why then, as Browning would +say, 'the less Island it.' + +V + +I have purposely exhibited "The Tempest" at its least tractable. +Who will deny that _as a whole_ it can be made intelligible even +to very young children by the simple process of reading it with +them intelligently? or that the mysteries such a reading leaves +unexplained are of the sort to fascinate a child's mind and +allure it? But if this be granted, I have established my +contention that the Humanities should not be treated as a mere +crown and ornament of education; that they should inform every +part of it, from the beginning, in every school of the realm: +that whether a child have more education or less education, what +he has can be, and should be, a 'liberal education' throughout. + +Matthew Arnold, as every one knows, used to preach the use of +these masterpieces as prophylactics of taste. I would I could +make you feel that they are even more necessary to us. + +The reason why?--The reason is that every child born in these +Islands is born into a democracy which, apart from home affairs, +stands committed to a high responsibility for the future welfare +and good governance of Europe. For three centuries or so it has +held rule over vast stretches of the earth's surface and many +millions of strange peoples: while its obligations towards the +general civilisation of Europe, if not intermittent, have been +tightened or relaxed, now here, now there, by policy, by +commerce, by dynastic alliances, by sudden revulsions or +sympathies. But this War will leave us bound to Europe as we +never have been: and, whether we like it or not, no less +inextricably bound to foe than to friend. Therefore, I say, it +has become important, and in a far higher degree than it ever was +before the War, that our countrymen grow up with a sense of what +I may call the _soul_ of Europe. And nowhere but in literature +(which is `memorable speech')--or at any rate, nowhere so well as +in literature--can they find this sense. + +VI + +There was, as we have seen, a time in Europe, extending over many +centuries, when mankind dwelt under the preoccupation of making +literature, and still making more of it. The 5th century B.C. in +Athens was such a time; and if you will you may envy, as we all +admire, the men of an age when to write at all was tantamount to +asserting genius; the men who, in Newman's words, `deserve to be +Classics, both because of what they do and because they can do +it.' If you envy--while you envy--at least remember that these +things often paid their price; that the "Phaedo," for example, +was bought for us by the death of Socrates. Pass Athens and come +to Alexandria: still men are accumulating books and the material +for books; threshing out the Classics into commentaries and +grammars, garnering books in great libraries. + +There follows an age which interrupts this hive-like labour with +sudden and insensate destruction. German tribes from the north, +Turkish from the east, break in upon the granaries and send up +literature in flames; the Christian Fathers from Tertullian to +Gregory the Great (I regret to say) either heartily assisting or +at least warming their benedictory hands at the blaze: and so +thoroughly they do their work that even the writings of +Aristotle, the Philosopher, must wait for centuries as 'things +silently gone out of mind or things violently destroyed' (to +borrow Wordsworth's fine phrase) and creep back into Europe bit +by bit, under cover of Arabic translations. + +The scholars set to work and begin rebuilding: patient, +indefatigable, anonymous as the coral insects at work on a +Pacific atoll-building, building, until on the near side of the +gulf we call the Dark Age, islets of scholarship lift themselves +above the waters: mere specks at first, but ridges appear and +connect them: and, to first seeming, sterile enough: + + Nec Cereri opportuna seges, nec commoda Baccho-- + +but as they join and become a _terra firma,_ a thin soil gathers +on them God knows whence: and, God knows whence, the seed is +brought, 'it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain.' There +is a price, again, for this resurrection: but how nobly, how +blithely paid you may learn, without seeking recondite examples, +from Cuthbert's famous letter describing the death of Bede. +Compare that story with that of the last conversation of +Socrates; and you will surely recognise that the two men are +brothers born out of time; that Bede's work has been a legacy; +that his life has been given to recreating--not scholarship +merely nor literature merely--but, through them both, something +above them both--the soul of Europe. And this may or may not lead +you on to reflect that beyond our present passions, and beyond +this War, in a common sanity Europe (and America with her) will +have to discover that common soul again. + +But eminent spirits such as Bede's are, by their very eminence, +less representative of the process--essentially fugitive and +self-abnegatory--than the thousands of copyists who have left no +name behind them. Let me read you a short paragraph from "The +Cambridge History of English Literature," Chapter 11, written, +the other day, by one of our own teachers: + + The cloister was the centre of life in the monastery, and in + the cloister was the workshop of the patient scribe. It is hard + to realise that the fair and seemly handwriting of these + manuscripts was executed by fingers which, on winter days, + when the wind howled through the cloisters, must have been + numbed by icy cold. It is true that, occasionally, little + carrels or studies in the recesses of the windows were screened + off from the main walk of the cloister, and, sometimes, a small + room or cell would be partitioned off for the use of a single + scribe. The room would then be called the Scriptorium, but it + is unlikely that any save the oldest and most learned of the + community were afforded this luxury. In these scriptoria of + various kinds the earliest annals and chronicles in the + English language were penned, in the beautiful and painstaking + forms in which we know them. + +If you seek testimony, here are the _ipsissima verba_ of a poor +monk of Wessobrunn endorsed upon his MS: + + The book which you now see was written in the outer seats + of the cloister. While I wrote I froze: and what I could not + write by the beams of day I finished by candlelight. + +We might profitably spend--but to-day cannot spare--a while upon +the pains these men of the Middle Ages took to accumulate books +and to keep them. The chained volumes in old libraries, for +example, might give us a text for this as well as start us +speculating why it is that, to this day, the human conscience +incurably declines to include books with other portable property +covered by the Eighth Commandment. Or we might follow several of +the early scholars and humanists in their passionate chasings +across Europe, in and out of obscure monasteries, to recover the +lost MSS of the classics: might tell, for instance, of Pope +Nicholas V, whose birth-name was Tommaso Parentucelli, and how he +rescued the MSS from Constantinople and founded the Vatican +Library: or of Aurispa of Sicily who collected two hundred and +thirty-eight for Florence: or the story of the _editio princeps_ +of the Greek text of Homer. Or we might dwell on the awaking of +our literature, and the trend given to it, by men of the Italian +and French renaissance; or on the residence of Erasmus here, in +this University, with its results. + +VII + +But I have said enough to make it clear that, as we owe so much +of our best to understanding Europe, so the need to understand +Europe lies urgently to-day upon large classes in this country; +and that yet, in the nature of things, these classes can never +enjoy such leisure as our forefathers enjoyed to understand what +I call the soul of Europe, or at least to misunderstand it _upon +acquaintance._ + +Let me point out further that within the last few months we have +doubled the difficulty at a stroke by sharing the government of +our country with women and admitting them to Parliament. It +beseems a great nation to take great risks: to dare them is at +once a sign and a property of greatness: and for good or ill--but +for limitless good as we trust--our country has quietly made this +enterprise amid the preoccupations of the greatest War in its +annals. Look at it as you will--let other generations judge +it as they will--it stands a monument of our faith in free +self-government that in these most perilous days we gave and took +so high a guerdon of trust in one another. + +But clearly it implies that all the women of this country, down +to the small girls entering our elementary schools, must be +taught a great many things their mothers and grandmothers--happy +in their generation--were content not to know[1]. + +It cannot be denied, I think, that in the long course of this +War, now happily on the point of a victorious conclusion, we have +suffered heavily through past neglect and present nescience of +our literature, which is so much more European, so much more +catholic, a thing than either our politics or our national +religion: that largely by reason of this neglect and this +nescience our statesmen have again and again failed to foresee +how continental nations would act through failing to understand +their minds; and have almost invariably, through this lack of +sympathetic understanding, failed to interpret us to foreign +friend or foe, even when (and it was not often) they interpreted +us to ourselves. I note that America--a country with no +comparable separate tradition of literature--has customarily +chosen men distinguished by the grace of letters for ambassadors +to the Court of St James--Motley, Lowell, Hay, Page, in our time: +and has for her President a man of letters--and a Professor at +that!--whereas, even in these critical days, Great Britain, +having a most noble cause and at least half-a-hundred writers and +speakers capable of presenting it with dignity and so clearly +that no neutral nation could mistake its logic, has by preference +entrusted it to stunt journalists and film-artistes. If in these +later days you have lacked a voice to interpret you in the great +accent of a Chatham, the cause lies in past indifference to that +literary tradition which is by no means the least among the +glories of our birth and state. + +VIII + +Masterpieces, then, will serve us as prophylactics of taste, even +from childhood; and will help us, further, to interpret the +common mind of civilisation. But they have a third and yet nobler +use. They teach us to lift our own souls. + +For witness to this and to the way of it I am going to call an +old writer for whom, be it whim or not, I have an almost 18th +century reverence--Longinus. No one exactly knows who he was; +although it is usual to identify him with that Longinus who +philosophised in the court of the Queen Zenobia and was by her, +in her downfall, handed over with her other counsellors to be +executed by Aurelian: though again, as is usual, certain bold bad +men affirm that, whether he was this Longinus or not, the +treatise of which I speak was not written by any Longinus at all +but by someone with a different name, with which they are +unacquainted. Be this as it may, somebody wrote the treatise and +its first editor, Francis Robertello of Basle, in 1554 called him +Dionysius Longinus; and so shall I, and have done with it, +careless that other MSS than that used by Robertello speak of +Dionysius or Longinus. Dionysius Longinus, then, in the 3rd +century A.D.--some say in the 1st: it is no great matter--wrote a +little book [Greek: PERI UPSOUS] commonly cited as "Longinus on +the Sublime." The title is handy, but quite misleading, unless +you remember that by 'Sublimity' Longinus meant, as he expressly +defines it, 'a certain distinction and excellence in speech.' The +book, thus recovered, had great authority with critics of the +17th and 18th centuries. For the last hundred years it has quite +undeservedly gone out of vogue. + +It is (I admit) a puzzling book, though quite clear in argument +and language: pellucidly clear, but here and there strangely +modern, even hauntingly modern, if the phrase may be allowed. You +find yourself rubbing your eyes over a passage more like Matthew +Arnold than something of the 3rd century: or you come without +warning on a few lines of 'comparative criticism,' as we call it +--an illustration from Genesis--'God said, Let there be Light, +and there was Light' used for a specimen of the exalted way of +saying things. Generally, you have a sense that this author's +lineage is mysterious after the fashion of Melchisedek's. + +Well, to our point--Longinus finds that the conditions of lofty +utterance are five: of which the first is by far the most +important. And this foremost condition is innate: you either have +it or you have not. Here it is: + + 'Elsewhere,' says Longinus, 'I have written as follows: + _"Sublimity is the echo of a great soul."_ Hence even a bare + idea sometimes, by itself and without a spoken word will + excite admiration, just because of the greatness of soul + implied. Thus the silence of Ajax in the underworld is great + and more sublime than words.' + +You remember the passage, how Odysseus meets that great spirit +among the shades and would placate it, would 'make up' their +quarrel on earth now, with carneying words: + + 'Ajax, son of noble Telamon, wilt thou not then, even in + death forget thine anger against me over that cursed + armour.... Nay, there is none other to blame but Zeus: he + laid thy doom on thee. Nay, come hither, O my lord, and + hear me and master thine indignation: + + So I spake, but he answered me not a word, but strode from + me into the Darkness, following the others of the dead that + be departed. + +Longinus goes on: + + It is by all means necessary to point this out--that the truly + eloquent must be free from base and ignoble (or ill-bred) + thoughts. For it is not possible that men who live their lives + with mean and servile aims and ideas should produce what is + admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we expect to + fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are dignified. + +Believe this and it surely follows, as concave implies convex, +that by daily converse and association with these great ones we +take their breeding, their manners, earn their magnanimity, make +ours their gifts of courtesy, unselfishness, mansuetude, high +seated pride, scorn of pettiness, wholesome plentiful jovial +laughter. + + He that of such a height hath built his mind, + And rear'd the dwelling of his soul so strong + As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame + Of his resolvèd powers, nor all the wind + Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong + His settled peace, or to disturb the same; + What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may + The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey! + + And with how free an eye doth he look down + Upon these lower regions of turmoil! + Where all the storms of passions mainly beat + On flesh and blood; where honour, power, renown, + Are only gay afflictions, golden toil; + Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet + As frailty doth; and only great doth seem + To little minds, who do it so esteem.... + + Knowing the heart of man is set to be + The centre of this world, about the which + These revolutions of disturbances + Still roll; where all th' aspects of misery + Predominate; whose strong effects are such + As he must bear, being powerless to redress; + And that, unless above himself he can + Erect himself, how poor a thing is man![2] + +IX + +If the exhortation of these verses be somewhat too high and +stoical for you, let me return to Longinus and read you, from his +concluding chapter, a passage you may find not inapposite to +these times, nor without a moral: + + 'It remains' [he says] 'to clear up, my dear Terentianus, a + question which a certain philosopher has recently mooted. I + wonder,' he says, 'as no doubt do many others, how it happens + that in our time there are men who have the gift of persuasion + to the utmost extent, and are well fitted for public life, and + are keen and ready, and particularly rich in all the charms of + language, yet there no longer arise really lofty and + transcendent natures unless it be quite peradventure. So great + and world-wide a dearth of high utterance attends our age. + Can it be,' he continued, 'we are to accept the common cant + that democracy is the nursing mother of genius, and that great + men of letters flourish and die with it? For freedom, they say, + has the power to cherish and encourage magnanimous minds, and + with it is disseminated eager mutual rivalry and the emulous + thirst to excel. Moreover, by the prizes open under a popular + government, the mental faculties of orators are perpetually + practised and whetted, and as it were, rubbed bright, so that + they shine free as the state itself. Whereas to-day,' he went + on, 'we seem to have learnt as an infant-lesson that servitude + is the law of life; being all wrapped, while our thoughts are + yet young and tender, in observances and customs as in + swaddling clothes, bound without access to that fairest and + most fertile source of man's speech (I mean Freedom) so that we + are turned out in no other guise than that of servile + flatterers. And servitude (it has been well said) though + it be even righteous, is the cage of the soul and a public + prison-house.' + + But I answered him thus.--'It is easy, my good sir, and + characteristic of human nature, to gird at the age in which + one lives. Yet consider whether it may not be true that it is + less the world's peace that ruins noble nature than this war + illimitable which holds our aspirations in its fist, and + occupies our age with passions as with troops that utterly + plunder and harry it. The love of money and the love of + pleasure enslave us, or rather, as one may say, drown us + body and soul in their depths. For vast and unchecked + wealth marches with lust of pleasure for comrade, and when + one opens the gate of house or city, the other at once enters + and abides. And in time these two build nests in the hearts + of men, and quickly rear a progeny only too legitimate: and + the ruin within the man is gradually consummated as the + sublimities of his soul wither away and fade, and in ecstatic + contemplation of our mortal parts we omit to exalt, and + come to neglect in nonchalance, that within us which is + immortal.' + +I had a friend once who, being in doubt with what picture to +decorate the chimney-piece in his library, cast away choice and +wrote up two Greek words--[Greek: PSYCHES 'IATREION]; that is, +the hospital--the healing-place--of the soul. + + + +[Footnote 1: 'Well! ... my education is at last finished: indeed +it would be strange, if, after five years' hard application, +anything were left incomplete. Happily that is all over now; and +I have nothing to do, but to exercise my various accomplishments. + +'Let me see!--as to French, I am mistress of that, and speak it, +if possible, with more fluency than English. Italian I can read +with ease, and pronounce very well: as well at least, and better, +than any of my friends; and that is all one need wish for in +Italian. Music I have learned till I am perfectly sick of it. But +... it will be delightful to play when we have company. I must +still continue to practise a little;--the only thing, I think, +that I need now to improve myself in. And then there are my +Italian songs! which everybody allows I sing with taste, and as +it is what so few people can pretend to, I am particularly glad +that I can. + +'My drawings are universally admired; especially the shells and +flowers; which are beautiful, certainly; besides this, I have a +decided taste in all kinds of fancy ornaments. + +'And then my dancing and waltzing! in which our master himself +owned that he could take me no further! just the figure for it +certainly; it would be unpardonable if I did not excel. + +'As to common things, geography, and history, and poetry, and +philosophy, thank my stars, I have got through them all! so that +I may consider myself not only perfectly accomplished, but also +thoroughly well-informed. + +'Well, to be sure, how much have I fagged through--; the only +wonder is that one head can contain it all.' + +I found this in a little book "Thoughts of Divines and +Philosophers," selected by Basil Montagu. The quotation is +signed 'J. T.' I cannot trace it, but suspect Jane Taylor.] + +[Footnote 2: Samuel Daniel, "Epistle to the Lady Margaret, +Countess of Cumberland."] + + + + +INDEX + + +"Acts of the Apostles, The," 165 +Addison, Joseph, 146, 192 +"Adonais," Shelley's, 79 +Adrian VI, Pope, 77 +Aeschylus, 1, 121, 179, 183 +"Aesop and Rhodopè," Landor's 117 +"Agamemnon, The," 79 +"Aims of Literary Study, The," 6 +"Allegro,L'," 62, 63, 64 +Ameipsias, 21 +"Anatomy of Melancholy," Burton's, 155 +"Ancient Mariner, The," 59 +Andersen, Hans Christian, 46 +"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The," 154 +"Annual Register, The," 155 +"Anti-Jacobin, The," 194 +"Apologia," Newman's, 155 +"Arabian Nights," M. Galland's, 43 +"Arabian Nights, The," 139 +Arber, 99 +Aristophanes, 21, 147 +Aristotle, 1, 25, 48, 51, 52, 58, 59, 60, 121, 129, 148, 150, + 174, 207 +Arnold, Matthew, 38, 99, 104, 124, 153, 205, 213 +"Arraignment of Paris," Peele's, 80 +"As You Like It," 71 +Aulnoy, Madame D', 43 +Aurispa, 209 +Austen, Jane, 102, 194, 197 + +Bacon, Francis 21, 22, 23, 73, 94, 114, 126, 155, 205 +Bagehot, Walter, 36, 113 +Bailey, Philip James, 155 +Baker, Sir William, 170 +"Balder Dead" 163 +Ballad. The, 55 +Barboar, John, 155 +Bede, 207. 209 +Beethoven, 139 +"Beginnings of Poetry," Dr Gummere's, 55, 56, 58 +"Beowulf,". 99 +Berkeley, George, 191 +Berners, 193 +"Bible, The," 97, 126 et seq. +"Bible, The Geneva," 155 +"Blackwood's Magazine," 80 +Blair, Robert, 155 +Blake, William, 33, 155 +Boileau, 193 +Bologna, University of, 73 +"Book of Nonsense," Lear's, 111 +Boswell, James, 93, 155 +Bottomley, Horatio, 185 +Brady, Nicholas, 170 +Brooke, Stopford, 94 +Brown, Dr John, 56 +Browne, Sir Thomas, 145, 185, 189, 190 +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 72 +Browning, Robert, 5, 6, 7, 15, 152, 155, 205 +"Bruce, The," Barbour's, 155 +Bunyan, John, 97, 134, 135, 145, 152 +Burke, Edmund, 94, 104, 116, 155, 192 +Burns, Robert, 97, 132, 133 +Burton, Robert, 155 +Butcher, Professor, 129 +Byron, Lord, 5, 80, 168 + +"Cabinet des Fées, Le," 43 +"Cambridge Essays on Education," Inge's essay in, 112 +"Cambridge History of English Literature, The," 5, 152, 208 +Cambridge Platonists, The, 29, 193 +Cambridge, University of, 1, 2 et seq., 57, 76, 77, 87, 88, + 105, 121, 209 +Campbell, John, 155 +Canning, 193 +"Canterbury Tales, The," 71, 161 +"Canterbury Tales, The Prologue to the," 71, 94, 144, 161 +Canton, William, 38 +Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 38, 106 +Casaubon, 70, 197 +"Centuries of Meditations," Thomas Traherne's, 44 +Chatham, Earl of, 115, 116, 192, 211 +Chaucer, 4, 27, 65, 66, 71, 88, 94, 102, 164, 105, 124, 144, + 164, 193 +Chicago, University of, 154 +"Choephori," 175 +"Chronicles, Book of," 138 +Clarendon, Lord, 155 +Clark, William George, 94, 99 +"Cloister and the Hearth, The," Charles Reade's, 189 +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 65 +Collins, William, 124 +Colvin, Sir Sidney, 86 +"Complaint of Deor, The," 155 +Comte, Auguste, 51 +Congreve, William, 192 +"Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra," Landor's, 124, 125 +"Corinthians, St Paul's First Epistle to the," 81, 82 +Corson, Dr, 6, 66, 100 +Cory, William (Johnson), 123 +"Cotter's Saturday Night, The," Burns's, 132, 139 +Coverdale, Miles, 97,145, 158 +Cowper, William, 100, 115, 192 +Cranmer, Thomas, 97 +Crashaw, Richard, 193 +Cuthbert, 207 +"Cyrano de Bergerac," 111 + +Daniel, Samuel, 215 +Dante, 27, 79, 104, 153, 164. 197 +Darwin, Charles, 154 +Davenant, Sir William, 151 +"Death in the Desert, A," Browning's, 6, 7 +"Descent of Man," Darwin's, 154 +"Deserted Village, The," 155 +Dickens, Charles, 5, 193 +Dionysius, 212 +"Divina Commedia," 52 +"Doctor's Tale, The," 71 +"Dolores," Swinburne's, 155 +"Domesday Book," 155 +"Don Quixote," 105 +Donne, John, 82, 89, 105, 114, 155, 193 +"Dream of Boccaccio," Landor's, 82 +Dryden, John, 54 +Dublin, University of, 131 +Dunbar, William, 193 +"Dutch Republic," Motley's, 82 + +Earle, John, 44, 49 +"Ecclesiastes," 161 +"Ecclesiastical Polity," Richard Hooker's, 155 +"Ecclesiasticus" 144 +Education, 35 et seq. +Ehrenreich, Dr Paul, 55 +"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," Gray's, 61, 144, 164 +Eliot, George, 14 +Ellis, A. J., 99 +Elyot, Sir Thomas, 11 +Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 33, 203 +"Eöthen," Kinglake's, 196 +"Epipsychidion," Shelley's, 89 +"Epistle to the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland," + Samuel Daniel's, 214, 215 +Erasmus, 121, 209 +"Erster Schulgang," 39 +"Esmond," Thackeray's, 82, 83 +"Essay on Comedy," Meredith's, 110 +"Essay on Man," Pope's, 144 +"Essays," Bacon's, 94, 155 +"Esther," 161 +"Ethics," Aristotle's, 1 +Euclid, 93, 131 +Euripides, 19, 21, 123, 157 +"Everyman," 176 +"Everyman's Library," 198 +Ezekiel, 161 + +"Faerie Queene, The," 155 +"Fairchild Family, The," 40 +"Festus," Bailey's, 155 +"Fetch a pail of water," 53 +Fitzgerald, Edward, 118, 122, 155 +Fort, Paul, 174 +Fowler, F. G., 108 +Fowler, H. W., 108 +Franklin, Benjamin, 90 +Frere, J. H., 193 +"Friar's Tale, The," 71 +"Friendship's Garland," Matthew Arnold's, 38 +Froissart, 155 +Furnivall, 99 + +Galileo, 27 +Galland, M., 43 +"Gammer Grethel," 43 +Gautier, Théophile, 197 +"Genesis, Book of," 213 +"Geneva Bible, The," 155 +Gibbon, Edward, 20, 21, 121, 131, 146, 149, 192 +"Golden Treasury," Palgrave's, 155 +Goldsmith, Oliver, 102, 105 +"Gondibert," Sir William Davenant's, 151 +"Grammarian's Funeral, A," Browning's, 15 +Grave, Robert Blair's, 155 +Gray, Thomas, 61, 144, 164 +Gregory the Great, 207 +Grimm, the brothers, 43 +Grocyn, 121 +Grosart, Alexander Balloch, 99 +Gummere, Dr, 55, 56, 58 + +Hakluyt, Richard, 155 Hales, Dr, 99 +Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 3, 41 11, 23, 24 +"Hamlet," 71, 127, 144, 161, 163, 203 +Hammond, Mr, 190 +Hammond, Mrs, 190 +Hay, 211 +Hazlitt, William, 202 Hegel, 25, 26 +Heidelberg, University of, 76 +"Here Come Three Dukes a riding," 53 +"Here we go Gathering Nuts in May," 53 +Herodotus, 123 +Hesiod, 197 +Hobbes, Thomas, 197 +Holmes, Mr, 47, 50, 51, 52 +Homer, 83, 118, 146 147, 148, 149, 153, 164, 167, 195, 196 +Hooker, Richard, 155 +Hopkins, John, 170 +Horace, 1 +"Hound of Heaven, The," Thompson's, 155 +"Household Tales," the Grimms; 43 +Hugo, Victor, 164 +Hume, David, 192 +"Hymns Ancient and Modern," 170 + +"Idea of a University, The," Newman's, 114 +"Iliad, The," 99, 147, 148 +"Imitatione Christi, De," 138 +"In Memoriam," Tennyson's, 58 +Inge, Dean, 112 +"Intellectual Life, The," Hamerton's, 3, 4, 23, 24 +"Intimations of Immortality," Wordsworth's, 44 +"Invisible Playmate, The," William Canton's, 38 +"Irish R.M., The Adventures of an," Somerville's and Ross's, 135 +Irwin, Sidney, 121 +Isaiah, 138, 153, 156, 161 +"Isaiah, Book of," 138, 144, 153, 161 +"Isthmian Odes," Pindar's, 98 + +Jansen, 77, +Jenkinson, Mr, 184, 185 +Job, 166, 167, 168, 175 et seq. +"Job, Book of," 139, 144, 161 et seq. +"John Bull," Bottomley's, 185 +John, St, of Patmos, 7, 130, 151 +Johnson, Samuel, 61, 89, 93, 105, 131, 146, 192, 193 +Jonson, Ben, 102 +"Joshua, Book of," 47, 136, 137 +Joubert, 117 +Jowett, Benjamin, 186 +Jusserand, J. J., 104 + +Keats, John, 84, 85, 87 +Keble, John, 114 +"King Henry IV," Part I, 71 +"King John," 71 +"King Lear," 16, 71, 163, 201 +Kinglake, Alexander William, 196 +"Kings, Book of," 138, 139, 141 +"Kings' Treasuries, Of," Ruskin's, 195 +"Knight's Tale, The," 71 + +Lamb, Charles, 102, 106, 156, 197, 200 +Landor, Walter Savage, 82, 117, 124, 130 +Latymer, Lord (F. B. Money-Coutts), 154, 162, 167, 183 +Laus Veneris, Swinburne's, 155 +Lear, Edward, 111 +"Lectures on Poetry," Keble's, 114 +Leipsic, University of, 76 +"Letters on a Regicide Peace," Burke's, 155 +"Life of Cowley," Johnson's, 193 +"Life of Johnson," Boswell's, +Lincoln, Abraham, 124 +"Literary Study of the Bible," Moulton's, 162 +"Lives of the Lord Chancellors," John Campbell's, 155 +Longinus, 148, 149, 150, 151, 212 et seq. +"Longinus on the Sublime," 149, 150, 212 et seq. +Louvain, University of, 76 +Lowell, James Russell, 211 +Lucian, 108 +"Luke, Gospel of St," 161 +Lycidas, 164 + +Macaulay, Lord, 19, 155, 156 +"Macbeth," 71 +Macchiavelli, 197 +Maeterlinck, 174, 175 +Malherbe, 193 +Malory, Sir Thomas, 193 +"Man of Law's Tale, The," 71 +"Manfred," 155 +Map, Walter, 155, 156 +Martin, Violet, 136 +Marvell, Andrew, 201 +"Matthew, Gospel of St," 137 +"Memories, Irish," Somerville's and Ross's, 135 +"Merchant of Venice, The," 71 +Meredith, George, 5, 110 +"Microcosmography," John Earle's, 44 +Mill, John Stuart, 93, 155 +Milton, John, 27, 62, 65, 93, 94, 111, 127, 131, 145, 162, + 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 188 +Molière, 79 +Money-Coutts, F. B. (Lord Latymer), 154, 162, 167, 183 +Montagu, Basil, 211 +Moore, Sturge, 124 +More, Hannah, 192 +More, Sir Thomas, 114 +Morris, Richard, 99 +"Morte d'Arthur, Le," 155 +Motley, 82, 211 +Moulton, Dr R. G., 154, 158, 162, 177 +"Much Ado About Nothing," 71 +Myers, F. W. H., 165, 166 + +Newman, John Henry, 113, 114, 131, 155, 206 +Newton, Sir Isaac, 27, 114 +Nicholas V, Pope (Tommaso Parentucelli), 209 +North, Sir Thomas, 123 +"Notes and Queries," 101 +"Nun Priest's Tale, The," 71 + +"Ode to a Grecian Urn," Keats's, 85,86 +"Ode to a Nightingale," Keats's, 85, 86 +"Ode to Evening," Collins's, 124 +"Ode to Psyche," Keats's, 85 +"Odyssey, The," 42, 147, 148 +"Of Studies," Bacon's, 21, 22, 23 +Omar, 20 +"Omar Khayyàm," FitzGerald's, 155 +"On Liberty," John Stuart Mill's, 155 +"On the Art of Writing," 1 +"Ossian," 155 +"Othello," 52, 71, 89 +Oxford, University of, 9, 73, 75, 76, 77, 121 + +Page, 211 +Paine, Thomas, 192 +Paley, Frederick, 98, 123 +Palgrave, Francis Turner, 15 5 +"Pall Mall Gazette, The," 197, 198 +"Paradise Lost," 56, 58, 59, 62, 127, 144, 154, 161, 164, 166, + 167, 168, 169, 170, 182, 188, 202 +"Paradise Regained," 166, 170 +"Paradiso, The," 201 +"Pardoner's Tale, The," 71 +Parentucelli Tommaso (Pope Nicholas V), 209 +Paris, University of, 74, 75 +"Parlement of Fowls, The," 27, 71 +Pater, Walter, 99, 149 +Patmore, Coventry, 33 +Pattison, Mark, 70 +Paul, St, 32, 60, 81, 82, 147, 161, 165 +Peele, 80 +Pericles, 124 +Perrault, 43, 110 +"Pervigilium Veneris, The," 124 +"Phaedo, The," 147, 148, 201, 206 +"Phaedrus, The," 118, 186 +"Piers Ploughman," 155, 156 +"Pilgrim's Progress, The," 68 +Pindar, 57, 79, 98 +Plato, 8, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 36, 111, 118, 147, 150, 185 +Plutarch, 123 +"Poems and Ballads," Swinburne's, 155 +"Poet's Charter, The," Lord Latymer's (Money-Coutts), 162 +"Poetics," Aristotle's, 52, 58, 59, 129 +"Polonius," FitzGerald's, 122 +Pope, Alexander, 105, 131, 144, 164, 192, 196 +"Prince Charming," Perrault's, 111 +"Principia," Newton's, 114 +Prior, Matthew, 102 +"Prometheus Bound," Aeschylus's, 175, 179, 180, 183 +"Prometheus Unbound," Shelley's, 59, 155, 164, 167, 168, 169 +"Psalm of Life, The," 56 +"Psalm cvii," 158, 159, 160 +"Psalm cxiv," Milton's Paraphrase of, 169, +"Psalm cxxxvi," Milton's Paraphrase of, 169, 170 +"Psalms, The," 139, 144 142, 161 +Pythagoras, 27 +"Pythian Odes," Pindar's, 98 + +Quarles, Francis, 155 + +Rashdall, Hastings, 76 +Reade, Charles, 189 +"Reading without Tears," 38, 41 +"Reason of Church Government," Milton's, 167 +Reid, Captain Mayne, 138 +"Religio Medici," Sir Thomas Browne's, 189, 190 +"Republic," Plato's, 16, 26 +"Revelation of St John the Divine, The," 151 +"Revellers," Ameipsias's, 21 +Rhoades, James, 11, 110, 202, 205 +"Rifle Rangers, The," Mayne Reid's, 138 +Roberts, Prof. W. Rhys, 150 +Ronsard, 193 +Ruskin, John, 93, 138, 155, 195 +"Ruth," 139, 161 + +"Sally, Sally Waters," 53 +Sainte-Beuve, 99, 199 +"St Paul," Myers's, 165, 166 +"Samson Agonistes," 170 +"Sartor Resartus," Carlyle's, 38, 155 +"Scalp Hunters, The," Mayne Reid's, 138 +"School for Scandal, The," 89 +Scott, Sir Walter, 43, 131 +"Sermon on the Mount, The," 128 +"Sermon II preached at Pauls upon Christmas Day, in the + Evening." 1624, Donne's, 89 +"Sermons," Donne's, 155 +"Sesame and Lilies," Ruskin's, 138, 195 +Sévigné, Madame de, 197 +Shakespeare, William, 4, 33, 65, 66, 70, 71, 94, 97, + 104, 116, 123, 131, 145, 155, 200, 203, 204, 205 +Shelley, 79, 155, 167, 168, 169, 193, 194 +Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 192 +"Sicilian Vine-Dresser, The," Sturge Moore's, 124 +Skeat, Walter W., 99 +Smiles, Samuel, 194 +Smith, Adam, 56, 155, 156 +Socrates, 118, 147, 148, 186, 187, 188, 206, 207 +Solomon, 156, 157 +"Song of Songs," 139, 156, 157, 161 +Sophocles, 111 +Spenser, 164 +Stead, W. T., 197 +Steele, Sir Richard, 102, 192 +Sternhold, Thomas, 170 +"Sthenoboea," Euripides's, 21 +"Stradivarius," George Eliot's, 14 +"Strayed Reveller," Matthew Arnold's, 124 +Stubbs, 101 +"Sublimitate, De," Longinus's, 149 +Suckling, Sir John, 90 +Swift, Jonathan, 105, 131 +Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 155 + +"Table Talk," Johnson's, 131 +"Tale of a Tub, A," 89 +"Task, The," Cowper's, 100 +Tasso, 167 +Tate, Nahum, 170 +Taylor, Edgar, 43 +Taylor, Jane, 211 +"Tempest, The," 59, 71, 202, 203, 204, 205 +Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 5, 193, 194 +Tertullian, 207 +Thackeray, William Makepeace, 82, 146 +Theocritus, 124 +Thompson, Francis, 155 +"Thoughts of Divines and Philosophers," Basil Montagu's, 211 +"Thoughts on the Present Discontents," Burke's, 155 +Thucydides, 121 +"Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth's, 152 +Todhunter, Dr, 93 +Traherne, Thomas, 29, 44 +"Training of the Imagination, The," Rhoades's, 110 +"Troilus," 71 +Tyndale, William, 97, 145 + +"Utopia," More's, 114 + +Vaughan, Henry, 193 +"Vicar of Wakefield, The," 144 +Vienna, medical school of, 76 +"Village Labourer, The," Mr and Mrs Hammond's, 190, 191 +Villon, 193 +Virgil, 12, 116, 167 +"Voyages," Hakluyt's, 155 +"Vulgate, The," 170 + +Walpole, Sir Spencer, 192 +Walton, Isaak, 82, 145 +"Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith's, 155 +Wesley, John, 61 +Wessobrunn, 208 +"What is and What Might Be," Holmes's, 50, 51, 52 +White, Blanco, 31, 112 +Wilberforce, 192 +"Wisdom, Book of," 144 +Wolfe, General, 116 +Wordsworth, William, 5, 28, 33, 37, 44, 61, 66, 73, 116, 123, + 152, 155, 202, 207 +"World's Classics, The," 138 +Wright, Aldis, 94, 99 +Wyclif, 145 + +Zadkiel, 139 +Zenobia, 212 + + + +CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY W. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/16579-8.zip b/16579-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..696e3c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/16579-8.zip diff --git a/16579.txt b/16579.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9c58334 --- /dev/null +++ b/16579.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8535 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of On The Art of Reading, by Arthur Quiller-Couch + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: On The Art of Reading + +Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: August 22, 2005 [EBook #16579] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ART OF READING *** + + + + +Produced by James Tenison + + + + + + +CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS +LONDON: + +BENTLEY HOUSE NEW YORK. +TORONTO, BOMBAY +CALCUTTA. MADRAS: + +MACMILLAN TOKYO: +MARUZEN COMPANY LTD + +All rights reserved + +Copyrighted in the United States of +America by G. P. Putnam's Sons + +All rights reserved + + +On The Art of Reading + +By + +Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch + +CAMBRIDGE + +AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1939 + + + +TO +H. F. S. and H. M. C. + +First edition 1920 +reprinted 1920,1921 +Pocket edition 1924 +reprinted 1925, 1928, 1933, 1939 + + + + +PREFACE + +The following twelve lectures have this much in common with a +previous twelve published in 1916 under the title "On the Art of +Writing"--they form no compact treatise but present their central +idea as I was compelled at the time to enforce it, amid the dust +of skirmishing with opponents and with practical difficulties. + +They cover--and to some extent, by reflection, chronicle--a +period during which a few friends, who had an idea and believed +in it, were fighting to establish the present English Tripos at +Cambridge. In the end we carried our proposals without a vote: +but the opposition was stiff for a while; and I feared, on +starting to read over these pages for press, that they might be +too occasional and disputatious. I am happy to think that, on the +whole, they are not; and that the reader, though he may wonder at +its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from +polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century +theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead +controversies afford the driest. + +And after all, and though it be well worth while to strive that +the study of English (of our own literature, and of the art of +using our own language, in speech or in writing, to the best +purpose) shall take an honourable place among the Schools of a +great University, that the other fair sisters of learning shall + + Ope for thee their queenly circle ... + +it is not in our Universities that the general redemption of +English will be won; nor need a mistake here or there, at Oxford +or Cambridge or London, prove fatal. We make our discoveries +through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where +there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve. A youth +who can command means to enter a University can usually command +some range in choosing which University it shall be. If Cambridge +cannot supply what he wants, or if our standard of training be +low in comparison with that of Oxford, or of London or of +Manchester, the pressure of neglect will soon recall us to our +senses. + +_The real battle for English lies in our Elementary Schools, and +in the training of our Elementary Teachers._ It is there that the +foundations of a sound national teaching in English will have to +be laid, as it is there that a wrong trend will lead to incurable +issues. For the poor child has no choice of Schools, and the +elementary teacher, whatever his individual gifts, will work +under a yoke imposed upon him by Whitehall. I devoutly trust that +Whitehall will make the yoke easy and adaptable while insisting +that the chariot must be drawn. + +I foresee, then, these lectures condemned as the utterances of a +man who, occupying a Chair, has contrived to fall betwixt two +stools. My thoughts have too often strayed from my audience in a +University theatre away to remote rural class-rooms where the +hungry sheep look up and are not fed; to piteous groups of +urchins standing at attention and chanting "The Wreck of the +Hesperus" in unison. Yet to these, being tied to the place and +the occasion, I have brought no real help. + +A man has to perform his task as it comes. But I must say this in +conclusion. Could I wipe these lectures out and re-write them in +hope to benefit my countrymen in general, I should begin and end +upon the text to be found in the twelfth and last--that a liberal +education is not an appendage to be purchased by a few: that +Humanism is, rather, a _quality_ which can, and should, condition +all our teaching; which can, and should, be impressed as a +character upon it all, from a poor child's first lesson in +reading up to a tutor's last word to his pupil on the eve of a +Tripos. + +ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH +July 7, 1920. + + + + +CONTENTS + +LECTURE + +I INTRODUCTORY +II APPREHENSION VERSUS COMPREHENSION +III CHILDREN'S READING (I) +IV " " (II) +V ON READING FOR EXAMINATIONS +VI ON A SCHOOL OF ENGLISH +VII THE VALUE OF GREEK AND LATIN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE +VIII ON READING THE BIBLE (I) +IX " " (II) +X " " (III) +XI OF SELECTION +XI ON THE USE OF MASTERPIECES + +INDEX + + + + +LECTURE I + +INTRODUCTORY + +WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1916 + + +I + +In the third book of the "Ethics", and in the second chapter, +Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in +themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were +committed involuntarily, through ignorance, instances 'the man +who did not know a subject was forbidden, like Aeschylus with the +Mysteries,' and 'the man who only meant to show how it worked, +like the fellow who let off the catapult' ([Greek: e deixai +Boulemos apheinai, os o ton katapelten]). + +I feel comfortably sure, Gentlemen, that in a previous course of +lectures "On the Art of Writing", unlike Aeschylus, I divulged no +mysteries: but I am troubled with speculations over that man and +the catapult, because I really was trying to tell you how the +thing worked; and Aristotle, with a reticence which (as Horace +afterwards noted) may lend itself to obscurity, tells us neither +what happened to that exponent of ballistics, nor to the engine +itself, nor to the other person. My discharge, such as it was, at +any rate provoked another Professor (_emeritus,_ learned, +sagacious, venerable) to retort that the true business of a Chair +such as this is to instruct young men how to _read_ rather than +how to write. Well, be it so. I accept the challenge. + +I propose in this and some ensuing lectures to talk of the Art +and Practice of Reading, particularly as applied to English +Literature: to discuss on what ground and through what faculties +an Author and his Reader meet: to enquire if, or to what extent, +Reading of the best Literature can be taught; and supposing it to +be taught, if or to what extent it can be examined upon; with +maybe an interlude or two, to beguile the way. + +II + +The first thing, then, to be noted about the reading of English +(with which alone I am concerned) is that for Englishmen it has +been made, by Act of Parliament, compulsory. + +The next thing to be noted is that in our schools and Colleges +and Universities it has been made, by Statute or in practice, all +but impossible. + +The third step is obvious--to reconcile what we cannot do with +what we must: and to that aim I shall, under your patience, +direct this and the following lecture. I shall be relieved at all +events, and from the outset, of the doubt by which many a +Professor, here and elsewhere, has been haunted: I mean the doubt +whether there really _is_ such a subject as that of which he +proposes to treat. Anything that requires so much human ingenuity +as reading English in an English University _must_ be an art. + +III + +But I shall be met, of course, by the question 'How is the +reading of English made impossible at Cambridge?' and I pause +here, on the edge of my subject, to clear away that doubt. + +It is no fault of the University. + +The late Philip Gilbert Hamerton, whom some remember as an +etcher, wrote a book which he entitled (as I think, too +magniloquently) "The Intellectual Life." He cast it in the form +of letters--'To an Author who kept very Irregular Hours,' 'To a +Young Etonian who thought of becoming a Cotton-spinner,' 'To a +Young Gentleman who had firmly resolved never to wear anything +but a Grey Coat' (but Mr Hamerton couldn't quite have meant +that). 'To a Lady of High Culture who found it difficult to +associate with persons of her Own Sex,' 'To a Young Gentleman of +Intellectual Tastes, who, without having as yet any Particular +Lady in View, had expressed, in a General Way, his Determination +to get Married: The volume is well worth reading. In the first +letter of all, addressed 'To a Young Man of Letters who worked +Excessively,' Mr Hamerton fishes up from his memory, for +admonishment, this salutary instance: + + A tradesman, whose business affords an excellent outlet for + energetic bodily activity, told me that having attempted, in + addition to his ordinary work, to acquire a foreign language + which seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been obliged to + abandon it on account of alarming cerebral symptoms. This man + has immense vigour and energy, but the digestive functions, in + this instance, are sluggish. However, when he abandoned study, + the cerebral inconveniences disappeared, and have never + returned since. + +IV + +Now we all know, and understand, and like that man: for the +simple reason that he is every one of us. + +You or I (say) have to take the Modern Languages Tripos, Section +A (English), in 1917[1]. First of all (and rightly) it is +demanded of us that we show an acquaintance, and something more +than a bowing acquaintance, with Shakespeare. Very well; but next +we have to write a paper and answer questions on the outlines of +English Literature from 1350 to 1832--almost 500 years--, and +next to write a paper and show particular knowledge of English +Literature between 1700 and 1785--eighty-five years. Next comes a +paper on passages from selected English verse and prose writings +--the Statute discreetly avoids calling them literature--between +1200 and 1500, exclusive of Chaucer; with questions on language, +metre, literary history and literary criticism: then a paper on +Chaucer with questions on language, metre, literary history and +literary criticism: lastly a paper on writing in the Wessex +dialect of Old English, with questions on the cornet, flute, +harp, sackbut, language, metre and literary history. + +Now if you were to qualify yourself for all this as a scholar +should, and in two years, you would certainly deserve to be +addressed by Mr Hamerton as 'A Young Man of Letters who worked +Excessively'; and to work excessively is not good for anyone. +Yet, on the other hand, you are precluded from using, for your +'cerebral inconveniences,' the heroic remedy exhibited by Mr +Hamerton's enterprising tradesman, since on that method you would +not attain to the main object of your laudable ambition, a +Cambridge degree. + +But the matter is very much worse than your Statute makes it out. +Take one of the papers in which some actual acquaintance with +Literature is required the Special Period from 1700 to 1785; then +turn to your "Cambridge History of English Literature", and you +will find that the mere bibliography of those eighty-five years +occupies something like five or six hundred pages--five or six +hundred pages of titles and authors in simple enumeration! The +brain reels; it already suffers 'cerebral inconveniences.' But +stretch the list back to Chaucer, back through Chaucer to those +alleged prose writings in the Wessex dialect, then forward from +1785 to Wordsworth, to Byron, to Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson, +Browning, Meredith, even to this year in which literature still +lives and engenders; and the brain, if not too giddy indeed, +stands as Satan stood on the brink of Chaos-- + + Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith + He had to cross-- + +and sees itself, with him, now plumbing a vast vacuity, and anon +nigh-foundered, 'treading the crude consistence.' + +The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to +_know_ it in any reputable sense of the word--let alone your +learning to write English--is, in short, impossible. And the +framers of the Statute, recognising this, have very sensibly +compromised by setting you to work on such things as 'the +Outlines of English Literature'; which are not Literature at all +but are only what some fellow has to say about it, hastily +summarising his estimates of many works, of which on a generous +computation he has probably read one-fifth; and by examining you +on (what was it all?) 'language, metre, literary history and +literary criticism,' which again are not Literature, or at least +(as a Greek would say in his idiom) escape their own notice being +Literature. For English Literature, as I take it, is _that which +sundry men and women have written memorably in English about +Life._ And so I come to my subject--the art of reading _that,_ +which is Literature. + +V + +I shall take leave to leap into it over another man's back, or, +rather over two men's backs. No doubt it has happened to many of +you to pick up in a happy moment some book or pamphlet or copy of +verse which just says the word you have unconsciously been +listening for, almost craving to speak for yourself, and so sends +you off hot-foot on the trail. And if you have had that +experience, it may also have happened to you that, after ranging, +you returned on the track 'like faithful hound returning,' in +gratitude, or to refresh the scent; and that, picking up the book +again, you found it no such wonderful book after all, or that +some of the magic had faded by process of the change in yourself +which itself had originated. But the word was spoken. + +Such a book--pamphlet I may call it, so small it was--fell into +my hands some ten years ago; "The Aims of Literary Study"--no +very attractive title--by Dr Corson, a distinguished American +Professor (and let me say that, for something more than ten--say +for twenty--years much of the most thoughtful as well as the most +thorough work upon English comes to us from America). I find, as +I handle again the small duodecimo volume, that my own thoughts +have taken me a little wide, perhaps a little astray, from its +suggestions. But for loyalty's sake I shall start just where Dr +Corson started, with a passage from Browning's, "A Death in the +Desert," supposed (you will remember)-- + + Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene + +narrating the death of St John the Evangelist, John of Patmos; +the narrative interrupted by this gloss: + + [This is the doctrine he was wont to teach, + How divers persons witness in each man, + Three souls which make up one soul: _first,_ to wit, + A soul of each and all the bodily parts, + Seated therein, which works, and is _What Does,_ + And has the use of earth, and ends the man + Downward: but, tending upward for advice, + Grows into, and again is grown into + By the next soul, which, seated in the brain, + Useth the first with its collected use, + And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,--is _What Knows_: + Which, duly tending upward in its turn, + Grows into, and again is grown into + By the last soul, that uses both the first, + Subsisting whether they assist or no, + And, constituting man's self, is _What Is_-- + And leans upon the former + +(Mark the word, Gentlemen; '_leans_ upon the former'--leaning +back, as it were felt by him, on this very man who had leaned +on Christ's bosom, being loved) + + And leans upon the former, makes it play, + As that played off the first: and, tending up, + Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man + Upward in that dread point of intercourse, + Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him. + _What Does, What Knows, What Is;_ three souls, one man. + I give the glossa of Theotypas.] + +_What Does, What Knows, What Is_--there is no mistaking what +Browning means, nor in what degrees of hierarchy he places this, +that, and the other.... Does it not strike you how curiously men +to-day, with their minds perverted by hate, are inverting that +order?--all the highest value set on _What Does--What Knows_ +suddenly seen to be of importance, but only as important in +feeding the guns, perfecting explosives, collaring trade--all in +the service of _What Does,_ of 'Get on or Get Out,' of +'Efficiency'; no one stopping to think that 'Efficiency' is--must +be--a relative term! Efficient for what?--for _What Does, What +Knows_ or perchance, after all, for _What Is_? No! banish the +humanities and throw everybody into practical science: not into +that study of natural science, which can never conflict with the +'humanities' since it seeks discovery for the pure sake of truth, +or charitably to alleviate man's lot-- + + Sweetly, rather, to ease, loose and bind + As need requires, this frail fallen humankind ... + +--but to invent what will be commercially serviceable in besting +your neighbour, or in gassing him, or in slaughtering him neatly +and wholesale. But still the whisper (not ridiculous in its day) +will assert itself, that _What Is_ comes first, holding and +upheld by God; still through the market clamour for a 'Business +Government' will persist the voice of Plato murmuring that, after +all, the best form of government is government by good men: and +the voice of some small man faintly protesting 'But I don't want +to be governed by business men; because I know them and, without +asking much of life, I have a hankering to die with a shirt on my +back.' + +VI + +But let us postpone _What Is_ for a moment, and deal with _What +Does_ and _What Knows._ They too, of course, have had their +oppositions, and the very meaning of a University such as +Cambridge--its _fons,_ its _origo,_ its [Greek: to ti en einai]-- +was to assert _What Knows_ against _What Does_ in a medieval +world pranced over by men-at-arms, Normans, English, Burgundians, +Scots. Ancillary to Theology, which then had a meaning vastly +different from its meaning to-day, the University tended as +portress of the gate of knowledge--of such knowledge as the +Church required, encouraged, or permitted--and kept the flag of +intellectual life, as I may put it, flying above that gate and +over the passing throngs of 'doers' and mailed-fisters. The +University was a Seat of Learning: the Colleges, as they sprang +up, were Houses of Learning. + +But note this, which in their origin and still in the frame of +their constitution differentiates Oxford and Cambridge from all +their ancient sisters and rivals. These two (and no third, I +believe, in Europe) were corporations of Teachers, existing for +Teachers, governed by Teachers. In a Scottish University the +students by vote choose their Rector: but here or at Oxford no +undergraduate, no Bachelor, counts at all in the government, both +remaining alike _in statu pupillari_ until qualified as Masters-- +_Magistri._ Mark the word, and mark also the title of one who +obtained what in those days would be the highest of degrees (but +yet gave him no voting strength above a Master). He was a +Professor-'Sanctae Theologiae Professor.' To this day every +country clergyman who comes up to Cambridge to record his +_non-placet,_ does so by virtue of his capacity to teach what he +learned here--in theory, that is. Scholars were included in +College foundations on a sort of pupil-teacher-supply system: +living in rooms with the lordly masters, and valeting them for +the privilege of 'reading with' them. We keep to this day the +pleasant old form of words. Now for various reasons--one of +which, because it is closely germane to my subject, I shall +particularly examine--Oxford and Cambridge, while conserving +almost intact their medieval frame of government, with a hundred +other survivals which Time but makes, through endurance, more +endearing, have, insensibly as it were, and across (it must be +confessed) intervals of sloth and gross dereliction of duty, +added a new function to the cultivation of learning--that of +furnishing out of youth a succession of men capable of fulfilling +high offices in Church and State. + +Some may regret this. I think many of us must regret that a +deeper tincture of learning is not required of the average +pass-man, or injected into him perforce. But speaking roughly about +fact, I should say that while we elders up here are required-- +nay, presumed to _know_ certain things, we aim that our young men +shall be of a certain kind; and I see no cause to disown a +sentence in the very first lecture I had the honour of reading +before you--'The man we are proud to send forth from our Schools +will be remarkable less for something he can take out of his +wallet and exhibit for knowledge, than for _being_ something, +and that something recognisable for a man of unmistakable +intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust to +choose the better and reject the worse.' + +The reasons which have led our older Universities to deflect +their functions (whether for good or ill) so far from their first +purpose are complicated if not many. Once admit young men in +large numbers, and youth (I call any Dean or Tutor to witness) +must be compromised with; will construe the laws of its seniors +in its own way, now and then breaking them; and will inevitably +end, by getting something of its own way.. The growth of +gymnastic, the insensible gravitation of the elderly towards +Fenner's--there to snatch a fearful joy and explain that the walk +was good for them; the Union and other debating societies; +College rivalries; the festivities of May Week; the invasion of +women students: all these may have helped. But I must dwell +discreetly on one compelling and obvious cause--the increased and +increasing unwieldiness of Knowledge. And that is the main +trouble, as I guess. + +VII + +Let us look it fair in the face: because it is the main practical +difficulty with which I propose that, in succeeding lectures, we +grapple. Against Knowledge I have, as the light cynic observed of +a certain lady's past, only one serious objection--that there is +so much of it. There is indeed so much of it that if with the +best will in the world you devoted yourself to it as a mere +scholar, you could not possibly digest its accumulated and still +accumulating stores. As Sir Thomas Elyot wrote in the 16th +century (using, you will observe, the very word of Mr Hamerton's +energetic but fed-up tradesman), 'Inconveniences always doe +happen by ingurgitation and excessive feedings.' An old +schoolmaster and a poet--Mr James Rhoades, late of Sherborne-- +comments in words which I will quote, being unable to better +them: + + This is no less true of the mind than of the body. I do not + know that a well-informed man, as such, is more worthy of + regard than a well-fed one. The brain, indeed, is a nobler + organ than the stomach, but on that very account is the less + to be excused for indulging in repletion. The temptation, I + confess, is greater, because for the brain the banquet stands + ever spread before our eyes, and is, unhappily, as + indestructible as the widow's meal and oil. + + Only think what would become of us if the physical food, + by which our bodies subsist, instead of being consumed by + the eater, was passed on intact by every generation to the + next, with the superadded hoards of all the ages, the earth's + productive power meanwhile increasing year by year + beneath the unflagging hand of Science, till, as Comus + says, she + + would be quite surcharged with her own weight + And strangled with her waste fertility. + + Should we rather not pull down our barns, and build + smaller, and make bonfires of what they would not hold? + And yet, with regard to Knowledge, the very opposite of + this is what we do. We store the whole religiously, and that + though not twice alone, as with the bees in Virgil, but + scores of times in every year, is the teeming produce + gathered in. And then we put a fearful pressure on + ourselves and others to gorge of it as much as ever we can + hold. + +_Facit indignatio versus._ My author, gathering heat, puts it +somewhat dithyrambically: but there you have it, Gentlemen. + +If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and +groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still +putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to dodge the +difficulty by specialising, you produce a brain bulging out +inordinately on one side, on the other cut flat down and mostly +paralytic at that: and in short so long as I hold that the +Creator has an idea, of a man, so long shall I be sure that no +uneven specialist realises it. The real tragedy of the Library at +Alexandria was not that the incendiaries burned immensely, but +that they had neither the leisure nor the taste to discriminate. + +VIII + +The old schoolmaster whom I quoted just now goes on: + + I believe, if the truth were known, men would be + astonished at the small amount of learning with which a + high degree of culture is compatible. In a moment of enthusiasm + I ventured once to tell my 'English set' that if they could + really master the ninth book of "Paradise Lost", so as to rise + to the height of its great argument and incorporate all its + beauties in themselves, they would at one blow, by virtue + of that alone, become highly cultivated men.... More and + more various learning might raise them to the same height + by different paths, but could hardly raise them higher. + +Here let me interpose and quote the last three lines of that +Book--three lines only; simple, unornamented, but for every man +and every woman who have dwelt together since our first parents, +in mere statement how wise! + + Thus they in mutual accusation spent + The fruitless hours, _but neither self-condemning;_ + And of their vain contest appear'd no end. + +A parent afterwards told me (my schoolmaster adds) that his son +went home and so buried himself in the book that food and sleep +that day had no attraction for him. Next morning, I need hardly +say, the difference in his appearance was remarkable: he had +outgrown all his intellectual clothes. + +The end of this story strikes me, I confess, as rapid, and may be +compared with that of the growth of Delian Apollo in the Homeric +hymn; but we may agree that, in reading, it is not quantity so +much that tells, as quality and thoroughness of digestion. + +IX + +_What Does--What Knows--What Is...._ + +I am not likely to depreciate to you the value of _What Does,_ +after spending my first twelve lectures up here, on the art and +practice of Writing, encouraging you to _do_ this thing which I +daily delight in trying to do: as God forbid that anyone should +hint a slightening word of what our sons and brothers are doing +just now, and doing for us! But Peace being the normal condition +of man's activity, I look around me for a vindication of what is +noblest in _What Does_ and am content with a passage from George +Eliot's poem "Stradivarius", the gist of which is that God +himself might conceivably make better fiddles than Stradivari's, +but by no means certainly; since, as a fact, God orders his best +fiddles of Stradivari. Says the great workman, + + 'God be praised, + Antonio Stradivari has an eye + That winces at false work and loves the true, + With hand and arm that play upon the tool + As willingly as any singing bird + Sets him to sing his morning roundelay, + Because he likes to sing and likes the song.' + Then Naldo: ''Tis a pretty kind of fame + At best, that comes of making violins; + And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go + To purgatory none the less.' + But he: + ''Twere purgatory here to make them ill; + And for my fame--when any master holds + 'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine, + He will be glad that Stradivari lived, + Made violins, and made them of the best. + The masters only know whose work is good: + They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill + I give them instruments to play upon, + God choosing me to help Him.' + 'What! Were God + At fault for violins, thou absent?' + 'Yes; + He were at fault for Stradivari's work.' + 'Why, many hold Giuseppe's + violins As good as thine.' + 'May be: they are different. + His quality declines: he spoils his hand + With over-drinking. But were his the best, + He could not work for two. My work is mine, + And heresy or not, if my hand slacked + I should rob God--since He is fullest good-- + Leaving a blank instead of violins. + I say, not God Himself can make man's best + Without best men to help him.... + 'Tis God gives skill, + But not without men's hands: He could not make + Antonio Stradivari's violins + Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel.' + +So much then for _What Does_: I do not depreciate it. + +X + +Neither do I depreciate--in Cambridge, save the mark!--_What +Knows._ All knowledge is venerable; and I suppose you will find +the last vindication of the scholar's life at its baldest in +Browning's "A Grammarian's Funeral": + + Others mistrust and say, 'But time escapes: + Live now or never!' + He said, 'What's time? Leave Now for dog and apes! + Man has Forever.' + Back to his book then; deeper drooped his head: + Calculus racked him: + Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead: + Tussis attacked him.... + So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, + Ground he at grammar; + Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife: + While he could stammer + He settled Hoti's business--let it be!-- + Properly based Oun-- + Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De, + Dead from the waist down. + Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place: + Hail to your purlieus, + All ye highfliers of the feathered race, + Swallows and curlews! + Here's the top-peak; the multitude below + Live, for they can, there: + This man decided not to Live but Know-- + Bury this man there. + +Nevertheless Knowledge is not, cannot be, everything; and indeed, +as a matter of experience, cannot even be counted upon to +educate. Some of us have known men of extreme learning who yet +are, some of them, uncouth in conduct, others violent and +overbearing in converse, others unfair in controversy, others +even unscrupulous in action--men of whom the sophist Thrasymachus +in Plato's "Republic" may stand for the general type. Nay, some +of us will subscribe with the old schoolmaster whom I will quote +again, when he writes: + + To myself personally, as an exception to the rule that + opposites attract, a very well-informed person is an object of + terror. His mind seems to be so full of facts that you cannot, + as it were, see the wood for the trees; there is no room for + perspective, no lawns and glades for pleasure and repose, no + vistas through which to view some towering hill or elevated + temple; everything in that crowded space seems of the same + value: he speaks with no more awe of "King Lear" than of the + last Cobden prize essay; he has swallowed them both with the + same ease, and got the facts safe in his pouch; but he has no + time to ruminate because he must still be swallowing; nor does + he seem to know what even Macbeth, with Banquo's murderers + then at work, found leisure to remember--that good digestion + must wait on appetite, if health is to follow both: + +Now that may be put a trifle too vivaciously, but the moral is +true. Bacon tells us that reading maketh a full man. Yes, and too +much of it makes him too full. The two words of the Greek upon +knowledge remain true, that the last triumph of Knowledge is +_Know Thyself._ So Don Quixote repeats it to Sancho Panza, +counselling him how to govern his Island: + + First, O son, thou hast to fear God, for in fearing Him is + wisdom, and being wise thou canst not err. + + But secondly thou hast to set thine eyes on what thou art, + endeavouring to _know thyself--which is the most difficult_ + _knowledge that can be conceived._ + +But to know oneself is to know that which alone can know _What +Is._ So the hierarchy runs up. + +XI + +_What Does, What Knows, What Is...._ +I have happily left myself no time to-day to speak of _What Is_: +happily, because I would not have you even approach it +towards the end of an hour when your attention must be languishing. +But I leave you with two promises, and with two sayings from which +as this lecture took its start its successors will proceed. + +The first promise is, that _What Is,_ being the spiritual element +in man, is the highest object of his study. + +The second promise is that, nine-tenths of what is worthy to be +called Literature being concerned with this spiritual element, +for that it should be studied, from firstly up to ninthly, before +anything else. + +And my two quotations are for you to ponder: + +(1) This, first: + + That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is + mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact beyond which we cannot + go.... Spirit to spirit--as in water face answereth to face, so + the heart of man to man. + +(2) And this other, from the writings of an obscure Welsh +clergyman of the 17th century: + + You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself + floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens + and crowned with the stars. + + + +[Footnote 1: The reader will kindly turn back to p.1, and observe +the date at the head of this lecture. At that time I was engaged +against a system of English teaching which I believed to be +thoroughly bad. That system has since given place to another, +which I am prepared to defend as a better.] + + + + +LECTURE II + +APPREHENSION VERSUS COMPREHENSION + +WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1916 + + +I + +Let us attempt to-day, Gentlemen, picking up the scent where we +left at the conclusion of my first lecture, to hunt the Art of +Reading (as I shall call it), a little further on the line of +common-sense; then to cast back and chase on a line somewhat more +philosophical. If these lines run wide and refuse to unite, we +shall have made a false cast: if they converge and meet, we shall +have caught our hare and may proceed, in subsequent lectures, to +cook him. + +Well, the line of common-sense has brought us to this point-- +that, man and this planet being such as they are, for a man to +read all the books existent on it is impossible; and, if +possible, would be in the highest degree undesirable. Let us, for +example, go back quite beyond the invention of printing and try +to imagine a man who had read all the rolls destroyed in the +Library of Alexandria by successive burnings. (Some reckon the +number of these MSS at 700,000.) Suppose, further, this man to be +gifted with a memory retentive as Lord Macaulay's. Suppose lastly +that we go to such a man and beg him to repeat to us some chosen +one of the fifty or seventy lost, or partially lost, plays of +Euripides. It is incredible that he could gratify us. + +There was, as I have said, a great burning at Alexandria in 47 +B.C., when Caesar set the fleet in the harbour on fire to prevent +its falling into the hands of the Egyptians. The flames spread, +and the great library stood but 400 yards from the quayside, with +warehouses full of books yet closer. The last great burning was +perpetrated in A.D. 642. Gibbon quotes the famous sentence of +Omar, the great Mohammedan who gave the order: 'If these writings +of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and +need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and +ought to be destroyed,' and goes on: + + The sentence was executed with blind obedience; the + volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four + thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible + multitude that six months were barely sufficient for the + consumption of this precious fuel.... The tale has been + repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious + indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the + learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity. For my own + part, I am strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the + consequences. + +Of the consequence he writes: + + Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be + enriched with a repository of books: but, if the ponderous + mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were indeed + consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may allow, with + a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of + mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries, + which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; + but, when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of + ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather + than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious + and interesting facts are buried in oblivion: the three great + historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a + mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing + compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the + Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember that the + mischances of time and accident have spared the classic + works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the + first place of genius and glory; the teachers of ancient + knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared + the writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be + presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in + art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of + modern ages. + +I certainly do not ask you to subscribe to all that. In fact when +Gibbon asks us to remember gratefully 'that the mischances of +time and accident have spared the classic works to which the +suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and +glory,' I submit with all respect that he talks nonsense. Like +the stranger in the temple of the sea-god, invited to admire the +many votive garments of those preserved out of shipwreck, I ask +'at ubi sunt vestimenta eorum qui post vota nuncupata perierunt?'-- +or in other words 'Where are the trousers of the drowned?' 'What +about the "Sthenoboea" of Euripides, the "Revellers" of Ameipsias-- +to which, as a matter of simple fact, what you call the suffrage of +antiquity did adjudge the first prize, above Aristophanes' best?' + +But of course he is equally right to this extent, that the fire +consumed a vast deal of rubbish: solid tons more than any man +could swallow,--let be, digest--'read, mark, learn and inwardly +digest.' And that was in A.D. 642, whereas we have arrived at +1916. Where would our voracious Alexandrian be to-day, with all +the literature of the Middle Ages added to his feast and on top +of that all the printed books of 450 years? 'Reading,' says +Bacon, 'maketh a Full Man.' Yes, indeed! + +Now I am glad that sentence of Bacon falls pat here, because it +gives me, turning to his famous Essay "Of Studies", the +reinforcement of his great name for the very argument which I am +directing against the fallacy of those teachers who would have +you use 'manuals' as anything else than guides to your own +reading or perspectives in which the authors are set out in the +comparative eminence by which they claim priority of study or +indicate the proportions of a literary period. Some of these +manuals are written by men of knowledge so encyclopaedic that (if +it go with critical judgment) for these purposes they may be +trusted. But to require you, at your stage of reading, to have +even the minor names by heart is a perversity of folly. For later +studies it seems to me a more pardonable mistake, but yet a +mistake, to hope that by the employ of separate specialists you +can get even in 15 or 20 volumes a perspective, a proportionate +description, of what English Literature really is. But worst of +all is that Examiner, who--aware that you must please him, to get +a good degree, and being just as straight and industrious as +anyone else--assumes that in two years you have become expert in +knowledge that beats a lifetime, and, brought up against the +practical impossibility of this assumption, questions you--not on +a little selected first-hand knowledge--but on massed information +which at the best can be but derivative and second-hand. + +Now hear Bacon. + + Studies serve for Delight-- + +(Mark it,--he puts delight first) + + Studies serve for Delight, for Ornament, and for Ability. + Their Chiefe use for Delight, is in Privatenesse and + Retiring[1]; for Ornament, is in Discourse; and for Ability, + is in the Judgement and Disposition of Businesse.... To spend + too much Time in Studies is Sloth; to use them too much for + Ornament is Affectation; to make judgement wholly by their + Rules is the Humour of a Scholler. They perfect Nature, and + are perfected by Experience: for Naturall Abilities are like + Naturall Plants, they need Proyning by Study. And Studies + themselves doe give forth Directions too much at Large, + unless they be bounded in by experience. + +Again, he says: + + Some Bookes are to be Tasted, Others to be Swallowed, + and Some Few to be Chewed and Digested: that is, some + Bookes are to be read onely in Parts; Others to be read but + not Curiously; and some Few are to be read wholly, and with + Diligence and Attention. Some Bookes also may be read by + Deputy, and Extracts made of them by Others. But that + would be onely in the lesse important Arguments, and the + Meaner Sort of Bookes: else distilled Bookes are like + Common distilled Waters, Flashy Things. + +So you see, Gentlemen, while pleading before you that Reading is +an Art--that its best purpose is not to accumulate Knowledge but +to produce, to educate, such-and-such a man--that 'tis a folly to +bite off more than you can assimilate--and that with it, as with +every other art, the difficulty and the discipline lie in +selecting out of vast material, what is fit, fine, applicable--I +have the great Francis Bacon himself towering behind my shoulder +for patron. + +Some would push the argument further than--here and now, at any +rate--I choose to do, or perhaps would at all care to do. For +example, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, whom I quoted to you three +weeks ago, instances in his book "The Intellectual Life" an +accomplished French cook who, in discussing his art, comprised +the whole secret of it under two heads--the knowledge of the +mutual influences of ingredients, and the judicious management of +heat: + + Amongst the dishes for which my friend had a deserved + reputation was a certain _gateau de foie_ which had a very + exquisite flavour. The principal ingredient, not in quantity + but in power, was the liver of a fowl; but there were several + other ingredients also, and amongst these a leaf or two of + parsley. He told me that the influence of the parsley was a + good illustration of his theory about his art. If the parsley + were omitted, the flavour he aimed at was not produced at all; + but, on the other hand, if the quantity of the parsley was in + the least excessive, then the _gateau_ instead of being a + delicacy for gourmets became an uneatable mess. Perceiving that + I was really interested in the subject, he kindly promised a + practical evidence of his doctrine, and the next day + intentionally spoiled the dish by a trifling addition of + parsley. He had not exaggerated the consequences; the delicate + flavour entirely departed, and left a nauseous bitterness in + its place, like the remembrance of an ill-spent youth. + +I trust that none of you are in a position to appreciate the full +force of this last simile; and, for myself, I should have taken +the chef's word for it, without experiment. Mr Hamerton proceeds +to draw his moral: + + There is a sort of intellectual chemistry which is quite as + marvellous as material chemistry and a thousand times more + difficult to observe. One general truth may, however, be + relied upon.... It is true that everything we learn affects the + _whole_ character of the mind. + + Consider how incalculably important becomes the + question of _proportion_ in our knowledge, and how that which + we are is dependent as much upon our ignorance as our + science. What we call ignorance is only a smaller proportion-- + what we call science only a larger. + +Here the argument begins to become delicious: + + The larger quantity is recommended as an unquestionable + good, but the goodness of it is entirely dependent _on the + mental product that we want._ Aristocracies have always + instinctively felt this, and have decided that a gentleman + ought not to know too much of certain arts and sciences. The + character which they had accepted as their ideal would have + been destroyed by indiscriminate additions to those + ingredients of which long experience had fixed the exact + proportions.... + + The last generation of the English country aristocracy + was particularly rich in characters whose unity and charm + was dependent upon the limitations of their culture, and + which would have been entirely altered, perhaps not for the + better, by simply knowing a science or a literature that was + dosed to them. + +If anything could be funnier than that, it is that it is, very +possibly, true. Let us end our quest-by-commonsense, for the +moment, on this; that to read all the books that have been +written---in short to keep pace with those that are being +written--is starkly impossible, and (as Aristotle would say) +about what is impossible one does not argue. We _must_ select. +Selection implies skilful practice. Skilful practice is only +another term for Art. So far plain common-sense leads us. On this +point, then, let us set up a rest and hark back. + +II + +Let us cast back to the three terms of my first lecture--_What +does, What knows, What is._ + +I shall here take leave to recapitulate a brief argument much +sneered at a few years ago when it was still fashionable to +consider Hegel a greater philosopher than Plato. Abbreviating it +I repeat it, because I believe in it yet to-day, when Hegel (for +causes unconnected with pure right and wrong) has gone somewhat +out of fashion for a while. + +As the tale, then, is told by Plato, in the tenth book of "The +Republic", one Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian, was slain in +battle; and ten days afterwards, when they collected the dead for +burial, his body alone showed no taint of corruption. His +relatives, however, bore it off to the funeral pyre; and on the +twelfth day, lying there, he returned to life, and he told them +what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he related +concerning the dead, for example, with their rewards and +punishments: but what had impressed him as most wonderful of all +was the great spindle of Necessity, reaching up to Heaven, with +the planets revolving around it in graduated whorls of width and +spread: yet all concentric and so timed that all complete the +full circle punctually together--'The Spindle turns on the knees +of Necessity; and on the rim of each whorl sits perched a Siren +who goes round with it, hymning a single note; the eight notes +together forming one harmony.' + +Now as--we have the divine word for it--upon two great +commandments hang all the law and the prophets, so all +religions, all philosophies, hang upon two steadfast and +faithful beliefs; the first of which Plato would show by the +above parable. + +It is, of course, that the stability of the Universe rests upon +ordered motion--that the 'firmament' above, around, beneath, +stands firm, continues firm, on a balance of active and +tremendous forces somehow harmoniously composed. Theology asks +'by What?' or 'by Whom?' Philosophy inclines rather to ask 'How?' +Natural Science, allowing that for the present these questions +are probably unanswerable, contents itself with mapping and +measuring what it can of the various forces. But all agree about +the harmony; and when a Galileo or a Newton discovers a single +rule of it for us, he but makes our assurance surer. For +uncounted centuries before ever hearing of Gravitation men knew +of the sun that he rose and set, of the moon that she waxed and +waned, of the tides that they flowed and ebbed, all regularly, at +times to be predicted; of the stars that they swung as by +clockwork around the pole. Says the son of Sirach: + + At the word of the Holy One they will stand in due order, + And they will not faint in their watches. + +So evident is this calculated harmony that men, seeking to +interpret it by what was most harmonious in themselves or in +their human experience, supposed an actual Music of the Spheres +inaudible to mortals: Plato as we see (who learned of Pythagoras) +inventing his Octave of Sirens, perched on the whorls of the +great spindle and intoning as they spin. + +Dante (Chaucer copying him in "The Parlement of Fowls") makes the +spheres nine: and so does Milton: + + then listen I + To the celestial _Sirens_ harmony, + That sit upon the nine infolded Sphears, + And sing to those that hold the vital shears, + And turn the Adamantine spindle round + On which the fate of gods and men is wound. + Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie + To lull the daughters of _Necessity_, + And keep unsteady Nature to her law, + And the low world in measur'd motion draw + After the heavenly tune.... + +If the sceptical mind object to the word _law_ as begging the +question and postulating a governing intelligence with a +governing will--if it tell me that when revolted Lucifer uprose +in starlight-- + + and at the stars, + Which are the brain of heaven, he look'd, and sank. + Around the ancient track march'd, rank on rank, + The army of unalterable law-- + +he was merely witnessing a series of predictable or invariable +recurrences, I answer that he may be right, it suffices for my +argument that they _are_ recurrent, are invariable, can be +predicted. Anyhow the Universe is not Chaos (if it were, by the +way, we should be unable to reason about it at all). It stands +and is renewed upon a harmony: and what Plato called 'Necessity' +is the Duty--compulsory or free as you or I can conceive it--the +Duty of all created things to obey that harmony, the Duty of +which Wordsworth tells in his noble Ode. + + Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong: + And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and + strong. + +III + +Now the other and second great belief is, that the Universe, the +macrocosm, cannot be apprehended at all except as its rays +converge upon the eye, brain, soul of Man, the microcosm: on you, +on me, on the tiny percipient centre upon which the immense +cosmic circle focuses itself as the sun upon a burning-glass--and +he is not shrivelled up! Other creatures, he notes, share in his +sensations; but, so far as he can discover, not in his percipience +--or not in any degree worth measuring. So far as he can discover, +he is not only a bewildered actor in the great pageant but 'the +ring enclosing all,' the sole intelligent spectator. Wonder of +wonders, it is all meant for _him_! + +I doubt if, among men of our nation, this truth was ever more +clearly grasped than by the Cambridge Platonists who taught your +forerunners of the 17th century. But I will quote you here two +short passages from the work of a sort of poor relation of +theirs, a humble Welsh parson of that time, Thomas Traherne-- +unknown until the day before yesterday--from whom I gave you one +sentence in my first lecture. He is speaking of the fields and +streets that were the scene of his childhood: + + Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had from the + womb, and that divine light wherewith I was born are the + best unto this day, wherein I can see the Universe.... The + corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be + reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from + everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street + were as precious as gold: the gates were at first the end of + the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one + of the gates transported and ravished me.... Boys and girls + tumbling in the street, and playing, were moving jewels. I + knew not that they were born or should die.... + + The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people + were mine, their clothes and gold and silver were mine, as + much as their sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy faces. + The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars; + and all the World was mine; and I the only spectator and + enjoyer of it. + +Then: + + News from a foreign country came, + As if my treasure and my wealth lay there; + So much it did my heart inflame, + 'Twas wont to call my Soul into mine ear; + Which thither went to meet + The approaching sweet, + And on the threshold stood + To entertain the unknown Good.... + + What sacred instinct did inspire + My Soul in childhood with a hope to strong? + What secret force moved my desire + To expect new joys beyond the seas, so young? + Felicity I knew + Was out of view, + + And being here alone, + I saw that happiness was gone + From me! For this + I thirsted absent bliss, + And thought that sure beyond the seas, + Or else in something near at hand-- + I knew not yet (since naught did please + I knew) my Bliss did stand. + + But little did the infant dream + That all the treasures of the world were by: + And that himself was so the cream + And crown of all which round about did lie. + Yet thus it was: the Gem, + The Diadem, + The Ring enclosing all + That stood upon this earthly ball, + The Heavenly Eye, + Much wider than the sky, + Wherein they all included were, + The glorious Soul, that was the King + Made to possess them, did appear + A small and little thing! + +And then comes the noble sentence of which I promised you that it +should fall into its place: + + You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth + in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and + crowned with the stars. + +Man in short--you, I, any one of us--the heir of it all! + +_Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes deos!_ + +Our best privilege to sing our short lives out in tune with the +heavenly concert--and if to sing afterwards, then afterwards! + +IV + +But how shall Man ever attain to understand and find his proper +place in this Universe, this great sweeping harmonious circle of +which nevertheless he feels himself to be the diminutive focus? +His senses are absurdly imperfect. His ear cannot catch any music +the spheres make; and moreover there are probably neither spheres +nor music. His eye is so dull an instrument that (as Blanco +White's famous sonnet reminds us) he can neither see this world +in the dark, nor glimpse any of the scores of others until it +falls dark: + + If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life? + +Yet the Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to man save +in so far as _he_ apprehends it: and lacking him (so far as he +knows) it utterly lacks the compliment of an audience. Is all the +great orchestra designed for nothing but to please its Conductor? +Yes, if you choose: but no, as I think. And here my other +quotation: + + That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is + mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact.... Spirit to spirit-- + as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man. + +Yes and, all spirit being mutually attractive, far more than +this! I preach to you that, through help of eyes that are dim, of +ears that are dull, by instinct of something yet undefined--call +it soul--it wants no less a name--Man has a native impulse and +attraction and yearning to merge himself in that harmony and be +one with it: a spirit of adoption (as St Paul says) whereby we +cry _Abba, Father!_ + +And because ye are Sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of +His Son into your hearts, crying _Abba, Father._ + +That is to say, we know we have something within us correspondent +to the harmony, and (I make bold to say) unless we have deadened +it with low desires, worthy to join in it. Even in his common +daily life Man is for ever seeking after harmony, in avoidance of +chaos: he cultivates habits by the clock, he forms committees, +governments, hierarchies, laws, constitutions, by which (as he +hopes) a system of society will work in tune. But these are +childish imitations, underplay on the great motive: + + The Kingdom of God is within you. + +Quid aliud est anima quam Deus in corpore humano hospitans? + +V + +Gentlemen, you may be thinking that I have brought you a long way +round, that the hour is wearing late, and that we are yet far +from the prey we first hunted on the line of common-sense. But be +patient for a minute or two, for almost we have our hand on the +animal. + +If the Kingdom of God, or anything correspondent to it, be within +us, even in such specks of dust as we separately are, why that, +and that only, can be the light by which you or I may hope to +read the Universal: that, and that only, deserves the name of +'_What Is_.' Nay, I can convince you in a moment. Let me recall a +passage of Emerson quoted by me on the morning I first had the +honour to address an audience in Cambridge: + + It is remarkable (says he) that involuntarily we always read + as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the + romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures ... anywhere + make us feel that we intrude, that this is for better men; but + rather is it true that in their grandest strokes we feel most + at home. All that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder slip of + a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. + +It is remarkable, as Emerson says; and yet, as we now +see, quite simple. A learned man may patronise a less learned +one: but the Kingdom of God cannot patronise the Kingdom +of God, the larger the smaller. There _are_ large and small. +Between these two mysteries of a harmonious universe and +the inward soul are granted to live among us certain men +whose minds and souls throw out filaments more delicate +than ours, vibrating to far messages which they bring home, +to report them to us; and these men we call prophets, poets, +masters, great artists, and when they write it, we call their +report literature. But it is by the spark in us that we read it: +and not all the fire of God that was in Shakespeare can dare +to patronise the little spark in me. If it did, I can see--with +Blake--the angelic host + + throw down their spears + And water heaven with their tears. + +VI + +To nurse that spark, common to the king, the sage, the +poorest child--to fan, to draw up to a flame, to 'educate' +_What Is_--to recognise that it is divine, yet frail, tender, +sometimes easily tired, easily quenched under piles of +book-learning--to let it run at play very often, even more +often to let it rest in what Wordsworth calls + + a wise passiveness + +passive--to use a simile of Coventry Patmore--as a photographic +plate which finds stars that no telescope can discover, simply by +waiting with its face turned upward--to mother it, in short, as +wise mothers do their children--this is what I mean by the Art of +Reading. + +For all great Literature, I would lastly observe, is gentle +towards that spirit which learns of it. It teaches by +_apprehension_ not by _comprehension_--which is what many +philosophers try to do, and, in trying, break their jugs and +spill the contents. Literature understands man and of what he is +capable. Philosophy, on the other hand, may not be 'harsh and +crabbed, as dull fools suppose,' but the trouble with most of its +practitioners is that they try to _comprehend_ the Universe. Now +the man who could comprehend the Universe would _ipso facto_ +comprehend God, and be _ipso facto_ a Super-God, able to dethrone +him, and in the arrogance of his intellectual conceit full ready +to make the attempt. + + + +[Footnote 1: Do you remember, by the by, Samuel Rogers's lines +on Lady Jane Grey? They have always seemed to me very beautiful: + + Like her most gentle, most unfortunate, + Crown'd but to die--who in her chamber sate + Musing with Plato, though the horn was blown, + And every ear and every heart was won, + And all in green array were chasing down the sun!] + + + + +LECTURE III + +CHILDREN'S READING (I) + +WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 24, 1917 + + +I have often wished, Gentlemen, that some more winning name could +be found for the thing we call Education; and I have sometimes +thought wistfully that, had we made a better thing of it, we +should long ago have found a more amiable, a blither, name. + +For after all it concerns the child; and is it quite an accident +that, weaning him away from lovely things that so lovelily call +themselves 'love,' 'home,' 'mother,' we can find no more alluring +titles for the streets into which we entrap him than 'Educational +Facilities,' 'Local Examinations,' 'Preceptors,' 'Pedagogues,' +'Professors,' 'Matriculations,' 'Certificates,' 'Diplomas,' +'Seminaries,' Elementary or Primary, and Secondary Codes,' +'Continuation Classes,' 'Reformatories,' 'Inspectors,' 'Local +Authorities,' 'Provided' and 'Non-Provided,' 'Denominational' and +'Undenominational,' and 'D.Litt.' and 'Mus. Bac.'? Expressive +terms, no doubt!--but I ask with the poet + + Who can track + A Grace's naked foot amid them all? + +Take even such words as should be perennially beautiful by +connotation-words such as 'Academy,' 'Museum.' Does the one (O, +"Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham Academy!") call up visions +of that green lawn by Cephissus, of its olives and plane trees +and the mirrored statues among which Plato walked and held +discourse with his few? Does the other as a rule invite to haunts +(O God! O Montreal!) where you can be secure of communion with +Apollo and the Nine? Answer if the word Academy does not first +call up to the mind some place where small boys are crammed, the +word Museum some place where bigger game are stuffed? + +And yet 'academy,' 'museum,' even 'education' are sound words if +only we would make the things correspond with their meanings. The +meaning of 'education' is a leading out, a drawing-forth; not an +_imposition_ of something on somebody--a catechism or an uncle-- +upon the child; but an eliciting of what is within him. Now, if +you followed my last lecture, we find that which is within him to +be no less, potentially, than the Kingdom of God. + +I grant that this potentiality is, between the ages of four and +sixteen, not always, perhaps not often, evident. The boy--in +Bagehot's phrase 'the small apple-eating urchin whom we know'-- +has this in common with the fruit for which he congenitally sins, +that his very virtues in immaturity are apt, setting the teeth on +edge, to be mistaken for vices. A writer, to whom I shall recur, +has said: + + If an Englishman who had never before tasted an apple + were to eat one in July, he would probably come to the + conclusion that it was a hard, sour, indigestible fruit, + `conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity,' fit only to be + consigned to perdition (on a dust heap or elsewhere). But if + the same man were to wait till October and then eat an apple + from the same tree, he would find that the sourness had + ripened into wholesome and refreshing acidity; the hardness + into firmness of fibre which, besides being pleasant to the + palate, makes the apple 'keep' better than any other fruit; + the indigestibility into certain valuable dietetic qualities, + and so on.... + +In other words--trench, manure, hoe and water around your young +tree, and patiently allow the young fruit to develop of its own +juice from the root; your own task being, as the fruit forms, but +to bring in all you can of air and sunshine upon it. It must, as +every mother and nurse knows, be coaxed to realise itself, to +develop, to grow from its individual root. It may be coaxed and +trained. But the main secret lies in encouraging it to grow, and, +to that end, in pouring sunshine upon it and hoeing after each +visitation of tears parentally induced. + +Every child wants to grow. Every child wants to learn. During his +first year or so of life he fights for bodily nutriment, almost +ferociously. From the age of two or thereabouts he valiantly +essays the conquest of articulate speech, using it first to +identify his father or his mother amid the common herd of +Gentiles; next, to demand a more liberal and varied dietary; +anon, as handmaid of his imperious will to learn. This desire, +still in the nursery, climbs--like dissolution in Wordsworth's +sonnet--from low to high: from a craving to discover +experimentally what the stomach will assimilate and what reject, +up to a kingly debonair interest in teleology. Our young +gentleman is perfectly at ease in Sion. He wants to know why +soldiers are (or were) red, and if they were born so; whence +bread and milk is derived, and would it be good manners to thank +the neat cow for both; why mamma married papa, and--that having +been explained and thoughtfully accepted as the best possible +arrangement--still thoughtfully, not in the least censoriously, +'why the All-Father has not married yet?' He falls asleep +weighing the eligibility of various spinsters, church-workers, in +the parish. + +His brain teeming with questions, he asks them of impulse and +makes his discoveries with joy. He passes to a school, which is +supposed to exist for the purpose of answering these or cognate +questions even before he asks them: and behold, he is not happy! +Or, he is happy enough at play, or at doing in class the things +that should not be done in class: his master writes home that he +suffers in his school work 'from having always more animal +spirits than are required for his immediate purposes.' What is the +trouble? You cannot explain it by home-sickness: for it attacks +day boys alike with boarders. You cannot explain it by saying +that all true learning involves 'drudgery,' unless you make that +miserable word a mendicant and force it to beg the question. +'Drudgery' is _what you feel to be drudgery_-- + + Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, + Makes that and th' action fine. + +--and, anyhow, this child learned one language--English, a most +difficult one--eagerly. Of the nursery through which I passed +only one sister wept while learning to read, and that was over a +scholastic work entitled "Reading Without Tears." + +Do you know a chapter in Mr William Canton's book "The Invisible +Playmate" in which, as Carlyle dealt in "Sartor Resartus" with an +imaginary treatise by an imaginary Herr Teufelsdroeckh, as Matthew +Arnold in "Friendship's Garland" with the imaginary letters of an +imaginary Arminius (Germany in long-past happier days lent the +world these playful philosophical spirits), so the later author +invents an old village grandpapa, with the grandpapa-name of +Altegans and a prose-poem printed in scarecrow duodecimo on +paper-bag pages and entitled "Erster Schulgang," 'first +school-going,' or 'first day at school'? + +The poem opens with a wonderful vision of children; delightful as +it is unexpected; as romantic in presentment as it is commonplace +in fact. All over the world--and all under it too, when their +time comes--the children are trooping to school. The great globe +swings round out of the dark into the sun; there is always +morning somewhere; and for ever in this shifting region of the +morning-light the good Altegans sees the little ones afoot--- +shining companies and groups, couples and bright solitary +figures; for they all seem to have a soft heavenly light about +them. + +He sees them in country lanes and rustic villages; on lonely +moorlands ... he sees them on the hillsides ... in the woods, on +the stepping-stones that cross the brook in the glen, along the +seacliffs and on the water-ribbed sands; trespassing on the +railway lines, making short cuts through the corn, sitting in the +ferry-boats; he sees them in the crowded streets of smoky cities, +in small rocky islands, in places far inland where the sea is +known only as a strange tradition. + +The morning-side of the planet is alive with them: one hears +their pattering footsteps everywhere. And as the vast continents +sweep `eastering out of the high shadow which reaches beyond the +moon' ... and as new nations with _their_ cities and villages, +their fields, woods, mountains and sea-shores, rise up into the +morning-side, lo! fresh troops, and still fresh troops, and yet +again fresh troops of these school-going children of the dawn. + +What are weather and season to this incessant panorama of +childhood? The pigmy people trudge through the snow on +moor and hill-side; wade down flooded roads; are not to be +daunted by wind or rain, frost or the white smother of 'millers and +bakers at fisticuffs.' Most beautiful picture of all, he sees them +travelling schoolward by the late moonlight which now and again in +the winter months precedes the tardy dawn. + +That vision strikes me as being poetically true as well as +delightful: by which I mean that it is not sentimental: we know +that it ought to be true, that in a world well-ordered according +to our best wishes for it, it would be _naturally_ true. It +expresses the natural love of Age, brooding on the natural eager +joy of children. But that natural eager joy is just what our +schools, in the matter of reading, conscientiously kill. + +In this matter of reading-of children's reading--we stand, just +now, or halt just now, between two ways. The parent, I believe, +has decisively won back to the right one which good mothers never +quite forsook. There was an interval, lasting from the early +years of the last century until midway in Queen Victoria's reign +and a little beyond, when children were mainly brought up on the +assumption of natural vice. They might adore father and mother, +and yearn to be better friends with papa: but there was the old +Adam, a quickening evil spirit; there were his imps always in the +way, confound them! I myself lived, with excellent grandparents, +for several years on pretty close terms with Hell and an +all-seeing Eye; until I grew so utterly weary of both that I have +never since had the smallest use for either. Some of you may have +read, as a curious book, the agreeable history called "The +Fairchild Family," in which Mr Fairchild leads his naughty +children afield to a gallows by a cross-road and seating them +under the swinging corpse of a malefactor, deduces how easily +they may come to this if they go on as they have been going. The +authors of such monitory or cautionary tales understood but one +form of development, the development of Original Sin. You stole a +pin and proceeded, by fatal steps, to the penitentiary; you threw +a stick at a pheasant, turned poacher, shot a gamekeeper and +ended on the gallows. You were always Eric and it was always +Little by Little with you.... Stay! memory preserves one gem from +a Sunday school dialogue, one sharp-cut intaglio of childhood +springing fully armed from the head of Satan: + + Q. Where hast thou been this Sabbath morning? + A. I have been coursing of the squirrel. + Q. Art not afraid so to desecrate the Lord's Day with idle + sport? + A. By no means: for I should tell you that I am an Atheist. + +I forget what happened to that boy: but doubtless it was, as it +should have been, something drastic. + +The spell of prohibition, of repression, lies so strong upon +these authors that when they try to break away from it, to appeal +to something better than fear in the child, and essay to amuse, +they become merely silly. For an example in verse: + + If Human Beings only knew + What sorrows little birds go through, + I think that even boys + Would never think it sport or fun + To stand and fire a frightful gun + For nothing but the noise. + +For another (instructional and quite a good _memoria technica_ so +far as it goes): + + William and Mary came next to the throne: + When Mary died, there was William alone. + +Now for a story of incident.--It comes from the book "Reading +Without Tears," that made my small sister weep. She did not weep +over the story, because she did not claim to be an angel. + +Did you ever hear of the donkey that went into the sea with the +little cart?... A lady drove the cart down to the beach. She had +six children with her. Three little ones sat in the cart by her +side. Three bigger girls ran before the cart. When they came to +the beach the lady and the children got out. + +Very good so far. It opens like the story of Nausicaa ["Odyssey," +Book vi, lines 81-86]. + +The lady wished the donkey to bathe its legs in the sea, to make +it strong and clean. But the donkey did not like to go near the +sea. So the lady bound a brown shawl over its eyes, and she bade +the big girls lead it close to the waves. Suddenly a big wave +rushed to the land. The girls started back to avoid the wave, and +they let go the donkey's rein. + +The donkey was alarmed by the noise the girls made, and it went +into the sea, not knowing where it was going because it was not +able to see. The girls ran screaming to the lady, crying out, +'The donkey is in the sea!' + +There it was, going further and further into the sea, till the +cart was hidden by the billows. The donkey sank lower and lower +every moment, till no part of it was seen but the ears; for the +brown shawl was over its nose and mouth. Now the children began +to bawl and to bellow! But no one halloed so loud as the little +boy of four. His name was Merty. He feared that the donkey was +drowned.... + +Two fishermen were in a boat far away. They said 'We hear howls +and shrieks on the shore. Perhaps a boy or girl is drowning. Let +us go and save him: So they rowed hard, and they soon came to the +poor donkey, and saw its ears peeping out of the sea. The donkey +was just going to sink when they lifted it up by the jaws, and +seized the bridle and dragged it along. The children on the shore +shouted aloud for joy. The donkey with the cart came safe to +land. The poor creature was weak and dripping wet. The fishermen +unbound its eyes, and said to the lady, 'We cannot think how this +thing came to be over its eyes.' The lady said she wished she had +not bound up its eyes, and she gave the shillings in her purse to +the fishermen who had saved her donkey. + +Now every child knows that a donkey may change into a Fairy +Prince: that is a truth of imagination. But to be polite and say +nothing of the lady, every child knows that so donkey would be +ass enough to behave as in this narrative. And the good parents +who, throughout the later 18th century and the 19th, inflicted +this stuff upon children, were sinning against the light. +Perrault's Fairy Tales, and Madame D'Aulnoy's were to their hand +in translations; "Le Cabinet des Fees", which includes these and +M. Galland's "Arabian Nights" and many another collection of +delectable stories, extends on my shelves to 41 volumes (the last +volume appeared during the fury of the French Revolution!). The +brothers Grimm published the first volume of their immortal tales +in 1812, the second in 1814. A capital selection from them, +charmingly rendered, was edited by our Edgar Taylor in 1823; and +drew from Sir Walter Scott a letter of which some sentences are +worth our pondering. + +He writes: + + There is also a sort of wild fairy interest in [these tales] + which makes me think them fully better adapted to awaken + the imagination and soften the heart of childhood than the + good-boy stories which have been in later years composed + for them. In the latter case their minds are, as it were, put + into the stocks ... and the moral always consists in good + moral conduct being crowned with temporal success. Truth + is, I would not give one tear shed over Little Red Riding + Hood for all the benefit to be derived from a hundred + histories of Jemmy Goodchild. + +Few nowadays, I doubt, remember Gammer Grethel. She has been +ousted by completer, maybe far better, translations of the +Grimms' "Household Tales". But turning back, the other day, to +the old volume for the old sake's sake (as we say in the West) I +came on the Preface--no child troubles with a Preface--and on +these wise words: + + Much might be urged against that too rigid and philosophic (we + might rather say, unphilosophic) exclusion of works of fancy + and fiction from the libraries of children which is advocated + by some. Our imagination is surely as susceptible of + improvement by exercise as our judgment or our memory. + +And that admirable sentence, Gentlemen, is the real text of my +discourse to-day. I lay no sentimental stress upon Wordsworth's +Ode and its doctrine that 'Heaven lies about us in our infancy.' +It was, as you know, a favourite doctrine with our Platonists of +the 17th century: and critics who trace back the Ode "Intimations +of Immortality" to Henry Vaughan's + + Happy those early days, when I + Shined in my Angel-infancy. + +might connect it with a dozen passages from authors of that +century. Here is one from "Centuries of Meditations" by that poor +Welsh parson, Thomas Traherne, whom I quoted to you the other +day: + + Those pure and virgin apprehensions I had from the + womb, and that divine light wherewith I was born are the + best unto this day, wherein I can see the Universe. By the + Gift of God they attended me into the world, and by His + special favour I remember them till now.... Certainly Adam + in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions + of the world, than I when I was a child. + +And here is another from John Earle's Character of 'A Child' in +his "Microcosmography": + + His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein + he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember; and + sighs to see what innocence he has out-liv'd. He is the + Christian's example, and the old man's relapse: the one + imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his + simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, + he had got Eternity without a burthen, and exchang'd but one + Heaven for another. + +Bethinking me again of 'the small apple-eating urchin whom we +know,' I suspect an amiable fallacy in all this: I doubt if when +he scales an apple-bearing tree which is neither his own nor his +papa's he does so under impulse of any conscious yearning back to +Hierusalem, his happy home, + + Where trees for evermore bear fruit. + +At any rate, I have an orchard, and he has put up many excuses, +but never yet that he was recollecting Sion. + +Still the doctrine holds affinity with the belief which I firmly +hold and tried to explain to you with persuasion last term: +that, boy or man, you and I, the microcosms, do--sensibly, +half-sensibly, or insensibly--yearn, through what we feel to be +best in us, to 'join up' with the greater harmony; that by poetry +or religion or whatnot we have that within us which craves to be +drawn out, 'e-ducated,' and linked up. + +Now the rule of the nursery in the last century rested on +Original Sin, and consequently and quite logically tended not to +educate, but to repress. There are no new fairy-tales of the days +when your grandmothers wore crinolines--I know, for I have +searched. Mothers and nurses taught the old ones; the Three Bears +still found, one after another, that 'somebody has been sleeping +in my bed'; Fatima continued to call 'Sister Anne, do you see +anyone coming?' the Wolf to show her teeth under her nightcap and +snarl out (O, great moment!) 'All the better to eat you with, my +dear.' But the Evangelicals held field. Those of our grandfathers +and grandmothers who understood joy and must have had fairies for +ministers--those of our grandmothers who played croquet through +hoop with a bell and practised Cupid's own sport archery--those +of our grandfathers who wore jolly peg-top trousers and Dundreary +whiskers, and built the Crystal Palace and drove to the Derby in +green-veiled top-hats with Dutch dolls stuck about the brim--_tot +circa unum caput tumultuantes deos_--and those splendid uncles +who used to descend on the old school in a shower of gold-- +half-a-sovereign at the very least--all these should have trailed +fairies with them in a cloud. But in practice the evangelical +parent held the majority, put away all toys but Noah's Ark on +Sundays, and voted the fairies down. + +I know not who converted the parents. It may have been that +benefactor of Europe, Hans Christian Andersen, born at Odensee in +Denmark in April 1805. He died, near Copenhagen, in 1875, having +by a few months outlived his 70th birthday. I like to think that +his genius, a continuing influence over a long generation, did +more than anything else to convert the parents. The schools, +always more royalist than the King, professionally bleak, +professionally dull, professionally repressive rather than +educative, held on to a tradition which, though it had to be on +the sly, every intelligent mother and nurse had done her best to +evade. The schools made a boy's life penitential on a system. +They discovered athletics, as a safety-valve for high spirits +they could not cope with, and promptly made that safety-valve +compulsory! They went on to make athletics a religion. Now +athletics are not properly a religious exercise, and their +meaning evaporates as soon as you enlist them in the service of +repression. They are being used to do the exact opposite of that +for which God meant them. Things are better now: but in those +times how many a boy, having long looked forward to it, rejoiced +in his last day at school? + +I know surely enough what must be in your minds at this point: I +am running up my head hard against the doctrine of Original Sin, +against the doctrine that in dealing with a child you are dealing +with a 'fallen nature,' with a human soul 'conceived in sin,' +unregenerate except by repression; and therefore that repression +and more repression _must_ be the only logical way with your +Original Sinners. + +Well, then, I am. I have loved children all my life; studied them +in the nursery, studied them for years--ten or twelve years +intimately--in elementary schools. I know for a surety, if I have +acquired any knowledge, that the child is a 'child of God' rather +than a 'Child of wrath'; and here before you I proclaim that to +connect in any child's mind the Book of Joshua with the Gospels, +to make its Jehovah identical in that young mind with the Father +of Mercy of whom Jesus was the Son, to confuse, as we do in any +school in this land between 9.5 and 9.45 a.m., that bloodthirsty +tribal deity whom the Hohenzollern family invokes with the true +God the Father, is a blasphemous usage, and a curse. + +But let me get away to milder heresies. If you will concede for a +moment that the better way with a child is to draw out, to +_educate,_ rather than to repress, what is in him, let us observe +what he instinctively wants. Now first, of course, he wants to +eat and drink, and to run about. When he passes beyond these +merely animal desires to what we may call the instinct of growth +in his soul, how does he proceed? I think Mr Holmes, whom I have +already quoted, very fairly sets out these desires as any +grown-up person can perceive them. The child desires + + (1) to talk and to listen; + (2) to act (in the dramatic sense of the word); + (3) to draw, paint and model; + (4) to dance and sing; + (5) to know the why of things + (6) to construct things. + +Now I shall have something to say by and by on the amazing +preponderance in this list of those instincts which Aristotle +would have called _mimetic._ This morning I take only the least +imitative of all, the desire to know the why of things. + +Surely you know, taking only this, that the master-key admitting +a child to all, or almost all, palaces of knowledge is his ability +to _read._ When he has grasped that key of his mother-tongue he +can with perseverance unlock all doors to all the avenues of +knowledge. More--he has the passport to heavens unguessed. + +You will perceive at once that what I mean here by 'reading' is +the capacity for silent reading, taking a book apart and +mastering it; and you will bear in mind the wonder that I +preached to you in a previous lecture--that great literature +never condescends, that what yonder boy in a corner reads of a +king is happening to _him._ Do you suppose that in an elementary +school one child in ten reads thus? Listen to a wise ex-inspector, +whose words I can corroborate of experience: + + The first thing that strikes the visitor who enters an + ordinary elementary school while a reading lesson is in + progress is that the children are not reading at all, in the + accepted sense of the word. They are not reading to + themselves, not studying, not mastering the contents of the + book, not assimilating the mental and spiritual nutriment that + it may be supposed to contain. They are standing up one by + one and reading aloud to their teacher. + +Ah! but I have seen far worse than that. I have visited and +condemned rural schools where the practice was to stand a class +up--- say a class of thirty children--and make them read in +unison: which meant, of course, that the front row chanted out +the lesson while the back rows made inarticulate noises. I well +remember one such exhibition, in a remote country school on the +Cornish hills, and having my attention arrested midway by the +face of a girl in the third row. She was a strikingly beautiful +child, with that combination of bright auburn, almost flaming, +hair with dark eyebrows, dark eyelashes, dark eyes, which of +itself arrests your gaze, being so rare; and those eyes seemed to +challenge me half scornfully and ask, 'Are you really taken in by +all this?' Well, I soon stopped the performance and required each +child to read separately: whereupon it turned out that, in the +upper standards of this school of 70 or 80 children, one only-- +this disdainful girl--could get through half a dozen easy +sentences with credit. She read well and intelligently, being +accustomed to read to herself, at home. + +I daresay that this bad old method of block-reading is dead by +this time. + +Reading aloud and _separately_ is excellent for several purposes. +It tests capacity: it teaches correct pronunciation by practice, +as well as the mastery of difficult words: it provides a good +teacher with frequent opportunities of helping the child to +understand what he reads. + +But as his schooling proceeds he should be accustomed more and +more to read to himself: for that, I repeat, is the master-key. + + + + +LECTURE IV + +CHILDREN'S READING (II) + +WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1917 + + +I + +In our talk, Gentlemen, about Children's Reading we left off upon +a list, drawn up by Mr Holmes in his book 'What Is, and What +Might Be,' of the things that, apart from physical nourishment +and exercise, a child instinctively desires. + +He desires + (1) to talk and to listen; + (2) to act (in the dramatic sense of the word); + (3) to draw, paint and model; + (4) to dance and sing; + (5) to know the why of things; + (6) to construct things. + +Let us scan through this catalogue briefly, in its order. + +No. (1). _To talk and to listen_--Mr Holmes calls this _the +communicative instinct._ Every child wants to talk with those +about him, or at any rate with his chosen ones--his parents, +brothers, sisters, nurse, governess, gardener, boot-boy (if he +possess these last)--with other children, even if his dear papa +is poor: to tell them what he has been doing, seeing, feeling: +and to listen to what they have to tell him. + +Nos. (2), (3), (4). _To act_--our author calls this the +'dramatic instinct': _to draw, paint and model_--this the +'artistic instinct'--_to dance and sing_--this the 'musical +instinct.' But obviously all these are what Aristotle would call +'mimetic' instincts: 'imitative' (in a sense I shall presently +explain); even as No. (2)--acting--like No. (1)--talking and +listening--comes of craving for sympathy. In fact, as we go on, +you will see that these instincts overlap and are not strictly +separable, though we separate them just now for convenience. + +No. (5). _To know the why of things_--the 'inquisitive instinct.' +This, being the one which gives most trouble to parents, parsons, +governesses, conventional schoolmasters--to all grown-up persons +who pretend to know what they don't and are ashamed to tell what +they do--is of course the most ruthlessly repressed. + + 'The time is come,' the Infant said, + 'To talk of many things: + Of babies, storks and cabbages + And-- + +--having studied the Evangelists' Window facing the family pew-- + + And whether cows have wings.' + +The answer, in my experience, is invariably stern, and 'in the +negative': in tolerant moments compromising on 'Wait, like a good +boy, and see.' + +But we singled out this instinct and discussed it in our last +lecture. + +No. (6). _To construct things_--the 'constructive instinct.' I +quote Mr Holmes here: + + After analysis comes synthesis. The child pulls his toys + to pieces in order that he may, if possible, reconstruct + them. The ends that he sets before himself are those which + Comte Set before the human race--_savoir pour prevoir, afin + de pouvoir: induire pour deduire, afin de construire._ The + desire to make things, to build things up, to control ways + and means, to master the resources of nature, to put his + knowledge of her laws and facts to practical use, is strong in + his soul. Give him a box of bricks, and he will spend hours + in building and rebuilding houses, churches.... Set him on a + sandy shore with a spade and a pail, and he will spend hours + in constructing fortified castles with deep encircling moats. + +Again obviously this constructive instinct overlaps with the +imitative ones. Construction, for example, enters into the art of +making mud-pies and has also been applied in the past to great +poetry. If you don't keep a sharp eye in directing this instinct, +it may conceivably end in an "Othello" or in a "Divina Commedia." + +II + +Without preaching on any of the others, however, I take three of +the six instincts scheduled by Mr Holmes--the three which you +will allow to be almost purely imitative. + +They are: + + Acting, + Drawing, painting, modelling, + Dancing and singing. + +Now let us turn to the very first page of Aristotle's "Poetics," +and what do we read? + + Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and dithyrambic poetry, + and the greater part of the music of the flute and of the + lyre, are all, in general, modes of imitation.... + + For as their are persons who represent a number of things + by colours and drawings, and others vocally, so it is with + the arts above mentioned. They all imitate by rhythm, + language, harmony, singly or combined. + +Even dancing (he goes on) + + imitates character, emotion and action, by rhythmical + movement. + +Now, having touched on mud-pies, let me say a few words upon +these aesthetic imitative instincts of acting, dancing, singing +before I follow Aristotle into his explanation of the origin of +Poetry, which I think we may agree to be the highest subject of +our Art of Reading and to hold promise of its highest reward. + +Every wise mother sings or croons to her child and dances him on +her knee. She does so by sure instinct, long before the small +body can respond or his eyes--always blue at first and +unfathomably aged--return her any answer. It lulls him into the +long spells of sleep so necessary for his first growth. By and +by, when he has found his legs, he begins to skip, and even +before he has found articulate speech, to croon for himself. Pass +a stage, and you find him importing speech, drama, dance, +incantation, into his games with his playmates. Watch a cluster +of children as they enact "Here we go gathering nuts in May"-- +eloquent line: it is just what they are doing!--or "Here come +three Dukes a-riding," or "Fetch a pail of water," or "Sally, +Sally Waters": + + Sally, Sally Waters, + Sitting in the sand, + Rise, Sally--rise, Sally, + For a young man. + +Suitor presented, accepted [I have noted, by the way, that this +game is more popular with girls than with boys]; wedding ceremony +hastily performed--so hastily, it were more descriptive to say +'taken for granted'--within the circle; the dancers, who join +hands and resume the measure, chanting + + Now you are married, we wish you joy-- + First a girl and then a boy + +--the order, I suspect, dictated by exigencies of rhyme rather +than of Eugenics, as Dryden confessed that a rhyme had often +helped him to a thought. And yet I don't know; for the incantation +goes on to redress the balance in a way that looks scientific: + + Ten years after, son and daughter, + And now-- + +[Practically!] + + And now, Miss Sally, come out of the water. + +The players end by supplying the applause which, in these days of +division of labour, is commonly left to the audience. + +III + +Well, there you have it all: acting, singing, dancing, choral +movement--enlisted ancillary to the domestic drama: and, when you +start collecting evidence of these imitative instincts blent in +childhood the mass will soon amaze you and leave you no room to +be surprised that many learned scholars, on the supposition that +uncivilised man is a child more or less--and at least so much of +child that one can argue through children's practice to his--have +found the historical origin of Poetry itself in these primitive +performances: 'communal poetry' as they call it. I propose to +discuss with you (may be neat term) in a lecture not belonging to +this 'course' the likelihood that what we call specifically 'the +Ballad,' or 'Ballad Poetry,' originated thus. Here is a wider +question. Did all Poetry develop out of this, historically, as a +process in time and in fact? These scholars (among whom I will +instance one of the most learned--Dr Gummere) hold that it did: +and I may take a passage from Dr Gummere's "Beginnings of Poetry" +(p. 95) to show you how they call in the practice of savage races +to support their theory. The Botocudos of South America are-- +according to Dr Paul Ehrenreich who has observed them[1]--an +ungentlemanly tribe, 'very low in the social scale.' + + The Botocudos are little better than a leaderless horde, and + pay scant respect to their chieftain; they live only for their + immediate bodily needs, and take small thought for the + morrow, still less for the past. No traditions, no legends, are + abroad to tell them of their forbears. They still use gestures + to express feeling and ideas; while the number of words which + imitate a given sound `is extraordinarily great' An action or + an object is named by imitating the sound peculiar to it; and + sounds are doubled to express greater intensity.... To speak is + _ao_; to speak loudly or to sing, is _ao-ao._ And now for their + aesthetic life, their song, dance, poetry, as described by this + accurate observer. 'On festal occasions the whole horde meets + by night round the camp fire for a dance. Men and women + alternating ... form a circle; each dancer lays his arms about + the necks of his two neighbours, and the entire ring begins to + turn to the right or to the left, while all the dancers stamp + strongly and in rhythm the foot that is advanced, and drag + after it the other foot. Now with drooping heads they press + closer and closer together; now they widen the circle. + Throughout the dance resounds a monotonous song to which + they stamp their feet. Often one can hear nothing but a + continually repeated _kalani aha!_...Again, however, short + improvised songs, in which we are told the doings of the day, + the reasons for rejoicing, what not, as "Good hunting," or "Now + we have something to eat," or "Brandy is good."' + +'As to the aesthetic value' of these South American utterances, +Dr Gummere asks in a footnote, 'how far is it inferior to the +sonorous commonplaces of our own verse--say "The Psalm of Life?"' +I really cannot answer that question. Which do you prefer, +Gentlemen?--'Life is real, life is earnest,' or 'Now we have +something to eat'? I must leave you to settle it with the Food +Controller. + +The Professor goes on: + + 'Now and then, too, an individual begins a song, and is + answered by the rest in chorus.... _They never sing without + dancing, never dance without singing, and have but one word + to express both song and dance._' + + As the unprejudiced reader sees [Dr Gummere proceeds] + this clear and admirable account confirms the doctrine of + early days revived with fresh ethnological evidence in the + writings of Dr Brown and of Adam Smith, that dance, poetry + and song were once a single and inseparable function, and is + in itself fatal to the idea of rhythmic prose, of solitary + recitation, as foundations of poetry.... All poetry is + communal, holding fast to the rhythm of consent as to the + one sure fact. + +IV + +Now I should tell you, Gentlemen, that I hold such utterances as +this last--whatever you may think of the utterances of the +Botocudos--to be exorbitant: that I distrust all attempts to +build up (say) "Paradise Lost" historically from the yells and +capers of recondite savages. 'Life is real, life is earnest' may +be no better aesthetically (I myself think it a little better) +than 'Now we have something to eat' 'Brandy is good' may rival +Pindar's [Greek: Arioton men udor], and indeed puts what it +contains of truth with more of finality, less of provocation +(though Pindar at once follows up [Greek: Arioton men udor] with +exquisite poetry): but you cannot--truly you cannot--exhibit the +steps which lead up from 'Brandy is good' to such lines as + + Thus with the year + Seasons return; but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, + Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. + +I bend over the learned page pensively, and I seem to see a +Botocudo Professor--though not high 'in the social scale,' they +may have such things--visiting Cambridge on the last night of the +Lent races and reporting of its inhabitants as follows: + + They pay scant heed to their chiefs: they live only for their + immediate bodily needs, and take small thought for the + morrow. On festal occasions the whole horde meets by night + round the camp fire for a dance. Each dancer lays his arms + about the necks of his two neighbours, stamping strongly + with one foot and dragging the other after it. Now with + drooping heads they press closer and closer together; now + they widen the circle. Often one can hear nothing but a + continually repeated _kalani aha,_ or again one hears short + improvised songs in which we are told the doings of the day, + the reasons for rejoicing, what not, as 'Good hunting,' 'Good + old--'[naming a tribal God], or in former times '_Now_ we shall + be but a short while,' or '_Woemma!_' Now and then, too, an + individual begins a song and is answered by the rest in + chorus--such as + + For he is an estimable person + Beyond possibility of gainsaying. + + The chorus twice repeats this and asseverates that they + are following a custom common to the flotilla, the + expeditionary force, and even their rude seats of learning. + +And Dr Gummere, or somebody else, comments: 'As the unprejudiced +reader will see, this clear and admirable account confirms our +hypothesis that in communal celebration we have at once the +origin and model of three poems, "The Faerie Queene," "Paradise +Lost" and "In Memoriam," recorded as having been composed by +members of this very tribe.' + +Although we have been talking of instincts, we are not concerned +here with the steps by which the child, or the savage, following +an instinct attains to _write_ poetry; but, more modestly, with +the instinct by which the child _likes_ it, and the way in which +he can be best encouraged to read and improve this natural +liking. Nor are we even concerned here to define Poetry. It +suffices our present purpose to consider Poetry as the sort of +thing the poets write. + +But obviously if we find a philosopher discussing poetry without +any reference to children, and independently basing it upon the +very same imitative instincts which we have noted in children, we +have some promise of being on the right track. + +V + +So I return to Aristotle. Aristotle (I shall in fairness say) +does not anticipate Dr Gummere, to contradict or refute him; he +may even be held to support him incidentally. But he sticks to +business, and this is what he says ("Poetics," C. IV): + + Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, and + these natural causes. First the instinct to imitate is + implanted in man from his childhood, and in this he differs + from other animals, being the most imitative of them all. Man + gets his first learning through imitation, and all men delight + in seeing things imitated. This is clearly shown by + experience.... + + To imitate, then, being instinctive in our nature, so too + we have an instinct for harmony and rhythm, metre being + manifestly a species of rhythm: and man, being born to these + instincts and little by little improving them, out of his early + improvisations created Poetry. + +Combining these two instincts, with him, we arrive at _harmonious +imitation._ Well and good. But what is it we imitate in poetry?-- +noble things or mean things? After considering this, putting mean +things aside as unworthy, and voting for the nobler--which must +at the same time be true, since without truth there can be no +real nobility--Aristotle has to ask `In what way true? True to +ordinary life, with its observed defeats of the right by the +wrong? or true, as again instinct tells good men it should be, +_universally_?' So he arrives at his conclusion that a true thing +is not necessarily truth of fact in a world where truth in fact +is so often belied or made meaningless--not the record that +Alcibiades went somewhere and suffered something--but truth to +the Universal, the superior demand of our conscience. In such a +way only we know that "The Tempest" or "Paradise Lost" or "The +Ancient Mariner" or "Prometheus Unbound" can be truer than any +police report. Yet we know that they are truer in essence, and in +significance, since they appeal to eternal verities--since they +imitate the Universal--whereas the police report chronicles +(faithfully, as in duty bound, even usefully in its way) events +which may, nay must, be significant somehow but cannot at best be +better to us than phenomena, broken ends and shards. + +VI + +I return to the child. Clearly in obeying the instinct which I +have tried to illustrate, he is searching to realise himself; +and, as educators, we ought to help this effort--or, at least, +not to hinder it. + +Further, if we agree with Aristotle, in this searching to realise +himself through imitation, what will the child most nobly and +naturally imitate? He will imitate what Aristotle calls 'the +Universal,' the superior demand. And does not this bring us back +to consent with what I have been preaching from the start in this +course--that to realise ourselves in _What Is_ not only in degree +transcends mere knowledge and activity, _What Knows_ and _What +Does,_ but transcends it in kind? It is not only what the child +unconsciously longs for: it is that for which (in St Paul's +words) 'the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain +together until now'; craving for this (I make you the admission) +as emotionally, as the heart may be thrilled, the breast surge, +the eyes swell with tears, at a note drawn from the violin: +feeling that somewhere, beyond reach, we have a lost sister, and +she speaks to our soul. + +VII + +Who, that has been a child, has not felt this surprise of beauty, +the revelation, the call of it? + + The sounding cataract + Haunted me like a passion ... + +--yes, or a rainbow on the spray against a cliff; or a vista of +lawns between descending woods; or a vision of fish moving in a +pool under the hazel's shadow? Who has not felt the small +surcharged heart labouring with desire to express it? + +I preach to you that the base of all Literature, of all Poetry, +of all Theology, is one, and stands on one rock: _the very +highest Universal Truth is something so simple that a child may +understand it._ This, surely, was in Jesus' mind when he said `I +thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast +hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed +them unto babes.' + +For as the Universe is one, so the individual human souls, that +apprehend it, have no varying values intrinsically, but one equal +value. They vary but in power to apprehend, and this may be more +easily hindered than helped by the conceit begotten of finite +knowledge. I shall even dare to quote of this Universal Truth, +the words I once hardily put into the mouth of John Wesley +concerning divine Love: 'I see now that if God's love reach up to +every star and down to every poor soul on earth, it must be +vastly simple; so simple that all dwellers on Earth may be +assured of it--as all who have eyes may be assured of the planet +shining yonder at the end of the street--and so vast that all +bargaining is below it, and they may inherit it without +considering their deserts.' I believe this to be strictly and +equally true of the appeal which Poetry makes to each of us, +child or man, in his degree. As Johnson said of Gray's "Elegy," +it 'abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and +with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.' It exalts +us through the best of us, by telling us something new yet not +strange, something that we _recognise,_ something that we too +have known, or surmised, but had never the delivering speech to +tell. 'There is a pleasure in poetic pains,' says Wordsworth: +but, Gentlemen, if you have never felt the travail, yet you have +still to understand the bliss of deliverance. + +VIII + +If, then, you consent with me thus far in theory, let us now +drive at practice. You have (we will say) a class of thirty or +forty in front of you. We will assume that they know _a-b, ab,_ +can at least spell out their words. You will choose a passage for +them, and you will not (if you are wise) choose a passage from +"Paradise Lost": your knowledge telling you that "Paradise Lost" +was written, late in his life, by a great _virtuoso,_ and older +men (of whom I, sad to say, am one) assuring you that to taste +the Milton of "Paradise Lost" a man must have passed his +thirtieth year. You take the early Milton: you read out this, for +instance, from "L'Allegro": + + Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee + Jest and youthful Jollity, + Quips, and Cranks, and wanton wiles, + Nods and Becks, and wreathed Smiles + Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, + And love to live in dimple sleek; + Sport that wrinkled Care derides, + And Laughter holding both his sides.... + +Go on: just read it to them. They won't know who Hebe was, but +you can tell them later. The metre is taking hold of them (in my +experience the metre of "L'Allegro" can be relied upon to grip +children) and anyway they can see `Laughter holding both his +sides': they recognise it as if they saw the picture. Go on +steadily: + + Come, and trip it as ye go, + On the light fantastick toe; + And in thy right hand lead with thee + The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty; + And, if I give thee honour due, + Mirth, admit me of thy crew-- + +Do not pause and explain what a Nymph is, or why Liberty is the +'Mountain Nymph'! Go on reading: the Prince has always to break +through briers to kiss the Sleeping Beauty awake. Go on with the +incantation, calling him, persuading him, that he is the Prince +and she is worth it. Go on reading-- + + Mirth, admit me of thy crew, + To live with her, and live with thee, + In unreproved pleasures free; + To hear the lark begin his flight, + And singing startle the dull night, + From his watch-towre in the skies, + Till the dappled dawn doth rise. + +At this point--still as you read without stopping to explain, the +child certainly feels that he is being led to something. He knows +the lark: but the lark's 'watch-towre'--he had never thought of +that: and 'the dappled dawn'-yes that's just _it,_ now he comes +to think: + + Then to come, in spite of sorrow, + And at my window bid good-morrow, + Through the sweet-briar or the vine + Or the twisted eglantine; + While the cock with lively din + Scatters the rear of Darkness thin; + And to the stack, or the barn door, + Stoutly struts his dames before: + Oft listening how the hounds and horn + Cheerily rouse the slumbering Morn, + From the side of some hoar hill, + Through the high wood echoing shrill: + Sometime walking, not unseen, + By hedgerow elms on hillocks green, + Right against the eastern gate, + Where the great sun begins his state, + Robed in flames and amber light, + The clouds in thousand liveries dight; + While the ploughman, near at hand, + Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, + And the milkmaid singeth blithe, + And the mower whets his sithe, + And every shepherd tells his tale + Under the hawthorn in the dale. + +Don't stop (I say) to explain that Hebe was (for once) the +legitimate daughter of Zeus and, as such, had the privilege to +draw wine for the gods. Don't even stop, just yet, to explain who +the gods were. Don't discourse on amber, otherwise ambergris; +don't explain that 'gris' in this connexion doesn't mean +'grease'; don't trace it through the Arabic into Noah's Ark; +don't prove its electrical properties by tearing up paper into +little bits and attracting them with the mouth-piece of your pipe +rubbed on your sleeve. Don't insist philologically that when +every shepherd 'tells his tale' he is not relating an anecdote +but simply keeping tally of his flock. + +Just go on reading, as well as you can; and be sure that when the +children get the thrill of it, for which you wait, they will be +asking more questions, and pertinent ones, than you are able to +answer. + +IX + +This advice, to be sure, presupposes of the teacher himself some +capacity of reading aloud, and reading aloud is not taught in our +schools. In our Elementary Schools, in which few of the pupils +contemplate being called to Holy Orders or to the Bar, it is +practised, indeed, but seldom taught as an art. In our Secondary +and Public Schools it is neither taught nor practised: as I know +to my cost--and you, to yours, Gentlemen, on whom I have had to +practise. + +But let the teacher take courage. First let him read a passage +'at the long breath'--as the French say--aloud, and persuasively +as he can. Now and then he may pause to indicate some particular +beauty, repeating the line before he proceeds. But he should be +sparing of these interruptions. When Laughter, for example, is +already 'holding both his sides' it cannot be less than +officious, a work of supererogation, to stop and hold them for +him; and he who obeys the counsel of perfection will read +straight to the end and then recur to particular beauties. Next +let him put up a child to continue with the tale, and another and +another, just as in a construing class. While the boy is reading, +the teacher should _never_ interrupt: he should wait, and return +afterwards upon a line that has been slurred or wrongly +emphasised. When the children have done reading he should invite +questions on any point they have found puzzling: it is with the +operation of poetry on _their_ minds that his main business lies. +Lastly, he may run back over significant points they have missed. + +'And is that all the method?'-Yes, that is all the method. 'So +simple as that?'-Yes, even so simple as that, and (I claim) even +so wise, seeing that it just lets the author--Chaucer or +Shakespeare or Milton or Coleridge--have his own way with the +young plant--just lets them drop 'like the gentle rain from +heaven,' and soak in. + + The moving Moon went up the sky, + And no where did abide: + Softly she was going up, + And a star or two beside. + +Do you really want to chat about _that_? Cannot you trust it? + + The stars were dim, and thick the night, + The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; + From the sails the dew did drip-- + Till clomb above the eastern bar + The horned Moon, with one bright star + Within the nether tip. + +_Must_ you tell them that for the Moon to hold a star anywhere +within her circumference is an astronomical impossibility? Very +well, then; tell it. But tell it afterwards, and put it away +quietly. For the quality of Poetry is not strained. Let the rain +soak; then use your hoe, and gently; and still trust Nature; by +which, I again repeat to you, all spirit attracts all spirit as +inevitably as all matter attracts all matter. + +'Strained.' I am glad that memory flew just here to the word of +Portia's: for it carries me on to a wise page of Dr Corson's, and +a passage in which, protesting against the philologers who cram +our children's handbooks with irrelevant information that but +obscures what Chaucer or Shakespeare _mean,_ he breaks out in +Chaucer's own words: + + Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde, + And turnen substaunce into accident! + +(Yes, and make the accident the substance!)--as he insists that +the true subject of literary study is the author's meaning; and +the true method a surrender of the mind to that meaning, with +what Wordsworth calls 'a wise passiveness': + + The eye--it cannot choose but see; + We cannot bid the ear be still; + Our bodies feel, where'er they be, + Against or with our will. + + Nor less I deem that there are Powers + Which of themselves our minds impress; + That we can feed this mind of ours + In a wise passiveness. + + Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum + Of things for ever speaking, + That nothing of itself will come, + But we must still be seeking? + +X + +I have been talking to-day about children; and find that most of +the while I have been thinking, if but subconsciously, of poor +children. Now, at the end, you may ask 'Why, lecturing here at +Cambridge, is he preoccupied with poor children who leave school +at fourteen and under, and thereafter read no poetry?'...Oh, yes! +I know all about these children and the hopeless, wicked waste; +these with a common living-room to read in, a father tired after +his day's work, and (for parental encouragement) just the two +words 'Get out!' A Scots domine writes in his log: + + I have discovered a girl with a sense of humour. I asked my + qualifying class to draw a graph of the attendance at a village + kirk. 'And you must explain away any rise or fall,' I said. + + Margaret Steel had a huge drop one Sunday, and her explanation + was 'Special Collection for Missions.' Next Sunday the + Congregation was abnormally large: Margaret wrote 'Change of + Minister.'... Poor Margaret! When she is fourteen, she will go + out into the fields, and in three years she will be an ignorant + country bumpkin. + +And again: + + Robert Campbell (a favourite pupil) left the school to-day. He + had reached the age-limit.... Truly it is like death: I stand + by a new made grave, and I have no hope of a resurrection. + Robert is dead. + +Precisely because I have lived on close terms with this, and the +wicked waste of it, I appeal to you who are so much more +fortunate than this Robert or this Margaret and will have far +more to say in the world, to think of them--how many they are. I +am not sentimentalising. When an Elementary Schoolmaster spreads +himself and tells me he looks upon every child entering his +school as a potential Lord Chancellor, I answer that, as I +expect, so I should hope, to die before seeing the world a +Woolsack. Jack cannot ordinarily be as good as his master; if he +were, he would be a great deal better. You have given Robert a +vote, however, and soon you will have to give it to Margaret. Can +you not give them also, in their short years at school, something +to sustain their souls in the long Valley of Humiliation? + +Do you remember this passage in "The Pilgrim's Progress"--as the +pilgrims passed down that valley? + + Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a + Boy feeding his Father's Sheep. The Boy was in very mean + Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured + Countenance, and as he sate by himself he Sung. Hark, said + Mr Greatheart, to what the Shepherd's Boy saith. + +Well, it was a very pretty song, about Contentment. + + He that is down need fear no fall + He that is low, no Pride: + He that is humble ever shall + Have God to be his Guide. + +But I care less for its subject than for the song. Though life +condemn him to live it through in the Valley of Humiliation, I +want to hear the Shepherd Boy singing. + + + +[Footnote 1: The reference given is _Zeitschr. f. Ethnologie_, +XIX. 30 ff.] + + + + +LECTURE V + +ON READING FOR EXAMINATIONS + +WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 1917 + + +I + +You, Gentlemen, who so far have followed with patience this +course of lectures, advertised, maybe too ambitiously, as 'On the +Art of Reading,' will recall to your memory, when I challenge it +across the intervals of Vacation, that three propositions have +been pretty steadily held before you. + +The _first_: (bear me out) that, man's life being of the length +it is, and his activities multifarious as they are, out of the +mass of printed matter already loaded and still being shot upon +this planet, he _must_ make selection. There is no other way. + +The _second_: that--the time and opportunity being so brief, the +mass so enormous, and the selection therefore so difficult--he +should select the books that are best for him, and take them +_absolutely,_ not frittering his time upon books written about +and around the best: that--in their order, of course--the primary +masterpieces shall come first, and the secondary second, and so +on; and mere chat about any of them last of all. + +My _third_ proposition (perhaps more discutable) has been that, +the human soul's activities being separated, so far as we can +separate them, into _What Does, What Knows, What Is_--to _be_ +such-and-such a man ranks higher than either _knowing_ or _doing_ +this, that, or the other: that it transcends all man's activity +upon phenomena, even a Napoleon's: all his housed store of +knowledge, though it be a Casaubon's or a Mark Pattison's: that +only by learning to _be_ can we understand or reach, as we have +an instinct to reach, to our right place in the scheme of things: +and that, any way, all the greatest literature commands this +instinct. To be Hamlet--to feel yourself Hamlet--is more +important than killing a king or even knowing all there is to be +known about a text. Now most of us have been Hamlet, more or +less: while few of us, I trust, have ever murdered a monarch: and +still fewer, perhaps, can hope to know all that is to be known of +the text of the play. But for value, Gentlemen, let us not rank +these three achievements by order of their rarity. Shakespeare +means us to feel--to _be_--Hamlet. That is all: and from the play +it is the best we can get. + +II + +Now in talking to you, last term, about children I had perforce +to lay stress on the point that, with all this glut of literature, +the mass of children in our commonwealth who leave school at +fourteen go forth starving. + +But you are happier. You are happier, not in having your +selection of reading in English done for you at school (for you +have in the Public Schools scarce any such help): but happier (1) +because the time of learning is so largely prolonged, and (2) +because this most difficult office of sorting out from the mass +what you should read as most profitable has been tentatively +performed for you by us older men for your relief. For example, +those of you-'if any,' as the Regulations say--who will, a week +or two hence, be sitting for Section A of the Medieval and Modern +Languages Tripos, have been spared, all along, the laborious +business of choosing what you should read or read with particular +attention for the good of your souls. Is Chaucer your author? +Then you will have read (or ought to have read) "The Parlement of +Fowls," the "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales, "The Knight's +Tale," "The Man of Law's Tale," "The Nun Priest's Tale," "The +Doctor's Tale," "The Pardoner's Tale" with its Prologue, "The +Friar's Tale." You were not dissuaded from reading "Troilus;" you +were not forbidden to read all the Canterbury Tales, even the +naughtiest; but the works that I have mentioned have been +'prescribed' for you. So, of Shakespeare, we do not discourage +you (at all events, intentionally) from reading "Macbeth," +"Othello," "As You Like It," "The Tempest," any play you wish. In +other years we 'set' each of these in its turn. But for this Year +of Grace we insist upon "King John," "The Merchant of Venice," +"King Henry IV, Part I," "Much Ado about Nothing," "Hamlet," +"King Lear," 'certain specified works'--and so on, with other +courses of study. Why is this done? Be fair to us, Gentlemen. We +do it not only to accommodate the burden to your backs, to avoid +overtaxing one-and-a-half or two years of study; not merely to +guide you that you do not dissipate your reading, that you shall +--with us, at any rate--know where you are. We do it chiefly, and +honestly--you likewise being honest--to give you each year, in +each prescribed course, a sound nucleus of knowledge, out of +which, later, your minds can reach to more. We are not, in the +last instance, praiseworthy or blameworthy for your range. I +think, perhaps, too little of a man's _range_ in his short while +here between (say) nineteen and twenty-two. For anything I care, +the kernel may be as small as you please. To plant it wholesome, +for a while to tend it wholesome, then to show it the sky and +that it is wide--not a hot-house, nor a brassy cupola over a man, +but an atmosphere shining up league on league; to reach the +moment of saying 'All this now is yours, if you have the +perseverance as I have taught you the power, _coelum nactus es, +hoc exorna_': this, even in our present Tripos, we endeavour to +do. + +III + +All very well. But, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning asked, + + Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers? + +'Yes,' I hear you ingeminate; 'but what about Examinations? We +thank you, sirs, for thus relieving and guiding us: we +acknowledge your excellent intentions. But in practice you hang +up a bachelor's gown and hood on a pole, and right under and just +in front of it you set the examination-barrier. For this in +practice we run during three years or so, and to this all the +time you are exhorting, directing us--whether you mean it or not, +though we suspect that you cannot help yourselves.' Yes; and, as +labouring swimmers will turn their eyes even to a little boat in +the offing, I hear you pant 'This man at all events--always so +insistent that good literature teaches _What Is_ rather than +_What Knows_--will bring word that we may float on our backs, +bathe, enjoy these waters and be refreshed, instead of striving +through them competitive for a goal. He _must_ condemn literary +examinations, nine-tenths of which treat Literature as matter of +Knowledge merely.' + +IV + +I am sorry, Gentlemen: I cannot bring you so much of comfort as +all that. I have a love of the past which, because it goes down +to the roots, has sometimes been called Radicalism: I could never +consent with Bacon's gibe at antiquity as _pessimum augurium,_ +and Examinations have a very respectable antiquity. Indeed no +University to my knowledge has ever been able in the long run to +do without them: and although certain Colleges--King's College +here, and New College at Oxford--for long persevered in the +attempt, the result was not altogether happy, and in the end they +have consigned with custom. + +Of course Universities have experimented with the _process._ Let +me give you two or three ancient examples, which may help you to +see (to vary Wordsworth) that though 'the Form decays, the +function never dies.' + +(1) I begin with most ancient Bologna, famous for Civil Law. At +Bologna the process of graduation--of admission to the _jus +docendi,_ 'right to teach'--consisted of two parts, the Private +Examination and the Public (_conventus_): + + The private Examination was the real test of + competence, the so-called public Examination being in + practice a mere ceremony. Before admission to each of these + tests the candidate was presented by the Consiliarius of his + Nation to the Rector for permission to enter it, and swore + that he had complied with all the statutable conditions, that + he would give no more than the statutable fees or + entertainments to the Rector himself, the Doctor, or his + fellow-students, and that he would obey the Rector. Within a + period of eight days before the Examination the candidate + was presented by 'his own' Doctor or by some other Doctor + or by two Doctors to the Archdeacon, the presenting Doctor + being required to have satisfied himself by private + examination of his presentee's fitness. Early on the morning + of the Examination, after attending a Mass of the Holy + Ghost, the candidate appeared before the assembled College + and was assigned by one of the Doctors present two passages + (_puncta_) in the Civil or Canon Law as the case might be. He + then retired to his house to study the passages, in doing which + it would appear that he had the assistance of the presenting + Doctor. Later in the day the Doctors were summoned to the + Cathedral, or some other public building, by the Archdeacon, + who presided over but took no active part in the ensuing + examination. The candidate was then introduced to the + Archdeacon and Doctors by the presenting Doctor or Promotor + as he was styled. The Prior of the College then administered a + number of oaths in which the candidate promised respect to + that body and solemnly renounced all the rights of which the + College had succeeded in robbing all Doctors of other Colleges + not included in its ranks. The candidate then gave a lecture or + exposition of the two prepared passages: after which he was + examined upon them by two of the Doctors appointed by the + College. Other Doctors might ask supplementary questions of + Law (which they were required to swear that they had not + previously communicated to the candidate) arising more + indirectly out of the passages selected, or might suggest + objections to the answers. With a tender regard for the + feelings of their comrades at this 'rigorous and tremendous + Examination' (as they style it) the Statutes required the + Examiner to treat the examinee as _his own son._ + +But, knowing what we do of parental discipline in the Middle +Ages, we need not take this to enjoin a weak excess of leniency. + + The Examination concluded, the votes of the Doctors present + were taken by ballot and the candidate's fate determined by the + majority, the decision being announced by the Archdeacon. + +(2) Let us pass to the great and famous University of Paris. At +Paris + + In 1275, if not earlier, a preliminary test (or 'Responsions') + was instituted to ascertain the fitness of those who wanted to + take part in the public performance. At these 'Responsions' + which took place in the December before the Lent in which the + candidate was to determine, he had to dispute in Grammar and + Logic with a Master. If this test was passed in a satisfactory + manner, the candidate was admitted to the _Examen + Baccalariandorum,_ Examination for the Baccalaureate, which + was conducted by a board of Examiners appointed by each Nation + for its own candidates. The duty of the Examiners was twofold, + firstly to ascertain by inspecting the _schedules_ given by + his Masters that the candidate had completed the necessary + residence and attended Lectures in the prescribed subjects, and + secondly to examine him in the contents of his books. If he + passed this Examination, he was admitted to determine. + + Determination was a great day in the student's University + life. It retained much of its primitive character of a + student's festivity. It was not, it would seem, till the middle + of the fifteenth century that the student's Master was required + to be officially present at it. The Speech-day of a Public + School if combined with considerably more than the license of + the Oxford Encaenia or degree day here in May week would + perhaps be the nearest modern equivalent of these medieval + exhibitions of rising talent. Every effort was made to attract + to the Schools as large an audience as possible, not merely of + Masters or fellow-students, but if possible of ecclesiastical + dignitaries and other distinguished persons. The friends of a + Determiner who was not successful in drawing a more + distinguished audience, would run out into the streets and + forcibly drag chance passers-by into the School. Wine was + provided at the Determiner's expense in the Schools: and the + day ended in a feast [given in imitation of the Master's + Inception-banquets], even if dancing or torch-light processions + were forborne in deference to authority. + +I may add here in parenthesis that the thirstiness, always so +remarkable in the medieval man whether it make him strange to you +or help to ingratiate him as a human brother, seems to have +followed him even into the Tripos. 'It was not only after a +University exercise,' says the historian (Rashdall, Vol. II, p. +687), 'but during its progress that the need of refreshment was +apt to be felt.... Many Statutes allude--some by way of +prohibition, but not always--to the custom of providing wine for +the Examiners or Temptator [good word] before, during, or after +the Examination. At Heidelberg the Dean of the Faculty might +order in drinks, the candidate not. At Leipsic the candidate is +forbidden to treat [_facere propinam_] the Examiners _before_ the +Examination: which seems sound. At Vienna (medical school) he is +required to spend a florin "_pro confectionibus_".' + +V + +Now when we come to England--that is, to Oxford and Cambridge, +which ever had queer ways of their own--we find, strange to say, +for centuries no evidence at all of any kind of examination. As +for _competitive_ examinations like the defunct Mathematical and +Classical Triposes here--with Senior Wranglers, Wooden Spoons and +what lay between--of all European Universities, Louvain alone +used the system and may have invented it. At Louvain the +candidates for the Mastership were placed in three classes, in +each of which the names were arranged in order of merit. The +first class were styled _Rigorosi_ (Honour-men), the second +_Transibiles_ (Pass-men), the third _Gratiosi_ (Charity-passes); +while a fourth class, not publicly announced, contained the names +of those who could not be passed on any terms. '_Si autem (quod +absit!),_' says the Statute, '_aliqui inveniantur refutabiles, +erant de quarto ordine._' 'These competitive examinations'--I +proceed in the historian's words--'contributed largely to raise +Louvain to the high position as a place of learning and education +which it retained before the Universities were roused from their +15th century torpor by the revival of Learning.' Pope Adrian VI +was one of its famous _Primuses,_ and Jansen another. The College +which produced a _Primus_ enjoyed three days' holiday, during +which its bell was rung continuously day and night. + +At Oxford and Cambridge (I repeat) we find in their early days no +trace of any examination at all. To be sure--and as perhaps you +know--the first archives of this University were burned in the +'Town and Gown' riots of 1381 by the Townsmen, whose descendants +Erasmus describes genially as 'combining the utmost rusticity +with the utmost malevolence.' But no student will doubt that +Cambridge used pretty much the same system as Oxford, and the +system was this:--When a candidate presented himself before the +Chancellor for a License in Arts, he had to swear that he had +heard certain books[1], and nine Regent Masters (besides his own +Master, who presented him) were required to depose to their +knowledge (_de scientia_) of his sufficiency: and five others to +their credence (_de credulitate_), says the Statute. Only in the +School of Theology was no room allowed to credulity: there all +the Masters had to depose 'of their knowledge,' and one black +ball excluded. + +VI + +Well, you may urge that this method has a good deal to be said +for it. I will go some way to meet you too: but first you must +pay me the compliment of supposing me a just man. Being a just +man, and there also being presumed in me some acquaintance with +English Literature--not indeed much--not necessarily much--but +enough to distinguish good writing from bad or, at any rate, real +writing from sham, and at least to have an inkling of what these +poets and prose-writers were trying to do--why then I declare to +you that, after two years' reading with a man and talk with him +about literature, I should have a far better sense of his +industry, of his capacity, of his performance and (better) of his +promise, than any examination is likely to yield me. In short I +could sign him up for a first, second or third class, or as +_refutabilis,_ with more accuracy and confidence than I could +derive from taking him as a stranger and pondering his three or +four days' performance in a Tripos. For some of the best men +mature slowly: and some, if not most, of the best writers write +slowly because they have a conscience; and the most original +minds are just those for whom, in a _literary_ examination, it is +hardest to set a paper. + +But the process (you will admit) might be invidious, might lend +itself to misunderstanding, might conceivably even lead to +re-imposition of an oath forbidding the use of a knife or other +sharp implement. And among Colleges rivalry is not altogether +unknown; and dons, if unlike other men in outward aspect, +sometimes resemble them in frailty; and in short I am afraid we +shall have to stick to the old system for a while longer. I am +sorry, Gentlemen: but you see how it works. + +VII + +Yet--and I admit it--the main objection abides: that, while +Literature deals with _What Is_ rather than with _What Knows,_ +Examinations by their very nature test mere Knowledge rather than +anything else: that in the hands of a second-rate examiner they +tend to test knowledge alone, or what passes for knowledge: and +that in the very run of this world most examiners will be +second-rate men: which, if we remind ourselves that they receive +the pay of fifth-rate ones is, after all, considerably better than +we have a right to expect. + +We are dealing, mind you, with _English_ Literature--our own +literature. In examining upon a foreign literature we can +artfully lay our stress upon Knowledge and yet neither raise nor +risk raising the fatal questions 'What is it all _about_?' 'What +is it, and why is it _it_?'-since merely to translate literally a +chorus of the "Agamemnon," or an ode of Pindar's, or a passage +from Dante or Moliere is a creditable performance; to translate +either well is a considerable feat; and to translate either +perfectly is what you can't do, and the examiner knows you can't +do, and you know the examiner can't do, and the examiner knows +you know he can't do. But when we come to a fine thing in our own +language--to a stanza from Shelley's "Adonais" for instance: + + He has outsoared the shadow of our night; + Envy and calumny and hate and pain, + And that unrest which men miscall delight, + Can touch him not and torture not again; + From the contagion of the world's slow stain + He is secure, and now can never mourn + A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; + Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, + With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. + +what can you do with _that_? How can you examine on _that_? Well, +yes, you can request the candidate, to 'Write a short note on the +word _calumny_ above,' or ask 'From what is it derived?' 'What +does he know of "Blackwood's Magazine?"' 'Can he quote any +parallel allusion in Byron?' You can ask all that: but you are +not getting within measurable distance of _it._ Your mind is not +even moving on the right plane. Or let me turn back to some light +and artless Elizabethan thing--say to the Oenone duet in Peele's +"Arraignment of Paris": + + _Oenone._ Fair and fair and twice so fair, + As fair as any may be: + The fairest shepherd on our green, + A love for any lady. + _Paris_ Fair and fair and twice so fair, + As fair as any may be: + Thy love is fair for thee alone, + And for no other lady. + _Oenone._ My love is fair, my love is gay, + As fresh as bin the flowers in May, + And of my love my roundelay, + My merry merry merry roundelay + Concludes with Cupid's curse: + They that do change old love for new, + Pray gods they change for worse.... + My love can pipe, my love can sing, + My love can many a pretty thing, + And of his lovely praises ring + My merry merry merry roundelays + 'Amen' to Cupid's curse: + They that do change old love for new + Pray gods they change for worse. + _Ambo._ Fair and fair and twice so fair, + As fair as any may be: + The fairest shepherd on our green, + A love for any lady.... + +How can anyone examine on _that_? How can anyone solemnly +explain, in a hurry, answering one of five or six questions +selected from a three hours' paper, just why and how that hits +him? And yet, if it hit him not, he is lost. If even so simple a +thing as that--a thing of silly sooth--do not hit him, he is all +unfit to traffic with literature. + +VIII + +You see how delicate a business it is. Examination in Literature, +being by its very nature so closely tied down to be a test of +_Knowledge,_ can hardly, save when used by genius, with care, be +any final test of that which is better than Knowledge, of that +which is the crown of all scholarship, of _understanding._ + +But do not therefore lose heart, even in your reading for +strict purposes of examination. Our talk is of reading. Let +me fetch you some comfort from the sister and correlative, +but harder, art of writing. + +I most potently believe that the very best writing, in verse or +in prose, can only be produced in moments of high excitement, or +rather (as I should put it) in those moments of still and solemn +awe into which a noble excitement lifts a man. Let me speak only +of prose, of which you may more cautiously allow this than of +verse. I think of St Paul's glorious passage, as rendered in the +Authorised Version, concluding the 15th chapter of his First +Epistle to the Corinthians. First, as you know, comes the long, +swaying, scholastic, somewhat sophisticated argument about the +evidence of resurrection; about the corn, 'that which thou +sowest,' the vivification, the change in vivification, and the +rest. All this, almost purely argumentative, should be read +quietly, with none of the _bravura_ which your prize reader +lavishes on it. The argument works up quietly--at once tensely +and sinuously, but very quietly--to conviction. Then comes the +hush; and then the authoritative voice speaking out of it, awful +and slow, 'Behold, I shew you a mystery' ... and then, all the +latent emotion of faith taking hold and lifting the man on its +surge, 'For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised +incorruptible' ... and so, incorruption tolling down corruption, +the trumpet smashes death underfoot in victory: until out of the +midst of tumult, sounds the recall; sober, measured, claiming the +purified heart back to discipline. 'Therefore, my beloved +brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the +work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in +vain in the Lord.' + +I think of that triumphant passage. I think of the sentences with +which Isaak Walton ends his life of Donne. I think of the last +pages of Motley's "Dutch Republic," with its eulogy on William +the Silent so exquisitely closing: + + As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave + nation, and when he died the little children cried in the + streets. + +I think of two great prose passages in Thackeray's "Esmond"; of +Landor's "Dream of Boccaccio" ... and so on: and I am sure that, +in prose or in verse, the best that man can utter flows from him +either in moments of high mental excitement or in the hush of +that _Altitudo_ to which high excitement lifts him. + +But, first now, observe how all these passages--and they are the +first I call to mind--rise like crests on a large bulk of a wave +--St Paul's on a labouring argument about immortality; Motley's +at the conclusion of a heavy task. Long campaigning brings the +reward of Harry Esmond's return to Castlewood, long intrigue of +the author's mind with his characters closes that febrile chapter +in which Harry walks home to break the news of the death of the +Duke of Hamilton--in the early morning through Kensington, where +the newsboys are already shouting it: + + The world was going to its business again, although dukes + lay dead and ladies mourned for them.... So day and night pass + away, and to-morrow comes, and our place knows us not. + Esmond thought of the courier now galloping on the north + road to inform him, who was Earl of Arran yesterday, that he + was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand great + schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant + heart, beating but a few hours since, and now in a little dust + quiescent. + +And on top of this let me assure you that in writing, or learning +to write, solid daily practice is the prescription and 'waiting +upon inspiration' a lure. These crests only rise on the back of +constant labour. Nine days, according to Homer, Leto travailed +with Apollo: but he was Apollo, lord of Song. I _know_ this to be +true of ordinary talent: but, supposing you all to be geniuses, I +am almost as sure that it holds of genius. Listen to this: + + Napoleon I used to say that battles were won by the sudden + flashing of an idea through the brain of a commander at a + certain critical instant. The capacity for generating this + sudden electric spark was military genius.... Napoleon seems + always to have counted upon it, always to have believed that + when the critical moment arrived the wild confusion of the + battlefield would be illuminated for him by that burst of + sudden flame. But if Napoleon had been ignorant of the + prosaic business of his profession, _to which he attended more + closely than any other commander,_ would these moments of + supreme clearness have availed him, or would they have come + to him at all? + +My author thinks not: and I am sure he is right. So, in writing, +only out of long preparation can come the truly triumphant flash: +and I ask you to push this analogy further, into the business of +reading, even of reading for examination. You learn to discipline +yourselves, you acquire the art of marshalling, of concentrating, +driving your knowledge upon a point: and--for you are young--that +point is by no means the final point. Say that it is only an +examination, and silly at that. Still you have been learning the +art, you have been training yourself to be, for a better purpose, +effective. + +IX + +Yet, and when this has been granted, the crucial question abides +and I must not shirk it 'you say that the highest literature +deals with _What Is_ rather than with _What Knows._ It is all +very fine to assure us that testing our knowledge _about_ +Literature and _around_ Literature, and on this side or that side +of Literature, is healthy for us in some oblique way: but can you +examiners examine, or can you not, on Literature in what you call +its own and proper category of _What Is_?' + +So I hear the question--the question which beats and has beaten, +over and over again, good men trying to construct Schools of +English in our Universities. + +With all sense of a responsibility, of a difficulty, that has +lain on my mind for these five years, I answer, Gentlemen, 'Yes, +we ought: yes, we can: and yes, we will.' + +But, for the achievement, we teachers must first know how to +teach. When that is learned, Examination will come as a +consequent, easy, almost trivial matter. I will, for example-- +having already allowed how _hard_ it is to examine on literature +--take the difficulty at its very extreme. I will select a piece +of poetry, and the poet shall be Keats--on whom, if on any one, +is felt the temptation to write gush and loose aesthetic chatter. +A pupil comes to read with me, and I open at the famous "Ode to a +Grecian Urn." + +(1) We read it through together, perhaps twice; at the +second attempt getting the emphasis right, and some, at any +rate, of the modulations of voice. So we reach a working +idea of the Ode and what Keats meant it to be. + +(2) We then compare it with his other Odes, and observe that it +is (a) regular in stanza form, (b) in spite of its outburst in +the 3rd stanza--'More happy love! more happy, happy love' etc.-- +much severer in tone than, e.g., the "Ode to a Nightingale" or +the "Ode to Psyche," (c) that the emotion is not luscious, but +simple, (d) that this simplicity is Hellenic, so far as Keats can +compass it, and (e) eminently well-suited to its subject, which +is a carven urn, gracious but severe of outline; a moment of joy +caught by the sculptor and arrested, for time to perpetuate; yet +--and this is the point of the Ode--conveying a sense that +innocent gaiety is not only its own excuse, but of human things +one of the few eternal--and eternal just because it is joyous and +fleeting. + +(3) Then we go back and compare this kind of quiet immortal +beauty with the passionate immortality hymned in the "Nightingale +Ode" + + Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! + No hungry generations tread thee down... + +with all the rest of that supreme stanza: from which (with some +passages my reading supplies to illustrate the difference) we +fall to contrasting the vibrating thrill of the "Nightingale" +with the happy grace of the "Grecian Urn" and, allowing each to +be appropriate, dispute for a while, perhaps, over the merits of +classical calm and romantic thrill. + +(4) From this we proceed to examine the Ode in detail line by +line: which examination brings up a whole crowd of questions, +such as + +(a) We have a thought enounced in the first stanza. Does the Ode +go on to develop and amplify it, as an Ode should? Or does +Pegasus come down again and again on the prints from which he +took off? If he do this, and the action of the Ode be dead and +unprogressive, is the defect covered by beauty of language? Can +such defect ever be so covered? + +(b) Lines 15 and 16 anticipate lines 21-24, which are saying the +same thing and getting no forwarder. + +(c) We come to the lines + + What little town by river or sea shore, + Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, + Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? + +with the answering lines + + And, little town, thy streets for evermore + Will silent be; and not a soul to tell + Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. + +and we note Sir Sidney Colvin's suggestion that this breaks in +upon an arrest of art as though it were an arrest on reality: and +remember that he raised a somewhat similar question over "The +Nightingale"; and comparing them, discuss truth of emotion +against truth of reality. + +We come to the last stanza and lament 'O Attic shape! Fair +attitude' for its jingle: but note how the poet recovers himself +and brings the whole to a grand close. + +I have, even yet, mentioned but a few of the points. For one, I +have omitted its most beautiful vowel-play, on which teacher and +pupil can dwell and learn together. And heaven forbid that as a +teacher I should _insist_ even on half of those I have indicated. +A teacher, as I hold, should watch for what his pupil divines of +his own accord; but if, trafficking with works of inspiration, he +have no gift to catch that inspiration nor power to pass it on, +then I say 'Heaven help him! but he has no valid right on earth +to be in the business.' + +And if a teacher have all these chances of teaching--mind you, of +_accurate_ teaching--supplied him by a single Ode of Keats, do +you suppose we cannot set in an Examination paper one intelligent +question upon it, in its own lawful category? + +Gentlemen, with the most scrupulous tenderness for aged and even +decrepit interests, we have been trying to liberate you from +certain old bad superstitions and silently laying the stones of a +new School of English, which we believe to be worthy even of +Cambridge. + +Our proposals are before the University. Should they be passed, +still everything will depend on the loyalty of its teachers to +the idea; and on that enthusiasm which I suppose to be the nurse +of all studies and know to be the authentic cherishing nurse of +ours. We may even have conceded too much to the letter, but we +have built and built our trust on the spirit 'which maketh +alive.' + + +[Footnote 1: Why had he to swear this under pain of +excommunication, when the lecturer could so easily keep a +roll-call? But the amount of oathtaking in a medieval University was +prodigious. Even College servants were put on oath for their +duties: Gyps invited their own damnation, bed-makers kissed the +book. Abroad, where examinations were held, the Examiner swore +not to take a bribe, the Candidate neither to give one, nor, if +unsuccessful, to take his vengeance on the Examiner with a knife +or other sharp instrument. At New College, Oxford, the +matriculating undergraduate was required to swear in particular +not to dance in the College Chapel.] + + + + +LECTURE VI + +ON A SCHOOL OF ENGLISH + +WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1917 + + +I + +It is now, Gentlemen, five years less a term since, feeling (as +they say of other offenders) my position acutely, I had the +honour of reading an Inaugural before this University and the +impudence to loose, in the course of it, a light shaft against a +phrase in the very Ordinance defining the duties of this Chair. + +'It shall be the duty of the Professor,' says the Ordinance, 'to +deliver courses of lectures on English Literature from the age of +Chaucer onwards, and otherwise to promote, so far as may be in +his power, the study in the University of the subject of English +Literature.' + +That was the phrase at which I glanced--'the subject of English +Literature'; and I propose that we start to-day, for reasons that +will appear, by subjecting this subject to some examination. + +II + +'The _Subject_ of English Literature.' Surely--for a start--there +is no such thing; or rather, may we not say that everything is, +has been or can be, a subject of English Literature? Man's loss +of Paradise has been a subject of English Literature, and so has +been a Copper Coinage in Ireland, and so has been Roast +Sucking-pig, and so has been Holy Dying, and so has been Mr Pepys's +somewhat unholy living, and so have been Ecclesiastical Polity, +The Grail, Angling for Chub, The Wealth of Nations, The Sublime +and the Beautiful, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, +Prize-Fights, Grecian Urns, Modern Painters, Intimations of +Immortality in early Childhood, Travels with a Donkey, Rural +Rides and Rejected Addresses--_all_ these have been subjects of +English Literature: as have been human complots and intrigues as +wide asunder as "Othello" and "The School for Scandal"; persons +as different as Prometheus and Dr Johnson, Imogen and Moll +Flanders, Piers the Plowman and Mr Pickwick; places as different +as Utopia and Cranford, Laputa and Reading Gaol. "Epipsychidion" +is literature: but so is "A Tale of a Tub." + +Listen, for this is literature: + + If some king of the earth have so large an extent of + dominion, in north, and south, so that he hath winter and + summer together in his dominions, so large an extent east and + west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, + much more hath God mercy and judgement together: He + brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he + can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; + though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or + conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and + frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, + smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, + not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the + spring, but as the sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as + the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions + invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons[1]. + +But listen again, for this also is literature: + + A sweet disorder in the dress + Kindles in clothes a wantonness: + A lawn about the shoulders thrown + Into a fine distraction: + An erring lace, which here and there + Enthrals the crimson stomacher: + A cuff neglectful, and thereby + Ribbons to flow confusedly: + A winning wave, deserving note, + In the tempestuous petticoat: + A careless shoe-string, in whose tie + I see a wild civility: + Do more bewitch me than when art + Is too precise in every part. + +Here again is literature: + + When I was a child, at seven years old, my friends on a + holiday filled my pockets with coppers. I went directly to a + shop where they sold toys for children; and being charmed with + the sound of a whistle that I met by the way in the hands of + another boy, I voluntarily offered him all my money for one. + I then came home and went whistling all over the house, much + pleased with my whistle but disturbing all the family. My + brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain I + had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it + was worth ... The reflection gave me more chagrin than the + whistle gave me pleasure. [BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.] + +Of a bridal, this is literature: + + Open the temple gates unto my love, + Open them wide that she may enter in! + +But so also is Suckling's account of a wedding that begins + + I tell thee, Dick, where I have been. + +This is literature: + + And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and + a covert from the tempest; + As rivers of water in a dry place, + As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. + +But so is this literature: + + One circle cannot touch another circle on the outside at + more points than one. + For, if it be possible, let the circle ACK touch the circle + ABC at the points A, C. Join AC. + Then because the two points A, C are in the + circumference of the circle ACK the line which joins them + falls within that circle. + But the circle ACK is without the circle ABC. Therefore + the straight line AC is without the circle ABC. + But because the two points A, C are in the circumference of + ABC therefore the straight line AC falls within that circle. + _Which is absurd._ + Therefore one circle cannot touch another on the outside at + more points than one. + +All thoughts, as well as all passions, all delights + + _votum, timor, ira, voluptas_-- + +whatsoever, in short, engages man's activity of soul or body, may +be deemed the subject of literature and is transformed into +literature by process of recording it in memorable speech. It is +so, it has been so, and God forbid it should ever not be so! + +III + +Now this, put so, is (you will say) so extremely, obvious that it +must needs hide a fallacy or at best a quibble on a word. I shall +try to show that it does not: that it directly opposes plain +truth to a convention accepted by the Ordinance, and that the +fallacy lies in that convention. + +A convention may be defined as something which a number of men +have agreed to accept in lieu of the truth and to pass off for +the truth upon others: I was about to add, preferably when they +can catch them young: but some recent travel in railway trains +and listening to the kind of stuff men of mature years deliver +straight out of newspapers for the products of their own digested +thought have persuaded me that the ordinary man is as susceptible +at fifty, sixty, or even seventy as at any earlier period of +growth, and that the process of incubation is scarcely less +rapid. + +I am not, to be sure, concerned to deny that there may be +conventions useful enough to society, serving it to maintain +government, order, public and private decency, or the commerce on +which it must needs rest to be a civilised society at all-- +commerce of food, commerce of clothing, and so on, up to commerce +in knowledge and ideas. Government itself--any form of it--is a +convention; marriage is a convention; money of course is a +convention, and the alphabet itself I suppose to contain as many +conventions as all the old Courts of Love and Laws of Chivalry +put together, and our English alphabet one tremendous fallacy, +that twenty-six letters, separately or in combination are capable +of symbolising all the sounds produced by an Englishman's organs +of speech, let alone the sounds he hears from foreigners, dogs, +guns, steam-engines, motor-horns and other friends and enemies to +whom we deny the franchise. Also of course it ignores the whole +system of musical notes--another convention--which yet with many +of the older bards could hardly be separated from the words they +used, though now only the words survive and as literature. + +IV + +But every convention has a fallacy somewhere at the root; whether +it be useful and operative, as many a legal fiction is operative, +for good; or senile, past service yet tyrannous by custom, and so +pernicious; or merely foolish, as certain artistic conventions +are traceable, when a Ruskin comes to judgment, back to nothing +better than folly: and it becomes men of honest mind, in dealing +with anything recognisable as a convention, to examine its +accepted fallacy, whether it be well understood or ill understood; +beneficent or pernicious or merely foolish or both foolish and +pernicious: and this is often most handily done by tracing its +history. + +Now I shall assume that the framers of the Ordinance regulating +the duties of this Chair knew well enough, of their own reading, +that English Literature deals with a vast variety of subjects: +and that, if any piece of writing miss to deal with its +particular subject, so closely that theme and treatment can +scarcely be separated, by so much will it be faulty as literature. +Milton is fairly possessed with the story of Man's fall, Boswell +possessed with Johnson, Shelley with hatred of tyranny in all its +manifestations, Mill again with the idea of Liberty: and it is +only because we had knowledge presented to us at an age when we +thought more attentively of apples, that we still fail to +recognise in Euclid and Dr Todhunter two writers who are excellent +because possessed with a passion for Geometry. + +I infer, then, that the framers of the Ordinance, when they +employed this phrase 'the study of the subject of English +Literature,' knew well enough that no such thing existed in +nature, but adopted the convention that English Literature could +be separated somehow from its content and treated as a subject +all by itself, for teaching purposes: and, for purposes of +examination, could be yoked up with another subject called +English Language, as other Universities had yoked it. + +V + +I believe the following to be a fair account of how these +examinations in English Language and Literature came to pass, and +how a certain kind of student came to pass these Examinations. At +any rate since the small revolution has happened in my life-time +and most of it since I was able to observe, the account here is +drawn from my own observation and may be checked and corrected by +yours. + +Thirty-five or forty years ago--say in the late seventies or +early eighties--some preparatory schools, and others that taught +older boys but ranked below the great Public Schools in repute, +taught so much of English Literature as might be comprised, at a +rough calculation, in two or three plays of Shakespeare, edited +by Clark and Aldis Wright; a few of Bacon's Essays, Milton's +early poems, Stopford Brooke's little primer, a book of extracts +for committal to memory, with perhaps Chaucer's "Prologue" and a +Speech of Burke. In the great Public Schools _no_ English +Literature was studied, save in those which had invented 'Modern +Sides,' to prepare boys specially for Woolwich or Sandhurst or +the Indian Civil Service; for entrance to which examinations were +held on certain prescribed English Classics, and marks mainly +given for acquaintance with the editors' notes. + +In the Universities, the study of English Classics was not +officially recognised at all. + +Let us not hastily suppose that this neglect of English rested +wholly on unreason, or had nothing to say for itself. Teachers +and tutors of the old Classical Education (as it was called) +could plead as follows: + + 'In the first place,' they would say, 'English Literature is + too _easy_ a study. Our youth, at School or University, starts + on his native classics with a liability which in any foreign + language he has painfully to acquire. The voices that + murmured around his cradle, the voice of his nurse, of his + governess, of the parson on Sundays; the voices of village + boys, stablemen, gamekeepers and farmers--friendly or + unfriendly--of callers, acquaintances, of the children he met + at Children's Parties; the voices that at the dinner-table + poured politics or local gossip into the little pitcher with + long ears--all these were English voices speaking in English: + and all these were all the while insensibly leading him up the + slope from the summit of which he can survey the promised + land spread at his feet as a wide park; and he holds the key of + the gates, to enter and take possession. Whereas,' the old + instructors would continue, 'with the classics of any foreign + language we take him at the foot of the steep ascent, spread a + table before him (_mensa, mensa, mensam_ ...) and coax or drive + him up with variations upon amo, "I love" or [Greek: tupto], + "I beat," until he, too, reaches the summit and beholds the + landscape: + + But O, what labour! + O Prince, what pain!' + +Now so much of truth, Gentlemen, as this plea contains was +admitted last term by your Senate, in separating the English +Tripos, in which a certain linguistic familiarity may be not +rashly presumed of the student, from the Foreign Language +Triposes, divided into two parts, of which the first will more +suspiciously test his capacity to construe the books he professes +to have studied. I may return to this and to the alleged +_easiness_ of studies in a School of English. Let us proceed just +now with the reasoned plea for neglect. + +These admirable old schoolmasters and dons would have hesitated, +maybe, to say flatly with Dogberry that 'to write and read comes +by nature ... and for your writing and reading, let that appear +when there is no need of such vanity.' But in practice their +system so worked, and in some of the Public Schools so works +to this day. Let me tell you that just before the war an +undergraduate came to me from the Sixth Form of one of the best +reputed among these great schools. He wished to learn to write. +He wished (poor fellow) to write me an essay, if I would set him +a subject. He had never written an essay at school. 'Indeed,' +said I, 'and there is no reason why you should, if by "essay" you +mean some little treatise about "Patriotism" or "A Day in the +Country." I will choose you no such subject nor any other upon +any book which you have never read. Tell me, what is your +Tripos?' He said 'the History Tripos.' 'Then,' said I, 'since +History provides quite a large number of themes, choose one and I +will try to correct your treatment of it, without offence to your +opinions or prejudice to your facts.' 'But,' he confessed, 'at +So-and-so'--naming the great Public School--'we never _wrote_ out +an account of anything, or set down our opinions on anything, to +be corrected. We just construed and did sums: And when he brought +me his first attempt, behold, it was so. He could not construct a +simple sentence, let alone putting two sentences together; while, +as for a paragraph, it lay beyond his farthest horizon. In short, +here was an instance ready to hand for any cheap writer engaged +to decry the old Classical Education. + +What would the old schoolmasters plead in excuse? Why this, as I +suggest--'You cite an extreme instance. But, while granting +English Literature to be great, we would point out that an +overwhelming majority of our best writers have modelled their +prose and verse upon the Greek and Roman classics, either +directly or through tradition. Now we have our own language +_gratis,_ so to speak. Let us spend our pains, then, in acquiring +Latin and Greek, and the tradition. So shall we most intimately +enjoy our own authors; and so, if we wish to write, we shall have +at hand the clues they followed, the models they used.' + +Now I have as you know, Gentlemen, a certain sympathy with this +plea, or with a part of it: nor can so much of truth as its +argument contains be silenced by a 'What about Shakespeare?' or a +'What about Bunyan?' or a 'What about Burns?' I believe our +imaginary pleader for the Classics could put up a stout defence +upon any of those names. To choose the forlornest hope of the +three, I can hear him demonstrating, to his own satisfaction if +not to yours, that Bunyan took his style straight out of the +Authorised Version of our Bible; which is to say that he took it +from the styles of forty-seven scholars, _plus_ Tyndale's, _plus_ +Coverdale's, _plus_ Cranmer's--the scholarship of fifty scholars +expressed and blended. + +But, as a theory, the strict classical argument gives itself +away, as well by its intolerance as by its obvious distrust of +the genius of our own wonderful language. I have in these five +years, and from this place, Gentlemen, counselled you to seek +back ever to those Mediterranean sources which are the well-heads +of our civilisation: but always (I hope) on the understanding +that you use them with a large liberty. They are effete for us +unless we add and mingle freely the juice of our own natural +_genius._ + +And in practice the strict classical theory, with its implied +contempt of English, has been disastrous: disastrous not only +with the ordinary man--as with my Sixth Form boy who could not +put two sentences together, and had read no English authors; but +disastrous even to highly eminent scholars. Listen, pray, to this +passage from one of them, Frederick Paley, who condescended +(Heaven knows why) to turn the majestic verse of Pindar into +English Prose-- + +_From the VIIIth Isthmian:_ + + And now that we are returned from great sorrows, let us + not fall into a dearth of victories, nor foster griefs; but as + we have ceased from our tiresome troubles, we will publicly + indulge in a sweet roundelay. + +_From the IVth Pythian:_ + + It had been divinely predicted to Pelias, that he should die + by the doughty sons of Aeolus and an alarming oracle had come + to his wary mind, delivered at the central point of tree-clad + mother-earth, 'that he must by all means hold in great caution + the man with one shoe, when he shall have come from a homestead + on the hills.' + + And he accordingly came in due time, armed with two spears, + a magnificent man. The dress he wore was of a double kind, + the national costume of the Magnesians.... Nor as yet had + the glossy clusters of his hair been clipped away, but + dangled brightly adown his back. + + Forward he went at once and took his stand among the + people.... Him then they failed to recognise: but some of the + reverent-minded went so far as to say, 'Surely this cannot be + Apollo!' + +It needs no comment, I think. Surely _this_ cannot be Apollo! + +Frederick Paley flourished--if the word be not exorbitant for so +demure a writer--in the middle of the last century (he was born +in the year of Waterloo and died in the year after Queen +Victoria's first jubilee). Well, in that period there grew up a +race of pioneers who saw that English Literature--that proud park +and rolling estate--lay a tangled, neglected wilderness for its +inheritors, and set themselves bravely to clear broad ways +through it. Furnivall and Skeat, Aldis Wright, Clark, Grosart, +Arber, Earle, Hales, Morris, Ellis and the rest--who can rehearse +these names now but in deepest respect? Oh, believe me, +Gentlemen! they were wonderful fighters in a cause that at first +seemed hopeless. If I presume to speak of foibles to-day, you +will understand that I do so because, lightly though I may talk +to you at times, I have a real sense of the responsibilities of +this Chair. I worship great learning, which they had: I loathe +flippant detraction of what is great; I have usually a heart for +men-against-odds and the unpopular cause. But these very valiant +fighters had, one and all, some very obvious foibles: and +because, in the hour of success, these foibles came to infect the +whole teaching of English in this country, and to infect it +fatally for many years, I shall dare to point them out. + +VI + +(a) To begin with, then, these valiant fighters, intent on +pushing their cause to the front, kept no sense of proportion. +All their geese were swans, and "Beowulf" a second "Iliad." I +think it scarcely too much to say that, of these men, all so +staunch in fighting for the claims of English Literature, not one +(with the exception of Dr Hales) appears to have had any critical +judgment whatever, apart from the rhyme, verse and inflectional +tests on which they bestowed their truly priceless industry. +Criticism, as Sainte-Beuve, Matthew Arnold or Pater understood +and practised it, they merely misprized. + +(b) I think it was of true scholarly desire to vindicate English +Literature from the charge of being 'too easy,' that--as their +studies advanced--they laid more and more stress on Middle-English +and Old English writings than on what our nations of England and +Scotland have written since they learned to write. I dare to think +also that we may attribute to this dread of 'easiness' their +practice of cumbering simple texts with philological notes; on +which, rather than on the text, we unhappy students were carefully +examined. For an example supplied to Dr Corson--I take those three +lines of Cowper's "Task" (Bk I, 86-88): + + Thus first necessity invented stools, + Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, + And luxury th' accomplish'd SOFA last. + +Now in these three lines the word '_accomplish'd_' is the only one +that needs even the smallest explanation. 'But,' says Dr Corson, +'in two different editions of "The Task" in my library, prepared +for the use of the young, no explanation is given of it, but in +both the Arabic origin of 'sofa' is given. In one the question is +asked what other words in English have been derived from the +Arabic.' ('Abracadabra' would be my little contribution.) + +(c) These valiant fighters--having to extol what Europe had, +wrongly enough, forgotten to count among valuable things--turned +aggressively provincial, parted their beards in the Anglo-Saxon +fashion; composed long sentences painfully innocent of any +word not derivable from Anglo-Saxon, sentences in which the +'impenetrability of matter' became the 'un-go-throughsomeness of +stuff (but that may have happened in a parody), and in general +comported themselves like the Anglo-Saxons they claimed for their +forbears; rightly enough for anything anyone cared, but wrongly +enough for the rest of us who had no yearning toward that kinship +and went on spelling Alfred with an A. + +(d) They were--I suppose through opposition--extremely irascible +men; like farmers. Urbanity was the last note in their gamut, the +City--_urbs quam dicunt Romam_--the last of places in their ken. +There was no engaging them in dialectic, an Athenian art which +they frankly despised. If you happened to disagree with them, +their answer was a sturdy Anglo-Saxon brick. If you politely asked +your way to Puddlehampton, and to be directed to Puddlehampton's +main objects of interest, the answer you would get (see "Notes and +Queries" _passim_) would be, 'Who is this that comes out of +Nowhere, enquiring for Puddlehampton, unacquainted with Stubbs? Is +it possible at this time of day that the world can contain anyone +ignorant of the published Transactions of the Wiltshire Walking +Club, Vol. III, p. 159--"Puddlehampton, its Rise and Decline, with +a note on Vespasian?"' + +(e) These pioneers--pushing the importance of English, but +occupied more and more with origins and with bad authors, simply +could not see the vital truth; that English Literature is a +continuing thing, ten times more alive to-day than it was in the +times they studied and belauded. The last word upon them is that +not a man of them could write prose in the language they thrust +on our study. To them, far more than to the old classical +scholars, English was a shut book: a large book, but closed and +clasped, material to heighten a desk for schoolmasters and +schoolmistresses. + +But schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, like chickens and curses, +come home to roost. Once set up your plea for a Tripos of English +Language and Literature on the lower plea that it will provide +for what _they_ call a 'felt want,' and sooner or later you give +English Language and Literature into _their_ hands, and then you +get the fallacy full-flowered into a convention. English +Literature henceforth is a 'subject,' divorced from life: and +what they have made of it, let a thousand handbooks and so-called +histories attest. But this world is not a wilderness of +class-rooms. English Language? They cannot write it, at all events. +They do not (so far as I can discover) try to write it. They talk +and write about it; how the poor deceased thing outgrew infantile +ailments, how it was operated on for _umlaut,_ how it parted with +its vermiform appendix and its inflexions one by one, and lost +its vowel endings in muted e's. + + And they went and told the sexton, + And the sexton toll'd the bell. + +But when it comes to _writing_; to keeping bright the noble +weapon of English, testing its poise and edge, feeling the grip, +handing it to their pupils with the word, 'Here is the sword of +your fathers, that has cloven dragons. So use it, that we who +have kept it bright may be proud of you, and of our pains, and of +its continuing valiance':--why, as I say, they do not even _try._ +Our unprofessional forefathers, when they put pen to paper, did +attempt English prose, and not seldom achieved it. But take up +any elaborate History of English Literature and read, and, as you +read, ask yourselves, 'How can one of the rarest delights of life +be converted into _this_? What has happened to merry Chaucer, +rare Ben Jonson, gay Steele and Prior, to Goldsmith, Jane Austen, +Charles Lamb?' + + All, all are gone, the old familiar faces! + +gone into the professional stock-pot! And the next news is that +these cooks, of whom Chaucer wrote prophetically + + Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde, + And turnen substaunce into accident! + +have formed themselves into professional Associations to protect +'the study of the subject of English Literature' and bark off any +intruder who would teach in another way than theirs. + +VII + +But I say to you that Literature is not, and should not be, the +preserve of any priesthood. To write English, so as to make +Literature, may be _hard._ But English Literature is _not_ a +mystery, _not_ a Professors' Kitchen. + +And the trouble lies, not in the harm professionising does to +schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, but in the harm it does 'in +widest commonalty spread' among men and women who, as Literature +was written for them, addressed to them, ought to find in it, all +their lives through, a retirement from mean occupations, a well +of refreshment, sustainment in the daily drudgery of life, solace +in calamity, an inmate by the hearth, ever sociable, never +intrusive--to be sought and found, to be found and dropped at +will: + + Men, when their affairs require, + Must themselves at whiles retire; + Sometimes hunt, and sometimes hawk, + And not ever sit and talk-- + +to be dropped at will and left without any answering growl of +moroseness; to be consulted again at will and found friendly. + +For this is the trouble of _professionising_ Literature. We exile +it from the business of life, in which it would ever be at our +shoulder, to befriend us. Listen, for example, to an extract from +a letter written, a couple of weeks ago, by somebody in the +Charity Commission: + + Sir, + With reference to previous correspondence in this matter, I + am to say that in all the circumstances of this case the + Commissioners are of the opinion that it would be desirable + that a public enquiry in connection with the Charity should + be held in the locality. + +And the man--very likely an educated man--having written _that,_ +very likely went home and read Chaucer, Dante, or Shakespeare, or +Burke for pleasure! That is what happens when you treat +literature as a 'subject,' separable from life and daily +practice. + +VIII + +I declare to you that Literature was _not_ written for +schoolmasters, nor for schoolmistresses. I would not exchange it +for a wilderness of schoolmasters. It should be delivered from +them, who, with their silly _Ablauts_ and 'tendencies,' can +themselves neither read nor write. For the proof? Having the +world's quintessential store of mirth and sharp sorrow, wit, +humour, comfort, farce, comedy, tragedy, satire; the glories of +our birth and state, piled all at their elbows, only one man of +the crowd--and he M. Jusserand, a Frenchman--has contrived to +draw out of the mass one interesting well-written history of the +'subject.' + +IX + +Is there, then, no better way? Yes there is a better way: for the +French have it, with their language and literature. In France, as +Matthew Arnold noted, a generation ago, the ordinary journey-man +work of literature is done far better and more conscientiously +than with us. In France a man feels it almost a personal stain, +an unpatriotic _lache,_ to write even on a police-order anything +so derogatory to the tradition of his language as our Cabinet +Ministers read out as answers to our House of Commons. I am told +that many a Maire in a small provincial town in N.E. France, even +when overwhelmed--_accable_--with the sufferings of his +town-folk, has truly felt the iron enter into his soul on being +forced to sign a document written out for him in the invaders' +French. + +Cannot we treat our noble inheritance of literature and language +as scrupulously, and with as high a sense of their appertaining +to our national honour, as a Frenchman cherishes _his_ language, +_his_ literature? Cannot we study to leave our inheritance---as +the old Athenian put it temperately, 'not worse but a little +better than we found it'? + +I think we can, and should. I shall close to-day, Gentlemen, with +the most modest of perorations. In my first lecture before you, +in January 1913, I quoted to you the artist in "Don Quixote" who, +being asked what animal he was painting, answered diffidently +'That is as it may turn out.' + +The teaching of our language and literature is, after all, a new +thing and still experimental. The main tenets of those who, aware +of this, have worked on the scheme for a School of English in +Cambridge, the scheme recently passed by your Senate and +henceforth to be in operation, are three:-- + +_The first._ That literature cannot be divorced from life: that +(for example) you cannot understand Chaucer aright, unless you +have the background, unless you know the kind of men for whom +Chaucer wrote and the kind of men whom he made speak; that is the +_national_ side with which all our literature is concerned. + +_The second._ Literature being so personal a thing, you cannot +understand it until you have some personal under-standing of the +men who wrote it. Donne is Donne; Swift, Swift; Pope, Pope; +Johnson, Johnson; Goldsmith, Goldsmith; Charles Lamb, Charles +Lamb; Carlyle, Carlyle. Until you have grasped those men, as men, +you cannot grasp their writings. That is the _personal_ side of +literary study, and as necessary as the other. + +_The third._ That the writing and speaking of English is a living +art, to be practised and (if it may be) improved. That what these +great men have done is to hand us a grand patrimony; that they +lived to support us through the trial we are now enduring, and to +carry us through to great days to come. So shall our sons, now +fighting in France, have a language ready for the land they shall +recreate and repeople. + + + +[Footnote 1: Donne's _Sermon II preached at Pauls upon Christmas +Day, in the Evening._ 1624.] + + + + +LECTURE VII + +THE VALUE OF GREEK AND LATIN IN ENGLISH LITERATURE + +WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1918 + + +I + +I have promised you, Gentlemen, for to-day some observations on +_The Value of Greek and Latin in English Literature_: a mild, +academic title, a _camouflage_ title, so to say; calculated to +shelter us for a while from the vigilance of those hot-eyed +reformers who, had I advertised _The Value of Greek and Latin in +English Life_ might even now be swooping from all quarters of the +sky on a suggestion that these dry bones yet were flesh: for +the eyes I dread are not only red and angry, but naturally +microscopic--and that indeed, if they only knew it, is their +malady. Yet 'surely' groaned patient job, 'there _is_ a path +which the vulture's eye hath not seen!' + +You, at any rate, know by this time that wherever these +lectures assert literature they assert life, perhaps even too +passionately, allowing neither the fact of death nor the +possibility of divorce. + +II + +But let us begin with the first word, '_Value_'--'The _Value_ of +Greek and Latin in English Literature.' What do I mean by +'Value'? Well, I use it, generally, in the sense of 'worth'; but +with a particular meaning, or shade of meaning, too. And, this +particular meaning is not the particular meaning intended (as I +suppose) by men of commerce who, on news of a friend's death, +fall a-musing and continue musing until the fire kindles, and +they ask 'What did So-and-so die worth?' or sometimes, more +wisely than they know, 'What did poor old So-and-so die worth?' +or again, more colloquially, 'What did So-and-so "cut up" for?' +Neither is it that which more disinterested economists used to +teach; men never (I fear me) loved, but anyhow lost awhile, who +for my green unknowing youth, at Thebes or Athens--growing older +I tend to forget which is, or was, which--defined the Value of a +thing as its 'purchasing power' which the market translates into +'price.' For--to borrow a phrase which I happened on, the other +day, with delight, in the Introduction to a translation of +Lucian--there may be forms of education less paying than the +commercial and yet better worth paying for; nay, above payment or +computation in price[1]. + +No: the particular meaning I use to-day is that which artists use +when they talk of painting or of music. To see things, near or +far, in their true perspective and proportions; to judge them +through distance; and fetching them back, to reproduce them in +art so proportioned comparatively, so rightly adjusted, that they +combine to make a particular and just perspective: that is to +give things their true _Values._ + +Suppose yourself reclining on a bank on a clear day, looking up +into the sky and watching the ascent of a skylark while you +listen to his song. That is a posture in which several poets of +repute have placed themselves from time to time: so we need not +be ashamed of it. Well, you see the atmosphere reaching up and +up, mile upon mile. There are no milestones planted there. But, +wave on wave perceptible, the atmosphere stretches up through +indeterminate distances; and according as your painter of the sky +can translate these distances, he gives his sky what is called +_Value._ + +You listen to the skylark's note rising, spiral by spiral, on +'the very jet of earth': + + As up he wings the spiral stair, + A song of light, and pierces air + With fountain ardour, fountain play, + To reach the shining tops of day: + +and you long for the musical gift to follow up and up the +delicate degrees of distance and thread the notes back as the +bird ascending drops them--on a thread, as it were, of graduated +beads, half music and half dew: + + That was the chirp of Ariel + You heard, as overhead it flew, + The farther going more to dwell + And wing our green to wed our blue; + But whether note of joy, or knell, + Not his own Father-singer knew; + Nor yet can any mortal tell, + Save only how it shivers through; + The breast of us a sounded shell, + The blood of us a lighted dew. + +Well in music, in painting, this graduating which gives right +proportion and, with proportion, a sense of distance, of +atmosphere, is called _Value._ Let us, for a minute or two, assay +this particular meaning of Value upon life and literature, and +first upon life, or, rather upon one not negligible facet of +life. + +I suppose that if an ordinary man of my age were asked which has +better helped him to bear the burs of life--religion or a sense +of humour--he would, were he quite honest, be gravelled for an +answer. Now the best part of a sense of humour, as you know +without my telling you, consists in a sense of proportion; a +habit, abiding and prompt at command, of seeing all human, +affairs in their just perspective, so that its happy possessor at +once perceives anything odd or distorted or overblown to be an +excrescence, a protuberance, a swelling, literally a _humour_: +and the function of Thalia, the Comic Spirit, as you may read in +Meredith's "Essay on Comedy," is just to prick these humours. I +will but refer you to Meredith's "Essay," and here cite you the +words of an old schoolmaster: + +It would seem to be characteristic of the same mind to appreciate +the beauty of ideas in just proportion and harmonious relation to +each other, and the absurdity of the same ideas when distorted or +brought into incongruous juxtaposition. The exercise of this +sense of humour ... compels the mind to form a picture to itself, +accompanied by pleasurable emotion; and what is this but setting +the imagination to work, though in topsy-turvy fashion? Nay, in +such a case, imagination plays a double part, since it is only by +instantaneous comparison with ideal fitness and proportion +that it can grasp at full force the grotesqueness of their +contraries[2]. + +Let us play with an example for one moment. A child sees such an +excrescence, such an offence upon proportion, in an immoderately +long nose. He is apt to call attention to it on the visage of a +visitor: it intrigues him in Perrault's 'Prince Charming' and +many a fairy tale: it amuses him in Lear's "Book of Nonsense": + + There was an old man with a Nose, + Who said 'If you choose to suppose + That my nose is too long + You are certainly wrong'-- + +This old man he detects as lacking sense of proportion, sense of +humour. Pass from the child to the working-man as we know him. A +few weeks ago, a lady--featured, as to nose, on the side of +excess--was addressing a North Country audience on the Economic +Position of Women after the War. Said she, 'There won't be men to +go round.' Said a voice 'Eh, but they'll _have to,_ Miss!' Pass +from this rudimentary criticism to high talent employed on the +same subject, and you get "Cyrano de Bergerac." Pass to genius, +to Milton, and you find the elephant amusing Adam and Eve in +Paradise, and doing his best: + + the unwieldy elephant, + To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed + His lithe proboscis. + +Milton, like the elephant, jokes with difficulty, but he, too, is +using all his might. + +I have illustrated, crudely enough, how a sense of things in +their right values will help us on one side of our dealings with +life. But truly it helps us on every side. This was what Plato +meant when he said that a philosopher must see things as they +relatively are within his horizon--[Greek: o synoptikos +dialektikos]. And for this it was that an English poet praised +Sophocles as one + + Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole. + +And this of course is what Dean Inge meant when, the other day, +in a volume of "Cambridge Essays on Education," he reminded us, +for a sensible commonplace, that 'The wise man is he who knows +the relative values of things.' + +IV + +Applying this to literature, I note, but shall not insist here on +the fact--though fact it is--that the Greek and Roman 'classical' +writers (as we call them) laid more stress than has ever been +laid among the subsequent tribes of men upon the desirability of +getting all things into proportion, of seeing all life on a scale +of relative values. And the reason I shall not insist on this is +simply that better men have saved me the trouble. + +I propose this morning to discuss the value of the classics to +students of English literature from, as the modern phrase goes, a +slightly different angle. + +Reclining and looking up into that sky which is not too grandiose +an image for our own English Literature, you would certainly not +wish, Gentlemen, to see it as what it is not--as a cloth painted +on the flat. No more than you would choose the sky overarching +your life to be a close, hard, copper vault, would you choose +this literature of ours to resemble such a prison. I say nothing, +for the moment, of the thrill of comparing ours with other +constellations--of such a thrill as Blanco White's famous sonnet +imagines in Adam's soul when the first night descended on Eden +and + + Hesperus with the host of heaven came, + And lo! Creation widen'd in man's view. + Who could have thought such darkness lay conceal'd + Within thy beams, O sun!... + +No: I simply picture you as desiring to realise _our own_ +literature, its depths and values, mile above mile deeper and +deeper shining, with perchance a glimpse of a city celestial +beyond, or at whiles, on a ladder of values, of the angels--the +messengers--climbing and returning. + +V + +Well, now, I put it to you that without mental breeding, without +at least some sense of ancestry, an Englishman can hardly have +this perception of value, this vision. I put to you what I +posited in an earlier course of lectures, quoting Bagehot, that +while a knowledge of Greek and Latin is not necessary to a writer +of English, he should at least have a firm conviction that those +two languages existed. I refer you to a long passage which, in +one of those lectures, I quoted from Cardinal Newman to the +effect that for the last 3000 years the Western World has +been evolving a human society, having its bond _in a common +civilisation_--a society to which (let me add, by way of +footnote) Prussia today is firmly, though with great difficulty, +being tamed. There are, and have been, other civilisations in the +world --the Chinese, for instance; a huge civilisation, +stationary, morose, to us unattractive; 'but _this_ +civilisation,' says Newman, 'together with the society which is +its creation and its home, is so distinctive and luminous in its +character, so imperial in its extent, so imposing in its +duration, and so utterly without rival upon the face of the +earth, that the association may fitly assume for itself the title +of "Human Society," and its civilisation the abstract term +"Civilisation".' + +He goes on: + + Looking, then, at the countries which surround the + Mediterranean Sea as a whole, I see them to be, from time + immemorial, the seat of an association of intellect and mind + such as deserves to be called the Intellect and Mind of the + Human Kind. + +But I must refer you to his famous book "The Idea of a +University" to read at length how Newman, in that sinuous, +sinewy, Platonic style of his, works it out--the spread, through +Rome, even to our shores, of the civilisation which began in +Palestine and Greece. + +VI + +I would press the point more rudely upon you, and more +particularly, than does Newman. And first, for Latin-- + +I waive that Rome occupied and dominated this island during 400 +years. Let that be as though it had never been. For a further +1000 years and more Latin remained the common speech of educated +men throughout Europe: the 'Universal Language.' Greek had been +smothered by the Turk. Through all that time--through the most of +what we call Modern History, Latin reigned everywhere. Is this a +fact to be ignored by any of you who would value 'values'? + +Here are a few particulars, by way of illustration. More wrote +his "Utopia," Bacon wrote all the bulk of his philosophical work, +in Latin; Newton wrote his "Principia" in Latin. Keble's Lectures +on Poetry (if their worth and the name of Keble may together save +me from bathos) were delivered in Latin. Our Vice-Chancellor, our +Public Orator still talk Latin, securing for it what attention +they can: nor have + + The bigots of this iron time + _Yet_ call'd their harmless art a crime. + +But there is a better reason why you should endeavour to +understand the value of Latin in our literature; a filial reason. +Our fathers built their great English prose, as they built their +oratory, upon the Latin model. Donne used it to construct his +mighty fugues: Burke to discipline his luxuriance. Says Cowper, +it were + + Praise enough for any private man, + That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, + And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own. + +Well then, here is a specimen of Chatham's language: from his +speech, Romanly severe, denouncing the Government of the day for +employing Red Indians in the American War of Independence. He is +addressing the House of Lords: + + I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers + of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church--I conjure + them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of + their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned + bench to defend and support the justice of their country. I + call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of + their lawn; upon the learned judges to interpose the purity of + their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the + honour of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your + ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit + and humanity of my country to vindicate the national + character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the + tapestry that adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of this + noble lord [Lord Suffolk] frowns with indignation at the + disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleet: + against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended + and established the honour, the liberties, the religion--the + _Protestant religion_--of this country, against the arbitrary + cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than + Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose + among us--to turn forth into our settlements, among our + ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless + cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child! + to send forth the infidel savage---against whom? against your + Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate + their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these + horrible hell-hounds of savage war!--hell-hounds, I say, of + savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate + the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman + example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage + hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of + the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to + us by every tie that should sanctify humanity.... + + My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; + but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said + less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed + my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal + abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles. + +That was Chatham. For Wolfe--he, as you know, was ever reading +the classics even on campaign: as Burke again carried always a +Virgil in his pocket. _Abeunt studia in mores._ Moreover can we +separate Chatham's Roman morality from Chatham's language in the +passage I have just read? No: we cannot. No one, being evil, can +speak good things with that weight; _'for out of the abundance of +the heart the mouth speaketh.'_ We English (says Wordsworth) + + We must be free or die, who speak the tongue + That Shakespeare spake.... + +You may criticise Chatham's style as too consciously Ciceronian. +But has ever a Parliamentary style been invented which conveys a +nobler gravity of emotion? `Buskined'?--yes: but the style of a +man. 'Mannered'?--yes, but in the grand manner. 'Conscious'?-- +yes, but of what? Conscious of the dignity a great man owes to +himself, and to the assembly he addresses. He conceives that +assembly as 'the British Senate'; and, assuming, he communicates +that high conception. The Lords feel that they are listening as +Senators, since it is only thus a Senate should be addressed, as +nothing less than a Senate should be addressed thus. + +Let me read you a second passage; of _written_ prose: + + Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, + went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than + to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what + we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable + fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of + infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, + is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is + to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this aide of the + grave; there are no voices, O Rhodope! that are not soon mute, + however tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of + passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at + last[3]. + +Latin--all Latin--down to its exquisite falling close! And I say +to you, Gentlemen, that passages such as these deserve what +Joubert claimed of national monuments, _Ce sont les crampons qui +unissent une generation a une autre. Conservez ce qu'ont vu vos +peres,_ 'These are the clamps that knit one generation to +another. Cherish those things on which your fathers' eyes have +looked.' + +_Abeunt studia in mores._ + +If, years ago, there had lacked anything to sharpen my suspicion +of those fork-bearded professors who derived our prose from the +stucco of Anglo-Saxon prose, it would have been their foolish +deliberate practice of composing whole pages of English prose +without using one word derivative from Latin or Greek. Esau, when +he sold his birthright, had the excuse of being famished. These +pedants, with a full board, sought frenetically to give it away-- +board and birthright. _'So when this corruptible shall have put +on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality'_ +--almost, I say, these men had deserved to have a kind of speech +more to their taste read over their coffins. + +VII + +What, in the next place, can I say of Greek, save that, as Latin +gave our fathers the model of prose, Greek was the source of it +all, the goddess and genius of the well-head? And, casting about +to illustrate, as well as may be, what I mean by this, I hit on a +minor dialogue of Plato, the "Phaedrus," and choose you a short +passage in Edward FitzGerald's rendering: + + When Socrates and Phaedrus have discoursed away the noon-day + under the plane trees by the Ilissus, they rise to depart + toward the city. But Socrates (pointing perhaps to some images + of Pan and other sylvan deities) says it is not decent to leave + their haunts without praying to them, and he prays: + + 'O auspicious Pan, and ye other deities of this place, grant to + me to become beautiful _inwardly,_ and that all my outward + goods may prosper my inner soul. Grant that I may esteem wisdom + the only riches, and that I may have so much gold as temperance + can handsomely carry. + + 'Have we yet aught else to pray for, Phaedrus? For myself I + seem to have prayed enough.' + + _Phaedrus_: 'Pray as much for me also: for friends have all + in common.' + + _Socrates_: 'Even so be it. Let us depart' + +To this paternoster of Socrates, reported more than four +centuries before Christ taught the Lord's Prayer, let me add an +attempted translation of the lines that close Homer's hymn to the +Delian Apollo. Imagine the old blind poet on the beach chanting +to the islanders the glorious boast of the little island--how it +of all lands had harboured Leto in her difficult travail; how she +gave birth to the Sun God; how the immortal child, as the +attendant goddesses touched his lips with ambrosia, burst his +swaddling bands and stood up, sudden, a god erect: + + But he, the Sun-God, did no sooner taste + That food divine than every swaddling band + Burst strand by strand, + And burst the belt above his panting waist-- + All hanging loose + About him as he stood and gave command: + 'Fetch me my lyre, fetch me my curving bow! + And, taught by these, shall know + All men, through me, the unfaltering will of Zeus!' + So spake the unshorn God, the Archer bold, + And turn'd to tread the ways of Earth so wide; + While they, all they, had marvel to behold + How Delos broke in gold + Beneath his feet, as on a mountain-side + Sudden, in Spring, a tree is glorified + And canopied with blossoms manifold. + But he went swinging with a careless stride, + Proud, in his new artillery bedight, + Up rocky Cynthus, and the isles descried-- + All his, and their inhabitants--for wide, + Wide as he roam'd, ran these in rivalry + To build him temples in many groves: + And these be his, and all the isles he loves, + And every foreland height, + And every river hurrying to the sea. + But chief in thee, + Delos, as first it was, is his delight. + Where the long-robed Ionians, each with mate + And children, pious to his altar throng, + And, decent, celebrate + His birth with boxing-match and dance and song: + So that a stranger, happening them among, + Would deem that these Ionians have no date, + Being ageless, all so met; + And he should gaze + And marvel at their ways, + Health, wealth, the comely face + On man and woman--envying their estate-- + And yet + _You_ shall he least be able to forget, + You maids of Delos, dear ones, as ye raise + The hymn to Phoebus, Leto, Artemis, + In triune praise, + Then slide your song back upon ancient days + And men whose very name forgotten is., + And women who have lived and gone their ways: + And make them live agen, + Charming the tribes of men, + Whose speech ye mock with pretty mimicries + So true + They almost woo + The hearer to believe he's singing too! + Speed me, Apollo: speed me, Artemis! + And you, my dears, farewell! Remember me + Hereafter if, from any land that is, + Some traveller question ye-- + 'Maidens, who was the sweetest man of speech + Fared hither, ever chanted on this beach?' + I you beseech + Make answer to him, civilly-- + 'Sir, he was just a blind man, and his home + In rocky Chios. But his songs were best, + And shall be ever in the days to come.' + Say that: and as I quest + In fair wall'd cities far, I'll tell them there + (They'll list, for 'twill be true) + Of Delos and of you. + But chief and evermore my song shall be + Of Prince Apollo, lord of Archery. + God of the Silver Bow, whom Leto bare-- + Leto, the lovely-tress'd. + +Did time permit, I might quote you a chorus of Aeschylus, a +passage from Thucydides or from Aristotle, to illustrate Gibbon's +saying that the Greek language 'gave a soul to the objects of +sense, and a body to the abstractions of metaphysics.' But there +it is, and it has haunted our literature; at first filtering +through Latin, at length breaking from Constantinople in flood +and led to us, to Oxford and Cambridge, by Erasmus, by Grocyn: + + Thee, that lord of splendid lore + Orient from old Hellas' shore. + +To have a sense of Greek, too, is to own a corrective of taste. I +quote another old schoolmaster here--a dead friend, Sidney Irwin: + + What the Greeks disliked was extravagance, caprice, + boastfulness, and display of all kinds.... The Greeks _hated_ all + monsters. The quaint phrase in the "Odyssey" about the Queen + of the Laestrygones--'She was tall as a mountain, and they + hated her'--would have seemed to them most reasonable.... + To read Greek is to have a perpetual witness to the virtue + of pruning--of condensing--a perpetual protest against all + that crowds, and swells, and weakens the writer's purpose. + To forget this is but to 'confound our skill in covetousness.' + We cannot all be writers ... but we all wish to have good + taste, and good taste is born of a generous caution about + letting oneself go. I say _generous,_ for caution is seldom + generous--but it is a generous mood which is in no haste to + assert itself. To consider the thing, the time, the place, the + person, and to take yourself and your own feelings _only fifth_ + is to be armour-proof against bad taste. + +VIII + +They tell us that Greek is going, here. Well, I hold no brief for +compulsory Greek; and I shall say but one word on it. I put it, +rather idly, to a vote in a Cambridge Combination Room, the other +day, and was amazed to find how the votes were divided. The men +of science were by no means unanimous. They owned that there was +much to be said even for compulsory Greek, if only Greek had been +intelligently taught. And with that, of course, I agree: for to +learn Greek is, after all, a baptism into a noble cult. The +Romans knew _that._ I believe that, even yet, if the schools +would rebuild their instruction in Greek so as to make it +interesting, as it ought to be, from the first, we should oust +those birds who croak and chatter upon the walls of our old +Universities. I find the following in FitzGerald's "Polonius": + + An old ruinous tower which had harboured innumerable + jackdaws, sparrows, and bats, was at length repaired. When + the masons left it, the jackdaws, sparrows, and bats came back + in search of their old dwellings. But these were all filled up. + 'Of what use now is this great building?' said they, 'come let + us forsake this useless stone-heap: + +And the beauty of this little apologue is that you can read it +either way. + +IX + +But, although a student of English Literature be ignorant of +Greek and Latin as languages, may he not have Greek and Latin +literature widely opened to him by intelligent translations? The +question has often been asked, but I ask it again. May not _some_ +translations open a door to him by which he can see them through +an atmosphere, and in that atmosphere the authentic ancient gods +walking: so that returning upon English literature he may +recognise them there, too, walking and talking in a garden of +values? The highest poetical speech of any one language defies, +in my belief, translation into any other. But Herodotus loses +little, and North is every whit as good as Plutarch. + + Sigh no more, ladies; ladies, sigh no more! + Men were deceivers ever; + One foot in sea and one on shore, + To one thing constant never + +Suppose that rendered thus: + +I enjoin upon the adult female population ([Greek: gynaikes]), +not once but twice, that there be from this time forward, a total +cessation of sighing. The male is, and has been, constantly +addicted to inconstancy, treading the ocean and the mainland +respectively with alternate feet. + +That, more or less, is what Paley did upon Euripides, and how +would you like it if a modern Greek did it upon Shakespeare? None +the less I remember that my own first awed surmise of what Greek +might mean came from a translated story of Herodotus--the story +of Cleobis and Biton--at the tail of an old grammar-book, before +I had learnt the Greek alphabet; and I am sure that the instinct +of the old translators was sound; that somehow (as Wordsworth +says somewhere) the present must be balanced on the wings of the +past and the future, and that as you stretch out the one you +stretch out the other to strength. + +X + +There is no derogation of new things in this plea I make +specially to you who may be candidates in our School of English. +You may remember my reading to you in a previous lecture that +liberal poem of Cory's invoking the spirit of 'dear divine +Comatas,' that + + Two minds shall flow together, the English and the Greek. + +Well, I would have your minds, as you read our literature, reach +back to that Dorian shepherd through an atmosphere--his made +ours--as through veils, each veil unfolding a value. So you will +recognise how, from Chaucer down, our literature has panted after +the Mediterranean water-brooks. So through an atmosphere you will +link (let me say) Collins's "Ode to Evening," or Matthew Arnold's +"Strayed Reveller" up to the 'Pervigilium Veneris,' Mr Sturge +Moore's "Sicilian Vine-dresser" up to Theocritus, Pericles' +funeral oration down to Lincoln's over the dead at Gettysburg. +And as I read you just now some part of an English oration in the +Latin manner, so I will conclude with some stanzas in the Greek +manner. They are by Landor--a proud promise by a young writer, +hopeful as I could wish any young learner here to be. The title-- + + _Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra_ + + Tanagra! think not I forget + Thy beautifully storied streets; + Be sure my memory bathes yet + In clear Thermodon, and yet greets + The blithe and liberal shepherd-boy, + Whose sunny bosom swells with joy + When we accept his matted rushes + Upheav'd with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes. + + A gift I promise: one I see + Which thou with transport wilt receive, + The only proper gift for thee, + Of which no mortal shall bereave + In later times thy mouldering walls, + Until the last old turret falls; + A crown, a crown from Athens won, + A crown no god can wear, beside Latona's son. + + There may be cities who refuse + To their own child the honours due, + And look ungently on the Muse; + But ever shall those cities rue + The dry, unyielding, niggard breast, + Offering no nourishment, no rest, + To that young head which soon shall rise + Disdainfully, in might and glory, to the skies. + + Sweetly where cavern'd Dirce flows + Do white-arm'd maidens chaunt my lay, + Flapping the while with laurel-rose + The honey-gathering tribes away; + And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues + Lisp your Corinna's early songs; + To her with feet more graceful come + The verses that have dwelt in kindred breasts at home. + + O let thy children lean aslant + Against the tender mother's knee, + And gaze into her face, and want + To know what magic there can be + In words that urge some eyes to dance, + While others as in holy trance + Look up to heaven: be such my praise! + Why linger? I must haste, or lose the Delphic bays. + + + +[Footnote 1: The Works of Lucian of Samosata: translated +by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (Introduction, p. xxix). +Oxford, Clarendon Press.] + +[Footnote 2: "The Training of the Imagination": by James +Rhoades. London, John Lane, 1900.] + +[Footnote 3: Landor: "AEsop and Rhodope."] + + + + +LECTURE VIII + +ON READING THE BIBLE (I) + +WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1918 + + +I + +'_Read not to Contradict and Confute,_' says Bacon of Studies in +general: and you may be the better disposed, Gentlemen, to +forgive my choice of subject to-day if in my first sentence I +rule _that_ way of reading the Bible completely out of court. You +may say at once that, the Bible being so full of doctrine as it +is, and such a storehouse for exegesis as it has been, this is +more easily said than profitably done. You may grant me that the +Scriptures in our Authorised Version are part and parcel of +English Literature (and more than part and parcel); you may grant +that a Professor of English Literature has therefore a claim, if +not an obligation, to speak of them in that Version; you may-- +having granted my incessant refusal to disconnect our national +literature from our national life, or to view them as +disconnected--accept the conclusion which plainly flows from it; +that no teacher of English can pardonably neglect what is at once +the most majestic thing in our literature and by all odds the most +spiritually living thing we inherit; in our courts at once superb +monument and superabundant fountain of life; and yet you may +discount beforehand what he must attempt. + +For (say you) if he attempt the doctrine, he goes straight down +to buffeted waters so broad that only stout theologians can win +to shore; if, on the other hand, he ignore doctrine, the play is +"Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark left out. He reduces our +Bible to 'mere literature,' to something 'belletristic,' pretty, +an artifice, a flimsy, a gutted thing. + +II + +Now of all ways of dealing with literature that happens to be the +way we should least admire. By that way we disassociate +literature from life; 'what they said' from the men who said it +and meant it, not seldom at the risk of their lives. My pupils +will bear witness in their memories that when we talk together +concerning poetry, for example, by 'poetry' we mean 'that which +the poets wrote,' or (if you like) 'the stuff the poets wrote'; +and their intelligence tells them, of course, that anyone who in +the simple proposition 'Poets wrote Poetry' connects an object +with a subject by a verb does not, at any rate, intend to sunder +what he has just been at pains, however slight, to join together: +he may at least have the credit, whether he be right or wrong, of +asserting his subject and his object to be interdependent. Take a +particular proposition--John Milton wrote a poem called "Paradise +Lost." You will hardly contest the truth of that: but what does +it mean? Milton wrote the story of the Fall of Man: he told it in +some thousands of lines of decasyllabic verse unrhymed; he +measured these lines out with exquisite cadences. The object of +our simple sentence includes all these, and this much beside: +that he wrote the total poem and made it what it is. Nor can that +object be fully understood--literature being, ever and always, so +personal a thing--until we understand the subject, John Milton-- +what manner of man he was, and how on earth, being such a man, he +contrived to do it. We shall never _quite_ know that: but it is +important we should get as near as we can. + +Of the Bible this is yet more evident, it being a translation. +Isaiah did not write the cadences of his prophecies, as we +ordinary men of this country know them: Christ did not speak the +cadences of the Parables or of the Sermon on the Mount, as we +know them. These have been supplied by the translators. By all +means let us study them and learn to delight in them; but Christ +did not suffer for his cadences, still less for the cadences +invented by Englishmen almost 1600 years later; and Englishmen +who went to the stake did not die for these cadences. They were +Lollards and Reformers who lived too soon to have heard them; +they were Catholics of the `old profession' who had either never +heard or, having heard, abhorred them. These men were cheerful to +die for the _meaning_ of the Word and for its _authorship_-- +because it was spoken by Christ. + +III + +There is in fact, Gentlemen, no such thing as 'mere literature.' +Pedants have coined that contemptuous term to express a +figmentary concept of their own imagination or--to be more +accurate, an hallucination of wrath--having about as much +likeness to a _vera causa_ as had the doll which (if you +remember) Maggie Tulliver used to beat in the garret whenever, +poor child, the world went wrong with her somehow. The thoughts, +actions and passions of men became literature by the simple but +difficult process of being recorded in memorable speech; but in +that process neither the real thing recorded nor the author is +evacuated. _Belles lettres, Fine Art_ are odious terms, for which +no clean-thinking man has any use. There is no such thing in the +world as _belles lettres_; if there were, it would deserve the +name. As for _Fine Art,_ the late Professor Butcher bequeathed to +us a translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" with some admirable +appendixes--the whole entitled "Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and +Fine Art." Aristotle never in his life had a theory of Fine Art +as distinct from other art: nor (I wager) can you find in his +discovered works a word for any such thing. Now if Aristotle had +a concept of `fine' art as distinguished from other art, he was +man enough to find a name for it. His omission to do anything of +the sort speaks for itself. + +So you should beware of any teacher who would treat the Bible or +any part of it as 'fine writing,' mere literature. + +IV + +Let me, having said this, at once enter a _caveat,_ a +qualification. Although men do not go to the stake for the +cadences, the phrases of our Authorised Version, it remains true +that these cadences, these phrases, have for three hundred years +exercised a most powerful effect upon their emotions. They do so +by association of ideas by the accreted memories of our race +enwrapping connotation around a word, a name--say the name +_Jerusalem,_ or the name _Sion_: + + And they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, + Sing us one of the songs of Sion. + How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? + If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget + her cunning. + +It must be known to you, Gentlemen, that these words can affect +men to tears who never connect them in thought with the actual +geographical Jerusalem; who connect it in thought merely with a +quite different native home from which they are exiles. Here and +there some one man may feel a similar emotion over Landor's + + Tanagra, think not I forget.... + +But the word Jerusalem will strike twenty men twentyfold more +poignantly: for to each it names the city familiar in spirit to +his parents when they knelt, and to their fathers before them: +not only the city which was his nursery and yet lay just beyond +the landscape seen from its window; its connotation includes not +only what the word 'Rome' has meant, and ever must mean, to +thousands on thousands setting eyes for the first time on _The +City_: but it holds, too, some hint of the New Jerusalem, the +city of twelve gates before the vision of which St John fell +prone: + + Ah, my sweet home, Hierusalem, + Would God I were in thee! + Thy Gardens and thy gallant walks + Continually are green: + There grows such sweet and pleasant flowers + As nowhere else are seen. + Quite through the streets with pleasant sound + The flood of Life doth flow; + Upon whose banks on every side + The wood of Life doth grow.... + Our Lady sings Magnificat + With tones surpassing sweet: + And all the virgins bear their part, + Sitting about her feet. + Hierusalem, my happy home, + Would God I were in thee! + Would God my woes were at an end, + Thy joys that I might see! + +You cannot (I say) get away from these connotations accreted +through your own memories and your fathers'; as neither can you +be sure of getting free of any great literature in any tongue, +once it has been written. Let me quote you a passage from +Cardinal Newman [he is addressing the undergraduates of the +Catholic University of Dublin]: + + How real a creation, how _sui generis,_ is the style of + Shakespeare, or of the Protestant Bible and Prayer Book, + or of Swift, or of Pope, or of Gibbon, or of Johnson! + +[I pause to mark how just this man can be to his great enemies. +Pope was a Roman Catholic, you will remember; but Gibbon was an +infidel.] + + Even were the subject-matter without meaning, though in truth + the style cannot really be abstracted from the sense, still the + style would, on _that_ supposition, remain as perfect and + original a work as Euclid's "Elements" or a symphony of + Beethoven. + + And, like music, it has seized upon the public mind: and the + literature of England is no longer a mere letter, printed in + books and shut up in libraries, but it is a living voice, which + has gone forth in its expressions and its sentiments into the + world of men, which daily thrills upon our ears and syllables + our thoughts, which speaks to us through our correspondents and + dictates when we put pen to paper. Whether we will or no, the + phraseology of Shakespeare, of the Protestant formularies, of + Milton, of Pope, of Johnson's Table-talk, and of Walter Scott, + have become a portion of the vernacular tongue, the household + words, of which perhaps we little guess the origin, and the + very idioms of our familiar conversation.... So tyrannous is + the literature of a nation; it is too much for us. We cannot + destroy or reverse it.... We cannot make it over again. It is a + great work of man, when it is no work of God's.... We cannot + undo the past. English Literature will ever _have been_ + Protestant. + +V + +I am speaking, then, to hearers who would read not to contradict +and confute; who have an inherited sense of the English Bible; +and who have, even as I, a store of associated ideas, to be +evoked by any chance phrase from it; beyond this, it may be, +nothing that can be called scholarship by any stretch of the +term. + +Very well, then: my first piece of advice _on reading the Bible_ +is that you do it. + +I have, of course, no reason at all to suppose or suggest that +any member of this present audience omits to do it. But some +general observations are permitted to an occupant of this Chair: +and, speaking generally, and as one not constitutionally disposed +to lamentation [in the book we are discussing, for example, I +find Jeremiah the contributor least to my mind], I do believe +that the young read the Bible less, and enjoy it less--probably +read it less, because they enjoy it less--than their fathers did. + +The Education Act of 1870, often in these days too sweepingly +denounced, did a vast deal of good along with no small amount of +definite harm. At the head of the harmful effects must (I think) +be set its discouragement of Bible reading; and this chiefly +through its encouraging parents to believe that they could +henceforth hand over the training of their children to the State, +lock, stock and barrel. You all remember the picture in Burns of +"The Cotter's Saturday Night": + + The chearfu' supper done, wi' serious face, + They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; + The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, + The big ha'-Bible, ance his father's pride. + His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, + His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; + Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, + He wales a portion with judicious care, + And 'Let us worship God !' he says, with solemn air. + +But you know that the sire bred on the tradition of 1870, and now +growing grey, does nothing of that sort on a Saturday night: +that, Saturday being tub-night, he inclines rather to order the +children into the back-kitchen to get washed; that on Sunday +morning, having seen them off to a place of worship, he inclines +to sit down and read, in place of the Bible, his Sunday +newspaper: that in the afternoon he again shunts them off to +Sunday-school. Now--to speak first of the children--it is good +for them to be tubbed on Saturday night; good for them also, I +dare say, to attend Sunday-school on the following afternoon; but +not good in so far as they miss to hear the Bible read by their +parents and + + Pure religion breathing household laws. + +'Pure religion'?--Well perhaps that begs the question: and I dare +say Burns' cotter when he waled 'a portion with judicious care,' +waled it as often as not--perhaps oftener than not--to contradict +and confute; that often he contradicted and confuted very +crudely, very ignorantly. But we may call it simple religion +anyhow, sincere religion, parental religion, household religion: +and for a certainty no 'lessons' in day-school or Sunday-school +have, for tingeing a child's mind, an effect comparable with that +of a religion pervading the child's home, present at bedside and +board:-- + + Here a little child I stand, + Heaving up my either hand; + Cold as paddocks the they be, + Here I lift them up to Thee; + For a benison to fall + On our meat and on us all. Amen. + +--permeating the house, subtly instilled by the very accent of +his father's and his mother's speech. For the grown man ... I +happen to come from a part of England [Ed.: Cornwall] where men, +in all my days, have been curiously concerned with religion and +are yet so concerned; so much that you can scarce take up a local +paper and turn to the correspondence column but you will find +some heated controversy raging over Free Will and Predestination, +the Validity of Holy Orders, Original Sin, Redemption of the many +or the few: + + Go it Justice, go it Mercy! + Go it Douglas, go it Percy! + +But the contestants do not write in the language their fathers +used. They seem to have lost the vocabulary, and to have picked +up, in place of it, the jargon of the Yellow Press, which does +not tend to clear definition on points of theology. The mass of +all this controversial stuff is no more absurd, no more frantic, +than it used to be: but in language it has lost its dignity with +its homeliness. It has lost the colouring of the Scriptures, the +intonation of the Scriptures, the Scriptural _habit._ + +If I turn from it to a passage in Bunyan, I am conversing with a +man who, though he has read few other books, has imbibed and +soaked the Authorised Version into his fibres so that he cannot +speak but Biblically. Listen to this: + + As to the situation of this town, it lieth just between the two + worlds, and the first founder, and builder of it, so far as by + the best, and most authentic records I can gather, was one + Shaddai; and he built it for his own delight. He made it the + mirror, and glory of all that he made, even the Top-piece + beyond anything else that he did in that country: yea, so + goodly a town was Mansoul, when first built, that it is said by + some, the Gods at the setting up thereof, came down to see it, + and sang for joy.... + + The wall of the town was well built, yea so fast and firm + was it knit and compact together, that had it not been for the + townsmen themselves, they could not have been shaken, or + broken for ever. + +Or take this: + + Now as they were going along and talking, they espied a Boy + feeding his Father's Sheep. The Boy was in very mean + Cloaths, but of a very fresh and well-favoured Countenance, + and as he sate by himself he Sung.... Then said their Guide, + Do you hear him? I will dare to say, that this Boy lives a + merrier Life, and wears more of that Herb called Heart's-ease + in his Bosom, than he that is clad in Silk and Velvet. + +I choose ordinary passages, not solemn ones in which Bunyan is +consciously scriptural. But you cannot miss the accent. + +That is Bunyan, of course; and I am far from saying that the +labouring men among whom I grew up, at the fishery or in the +hayfield, talked with Bunyan's magic. But I do assert that they +had something of the accent; enough to be _like,_ in a child's +mind, the fishermen and labourers among whom Christ found his +first disciples. They had the large simplicity of speech, the +cadence, the accent. But let me turn to Ireland, where, though +not directly derived from our English Bible, a similar scriptural +accent survives among the peasantry and is, I hope, ineradicable. +I choose two sentences from a book of 'Memories' recently written +by the survivor of the two ladies who together wrote the +incomparable 'Irish R.M.' The first was uttered by a small +cultivator who was asked why his potato-crop had failed: + +'I couldn't hardly say' was the answer. 'Whatever it was, God +spurned them in a boggy place.' + +Is that not the accent of Isaiah? + +He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a ball into a +large country. + +The other is the benediction bestowed upon the late Miss Violet +Martin by a beggar-woman in Skibbereen: + +Sure ye're always laughing! That ye may laugh in the sight of +the Glory of Heaven! + +VI + +But one now sees, or seems to see, that we children did, in our +time, read the Bible a great deal, if perforce we were taught to +read it in sundry bad ways: of which perhaps the worst was that +our elders hammered in all the books, all the parts of it, as +equally inspired and therefore equivalent. Of course this meant +among other things that they hammered it all in literally: but +let us not sentimentalise over that. It really did no child any +harm to believe that the universe was created in a working week +of six days, and that God sat down and looked at it on Sunday, +and behold it was very good. A week is quite a long while to a +child, yet a definite division rounding off a square job. The +bath-taps at home usually, for some unexplained reason, went +wrong during the week-end: the plumber came in on Monday and +carried out his tools on Saturday at mid-day. These little +analogies really do (I believe) help the infant mind, and not at +all to its later detriment. Nor shall I ask you to sentimentalise +overmuch upon the harm done to a child by teaching him that the +bloodthirsty jealous Jehovah of the Book of Joshua is as +venerable (being one and the same unalterably, 'with whom is no +variableness, neither shadow of turning') as the Father 'the same +Lord, whose property is always to have mercy,' revealed to us in +the Gospel, invoked for us at the Eucharist. I do most seriously +hold it to be fatal if we grow up and are fossilised in any such +belief. (Where have we better proof than in the invocations which +the family of the Hohenzollerns have been putting up, any time +since August 1914--and for years before--to this bloody +identification of the Christian man's God with Joshua's?) My +simple advice is that you not only read the Bible early but read +it again and again: and if on the third or fifth reading it leave +you just where the first left you--if you still get from it no +historical sense of a race _developing_ its concept of God--well +then, the point of the advice is lost, and there is no more to be +said. But over this business of teaching the Book of Joshua to +children I am in some doubt. A few years ago an Education +Committee, of which I happened to be Chairman, sent ministers of +religion about, two by two, to test the religious instruction +given in Elementary Schools. Of the two who worked around my +immediate neighbourhood, one was a young priest of the Church of +England, a medievalist with an ardent passion for ritual; the +other a gentle Congregational minister, a mere holy and humble +man of heart. They became great friends in the course of these +expeditions, and they brought back this report--'It is positively +wicked to let these children grow up being taught that there is +no difference in value between Joshua and St Matthew: that the +God of the Lord's Prayer is the same who commanded the massacre +of Ai.' Well, perhaps it is. Seeing how bloodthirsty old men can +be in these days, one is tempted to think that they can hardly be +caught too young and taught decency, if not mansuetude. But I do +not remember, as a child, feeling any horror about it, or any +difficulty in reconciling the two concepts. Children _are_ a bit +bloodthirsty, and I observe that two volumes of the late Captain +Mayne Reid--"The Rifle Rangers," and "The Scalp Hunters"--have +just found their way into The World's Classics and are advertised +alongside of Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies" and the "De Imitatione +Christi." I leave you to think this out; adding but this for a +suggestion: that as the Hebrew outgrew his primitive tribal +beliefs, so the bettering mind of man casts off the old clouts of +primitive doctrine, he being in fact better than his religion. +You have all heard preachers trying to show that Jacob was a +better fellow than Esau somehow. You have all, I hope, rejected +every such explanation. Esau was a gentleman: Jacob was not. The +instinct of a young man meets that wall, and there is no passing +it. Later, the mind of the youth perceives that the writer of +Jacob's history has a tribal mind and supposes throughout that +for the advancement of his tribe many things are permissible and +even admirable which a later and urbaner mind rejects as +detestably sharp practice. And the story of Jacob becomes the +more valuable to us historically as we realise what a hero he is +to the bland chronicler. + +VII + +But of another thing, Gentlemen, I am certain: that we were badly +taught in that these books, while preached to us as equivalent, +were kept in separate compartments. We were taught the books of +Kings and Chronicles as history. The prophets were the Prophets, +inspired men predicting the future which they only did by chance, +as every inspired man does. Isaiah was never put into relation +with his time at all; which means everything to our understanding +of Isaiah, whether of Jerusalem or of Babylon. We ploughed +through Kings and Chronicles, and made out lists of rulers, with +dates and capital events. Isaiah was all fine writing about +nothing at all, and historically we were concerned with him only +to verify some far-fetched reference to the Messiah in this or +that Evangelist. But there is not, never has been, really fine +literature--like Isaiah--composed about nothing at all: and in +the mere matter of prognostication I doubt if such experts as +Zadkiel and Old Moore have anything to fear from any School of +Writing we can build up in Cambridge. But if we had only been +taught to read Isaiah concurrently with the Books of the Kings, +what a fire it would have kindled among the dry bones of our +studies! + + Then said the Lord unto Isaiah, Go forth now to meet + Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the + conduit of the upper pool in the highway of the fuller's + field. + +Scholars, of course, know the political significance of that +famous meeting. But if we had only known it; if we had only been +taught what Assyria was--with its successive monarchs Tiglath- +pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, Sennacherib; and why Syria and +Israel and Egypt were trying to cajole or force Judah into +alliance; what a difference (I say) this passage would have meant +to us! + +VIII + +I daresay, after all, that the best way is not to bother a boy +too early and overmuch with history; that the best way is to let +him ramp at first through the Scriptures even as he might through +"The Arabian Nights": to let him take the books as they come, +merely indicating, for instance, that Job is a great poem, the +Psalms great lyrics, the story of Ruth a lovely idyll, the Song +of Songs the perfection of an Eastern love-poem. Well and what +then? He will certainly get less of "The Cotter's Saturday Night" +into it, and certainly more of the truth of the East. There he +will feel the whole splendid barbaric story for himself: the +flocks of Abraham and Laban: the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt +for corn: the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the +gleaning, and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in +weariness: Saul--great Saul--by the tent-prop with the jewels in +his turban: + + All its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous at heart. + +Or consider--to choose one or two pictures out of the tremendous +procession--consider Michal, Saul's royal daughter: how first she +is given in marriage to David to be a snare for him; how loving +him she saves his life, letting him down from the window and +dressing up an image on the bed in his place: how, later, she is +handed over to another husband Phaltiel, how David demands her +back, and she goes: + + And her husband (Phaltiel) went with her along weeping + behind her to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, Go, return. + And he returned. + +Or, still later, how the revulsion takes her, Saul's daughter, as +she sees David capering home before the ark, and how her +affection had done with this emotional man of the ruddy +countenance, so prone to weep in his bed: + + And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, + Michal Saul's daughter-- + +Mark the three words-- + + Michal Saul's daughter looked through a window, and saw + King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she + despised him in her heart. + +The whole story goes into about ten lines. Your psychological +novelist nowadays, given the wit to invent it, would make it +cover 500 pages at least. + +Or take the end of David in the first two chapters of the First +Book of Kings, with its tale of Oriental intrigues, plots, +treacheries, murderings in the depths of the horrible palace +wherein the old man is dying. Or read of Solomon and his ships +and his builders, and see his Temple growing (as Heber put it) +like a tall palm, with no sound of hammers. Or read again the end +of Queen Athaliah: + + And when Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the + people, she came to the people into the temple of the Lord.-- + And when she looked, behold, the king stood by a pillar, as the + manner was, and the princes and the trumpeters by the king, and + all the people of the land rejoiced, and blew with trumpets: + And Athaliah rent her clothes, and cried Treason, Treason.--But + Jehoiada the priest commanded the captains of the hundreds, the + officers of the host, and said unto them, Have her forth + without the ranges.... + + --And they laid hands on her; and she went by the way by the + which the horses came into the king's house: and there was + she slain. + +Let a youngster read this, I say, just as it is written; and how +the true East--sound, scent, form, colour--pours into the +narrative!--cymbals and trumpets, leagues of sand, caravans +trailing through the heat, priest and soldiery and kings going up +between them to the altar; blood at the foot of the steps, blood +everywhere, smell of blood mingled with spices, sandal-wood, dung +of camels! + +Yes, but how--if you will permit the word--how the _enjoyment_ of +it as magnificent literature might be enhanced by a scholar who +would condescend to whisper, of his knowledge, the magical word +here or there, to the child as he reads! For an instance.-- + +No child--no grown man with any sense of poetry--can deny his ear +to the Forty-fifth Psalm; the one that begins 'My heart is +inditing a good matter,' and plunges into a hymn of royal +nuptials. First (you remember) the singing-men, the sons of +Korah, lift their chant to the bridegroom, the King: + + Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty ... And in thy + majesty ride prosperously. + +Or as we hear it in the Book of Common Prayer: + + Good luck have thou with thine honour... + because of the word of truth, of meekness, and + righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee + terrible things.... + + All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia: out of + the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad. + +Anon they turn to the Bride: + + Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; + forget also thine own people, and thy father's house.... + The King's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is + of wrought gold. + + She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: + the virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company. And + the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift. Instead of thy + fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes + in all the earth. + +For whom (wonders the young reader, spell-bound by this), for +what happy bride and bridegroom was this glorious chant raised? +Now suppose that, just here, he has a scholar ready to tell him +what is likeliest true--that the bridegroom was Ahab--that the +bride, the daughter of Sidon, was no other than Jezebel, and +became what Jezebel now is--with what an awe of surmise would two +other passages of the history toll on his ear? + + And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; and + the dogs licked up his blood.... + + And when he (Jehu) was come in, he did eat and drink, and + said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is + a king's daughter. + + And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her + than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands. + + Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, This + is the word of the Lord, which he spake by his servant Elijah + the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat + the flesh of Jezebel ... so that (men) shall not say, This is + Jezebel. + +In another lecture, Gentlemen, I propose to take up the argument +and attempt to bring it to this point. 'How can we, having this +incomparable work, _necessary_ for study by all who would write +English, bring it within the ambit of the English Tripos and yet +avoid offending the experts?' + + + + +LECTURE IX + +ON READING THE BIBLE (II) + +WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1918 + + +I + +We left off last term, Gentlemen, upon a note of protest. We +wondered why it should be that our English Version of the Bible +lies under the ban of school-masters, Boards of Studies, and all +who devise courses of reading and examinations in English +Literature: that among our `prescribed books' we find Chaucer's +"Prologue," we find "Hamlet," we find "Paradise Lost," we find +Pope's "Essay on Man," again and again, but "The Book of Job" +never; "The Vicar of Wakefield" and Gray's "Elegy" often, but +"Ruth" or "Isaiah," "Ecclesiasticus" or "Wisdom" never. + +I propose this morning: + +(1) to enquire into the reasons for this, so far as I can guess +and interpret them; + +(2) to deal with such reasons as we can discover or surmise; + +(3) to suggest to-day, some simple first aid: and in another +lecture, taking for experiment a single book from the Authorised +Version, some practical ways of including it in the ambit of our +new English Tripos. This will compel me to be definite: and as +definite proposals invite definite objections, by this method we +are likeliest to know where we are, and if the reform we seek be +realisable or illusory. + +II + +I shall ask you then, first, to assent with me, that the Authorised +Version of the Holy Bible is, as a literary achievement, one of the +greatest in our language; nay, with the possible exception of the +complete works of Shakespeare, the very greatest. You will +certainly not deny this. + +As little, or less, will you deny that more deeply than any other +book--more deeply even than all the writings of Shakespeare--far +more deeply--it has influenced our literature. Here let me repeat +a short passage from a former lecture of mine (May 15, 1913, five +years ago). I had quoted some few glorious sentences such as: + + Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty: they shall + behold the land that is very far off. + + And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a + covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, + as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.... + + So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, + and this mortal shall have put on immortality ... + +and having quoted these I went on: + + When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, these + rhythms for its dearest beliefs, a literature is surely + established.... Wyclif, Tyndale, Coverdale and others before + the forty-seven had wrought. The Authorised Version, setting + a seal on all, set a seal on our national style.... It has + cadences homely and sublime, yet so harmonises them that + the voice is always one. Simple men--holy and humble men + of heart like Isaak Walton and Bunyan--have their lips + touched and speak to the homelier tune. Proud men, scholars + --Milton, Sir Thomas Browne--practise the rolling Latin + sentence; but upon the rhythms of our Bible they, too, fall + back--'The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may + be too short for our designs.' 'Acquaint thyself with the + Choragium of the stars.' 'There is nothing immortal but + immortality.' The precise man Addison cannot excel one parable + in brevity or in heavenly clarity: the two parts of Johnson's + antithesis come to no more than this 'Our Lord has gone up to + the sound of a trump; with the sound of a trump our Lord has + gone up.' The Bible controls its enemy Gibbon as surely as it + haunts the curious music of a light sentence of Thackeray's. It + is in everything we see, hear, feel, because it is in us, in + our blood. + +If that be true, or less than gravely overstated: if the English +Bible hold this unique place in our literature; if it be at once +a monument, an example and (best of all) a well of English +undefiled, no stagnant water, but quick, running, curative, +refreshing, vivifying; may we not agree, Gentlemen, to require +the weightiest reason why our instructors should continue to +hedge in the temple and pipe the fountain off in professional +conduits, forbidding it to irrigate freely our ground of study? + +It is done so complacently that I do not remember to have met one +single argument put up in defence of it; and so I am reduced to +guess-work. What can be the justifying reason for an embargo on +the face of it so silly and arbitrary, if not senseless? + +III + +Does it reside perchance in some primitive instinct of _taboo_; +of a superstition of fetish-worship fencing off sacred things as +unmentionable, and reinforced by the bad Puritan notion that holy +things are by no means to be enjoyed? + +If so, I begin by referring you to the Greeks and their attitude +towards the Homeric poems. We, of course, hold the Old Testament +more sacred than Homer. But I very much doubt if it be more +sacred to us than the Iliad and the Odyssey were to an old +Athenian, in his day. To the Greeks--and to forget this is the +fruitfullest source of error in dealing with the Tragedians or +even with Aristophanes--to the Greeks, their religion, such as it +was, mattered enormously. They built their Theatre upon it, as we +most certainly do not; which means that it had sunk into their +daily life and permeated their enjoyment of it, as our religion +certainly does not affect _our_ life to enhance it as amusing or +pleasurable. We go to Church on Sunday, and write it off as an +observance; but if eager to be happy with a free heart, we close +early and steal a few hours from the working-day. We antagonise +religion and enjoyment, worship and holiday. Nature being too +strong for any convention of ours, courtship has asserted +itself as permissible on the Sabbath, if not as a Sabbatical +institution. + +Now the Greeks were just as much slaves to the letter of their +Homer as any Auld Licht Elder to the letter of St Paul. No one +will accuse Plato of being overfriendly to poetry. Yet I believe +you will find in Plato some 150 direct citations from Homer, not +to speak of allusions scattered broadcast through the dialogues, +often as texts for long argument. Of these citations and +allusions an inordinate number seem to us laboriously trivial-- +that is to say, unless we put ourselves into the Hellenic mind. +On the other hand Plato uses others to enforce or illustrate his +profoundest doctrines. For an instance, in "Phaedo" (Sec. 96) +Socrates is arguing that the soul cannot be one with the harmony +of the bodily affections, being herself the master-player who +commands the strings: + +'--almost always' [he says] opposing and coercing them in all +sorts of ways throughout life, sometimes more violently with the +pains of medicine and gymnastic; then again more gently;-- +threatening, and also reprimanding the desires, passions, fears, +as if talking to a thing which is not herself; as Homer in the +Odyssey represents Odysseus doing in the words + +[Greek: stethos de plexas kradien enipape mutho: + tetlathi de, kradie; kai kynteron allo pot etles] + + He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart: + Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured. + +Do you think [asks Socrates] that Homer wrote this under the idea +that the soul is a harmony capable of being led by the affections +of the body, and not rather of a nature which should lead and +master them--herself a far diviner thing than any harmony? + +A Greek, then, will use Homer--_his_ Bible--minutely on niceties +of conduct or broadly on first principles of philosophy or +religion. But equally, since it is poetry all the time to him, he +will take--or to instance particular writers, Aristotle and the +late Greek, Longinus will take--a single hexameter to illustrate +a minute trick of style or turn of phrase, as equally he will +choose a long passage or the whole "Iliad," the whole "Odyssey," +to illustrate a grand rule of poetic construction, a first +principle of aesthetics. For an example--'Herein,' says +Aristotle, starting to show that an Epic poem must have Unity of +Subject--'Herein, to repeat what we have said before, we have a +further proof of Homer's superiority to the rest. He did not +attempt to deal even with the Trojan War in its entirety, though +it was a whole story with a definite beginning, middle and end-- +feeling apparently that it was too long a story to be taken in at +one view or else over-complicated by variety of incidents.' And +as Aristotle takes the "Iliad"--_his_ Bible--to illustrate a +grand rule of poetical construction, so the late writer of his +tradition--Longinus--will use it to exhibit the core and essence +of poetical sublimity; as in his famous ninth chapter, of which +Gibbon wrote: + + The ninth chapter ... {of the [Greek: PERI UPSOUS] or "De + Sublimitate" of Longinus} is one of the finest monuments of + antiquity. Till now, I was acquainted only with two ways of + criticising a beautiful passage: the one, to show, by an exact + anatomy of it, the distinct beauties of it, and whence they + sprung; the other, an idle exclamation, or a general + encomium, which leaves nothing behind it. Longinus has + shown me that there is a third. He tells me his own feelings + upon reading it; and tells them with so much energy, that he + communicates them. I almost doubt which is more sublime, + Homer's Battle of the Gods, or Longinus's Apostrophe to + Terentianus upon it. + +Well, let me quote you, in translation, a sentence or two from +this chapter, which produced upon Gibbon such an effect as almost +to anticipate Walter Pater's famous definition, 'To feel the +virtue of the poet, of the painter, to disengage it, to set it +forth--these are the three stages of the critic's duty.' + +'Elsewhere,' says Longinus, 'I have written as follows: +_Sublimity is the echo of a great soul._' + +'Sublimity is the echo of a great soul.'--It was worth repeating +too--was it not? + + For it is not possible that men with mean and servile ideas and + aims prevailing throughout their lives should produce anything + that is admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we + expect to fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are deep + and grave.... Hear how magnificently Homer speaks of the higher + powers: 'As far as a man seeth with his eyes into the haze of + distance as he sitteth upon a cliff of outlook and gazeth over + the wine-dark sea, even so far at a bound leap the neighing + horses of the Gods.' + +'He makes' [says Longinus] 'the vastness of the world the +measure of their leap.' Then, after a criticism of the Battle of +the Gods (too long to be quoted here) he goes on: + + Much superior to the passages respecting the Battle of the + Gods are those which represent the divine nature as it really + is--pure and great and undefiled; for example, what is said of + Poseidon. + + Her far-stretching ridges, her forest-trees, quaked in dismay, + And her peaks, and the Trojans' town, and the ships of Achaia's + array, + Beneath his immortal feet, as onward Poseidon strode. + Then over the surges he drave: leapt, sporting before the God, + Sea-beasts that uprose all round from the depths, for their king + they knew, + And for rapture the sea was disparted, and onward the car-steeds + flew[1]. + +Then how does Longinus conclude? Why, very strangely--very +strangely indeed, whether you take the treatise to be by that +Longinus, the Rhetorician and Zenobia's adviser, whom the Emperor +Aurelian put to death, or prefer to believe it the work of an +unknown hand in the first century. The treatise goes on: + + Similarly, the legislator of the Jews [Moses], no ordinary + man, having formed and expressed a worthy conception of + the might of the Godhead, writes at the very beginning of his + Laws, 'God said'--What? 'Let there be light, and there was + light' + +IV + +So here, Gentlemen, you have Plato, Aristotle, Longinus--all +Greeks of separate states--men of eminence all three, and two of +surpassing eminence, all three and each in his time and turn +treating Homer reverently as Holy Writ and yet enjoying it +liberally as poetry. For indeed the true Greek mind had no +thought to separate poetry from religion, as to the true Greek +mind reverence and liberty to enjoy, with the liberty of mind +that helps to enjoy, were all tributes to the same divine thing. +They had no professionals, no puritans, to hedge it off with a +_taboo_: and so when the last and least of the three, Longinus, +comes to _our_ Holy Writ--the sublime poetry in which Christendom +reads its God--his open mind at once recognises it as poetry and +as sublime. 'God said, Let there be light: and there was light.' +If Longinus could treat this as sublime poetry, why cannot we, +who have translated and made it ours? + +V + +Are we forbidden on the ground that our Bible is directly +inspired? Well, inspiration, as Sir William Davenant observed and +rather wittily proved, in his Preface to "Gondibert," 'is a +dangerous term.' It is dangerous mainly because it is a relative +term, a term of degrees. You may say definitely of some things +that the writer was inspired, as you may certify a certain man to +be mad--that is, so thoroughly and convincingly mad that you can +order him under restraint. But quite a number of us are (as they +say in my part of the world) 'not exactly,' and one or two of us +here and there at moments may have a touch even of inspiration. +So of the Bible itself: I suppose that few nowadays would contend +it to be all inspired _equally._ 'No' you may say, 'not all +equally: but all of it _directly,_ as no other book is.' + +To that I might answer, 'How do you _know_ that direct +inspiration ceased with the Revelation of St John the Divine, and +closed the book? It may be: but how do you know, and what +authority have you to say that Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," for +example, or Browning's great Invocation of Love was not directly +inspired? Certainly the men who wrote them were rapt above +themselves: and, if not directly, Why indirectly, and how?' + +But I pause on the edge of a morass, and spring back to firmer +ground. Our Bible, as we have it, is a translation, made by +forty-seven men and published in the year 1611. The original--and +I am still on firm ground because I am quoting now from "The +Cambridge History of English Literature"--'either proceeds from +divine inspiration, as some will have it, or, according to +others, is the fruit of the religious genius of the Hebrew race. +From either point of view the authors are highly gifted +individuals' [!]-- + + highly gifted individuals, who, notwithstanding their + diversities, and the progressiveness observable in their + representations of the nature of God, are wonderfully + consistent in the main tenor of their writings, and serve, in + general, for mutual confirmation and illustration. In some + cases, this may be due to the revision of earlier productions + by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive + conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and + profounder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier + conception often lends itself, without wrenching, to the + deeper interpretation and the completer exposition. The Bible + is not distinctively an intellectual achievement. + +In all earnest I protest that to write about the Bible in such a +fashion is to demonstrate inferentially that it has never +quickened you with its glow; that, whatever your learning, you +have missed what the unlearned Bunyan, for example, so admirably +caught--the true _wit_ of the book. The writer, to be sure, is +dealing with the originals. Let us more humbly sit at the feet of +the translators. 'Highly gifted individuals,' or no, the sort of +thing the translators wrote was 'And God said, Let there be +light,' 'A sower went forth to sow,' 'The Kingdom of Heaven is +like unto leaven, which a woman took,' 'The wages of sin is +death,' 'The trumpet shall sound,' 'Jesus wept,' 'Death is +swallowed up in victory.' + +Let me quote you for better encouragement, as well as for +relief, a passage from Matthew Arnold on the Authorised +Version: + + The effect of Hebrew poetry can be preserved and transferred + in a foreign language as the effect of other great + poetry cannot. The effect of Homer, the effect of Dante, is + and must be in great measure lost in a translation, because + their poetry is a poetry of metre, or of rhyme, or both; and + the effect of these is not really transferable. A man may make + a good English poem with the matter and thoughts of Homer + and Dante, may even try to reproduce their metre, or rhyme: + but the metre and rhyme will be in truth his own, and the + effect will be his, not the effect of Homer or Dante. Isaiah's, + on the other hand, is a poetry, as is well known, of + parallelism; it depends not on metre and rhyme, but on a + balance of thought, conveyed by a corresponding balance of + sentence; and the effect of this can be transferred to another + language.... Hebrew poetry has in addition the effect of + assonance and other effects which cannot perhaps be + transferred; but its main effect, its effect of parallelism of + thought and sentence, can. + +I take this from the preface to his little volume in which Arnold +confesses that his 'paramount object is to get Isaiah enjoyed.' + +VI + +Sundry men of letters besides Matthew Arnold have pleaded for a +literary study of the Bible, and specially of our English +Version, that we may thereby enhance our enjoyment of the work +itself and, through this, enjoyment and understanding of the rest +of English Literature, from 1611 down. Specially among these +pleaders let me mention Mr F. B. Money-Coutts (now Lord Latymer) +and a Cambridge man, Dr R. G. Moulton, now Professor of Literary +Theory and Interpretation in the University of Chicago. Of both +these writers I shall have something to say. But first and +generally, if you ask me why all their pleas have not yet +prevailed, I will give you my own answer--the fault as usual lies +in ourselves--in our own tameness and incuriosity. + +There is no real trouble with the _taboo_ set up by professionals +and puritans, if we have the courage to walk past it as Christian +walked between the lions; no real tyranny we could not overthrow, +if it were worth while, with a push; no need at all for us to +`wreathe our sword in myrtle boughs.' What tyranny exists has +grown up through the quite well-meaning labours of quite +well-meaning men: and, as I started this lecture by saying, I have +never heard any serious reason given why we should not include +portions of the English Bible in our English Tripos, if we +choose. + + Nos te, + Nos facimus, Scriptura, deam. + +Then why don't we choose? + +To answer this, we must (I suggest) seek somewhat further back. +The Bible--that is to say the body of the old Hebrew Literature +clothed for us in English--comes to us in our childhood. But how +does it come? + +Let me, amplifying a hint from Dr Moulton, ask you to imagine a +volume including the great books of our own literature all bound +together in some such order as this: "Paradise Lost," Darwin's +"Descent of Man," "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," Walter Map, Mill +"On Liberty," Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," "The Annual +Register," Froissart, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," "Domesday +Book," "Le Morte d'Arthur," Campbell's "Lives of the Lord +Chancellors," Boswell's "Johnson," Barbour's "The Bruce," +Hakluyt's "Voyages," Clarendon, Macaulay, the plays of +Shakespeare, Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound," "The Faerie Queene," +Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Bacon's Essays, Swinburne's "Poems +and Ballads," FitzGerald's "Omar Khayyam," Wordsworth, Browning, +"Sartor Resartus," Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Burke's +"Letters on a Regicide Peace," "Ossian," "Piers Plowman," Burke's +"Thoughts on the Present Discontents," Quarles, Newman's +"Apologia", Donne's Sermons, Ruskin, Blake, "The Deserted +Village," Manfred, Blair's "Grave," "The Complaint of Deor," +Bailey's "Festus," Thompson's "Hound of Heaven." + +Will you next imagine that in this volume most of the author's +names are lost; that, of the few that survive, a number have +found their way into wrong places; that Ruskin for example is +credited with "Sartor Resartus," that "Laus Veneris" and +"Dolores" are ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, "The Anatomy of +Melancholy" to Charles II; and that, as for the titles, these +were never invented by the authors, but by a Committee? + +Will you still go on to imagine that all the poetry is printed as +prose; while all the long paragraphs of prose are broken up into +short verses, so that they resemble the little passages set out +for parsing or analysis in an examination paper? + +This device, as you know, was first invented by the exiled +translators who published the Geneva Bible (as it is called) in +1557; and for pulpit use, for handiness of reference, for 'waling +a portion,' it has its obvious advantages: but it is, after all +and at the best, a very primitive device: and, for my part, I +consider it the deadliest invention of all for robbing the book +of outward resemblance to literature and converting it to the +aspect of a gazetteer--a _biblion a-biblion,_ as Charles Lamb +puts it. + +Have we done? By no means. Having effected all this, let us +pepper the result over with italics and numerals, print it in +double columns, with a marginal gutter on either side, each +gutter pouring down an inky flow of references and cross +references. Then, and not till then, is the outward disguise +complete--so far as you are concerned. It remains only then to +appoint it to be read in Churches, and oblige the child to get +selected portions of it by heart on Sundays. But you are yet to +imagine that the authors themselves have taken a hand in the +game: that the later ones suppose all the earlier ones to have +been predicting all the time in a nebulous fashion what they +themselves have to tell, and indeed to have written mainly with +that object: so that Macaulay and Adam Smith, for example, +constantly interrupt the thread of their discourse to affirm that +what they tell us must be right because Walter Map or the author +of "Piers Plowman" foretold it ages before. + +Now a grown man--that is to say, a comparatively unimpressionable +man--that is again to say, a man past the age when to enjoy the +Bible is priceless--has probably found out somehow that the word +prophet does not (in spite of vulgar usage) mean 'a man who +predicts.' He has experienced too many prophets of that kind-- +especially since 1914--and he respects Isaiah too much to rank +Isaiah among them. He has been in love, belike; he has read the +Song of Solomon: he very much doubts if, on the evidence, Solomon +was the kind of lover to have written that Song, and he is quite +certain that when the lover sings to his beloved: + + Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy + neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools + in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim. + +--he knows, I say, that this is not a description of the Church +and her graces, as the chapter-heading audaciously asserts. But +he is lazy; too lazy even to commend the Revised Version for +striking Solomon out of the Bible, calling the poem The Song of +Songs, omitting the absurd chapter-headings, and printing the +poetry as poetry ought to be printed. The old-fashioned +arrangement was good enough for him. Or he goes to church on +Christmas Day and listens to a first lesson, of which the old +translators made nonsense, and, in two passages at least, stark +nonsense. But, again, the old nonsense is good enough for him; +soothing in fact. He is not even quite sure that the Bible, +looking like any other book, ought to be put in the hands of the +young. + +In all this I think he is wrong. I am sure he is wrong if our +contention be right, that the English Bible should be studied by +us all for its poetry and its wonderful language as well as for +its religion--the religion and the poetry being in fact +inseparable. For then, in Euripides' phrase, we should clothe the +Bible in a dress through which its beauty might best shine. + +VII + +If you ask me How? I answer--first begging you to bear in mind +that we are planning the form of the book for our purpose, and +that other forms will be used for other purposes--that we should +start with the simplest alterations, such as these: + +(1) The books should be re-arranged in their right order, so far +as this can be ascertained (and much of it has been ascertained). +I am told, and I can well believe, that this would at a stroke +clear away a mass of confusion in strictly Biblical criticism. +But that is not my business. I know that it would immensely help +our _literary_ study. + +(2) I should print the prose continuously, as prose is ordinarily +and properly printed: and the poetry in verse lines, as poetry is +ordinarily and properly printed. And I should print each on a +page of one column, with none but the necessary notes and +references, and these so arranged that they did not tease and +distract the eye. + +(3) This arrangement should be kept, whether for the Tripos we +prescribe a book in the Authorised text or in the Revised. As a +rule, perhaps--or as a rule for some years to come--we shall +probably rely on the Authorised Version: but for some books (and +I instance "Job") we should undoubtedly prefer the Revised. + +(4) With the verse we should, I hold, go farther even than the +Revisers. As you know, much of the poetry in the Bible, +especially of such as was meant for music, is composed in +stanzaic form, or in strophe and anti-strophe, with prelude and +conclusion, sometimes with a choral refrain. We should print +these, I contend, in their proper form, just as we should print +an English poem in its proper form. + +I shall conclude to-day with a striking instance of this, with +four strophes from the 107th Psalm, taking leave to use at will +the Authorised, the Revised and the Coverdale Versions. Each +strophe, you will note, has a double refrain. As Dr Moulton +points out, the one puts up a cry for help, the other an +ejaculation of praise after the help has come. Each refrain has a +sequel verse, which appropriately changes the motive and sets +that of the next stanza: + + (i) + +They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; +They found no city to dwell in. +Hungry and thirsty, +Their soul fainted in them. + _Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he delivered them out of their distresses._ +He led them forth by a straight way, +That they might go to a city of habitation. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +For he satisfieth the longing soul, +And filleth the hungry soul with goodness. + + (ii) + +Such as sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, +Being bound in affliction and iron; +Because they rebelled against the words of God, +And contemned the counsel of the most High: +Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; +They fell down, and there was none to help. + _Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he saved them out of their distresses._ +He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, +And brake their bands in sunder. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +For he hath broken the gates of brass, +And cut the bars of iron in sunder. + + (iii) + +Fools because of their transgression, +And because of their iniquities, are afflicted, +Their soul abhorreth all manner of meat; +And they draw near unto death's door. + _Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he saveth them out of their distresses._ +He sendeth his word and healeth them, +And delivereth them from their destructions. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +And let them offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving, +And declare his works with singing: + + (iv) + +They that go down to the sea in ships, +That do business in great waters; +These see the works of the Lord, +And his wonders in the deep. +For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, +Which lifteth up the waves thereof. +They mount up to the heaven, +They go down again to the depths; +Their soul melteth away because of trouble. +They reel to and fro, +And stagger like a drunken man, +And are at their wits' end. + _Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble,_ + _And he bringeth them out of their distresses._ +He maketh the storm a calm, +So that the waves thereof are still. +Then are they glad because they be quiet; +So he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be. + _Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness,_ + _And for his wonderful works to the children of men!_ +Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people, +And praise him in the seat of the elders! + + + +[Footnote 1: I borrow the verse and in part the prose of +Professor W. Rhys Roberts' translation.] + + + + +LECTURE X + +ON READING THE BIBLE (III) + +MONDAY, MAY 6, 1918 + + +I + +My task to-day, Gentlemen, is mainly practical: to choose a +particular book of Scripture and show (if I can) not only that it +deserves to be enjoyed, in its English rendering, as a literary +masterpiece, because it abides in that dress, an indisputable +classic for us, as surely as if it had first been composed in +English; but that it can, for purposes of study, serve the +purpose of any true literary school of English as readily, and as +usefully, as the Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales" or "Hamlet" +or "Paradise Lost." I shall choose "The Book of Job" for several +reasons, presently to be given; but beg you to understand that, +while taking it for a striking illustration, I use it but to +illustrate; that what may be done with "Job" may, in degree, be +done with "Ruth," with "Esther," with the "Psalms," "The Song of +Songs," "Ecclesiastes;" with Isaiah of Jerusalem, Ezekiel, sundry +of the prophets; even with St Luke's Gospel or St Paul's letters +to the Churches. + +My first reason, then, for choosing "Job" has already been given. +It is the most striking illustration to be found. Many of the +Psalms touch perfection as lyrical strains: of the ecstacy of +passion in love I suppose "The Song of Songs" to express the very +last word. There are chapters of Isaiah that snatch the very soul +and ravish it aloft. In no literature known to me are short +stories told with such sweet austerity of art as in the Gospel +parables--I can even imagine a high and learned artist in words, +after rejecting them as divine on many grounds, surrendering in +the end to their divine artistry. But for high seriousness +combined with architectonic treatment on a great scale; for +sublimity of conception, working malleably within a structure +which is simple, severe, complete, having a beginning, a middle +and an end; for diction never less than adequate, constantly +right and therefore not seldom superb, as theme, thought and +utterance soar up together and make one miracle, I can name no +single book of the Bible to compare with "Job." + +My second reason is that the poem, being brief, compendious and +quite simple in structure, can be handily expounded; "Job" is +what Milton precisely called it, 'a brief model.' And my third +reason (which I must not hide) is that two writers whom I +mentioned in my last lecture Lord Latymer and Professor R. G. +Moulton--have already done this for me. A man who drives at +practice must use the tools other men have made, so he use them +with due acknowledgment; and this acknowledgment I pay by +referring you to Book II of Lord Latymer's "The Poet's Charter,' +and to the analysis of "Job" with which Professor Moulton +introduces his "Literary Study of the Bible.' + +II + +But I have a fourth reason, out of which I might make an apparent +fifth by presenting it to you in two different ways. Those elders +of you who have followed certain earlier lectures 'On the Art of +Writing' may remember that they set very little store upon metre +as a dividing line between poetry and prose, and no store at all +upon rhyme. I am tempted to-day to go farther, and to maintain +that, the larger, the sublimer, your subject is, the more +impertinent rhyme becomes to it: and that this impertinence +increases in a sort of geometrical progression as you advance +from monosyllabic to dissyllabic and on to trisyllabic rhyme. Let +me put this by a series of examples. + +We start with no rhyme at all: + + Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first born! + Or of the Eternal coeternal beam + May I express thee unblamed? since God is light, + And never but in unapproached light + Dwelt from eternity. + +We feel of this, as we feel of a great passage in "Hamlet" or +"Lear," that here is verse at once capable of the highest +sublimity and capable of sustaining its theme, of lifting and +lowering it at will, with endless resource in the slide and pause +of the caesura, to carry it on and on. We feel it to be adequate, +too, for quite plain straightforward narrative, as in this +passage from "Balder Dead": + + But from the hill of Lidskialf Odin rose, + The throne, from which his eye surveys the world; + And mounted Sleipner, and in darkness rode + To Asgard. And the stars came out in heaven, + High over Asgard, to light home the King. + But fiercely Odin gallop'd, moved in heart; + And swift to Asgard, to the gate, he came. + And terribly the hoofs of Sleipner rang + Along the flinty floor of Asgard streets, + And the Gods trembled on their golden beds-- + Hearing the wrathful Father coming home-- + For dread, for like a whirlwind, Odin came. + And to Valhalla's gate he rode, and left + Sleipner; and Sleipner went to his own stall: + And in Valhalla Odin laid him down. + +Now of rhyme he were a fool who, with Lycidas, or Gray's "Elegy," +or certain choruses of "Prometheus Unbound," or page after page +of Victor Hugo in his mind, should assert it to be in itself +inimical, or a hindrance, or even less than a help, to sublimity; +or who, with Dante in his mind, should assert it to be, in +itself, any bar to continuous and sustained sublimity. But +languages differ vastly in their wealth of rhyme, and differ out +of any proportion to their wealth in words: English for instance +being infinitely richer than Italian in vocabulary, yet almost +ridiculously poorer in dissyllabic, or feminine rhymes. Speaking +generally, I should say that in proportion to its wonderful +vocabulary, English is poor even in single rhymes; that the words +'love,' 'truth,' 'God,' for example, have lists of possible +congeners so limited that the mind, hearing the word 'love,' runs +forward to match it with 'dove' or 'above' or even with 'move': +and this gives it a sense of arrest, of listening, of check, of +waiting, which alike impedes the flow of Pope in imitating Homer, +and of Spenser in essaying a sublime and continuous story of his +own. It does well enough to carry Chaucer over any gap with a +'forsooth as I you say' or 'forsooth as I you tell': but it does +so at a total cost of the sublime. And this (I think) was really +at the back of Milton's mind when in the preface to "Paradise +Lost" he championed blank verse against 'the jingling sound of +like endings.' + +But when we pass from single rhymes to double, of which Dante had +an inexhaustible store, we find the English poet almost a pauper; +so nearly a pauper that he has to achieve each new rhyme by a +trick--which tricking is fatal to rapture, alike in the poet and +the hearer. Let me instance a poem which, planned for sublimity, +keeps tumbling flat upon earth through the inherent fault of the +machine--I mean Myers's "St Paul"--a poem which, finely +conceived, pondered, worked and re-worked upon in edition after +edition, was from the first condemned (to my mind) by the +technical bar of dissyllabic rhyme which the poet unhappily +chose. I take one of its most deeply felt passages--that of +St Paul protesting against his conversion being taken for +instantaneous, wholly accounted for by the miraculous vision +related in the "Acts of the Apostles": + + Let no man think that sudden in a minute + All is accomplished and the work is done;-- + Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it + Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun. + + Oh the regret, the struggle and the failing! + Oh the days desolate and useless years! + Vows in the night, so fierce and unavailing! + Stings of my shame and passion of my tears! + + How have I seen in Araby Orion, + Seen without seeing, till he set again, + Known the night-noise and thunder of the lion, + Silence and sounds of the prodigious plain! + + How have I knelt with arms of my aspiring + Lifted all night in irresponsive air, + Dazed and amazed with overmuch desiring, + Blank with the utter agony of prayer! + + 'What,' ye will say, `and thou who at Damascus + Sawest the splendour, answeredst the Voice; + So hast thou suffered and canst dare to ask us, + Paul of the Romans, bidding us rejoice?' + +You cannot say I have instanced a passage anything short of fine. +But do you not feel that a man who is searching for a rhyme to +Damascus has not really the time to cry 'Abba, father'? Is not +your own rapture interrupted by some wonder 'How will he bring it +off'? And when he has searched and contrived to `ask us,' are we +responsive to the ecstacy? Has he not--if I may employ an +Oriental trope for once--let in the chill breath of cleverness +upon the garden of beatitude? No man can be clever and ecstatic +at the same moment[1]. + +As for triple rhymes--rhymes of the comedian who had a lot o' +news with many curious facts about the square on the hypotenuse, +or the cassiowary who ate the missionary on the plains of +Timbuctoo, with Bible, prayer-book, hymn-book too--they are for +the facetious, and removed, as far as geometrical progression can +remove them, from any "Paradise Lost" or "Regained." + +It may sound a genuine note, now and then: + + Alas! for the rarity + Of Christian charity + Under the sun! + Oh, it was pitiful! + Near a whole city full, + Home she had none! + +But not often: and, I think, never but in lyric. + +III + +So much, then, for rhyme. We will approach the question of metre, +helped or unhelped by rhyme, in another way; and a way yet more +practical. + +When Milton (determined to write a grand epic) was casting about +for his subject, he had a mind for some while to attempt the +story of "Job." You may find evidence for this in a MS preserved +here in Trinity College Library. + +You will find printed evidence in a passage of his "Reason of +Church Government": + +'Time serves not now,' he writes, 'and perhaps I might seem too +profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in +the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to +herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether +that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, and those other +two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a +brief model ...' + +Again, we know "Job" to have been one of the three stories +meditated by Shelley as themes for great lyrical dramas, the +other two being the madness of Tasso and "Prometheus Unbound." +Shelley never abandoned this idea of a lyrical drama on Job; and +if Milton abandoned the idea of an epic, there are passages in +"Paradise Lost" as there are passages in "Prometheus Unbound" +that might well have been written for this other story. Take the +lines + + Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out + To deathless pain? How gladly would I meet + Mortality my sentence, and be earth + Insensible! how glad would lay me down + As in my mother's lap! There I should rest + And sleep secure;... + +What is this, as Lord Latymer asks, but an echo of Job's words?-- + + For now should I have lien down and been quiet; + I should have slept; then had I been at rest: + With kings and counsellers of the earth, + Which built desolate places for themselves ... + There the wicked cease from troubling; + And there the weary be at rest. + +There is no need for me to point out how exactly, though from two +nearly opposite angles, the story of Job would hit the philosophy +of Milton and the philosophy of Shelley to the very heart. What +is the story of the afflicted patriarch but a direct challenge to +a protestant like Milton (I use the word in its strict sense) to +justify the ways of God to man? It is the very purpose, in sum, +of the "Book of Job," as it is the very purpose, in sum, of +"Paradise Lost": and since both poems can only work out the +justification by long argumentative speeches, both poems +lamentably fail as real solutions of the difficulty. To this I +shall recur, and here merely observe that _qui s' excuse s' +accuse_: a God who can only explain himself by the help of +long-winded scolding, or of long-winded advocacy, though he employ +an archangel for advocate, has given away the half of his case by +the implicit admission that there are two sides to the question. +And when we have put aside the poetical ineptitude of a Creator +driven to apology, it remains that to Shelley the Jehovah who, +for a sort of wager, allowed Satan to torture Job merely for the +game of testing him, would be no better than any other tyrant; +would be a miscreant Creator, abominable as the Zeus of the +"Prometheus Unbound." + +Now you may urge that Milton and Shelley dropped Job for hero +because both felt him to be a merely static figure: and that the +one chose Satan, the rebel angel, the other chose Prometheus the +rebel Titan, because both are active rebels, and as epic and +drama require action, each of these heroes makes the thing move; +that Satan and Prometheus are not passive sufferers like Job but +souls as quick and fiery as Byron's Lucifer: + + Souls who dare use their immortality-- + Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in + His everlasting face, and tell him that + His evil is not good. + +Very well, urge this: urge it with all your might. All the while +you will be doing just what I desire you to do, using "Job" +alongside "Prometheus Unbound" and "Paradise Lost" as a +comparative work of literature. + +But, if you ask me for my own opinion why Milton and Shelley +dropped their intention to make poems on the "Book of Job," it is +that they no sooner tackled it than they found it to be a +magnificent poem already, and a poem on which, with all their +genius, they found themselves unable to improve. + +I want you to realise a thing most simple, demonstrable by five +minutes of practice, yet so confused by conventional notions of +what poetry is that I dare say it to be equally demonstrable that +Milton and Shelley discovered it only by experiment. Does this +appear to you a bold thing to say of so tremendous an artist as +Milton? Well, of course it would be cruel to quote in proof his +paraphrases of Psalms cxiv and cxxxvi: to set against the +Authorised Version's + + When Israel went out of Egypt, + The house of Jacob from a people of strange language + +such pomposity as + + When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son + After long toil their liberty had won-- + +or against + + O give thanks.... + To him that stretched out the earth above the waters: + for his mercy endureth for ever. + To him that made great lights: + for his mercy endureth for ever + +such stuff as + + Who did the solid earth ordain + To rise above the watery plain; + _For his mercies aye endure,_ + _Ever faithful, ever sure._ + Who, by his all-commanding might, + Did fill the new-made world with light; + _For his mercies aye endure,_ + _Ever faithful, ever sure._ + +verses yet further weakened by the late Sir William Baker for +"Hymns Ancient and Modern." + +It were cruel, I say, to condemn these attempts as little above +those of Sternhold and Hopkins, or even of those of Tate and +Brady: for Milton made them at fifteen years old, and he who +afterwards consecrated his youth to poetry soon learned to know +better. And yet, bearing in mind the passages in "Paradise Lost" +and "Paradise Regained" which paraphrase the Scriptural +narrative, I cannot forbear the suspicion that, though as an +artist he had the instinct to feel it, he never quite won to +_knowing_ the simple fact that the thing had already been done +and surpassingly well done: he, who did so much to liberate +poetry from rhyme--he--even he who in the grand choruses of +"Samson Agonistes" did so much to liberate it from strict metre +never quite realised, being hag-ridden by the fetish that rides +between two panniers, the sacred and the profane, that this +translation of "Job" already belongs to the category of poetry, +_is_ poetry, already above metre, and in rhythm far on its way to +the insurpassable. If rhyme be allowed to that greatest of arts, +if metre, is not rhythm above both for her service? Hear in a +sentence how this poem uplifts the rhythm of the Vulgate: + + _Ecce, Deus magnus vincens scientiam nostram; numerus annorum_ + _ejus inestimabilis!_ + +But hear, in a longer passage, how our English rhythm swings and +sways to the Hebrew parallels: + + Surely there is a mine for silver, + And a place for gold which they refine. + Iron is taken out of the earth, + And brass is molten out of the stone. + _Man_ setteth an end to darkness, + And searcheth out to the furthest bound + The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death. + He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; + They are forgotten of the foot _that passeth by_; + They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro. + As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: + And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. + The atones thereof are the place of sapphires, + And it hath dust of gold. + That path no bird of prey knoweth, + Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it: + The proud beasts have not trodden it, + Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby. + He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock; + He overturneth the mountains by the roots. + He cutteth out channels among the rocks; + And his eye seeth every precious thing. + He bindeth the streams that they trickle not; + And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. + But where shall wisdom be found? + And where is the place of understanding? + Man knoweth not the price thereof; + Neither is it found in the land of the living. + The deep saith, It is not in me: + And the sea saith, It is not with me. + It cannot be gotten for gold, + Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. + It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, + With the precious onyx, or the sapphire. + Gold and glass cannot equal it: + Neither shall the exchange thereof be jewels of fine gold. + No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal: + Yea, the price of wisdom is above rubies. + The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, + Neither shall it be valued with pure gold. + Whence then cometh wisdom? + And where is the place of understanding? + Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, + And kept close from the fowls of the air. + Destruction and Death say, + We have heard a rumour thereof with our ears. + God understandeth the way thereof, + And he knoweth the place thereof. + For he looketh to the ends of the earth, + And seeth under the whole heaven; + To make a weight for the wind; + Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure. + When he made a decree for the rain, + And a way for the lightning of the thunder: + Then did he see it, and declare it; + He established it, yea, and searched it out. + And unto man he said, + Behold, the fear of the Lord, _that_ is wisdom; + And to depart from evil is understanding. + +Is that poetry? Surely it is poetry. Can you improve it with the +embellishments of rhyme and strict scansion? Well, sundry bold +men have tried, and I will choose, for your judgment, the +rendering of a part of the above passage by one who is by no +means the worst of them--a hardy anonymous Scotsman. His version +was published at Falkirk in 1869: + + His hand on the rock the adventurer puts, + And mountains entire overturns by the roots; + New rivers in rocks are enchased by his might, + And everything precious revealed to his sight; + The floods from o'er-flowing he bindeth at will, + And the thing that is hid bringeth forth by his skill. + + But where real wisdom is found can he shew? + Or the place understanding inhabiteth? No! + Men know not the value, the price of this gem; + 'Tis not found in the land of the living with them. + It is not in me, saith the depth; and the sea + With the voice of an echo, repeats, Not in me. + +(I have a suspicion somehow that what the sea really answered, in +its northern vernacular, was 'Me either.') + + Whence then cometh wisdom? And where is the place + Understanding hath chosen, since this is the case?... + +Enough! This not only shows how that other rendering can be +spoilt even to the point of burlesque by an attempt, on +preconceived notions, to embellish it with metre and rhyme, but +it also hints that parallel verse will actually resent and abhor +such embellishment even by the most skilled hand. Yet, I repeat, +our version of "Job" is poetry undeniable. What follows? + +Why, it follows that in the course of studying it as literature +we have found experimentally settled for us--and on the side of +freedom--a dispute in which scores of eminent critics have taken +sides: a dispute revived but yesterday (if we omit the blank and +devastated days of this War) by the writers and apostles of _vers +libres._ 'Can there be poetry without metre?' 'Is free verse a +true poetic form?' Why, our "Book of Job" being poetry, +unmistakable poetry, of course there can, to be sure it is. These +apostles are butting at an open door. Nothing remains for them +but to go and write _vers libres_ as fine as those of "Job" in +our English translation. Or suppose even that they write as well +as M. Paul Fort, they will yet be writing ancestrally, not as +innovators but as renewers. Nothing is done in literature by +arguing whether or not this or that be possible or permissible. +The only way to prove it possible or permissible is to go and do +it: and then you are lucky indeed if some ancient writers have +not forestalled you. + +IV + +Now for another question (much argued, you will remember, a few +years ago) 'Is there--can there be--such a thing as a Static +Theatre, a Static Drama?' + +Most of you (I daresay) remember M. Maeterlinck's definition of +this and his demand for it. To summarise him roughly, he contends +that the old drama--the traditional, the conventional drama-- +lives by action; that, in Aristotle's phrase, it represents men +doing, [Greek: prattontas], and resolves itself into a struggle +of human wills--whether against the gods, as in ancient tragedy, +or against one another, as in modern. M. Maeterlinck tells us-- + + There is a tragic element in the life of every day that is far + more real, far more penetrating, far more akin to the true self + that is in us, than is the tragedy that lies in great + adventure.... It goes beyond the determined struggle of man + against man, and desire against desire; it goes beyond the + eternal conflict of duty and passion. Its province is rather to + reveal to us how truly wonderful is the mere act of living, and + to throw light upon the existence of the soul, self-contained + in the midst of ever-restless immensities; to hush the + discourse of reason and sentiment, so that above the tumult may + be heard the solemn uninterrupted whisperings of man and his + destiny. + + To the tragic author [he goes on, later], as to the mediocre + painter who still lingers over historical pictures, it is only + the violence of the anecdote that appeals, and in his + representation thereof does the entire interest of his work + consist.... Indeed when I go to a theatre, I feel as though I + were spending a few hours with my ancestors, who conceived life + as though it were something that was primitive, arid and + brutal.... I am shown a deceived husband killing his wife, a + woman poisoning her lover, a son avenging his father, a father + slaughtering his children, murdered kings, ravished virgins, + imprisoned citizens--in a word all the sublimity of tradition, + but alas how superficial and material! Blood, surface-tears and + death! What can I learn from creatures who have but one fixed + idea, who have no time to live, for that there is a rival, a + mistress, whom it behoves them to put to death? + +M. Maeterlinck does not (he says) know if the Static Drama of his +craving be impossible. He inclines to think--instancing some +Greek tragedies such as "Prometheus" and "Choephori"--that it +already exists. But may we not, out of the East--the slow, the +stationary East--fetch an instance more convincing? + +V + +The Drama of Job opens with a "Prologue" in the mouth of a +Narrator. + +There was a man in the land of Uz, named Job; upright, +God-fearing, of great substance in sheep, cattle and oxen; blest +also with seven sons and three daughters. After telling of their +family life, how wholesome it is, and pious, and happy-- + +The Prologue passes to a Council held in Heaven. The Lord sits +there, and the sons of God present themselves each from his +province. Enters Satan (whom we had better call the Adversary) +from his sphere of inspection, the Earth, and reports. The Lord +specially questions him concerning Job, pattern of men. The +Adversary demurs. 'Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not +set a hedge about his prosperity? But put forth thy hand and +touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face.' +The Lord gives leave for this trial to be made (you will recall +the opening of "Everyman"): + +So, in the midst of his wealth, a messenger came to job and +says-- + + The oxen were plowing, + and the asses feeding beside them: + and the Sabeans fell upon them, + and took them away; + yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, + The fire of God is fallen from heaven, + and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, + and consumed them; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, + The Chaldeans made three bands, + and fell upon the camels, + and have taken them away, + yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, + Thy sons and thy daughters + were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: + and, behold, + there came a great wind from the wilderness, + and smote the four corners of the house, + and it fell upon the young men, + and they are dead; + and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. + + Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and + fell down upon the ground, and worshipped; and he said, + Naked came I out of my mother's womb, + and naked shall I return thither: + the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; + blessed be the name of the Lord. + +So the Adversary is foiled, and Job has not renounced God. A +second Council is held in Heaven; and the Adversary, being +questioned, has to admit Job's integrity, but proposes a severer +test: + + Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his + life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and + his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face. + +Again leave is given: and the Adversary smites job with the most +hideous and loathsome form of leprosy. His kinsfolk (as we learn +later) have already begun to desert and hold aloof from him as a +man marked out by God's displeasure. But now he passes out from +their midst, as one unclean from head to foot, and seats himself +on the ash-mound--that is, upon the Mezbele or heap of refuse +which accumulates outside Arab villages. + + 'The dung,' says Professor Moulton, `which is heaped upon + the Mezbele of the Hauran villages is not mixed with straw, + which in that warm and dry land is not needed for litter, + and it comes mostly from solid-hoofed animals, as the + flocks and oxen are left over-night in the grazing places. It + is carried in baskets in a dry state to this place ... and + usually burnt once a month.... The ashes remain.... If the + village has been inhabited for centuries the Mezbele + reaches a height far overtopping it. The winter rains reduce + it into a compact mass, and it becomes by and by a solid + hill of earth.... The Mezbele serves the inhabitants for a + watchtower, and in the sultry evenings for a place of + concourse, because there is a current of air on the height. + There all day long the children play about it; and there the + outcast, who has been stricken with some loathsome malady, and + is not allowed to enter the dwellings of men, lays himself down + begging an alms of the passers-by by day, and by night + sheltering himself among the ashes which the heat of the sun + has warmed.' + +Here, then, sits in his misery 'the forsaken grandee'; and here +yet another temptation comes to him--this time not expressly +allowed by the Lord. Much foolish condemnation (and, I may add, +some foolish facetiousness) has been heaped on Job's wife. As a +matter of fact she is _not_ a wicked woman--she has borne her +part in the pious and happy family life, now taken away: she has +uttered no word of complaint though all the substance be +swallowed up and her children with it. But now the sight of her +innocent husband thus helpless, thus incurably smitten, wrings, +through love and anguish and indignation, this cry from her: + + Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and + die. + +But Job answered, soothing her: + + Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? + shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not + receive evil? + +So the second trial ends, and Job has sinned not with his lips. + +But now comes the third trial, which needs no Council in Heaven +to decree it. Travellers by the mound saw this figure seated +there, patient, uncomplaining, an object of awe even to the +children who at first mocked him; asked this man's history; and +hearing of it, smote on their breasts, and made a token of it and +carried the news into far countries: until it reached the ears of +Job's three friends, all great tribesmen like himself--Eliphaz +the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. +These three made an appointment together to travel and visit Job. +'And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, +they lifted up their voice, and wept.' Then they went up and sat +down opposite him on the ground. But the majesty of suffering is +silent: + + Here I and sorrows sit; + Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.... + +No, not a word.... And, with the grave courtesy of Eastern men, +they too are silent: + + So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and + seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw + that his grief was very great. + +The Prologue ends. The scene is set. After seven days of silence +the real drama opens. + +VI + +Of the drama itself I shall attempt no analysis, referring you +for this to the two books from which I have already quoted. My +purpose being merely to persuade you that this surpassing poem +can be studied, and ought to be studied, as literature, I shall +content myself with turning it (so to speak) once or twice in my +hand and glancing one or two facets at you. + +To begin with, then, you will not have failed to notice, in the +setting out of the drama, a curious resemblance between "Job" and +the "Prometheus" of Aeschylus. The curtain in each play lifts on +a figure solitary, tortured (for no reason that seems good to us) +by a higher will which, we are told, is God's. The chorus of +Sea-nymphs in the opening of the Greek play bears no small +resemblance in attitude of mind to job's three friends. When job +at length breaks the intolerable silence with + + Let the day perish wherein I was born, + And the night which said, There is a man child conceived. + +he uses just such an outburst as Prometheus: and, as he is +answered by his friends, so the Nymphs at once exclaim to +Prometheus + + Seest thou not that thou hast sinned? + +But at once, for anyone with a sense of comparative literature, +is set up a comparison between the persistent West and the +persistent East; between the fiery energising rebel and the +patient victim. Of these two, both good, one will dare everything +to release mankind from thrall; the other will submit, and +justify himself--mankind too, if it may hap--by submission. + +At once this difference is seen to give a difference of form to +the drama. Our poem is purely static. Some critics can detect +little individuality in Job's three friends, to distinguish them. +For my part I find Eliphaz more of a personage than the other +two; grander in the volume of his mind, securer in wisdom; as I +find Zophar rather noticeably a mean-minded greybeard, and Bildad +a man of the stand-no-nonsense kind. But, to tell the truth, I +prefer not to search for individuality in these men: I prefer to +see them as three figures with eyes of stone almost expressionless. +For in truth they are the conventions, all through,--the orthodox +men--addressing Job, the reality; and their words come to this: + + Thou sufferest, therefore must have sinned. + All suffering is, must be a judgment upon sin. + Else God is not righteous. + +They are statuesque, as the drama is static. The speeches follow +one another, rising and falling, in rise and fall magnificently +and deliberately eloquent. Not a limb is seen to move, unless it +be when job half rises from the dust in sudden scorn of their +conventions: + + No doubt but _ye_ are the people, + And wisdom shall die with you! + +or again + + Will ye speak unrighteously for God, + And talk deceitfully for him? + Will _ye_ respect _his_ person? + Will _ye_ contend for God? + +Yet--so great is this man, who has not renounced and will not +renounce God, that still and ever he clamours for more knowledge +of Him. Still getting no answer, he lifts up his hands and calls +the great Oath of Clearance; in effect 'If I have loved gold +overmuch, hated mine enemy, refused the stranger my tent, +truckled to public opinion': + + If my land cry out against me, + And the furrows thereof weep together; + If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, + Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life: + Let thistles grow instead of wheat, + And cockle instead of barley. + +With a slow gesture he covers his face: + + The words of Job are ended. + +VII + +They are ended: even though at this point (when the debate seems +to be closed) a young Aramaean Arab, Elihu, who has been +loitering around and listening to the controversy, bursts in and +delivers his young red-hot opinions. They are violent, and at the +same time quite raw and priggish. Job troubles not to answer: the +others keep a chilling silence. But while this young man rants, +pointing skyward now and again, we see, we feel--it is most +wonderfully conveyed--as clearly as if indicated by successive +stage-directions, a terrific thunder-storm gathering; a +thunder-storm with a whirlwind. It gathers; it is upon them; it +darkens them with dread until even the words of Elihu dry on his +lips: + + If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up. + +It breaks and blasts and confounds them; and out of it the Lord +speaks. + +Now of that famous and marvellous speech, put by the poet into +the mouth of God, we may say what may be said of all speeches put +by man into the mouth of God. We may say, as of the speeches of +the Archangel in "Paradise Lost" that it is argument, and +argument, by its very nature, admits of being answered. But, if to +make God talk at all be anthropomorphism, here is anthropomorphism +at its very best in its effort to reach to God. + +There is a hush. The storm clears away; and in this hush the +voice of the Narrator is heard again, pronouncing the Epilogue. +Job has looked in the face of God and reproached him as a friend +reproaches a friend. Therefore his captivity was turned, and his +wealth returned to him, and he begat sons and daughters, and saw +his sons' sons unto the fourth generation. So Job died, being old +and full of years. + +VIII + +Structurally a great poem; historically a great poem; +philosophically a great poem; so rendered for us in noble English +diction as to be worthy in any comparison of diction, structure, +ancestry, thought! Why should we not study it in our English +School, if only for purpose of comparison? I conclude with these +words of Lord Latymer: + + There is nothing comparable with it except the "Prometheus + Bound" of Aeschylus. It is eternal, illimitable ... its scope + is the relation between God and Man. It is a vast liberation, a + great gaol-delivery of the spirit of Man; nay, rather a great + Acquittal. + + + +[Footnote 1: It is fair to say that Myers cancelled the Damascus +stanza in his final edition.] + + + + +LECTURE XI + +OF SELECTION + +WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1918 + + +I + +Let us hark back, Gentlemen, to our original problem, and +consider if our dilatory way have led us to some glimpse of a +practical solution. + +We may re-state it thus: Assuming it to be true, as men of +Science assure us, that the weight of this planet remains +constant, and is to-day what it was when mankind carelessly laid +it on the shoulders of Atlas; that nothing abides but it goes, +that nothing goes but in some form or other it comes back; you +and I may well indulge a wonder what reflections upon this +astonishing fact our University Librarian, Mr Jenkinson, takes to +bed with him. A copy of every book printed in the United Kingdom +is--or I had better say, should be--deposited with him. Putting +aside the question of what he has done to deserve it, he must +surely wonder at times from what other corners of the earth +Providence has been at pains to collect and compact the +ingredients of the latest new volume he handles for a moment +before fondly committing it to the cellars. + + 'Locked up, not lost.' + +Or, to take it in reverse--When the great library of Alexandria +went up in flames, doubtless its ashes awoke an appreciable and +almost immediate energy in the crops of the Nile Delta. The more +leisurable process of desiccation, by which, under modern +storage, the components of a modern novel are released to fresh +unions and activities admits, as Sir Thomas Browne would say, a +wide solution, and was just the question to tease that good man. +Can we not hear him discussing it? 'To be but pyramidally extant +is a fallacy in duration.... To burn the bones of the King of +Edom for lime seems no irrational ferity: but to store the back +volumes of Mr Bottomley's "John Bull" a passionate prodigality.' + +II + +Well, whatever the perplexities of our Library we may be sure +they will never break down that tradition of service, help and +courtesy which is, among its fine treasures, still the first. But +we have seen that Mr Jenkinson's perplexities are really but a +parable of ours: that the question, What are we to do with all +these books accumulating in the world? really _is_ a question: +that their mere accumulation really _does_ heap up against us a +barrier of such enormous and brute mass that the stream of human +culture must needs be choked and spread into marsh unless we +contrive to pipe it through. That a great deal of it is meant to +help--that even the most of it is well intentioned--avails not +against the mere physical obstacle of its mass. If you consider +an Athenian gentleman of the 5th century B.C. connecting (as I +always preach here) his literature with his life, two things are +bound to strike you: the first that he was a man of leisure, +somewhat disdainful of trade and relieved of menial work by a +number of slaves; the second, that he was surprisingly +unencumbered with books. You will find in Plato much about +reciters, actors, poets, rhetoricians, pleaders, sophists, public +orators and refiners of language, but very little indeed about +books. Even the library of Alexandria grew in a time of decadence +and belonged to an age not his. Says Jowett in the end: + + He who approaches him in the most reverent spirit shall reap + most of the fruit of his wisdom; he who reads him by the + light of ancient commentators will have the least + understanding of him. + + We see him [Jowett goes on] with the eye of the mind in + the groves of the Academy, or on the banks of the Ilissus, + or in the streets of Athens, alone or walking with Socrates, + full of those thoughts which have since become the + common possession of mankind. Or we may compare him + to a statue hid away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no + longer existing on earth, a statue which has a look as of the + God himself. Or we may once more imagine him following + in another state of being the great company of heaven + which he beheld of old in a vision. So, 'partly trifling but + with a certain degree of seriousness,' we linger around the + memory of a world which has passed away. + +Yes, 'which has passed away,' and perhaps with no token more +evident of its decease than the sepulture of books that admiring +generations have heaped on it! + +III + +In a previous lecture I referred you to the beautiful opening and +the yet more beautiful close of the "Phaedrus." Let us turn back +and refresh ourselves with that Dialogue while we learn from it, +in somewhat more of detail, just what a book meant to an +Athenian: how fresh a thing it was to him and how little irksome. + +Phaedrus has spent his forenoon listening to a discourse by the +celebrated rhetorician Lysias on the subject of Love, and is +starting to cool his head with a stroll beyond the walls of the +city, when he encounters Socrates, who will not let him go until +he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias regaled him, or, +better still, the manuscript, 'which I suspect you are carrying +there in your left hand under your cloak.' So they bend their way +beside Ilissus towards a tall plane tree, seen in the distance. +Having reached it, they recline. + + 'By Hera,' says Socrates, 'a fair resting-place, full of + summer sounds and scents! This clearing, with the agnus + castus in high bloom and fragrant, and the stream beneath + the tree so gratefully cool to our feet! Judging from the + ornaments and statues, I think this spot must be sacred to + Acheloues and the Nymphs. And the breeze, how + deliciously charged with balm! and all summer's murmur in + the air, shrilled by the chorus of the grasshoppers! But the + greatest charm is this knoll of turf,--positively a pillow for + the head. My dear Phaedrus, you have been a delectable + guide.' + + 'What an incomprehensible being you are, Socrates,' returns + Phaedrus. 'When you are in the country, as you say, you + really are like some stranger led about by a guide. Upon my + word, I doubt if you ever stray beyond the gates save by + accident.' + + 'Very true, my friend: and I hope you will forgive me for the + reason--which is, that I love knowledge, and my teachers are + the men who dwell in the city, not the trees or country + scenes. Yet I do believe you have found a spell to draw me + forth, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of + fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a + book, and you may lead me all round Attica and over the + wide world.' + +So they recline and talk, looking aloft through that famous pure +sky of Attica, mile upon mile transparent; and their discourse +(preserved to us) is of Love, and seems to belong to that +atmosphere, so clear it is and luminously profound. It ends with +the cool of the day, and the two friends arise to depart. +Socrates looks about him. + +'Should we not, before going, offer up a prayer to these local +deities?' + +'By all means,' Phaedrus agrees. + + _Socrates_ (praying): 'Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who + haunt this place, grant me beauty in the inward soul, and that + the outward and inward may be at one! May I esteem the wise + to be the rich; and may I myself have that quantity of gold + which a temperate man, and he only, can carry.... Anything + more? That prayer, I think, is enough for me.' + + _Phaedrus._ 'Ask the same for me, Socrates. Friends, methinks, + should have all things in common.' + + _Socrates._ 'Amen, then.... Let us go.' + +Here we have, as it seems to me, a marriage, without impediment, +of wisdom and beauty between two minds that perforce have small +acquaintance with books: and yet, with it, Socrates' confession +that anyone with a book under his cloak could lead him anywhere +by the nose. So we see that Hellenic culture at its best was +independent of book-learning, and yet craved for it. + +IV + +When our own Literature awoke, taking its origin from the proud +scholarship of the Renaissance, an Englishman who affected it was +scarcely more cumbered with books than our Athenian had been, two +thousand years before. It was, and it remained, aristocratic: +sparingly expensive of its culture. It postulated, if not a slave +population, at least a proletariat for which its blessings were +not. No one thought of making a fortune by disseminating his work +in print. Shakespeare never found it worth while to collect and +publish his plays; and a very small sense of history will suffice +to check our tears over the price received by Milton for +"Paradise Lost." We may wonder, indeed, at the time it took our +forefathers to realise--or, at any rate, to employ--the energy +that lay in the printing-press. For centuries after its invention +mere copying commanded far higher prices than authorship[1]. +Writers gave 'authorised' editions to the world sometimes for the +sake of fame, often to justify themselves against piratical +publishers, seldom in expectation of monetary profit. Listen, for +example, to Sir Thomas Browne's excuse for publishing "Religio +Medici" (1643): + + Had not almost every man suffered by the press or were not the + tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for + complaint: but in times wherein I have lived to behold the + highest perversion of that excellent invention, the name of his + Majesty defamed, the honour of Parliament depraved, the + writings of both depravedly, anticipatively, counterfeitly + imprinted; complaints may seem ridiculous in private persons; + and men of my condition may be as incapable of affronts, as + hopeless of their reparations. And truly had not the duty I owe + unto the importunity of friends, and the allegiance I must ever + acknowledge unto truth, prevailed with me; the inactivity of + my disposition might have made these sufferings continual, + and time that brings other things to light, should have + satisfied me in the remedy of its oblivion. But because things + evidently false are not only printed, but many things of truth + most falsely set forth, in this latter I could not but think + myself engaged. For though we have no power to redress the + former, yet in the other, the reparation being within our + selves, I have at present represented unto the world a full and + intended copy of that piece, which was most imperfectly and + surreptitiously published before. + + This I confess, about seven years past, with some others of + affinity thereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction, I + had at leisurable hours composed; which being communicated + unto one, it became common unto many, and was by transcription + successively corrupted, untill it arrived in a most depraved + copy at the press ... [2] + +V + +The men of the 18th century maintained the old tradition of +literary exclusiveness, but in a somewhat different way and more +consciously. + +I find, Gentlemen, when you read with me in private, that nine +out of ten of you dislike the 18th century and all its literary +works. As for the Women students, they one and all abominate it. +You do not, I regret to say, provide me with reasons much more +philosophical than the epigrammatist's for disliking Doctor Fell. +May one whose time of life excuses perhaps a detachment from +passion attempt to provide you with one? If so, first listen to +this from Mr and Mrs Hammond's book "The Village Labourer," +1760-1832: + + A row of 18th century houses, or a room of normal 18th + century furniture, or a characteristic piece of 18th century + literature, conveys at once a sensation of satisfaction and + completeness. The secret of this charm is not to be found in + any special beauty or nobility of design or expression, but + simply in an exquisite fitness. The 18th century mind was a + unity, an order. All literature and art that really belong to + the 18th century are the language of a little society of men + and women who moved within one set of ideas; who understood + each other; who were not tormented by any anxious or + bewildering problems; who lived in comfort, and, above all + things, in composure. The classics were their freemasonry. + There was a standard for the mind, for the emotions, for + taste: there were no incongruities. + + When you have a society like this, you have what we + roughly call a civilisation, and it leaves its character and + canons in all its surroundings and in its literature. Its + definite ideas lend themselves readily to expression. A + larger society seems an anarchy in contrast: just because + of its escape into a greater world it seems powerless to + stamp itself in wood or stone; it is condemned as an age of + chaos and mutiny, with nothing to declare. + +You do wrong, I assure you, in misprising these men of the 18th +century. They reduced life, to be sure: but by that very means +they saw it far more _completely_ than do we, in this lyrical +age, with our worship of 'fine excess.' Here at any rate, and to +speak only of its literature, you have a society fencing that +literature around--I do not say by forethought or even +consciously--but in effect fencing its literature around, to keep +it in control and capable of an orderly, a nice, even an +exquisite cultivation. Dislike it as you may, I do not think that +any of you, as he increases his knowledge of the technique of +English Prose, yes, and of English Verse (I do not say of English +Poetry) will deny his admiration to the men of the 18th century. +The strength of good prose resides not so much in the swing and +balance of the single sentence as in the marshalling of argument, +the orderly procession of paragraphs, the disposition of parts so +that each finds its telling, its proper, place; the adjustment of +the means to the end; the strategy which brings its full force +into action at the calculated moment and drives the conclusion +home upon an accumulated sense of _justice._ I do not see how any +student of 18th century literature can deny its writers--Berkeley +or Hume or Gibbon--Congreve or Sheridan--Pope or Cowper--Addison +or Steele or Johnson--Burke or Chatham or Thomas Paine--their +meed for this, or, if he be an artist, even his homage. + +But it remains true, as your instinct tells you, and as I have +admitted, that they achieved all this by help of narrow and +artificial boundaries. Of several fatal exclusions let me name +but two. + +In the first place, they excluded the Poor; imitating in a late +age the Athenian tradition of a small polite society resting on a +large and degraded one. Throughout the 18th century--and the +great Whig families were at least as much to blame for this as +the Tories--by enclosure of commons, by grants, by handling of +the franchise, by taxation, by poor laws in result punitive +though intended to be palliative, the English peasantry underwent +a steady process of degradation into serfdom: into a serfdom +which, during the first twenty years of the next century, hung +constantly and precariously on the edge of actual starvation. The +whole theory of culture worked upon a principle of double +restriction; of restricting on the one hand the realm of polite +knowledge to propositions suitable for a scholar and a gentleman, +and, on the other, the numbers of the human family permitted to +be either. The theory deprecated enthusiasm, as it discountenanced +all ambition in a poor child to rise above what Sir Spencer Walpole +called 'his inevitable and hereditary lot'--to soften which and +make him acquiescent in it was, with a Wilberforce or a Hannah +More, the last dream of restless benevolence. + +VI + +Also these 18th century men fenced off the whole of our own +Middle English and medieval literature--fenced off Chaucer and +Dunbar, Malory and Berners--as barbarous and 'Gothic.' They +treated these writers with little more consideration than Boileau +had thought it worth while to bestow on Villon or on Ronsard-- +_enfin Malherbe_! As for Anglo-Saxon literature, one may, safely +say that, save by Gray and a very few others, its existence was +barely surmised. + +You may or may not find it harder to forgive them that they ruled +out moreover a great part of the literature of the preceding +century as offensive to urbane taste, or as they would say, +'disgusting.' They disliked it mainly, one suspects, as one age +revolts from the fashion of another--as some of you, for example, +revolt from the broad plenty of Dickens (Heaven forgive you) or +the ornament of Tennyson. Some of the great writers of that age +definitely excluded God from their scheme of things: others +included God fiercely, but with circumscription and limitation. I +think it fair to say of them generally that they hated alike the +mystical and the mysterious, and, hating these, could have little +commerce with such poetry as Crashaw's and Vaughan's or such +speculation as gave ardour to the prose of the Cambridge +Platonists. Johnson's famous attack, in his "Life of Cowley," +upon the metaphysical followers of Donne ostensibly assails their +literary conceits, but truly and at bottom rests its quarrel +against an attitude of mind, in respect of which he lived far +enough removed to be unsympathetic yet near enough to take +denunciation for a duty. Johnson, to put it vulgarly, had as +little use for Vaughan's notion of poetry as he would have had +for Shelley's claim that it + + feeds on the aereal kisses + Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses, + +and we have only to set ourselves back in Shelley's age and read +(say) the verse of Frere and Canning in "The Anti-Jacobin," to +understand how frantic a lyrist--let be how frantic a political +figure--Shelley must have appeared to well-regulated minds. + +VII + +All this literature which our forefathers excluded has come back +upon us: and concurrently we have to deal with the more serious +difficulty (let us give thanks for it) of a multitude of millions +insurgent to handsel their long-deferred heritage. I shall waste +no time in arguing that we ought not to wish to withhold it, +because we cannot if we would. And thus the problem becomes a +double one, of _distribution_ as well as of _selection._ + +Now in the first place I submit that this _distribution_ should +be free: which implies that our _selection_ must be confined to +books and methods of teaching. There must be no picking and +choosing among the recipients, no appropriation of certain forms +of culture to certain 'stations of life' with a tendency, +conscious or unconscious, to keep those stations as stationary as +possible. + +Merely by clearing our purpose to this extent we shall have made +no inconsiderable advance. For even the last century never quite +got rid of its predecessor's fixed idea that certain degrees of +culture were appropriate to certain stations of life. With what +gentle persistence it prevails, for example, in Jane Austen's +novels; with what complacent rhetoric in Tennyson (and in spite +of Lady Clara Vere de Vere)! Let me remind you that by allowing +an idea to take hold of our animosity we may be as truly +`possessed' by it as though it claimed our allegiance. The notion +that culture may be drilled to march in step with a trade or +calling endured through the Victorian age of competition and +possessed the mind not only of Samuel Smiles who taught by +instances how a bright and industrious boy might earn money and +lift himself out of his 'station,' but of Ruskin himself, who in +the first half of "Sesame and Lilies," in the lecture "Of Kings' +Treasuries," discussing the choice of books, starts vehemently +and proceeds at length to denounce the prevalent passion for +self-advancement--of rising above one's station in life--quite as +if it were the most important thing, willy-nilly, in talking of +the choice of books. Which means that, to Ruskin, just then, it +was the most formidable obstacle. Can we, at this time of day, do +better by simply turning the notion out of doors? Yes, I believe +that we can: and upon this _credo_: + +_I believe that while it may grow--and grow infinitely--with +increase of learning, the grace of a liberal education, like the +grace of Christianity, is so catholic a thing--so absolutely +above being trafficked, retailed, apportioned, among `stations in +life'--that the humblest child may claim it by indefeasible +right, having a soul._ + +_Further, I believe that Humanism is, or should he, no decorative +appanage, purchased late in the process of education, within the +means of a few: but a quality, rather, which should, and can, +condition all teaching, from a child's first lesson in Reading: +that its unmistakable hall-mark can be impressed upon the +earliest task set in an Elementary School._ + +VIII + +I am not preaching red Radicalism in this: I am not telling you +that Jack is as good as his master: if he were, he would be a +great deal better; for he would understand Homer (say) as well as +his master, the child of parents who could afford to have him +taught Greek. As Greek is commonly taught, I regret to say, +whether they have learnt it or not makes a distressingly small +difference to most boys' appreciation of Homer. Still it does +make a vast difference to some, and should make a vast difference +to all. And yet, if you will read the passage in Kinglake's +"Eoethen" in which he tells--in words that find their echo in many +a reader's memory--of his boyish passion for Homer--and if you +will note that the boy imbibed his passion, after all, through +the conduit of Pope's translation--you will acknowledge that, for +the human boy, admission to much of the glory of Homer's realm +does not depend upon such mastery as a boy of fifteen or sixteen +possesses over the original. But let me quote you a few +sentences: + + I, too, loved Homer, but not with a scholar's love. The most + humble and pious among women was yet so proud a mother that she + could teach her first-born son no Watts's hymns, no collects + for the day; she could teach him in earliest childhood no less + than this--to find a home in his saddle, and to love old Homer, + and all that old Homer sung. True it is, that the Greek was + ingeniously rendered into English, the English of Pope even, + but not even a mesh like that can screen an earnest child from + the fire of Homer's battles. + + I pored over the "Odyssey" as over a story-book, hoping and + fearing for the hero whom yet I partly scorned. But the + "Iliad"--line by line I clasped it to my brain with reverence + as well as with love.... + + The impatient child is not grubbing for beauties, but + pushing the siege; the women vex him with their delays, + and their talking ... but all the while that he thus chafes at + the pausing of the action, the strong vertical light of + Homer's poetry is blazing so full upon the people and + things of the "Iliad," that soon to the eyes of the child they + grow familiar as his mother's shawl.... + + It was not the recollection of school nor college learning, + but the rapturous and earnest reading of my childhood, + which made me bend forward so longingly to the plains of Troy. + +IX + +It is among the books then, and not among the readers, that we +must do our selecting. But how? On what principle or principles? + +Sometime in the days of my youth, a newspaper, "The Pall Mall +Gazette," then conducted by W. T. Stead, made a conscientious +effort to solve the riddle by inviting a number of eminent men to +compile lists of the Hundred Best Books. Now this invitation +rested on a fallacy. Considering for a moment how personal a +thing is Literature, you will promptly assure yourselves that +there is--there can be--no such thing as the Hundred Best Books. +If you yet incline to toy with the notion, carry it on and +compile a list of the Hundred Second-best Books: nay, if you +will, continue until you find yourself solemnly, with a brow +corrugated by responsibility, weighing the claims (say) of +Velleius Paterculus, Paul and Virginia and Mr Jorrocks to +admission among the Hundred Tenth-best Books. There is, in fact +no positive hierarchy among the classics. You cannot appraise the +worth of Charles Lamb against the worth of Casaubon: the worth of +Hesiod against the worth of Madame de Sevigne: the worth of +Theophile Gautier against the worth of Dante or Thomas Hobbes or +Macchiavelli or Jane Austen. They all wrote with pens, in ink, +upon paper: but you no sooner pass beyond these resemblances than +your comparison finds itself working in impari materia. + +Also why should the Best Books be 100 in number, rather than 99 +or 199? And under what conditions is a book a Best Book? There +are moods in which we not only prefer Pickwick to the Rig-Vedas +or Sakuntala, but find that it does us more good. In our day +again I pay all respect to Messrs Dent's "Everyman's Library." It +was a large conception vigorously planned. But, in the nature of +things, Everyman is going to arrive at a point beyond which he +will find it more and more difficult to recognise himself: at a +point, let us say, when Everyman, opening a new parcel, starts to +doubt if, after all, it wouldn't be money in his pocket to be +Somebody Else. + +X + +And yet, may be, "The Pall Mall Gazette" was on the right scent. +For it was in search of masterpieces: and, however we teach, our +trust will in the end repose upon masterpieces, upon the great +classics of whatever Language or Literature we are handling: and +these, in any language are neither enormous in number and mass, +nor extraordinarily difficult to detect, nor (best of all) +forbidding to the reader by reason of their own difficulty. Upon +a selected few of these--even upon three, or two, or one--we may +teach at least a surmise of the true delight, and may be some +measure of taste whereby our pupil will, by an inner guide, be +warned to choose the better and reject the worse when we turn him +loose to read for himself. + +To this use of masterpieces I shall devote my final lecture. + + + +[Footnote 1: Charles Reade notes this in "The Cloister and the +Hearth," chap. LXI.] + +[Footnote 2: The loose and tautologous style of this Preface is +worth noting. Likely enough Browne wrote it in a passion that +deprived him of his habitual self-command. One phrase alone +reveals the true Browne--that is, Browne true to himself: 'and +time that brings other things to light, should have satisfied me +in the remedy of its oblivion.'] + + + + +LECTURE XII + +ON THE USE OF MASTERPIECES + +WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1918 + + +I + +I do not think, Gentlemen, that we need to bother ourselves today +with any definition of a 'classic,' or of the _stigmata_ by which +a true classic can be recognised. Sainte-Beuve once indicated +these in a famous discourse, "Qu'est-ce qu'un classique": and it +may suffice us that these include Universality and Permanence. +Your true classic is _universal,_ in that it appeals to the +catholic mind of man. It is doubly _permanent_: for it remains +significant, or acquires a new significance, after the age for +which it was written and the conditions under which it was +written, have passed away; and it yet keeps, undefaced by +handling, the original noble imprint of the mind that first +minted it--or shall we say that, as generation after generation +rings the coin, it ever returns the echo of its father-spirit? + +But for our purpose it suffices that in our literature we possess +a number of works to which the title of classic cannot be +refused. So let us confine ourselves to these, and to the +question, How to use them? + +II + +Well, to begin with, I revert to a point which I tried to +establish in my first lecture; and insist with all my strength +that the first obligation we owe to any classic, and to those +whom we teach, and to ourselves, is to treat it _absolutely_: not +for any secondary or derivative purpose, or purpose recommended +as useful by any manual: but at first solely to interpret the +meaning which its author intended: that in short we should +_trust_ any given masterpiece for its operation, on ourselves and +on others. In that first lecture I quoted to you this most wise +sentence: + + That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is + mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact, + +and consenting to this with all my heart I say that it matters +very little for the moment, or even for a considerable while, +that a pupil does not perfectly, or even nearly, understand all +he reads, provided we can get the attraction to seize upon him. +He and the author between them will do the rest: our function is +to communicate and trust. In what other way do children take the +ineffaceable stamp of a gentle nurture than by daily attraction +to whatsoever is beautiful and amiable and dignified in their +home? As there, so in their reading, the process must be gradual +of acquiring an inbred monitor to reject the evil and choose the +good. For it is the property of masterpieces that they not only +raise you to + + despise low joys, low Gains; + Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains: + +they are not only as Lamb wrote of the Plays of Shakespeare +'enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing +from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet +and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach you courtesy, +benignity, generosity, humanity'; but they raise your gorge to +defend you from swallowing the fifth-rate, the sham, the +fraudulent. _Abeunt studia in mores._ I cannot, for my part, +conceive a man who has once incorporated the "Phaedo" or the +"Paradiso" or "Lear" in himself as lending himself for a moment +to one or other of the follies plastered in these late stern +times upon the firm and most solid purpose of this nation--the +inanities, let us say, of a Baby-Week. Or, for a more damnable +instance, I think of you and me with Marvell's great Horatian Ode +sunk in our minds, standing to-day by the statue of Charles I +that looks down Whitehall: telling ourselves of 'that memorable +scene' before the Banqueting House, remembering amid old woes all +the glory of our blood and state, recollecting what is due even +to ourselves, standing on the greatest site of our capital, and +turning to see it degraded, as it has been for a week, to a +vulgar raree-show. Gentlemen, I could read you many poor +ill-written letters from mothers whose sons have died for England, +to prove to you we have not deserved _that,_ or the sort of placard +with which London has been plastered, + + Dum domus AEneae Capitoli immobile saxum + Accolet. + +Great enterprises (as we know) and little minds go ill together. +Someone veiled the statue. That, at least, was well done. + +I have not the information--nor do I want it--to make even a +guess who was responsible for this particular outrage. I know the +sort of man well enough to venture that he never had a liberal +education, and, further, that he is probably rather proud of +it. But he may nevertheless own some instinct of primitive +kindliness: and I wish he could know how he afflicts men of +sensitiveness who have sons at the War. + +III + +Secondly, let us consider what use we can make of even one +selected classic. I refer you back to the work of an old +schoolmaster, quoted in my first lecture: + + I believe, if the truth were known, men would be astonished at + the small amount of learning with which a high degree of + culture is compatible. In a moment of enthusiasm I ventured + once to tell my 'English set' that if they could really master + the ninth book of "Paradise Lost," so as to rise to the height + of its great argument and incorporate all its beauties in + themselves, they would at one blow, by virtue of that alone, + become highly cultivated men.... More and more various learning + might raise them to the same height by different paths, but + could hardly raise them higher. + +I beg your attention for the exact words: 'to rise to the height +of its great argument and _incorporate all its beauties in +themselves._' There you have it--'to incorporate.' Do you +remember that saying of Wordsworth's, casually dropped in +conversation, but preserved for us by Hazlitt?--'It is in the +highest degree unphilosophic to call language or diction the +dress of our thoughts.... It is the _incarnation_ of our +thoughts.' Even so, I maintain to you, the first business of a +learner in literature is to get complete hold of some undeniable +masterpiece and incorporate it, incarnate it. And, I repeat, +there are a few great works for you to choose from: works +approved for you by ancient and catholic judgment. + +IV + +But let us take something far simpler than the Ninth Book of +"Paradise Lost" and more direct than any translated masterpiece +can be in its appeal; something of high genius, written in our +mother tongue. Let us take "The Tempest." + +Of "The Tempest" we may say confidently: + +(1) that it is a literary masterpiece: the last most perfect +'fruit of the noblest tree in our English Forest'; + +(2) that its story is quite simple; intelligible to a child: (its +basis in fact is fairy-tale, pure and simple--as I tried to show +in a previous lecture); + +(3) that in reading it--or in reading "Hamlet," for that matter-- +the child has no sense at all of being patronised, of being +'written down to.' And this has the strongest bearing on my +argument. The great authors, as Emerson says, never condescend. +Shakespeare himself speaks to a slip of a boy, and that boy feels +that he _is_ Ferdinand; + +(4) that, though Shakespeare uses his loftiest, most accomplished +and, in a sense, his most difficult language: a way of talking it +has cost him a life-time to acquire, in line upon line inviting +the scholar's, prosodist's, poet's most careful study; that +language is no bar to the child's enjoyment: but rather casts +about the whole play an aura of magnificence which, with the +assistant harmonies, doubles and redoubles the spell. A child no +more resents this because it is strange than he objects to read +in a fairytale of robbers concealed in oil-jars or of diamonds +big as a roc's egg. When will our educators see that what a child +depends on is imagination, that what he demands of life is the +wonderful, the glittering, possibility? + +Now if, putting all this together and taking confidence from it, +we boldly launch a child upon "The Tempest" we shall come sooner +or later upon passages that _we_ have arrived at finding +difficult. We shall come, for example, to the Masque of Iris, +which Iris, invoking Ceres, thus opens: + + Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas + Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats and pease; + Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, + And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep: + Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims, + Which spongy April at thy hest betrims-- + To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom-groves, + Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves, + Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard; + And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky hard, + Where thou thyself dost air--the Queen o' th' sky, + Whose watry arch and messenger am I, + Bids thee leave these.... + +The passage is undeniably hard for any child, even when you have +paused to explain who Ceres is, who Iris, who the Queen o' the +sky, and what Iris means by calling herself 'her watery arch and +messenger.' The grammatical structure not only stands on its head +but maintains that posture for an extravagant while. Naturally +(or rather let us say, ordinarily) it would run, 'Ceres, the +Queen o' the sky bids thee leave--thy rich leas, etc.' But, the +lines being twelve-and-a-half in number, we get no hint of there +being any grammatical subject until it bursts on us in the second +half of line eleven, while the two main verbs and the object of +one of them yet linger to be exploded in the last half-line, +'Bids thee leave these.' And this again is as nothing to the +difficulties of interpretation. 'Dismissed bachelor' may be easy; +'pole-clipt vineyard' is certainly not, at first sight. 'To make +cold nymphs chaste crowns.' What cold nymphs? You have to wait +for another fifty odd lines before being quite sure that +Shakespeare means Naiads (and 'What are Naiads?' says the child) +--'temperate nymphs': + + You nymphs, called Naiads, of the windring brooks, + With your sedged crowns... + +--and if the child demand what is meant by 'pioned and twilled +brims,' you have to answer him that nobody knows. + +These difficulties--perhaps for you, certainly for the young +reader or listener--are reserved delights. My old schoolmaster +even indulges this suspicion--'I never can persuade myself that +Shakespeare would have passed high in a Civil Service Examination +on one of his own plays.' At any rate you don't _begin_ with +these difficulties: you don't (or I hope you don't) read the +notes first: since, as Bacon puts it, 'Studies teach not their +own use.' + +As for the child, he is not '_grubbing_ for beauties'; he +magnificently ignores what he cannot for the moment understand, +being intent on _What Is,_ the heart and secret of the adventure. +He _is_ Ferdinand (I repeat) and the isle is 'full of voices.' If +these voices were all intelligible, why then, as Browning would +say, 'the less Island it.' + +V + +I have purposely exhibited "The Tempest" at its least tractable. +Who will deny that _as a whole_ it can be made intelligible even +to very young children by the simple process of reading it with +them intelligently? or that the mysteries such a reading leaves +unexplained are of the sort to fascinate a child's mind and +allure it? But if this be granted, I have established my +contention that the Humanities should not be treated as a mere +crown and ornament of education; that they should inform every +part of it, from the beginning, in every school of the realm: +that whether a child have more education or less education, what +he has can be, and should be, a 'liberal education' throughout. + +Matthew Arnold, as every one knows, used to preach the use of +these masterpieces as prophylactics of taste. I would I could +make you feel that they are even more necessary to us. + +The reason why?--The reason is that every child born in these +Islands is born into a democracy which, apart from home affairs, +stands committed to a high responsibility for the future welfare +and good governance of Europe. For three centuries or so it has +held rule over vast stretches of the earth's surface and many +millions of strange peoples: while its obligations towards the +general civilisation of Europe, if not intermittent, have been +tightened or relaxed, now here, now there, by policy, by +commerce, by dynastic alliances, by sudden revulsions or +sympathies. But this War will leave us bound to Europe as we +never have been: and, whether we like it or not, no less +inextricably bound to foe than to friend. Therefore, I say, it +has become important, and in a far higher degree than it ever was +before the War, that our countrymen grow up with a sense of what +I may call the _soul_ of Europe. And nowhere but in literature +(which is `memorable speech')--or at any rate, nowhere so well as +in literature--can they find this sense. + +VI + +There was, as we have seen, a time in Europe, extending over many +centuries, when mankind dwelt under the preoccupation of making +literature, and still making more of it. The 5th century B.C. in +Athens was such a time; and if you will you may envy, as we all +admire, the men of an age when to write at all was tantamount to +asserting genius; the men who, in Newman's words, `deserve to be +Classics, both because of what they do and because they can do +it.' If you envy--while you envy--at least remember that these +things often paid their price; that the "Phaedo," for example, +was bought for us by the death of Socrates. Pass Athens and come +to Alexandria: still men are accumulating books and the material +for books; threshing out the Classics into commentaries and +grammars, garnering books in great libraries. + +There follows an age which interrupts this hive-like labour with +sudden and insensate destruction. German tribes from the north, +Turkish from the east, break in upon the granaries and send up +literature in flames; the Christian Fathers from Tertullian to +Gregory the Great (I regret to say) either heartily assisting or +at least warming their benedictory hands at the blaze: and so +thoroughly they do their work that even the writings of +Aristotle, the Philosopher, must wait for centuries as 'things +silently gone out of mind or things violently destroyed' (to +borrow Wordsworth's fine phrase) and creep back into Europe bit +by bit, under cover of Arabic translations. + +The scholars set to work and begin rebuilding: patient, +indefatigable, anonymous as the coral insects at work on a +Pacific atoll-building, building, until on the near side of the +gulf we call the Dark Age, islets of scholarship lift themselves +above the waters: mere specks at first, but ridges appear and +connect them: and, to first seeming, sterile enough: + + Nec Cereri opportuna seges, nec commoda Baccho-- + +but as they join and become a _terra firma,_ a thin soil gathers +on them God knows whence: and, God knows whence, the seed is +brought, 'it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain.' There +is a price, again, for this resurrection: but how nobly, how +blithely paid you may learn, without seeking recondite examples, +from Cuthbert's famous letter describing the death of Bede. +Compare that story with that of the last conversation of +Socrates; and you will surely recognise that the two men are +brothers born out of time; that Bede's work has been a legacy; +that his life has been given to recreating--not scholarship +merely nor literature merely--but, through them both, something +above them both--the soul of Europe. And this may or may not lead +you on to reflect that beyond our present passions, and beyond +this War, in a common sanity Europe (and America with her) will +have to discover that common soul again. + +But eminent spirits such as Bede's are, by their very eminence, +less representative of the process--essentially fugitive and +self-abnegatory--than the thousands of copyists who have left no +name behind them. Let me read you a short paragraph from "The +Cambridge History of English Literature," Chapter 11, written, +the other day, by one of our own teachers: + + The cloister was the centre of life in the monastery, and in + the cloister was the workshop of the patient scribe. It is hard + to realise that the fair and seemly handwriting of these + manuscripts was executed by fingers which, on winter days, + when the wind howled through the cloisters, must have been + numbed by icy cold. It is true that, occasionally, little + carrels or studies in the recesses of the windows were screened + off from the main walk of the cloister, and, sometimes, a small + room or cell would be partitioned off for the use of a single + scribe. The room would then be called the Scriptorium, but it + is unlikely that any save the oldest and most learned of the + community were afforded this luxury. In these scriptoria of + various kinds the earliest annals and chronicles in the + English language were penned, in the beautiful and painstaking + forms in which we know them. + +If you seek testimony, here are the _ipsissima verba_ of a poor +monk of Wessobrunn endorsed upon his MS: + + The book which you now see was written in the outer seats + of the cloister. While I wrote I froze: and what I could not + write by the beams of day I finished by candlelight. + +We might profitably spend--but to-day cannot spare--a while upon +the pains these men of the Middle Ages took to accumulate books +and to keep them. The chained volumes in old libraries, for +example, might give us a text for this as well as start us +speculating why it is that, to this day, the human conscience +incurably declines to include books with other portable property +covered by the Eighth Commandment. Or we might follow several of +the early scholars and humanists in their passionate chasings +across Europe, in and out of obscure monasteries, to recover the +lost MSS of the classics: might tell, for instance, of Pope +Nicholas V, whose birth-name was Tommaso Parentucelli, and how he +rescued the MSS from Constantinople and founded the Vatican +Library: or of Aurispa of Sicily who collected two hundred and +thirty-eight for Florence: or the story of the _editio princeps_ +of the Greek text of Homer. Or we might dwell on the awaking of +our literature, and the trend given to it, by men of the Italian +and French renaissance; or on the residence of Erasmus here, in +this University, with its results. + +VII + +But I have said enough to make it clear that, as we owe so much +of our best to understanding Europe, so the need to understand +Europe lies urgently to-day upon large classes in this country; +and that yet, in the nature of things, these classes can never +enjoy such leisure as our forefathers enjoyed to understand what +I call the soul of Europe, or at least to misunderstand it _upon +acquaintance._ + +Let me point out further that within the last few months we have +doubled the difficulty at a stroke by sharing the government of +our country with women and admitting them to Parliament. It +beseems a great nation to take great risks: to dare them is at +once a sign and a property of greatness: and for good or ill--but +for limitless good as we trust--our country has quietly made this +enterprise amid the preoccupations of the greatest War in its +annals. Look at it as you will--let other generations judge +it as they will--it stands a monument of our faith in free +self-government that in these most perilous days we gave and took +so high a guerdon of trust in one another. + +But clearly it implies that all the women of this country, down +to the small girls entering our elementary schools, must be +taught a great many things their mothers and grandmothers--happy +in their generation--were content not to know[1]. + +It cannot be denied, I think, that in the long course of this +War, now happily on the point of a victorious conclusion, we have +suffered heavily through past neglect and present nescience of +our literature, which is so much more European, so much more +catholic, a thing than either our politics or our national +religion: that largely by reason of this neglect and this +nescience our statesmen have again and again failed to foresee +how continental nations would act through failing to understand +their minds; and have almost invariably, through this lack of +sympathetic understanding, failed to interpret us to foreign +friend or foe, even when (and it was not often) they interpreted +us to ourselves. I note that America--a country with no +comparable separate tradition of literature--has customarily +chosen men distinguished by the grace of letters for ambassadors +to the Court of St James--Motley, Lowell, Hay, Page, in our time: +and has for her President a man of letters--and a Professor at +that!--whereas, even in these critical days, Great Britain, +having a most noble cause and at least half-a-hundred writers and +speakers capable of presenting it with dignity and so clearly +that no neutral nation could mistake its logic, has by preference +entrusted it to stunt journalists and film-artistes. If in these +later days you have lacked a voice to interpret you in the great +accent of a Chatham, the cause lies in past indifference to that +literary tradition which is by no means the least among the +glories of our birth and state. + +VIII + +Masterpieces, then, will serve us as prophylactics of taste, even +from childhood; and will help us, further, to interpret the +common mind of civilisation. But they have a third and yet nobler +use. They teach us to lift our own souls. + +For witness to this and to the way of it I am going to call an +old writer for whom, be it whim or not, I have an almost 18th +century reverence--Longinus. No one exactly knows who he was; +although it is usual to identify him with that Longinus who +philosophised in the court of the Queen Zenobia and was by her, +in her downfall, handed over with her other counsellors to be +executed by Aurelian: though again, as is usual, certain bold bad +men affirm that, whether he was this Longinus or not, the +treatise of which I speak was not written by any Longinus at all +but by someone with a different name, with which they are +unacquainted. Be this as it may, somebody wrote the treatise and +its first editor, Francis Robertello of Basle, in 1554 called him +Dionysius Longinus; and so shall I, and have done with it, +careless that other MSS than that used by Robertello speak of +Dionysius or Longinus. Dionysius Longinus, then, in the 3rd +century A.D.--some say in the 1st: it is no great matter--wrote a +little book [Greek: PERI UPSOUS] commonly cited as "Longinus on +the Sublime." The title is handy, but quite misleading, unless +you remember that by 'Sublimity' Longinus meant, as he expressly +defines it, 'a certain distinction and excellence in speech.' The +book, thus recovered, had great authority with critics of the +17th and 18th centuries. For the last hundred years it has quite +undeservedly gone out of vogue. + +It is (I admit) a puzzling book, though quite clear in argument +and language: pellucidly clear, but here and there strangely +modern, even hauntingly modern, if the phrase may be allowed. You +find yourself rubbing your eyes over a passage more like Matthew +Arnold than something of the 3rd century: or you come without +warning on a few lines of 'comparative criticism,' as we call it +--an illustration from Genesis--'God said, Let there be Light, +and there was Light' used for a specimen of the exalted way of +saying things. Generally, you have a sense that this author's +lineage is mysterious after the fashion of Melchisedek's. + +Well, to our point--Longinus finds that the conditions of lofty +utterance are five: of which the first is by far the most +important. And this foremost condition is innate: you either have +it or you have not. Here it is: + + 'Elsewhere,' says Longinus, 'I have written as follows: + _"Sublimity is the echo of a great soul."_ Hence even a bare + idea sometimes, by itself and without a spoken word will + excite admiration, just because of the greatness of soul + implied. Thus the silence of Ajax in the underworld is great + and more sublime than words.' + +You remember the passage, how Odysseus meets that great spirit +among the shades and would placate it, would 'make up' their +quarrel on earth now, with carneying words: + + 'Ajax, son of noble Telamon, wilt thou not then, even in + death forget thine anger against me over that cursed + armour.... Nay, there is none other to blame but Zeus: he + laid thy doom on thee. Nay, come hither, O my lord, and + hear me and master thine indignation: + + So I spake, but he answered me not a word, but strode from + me into the Darkness, following the others of the dead that + be departed. + +Longinus goes on: + + It is by all means necessary to point this out--that the truly + eloquent must be free from base and ignoble (or ill-bred) + thoughts. For it is not possible that men who live their lives + with mean and servile aims and ideas should produce what is + admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we expect to + fall from the lips of those whose thoughts are dignified. + +Believe this and it surely follows, as concave implies convex, +that by daily converse and association with these great ones we +take their breeding, their manners, earn their magnanimity, make +ours their gifts of courtesy, unselfishness, mansuetude, high +seated pride, scorn of pettiness, wholesome plentiful jovial +laughter. + + He that of such a height hath built his mind, + And rear'd the dwelling of his soul so strong + As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame + Of his resolved powers, nor all the wind + Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong + His settled peace, or to disturb the same; + What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may + The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey! + + And with how free an eye doth he look down + Upon these lower regions of turmoil! + Where all the storms of passions mainly beat + On flesh and blood; where honour, power, renown, + Are only gay afflictions, golden toil; + Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet + As frailty doth; and only great doth seem + To little minds, who do it so esteem.... + + Knowing the heart of man is set to be + The centre of this world, about the which + These revolutions of disturbances + Still roll; where all th' aspects of misery + Predominate; whose strong effects are such + As he must bear, being powerless to redress; + And that, unless above himself he can + Erect himself, how poor a thing is man![2] + +IX + +If the exhortation of these verses be somewhat too high and +stoical for you, let me return to Longinus and read you, from his +concluding chapter, a passage you may find not inapposite to +these times, nor without a moral: + + 'It remains' [he says] 'to clear up, my dear Terentianus, a + question which a certain philosopher has recently mooted. I + wonder,' he says, 'as no doubt do many others, how it happens + that in our time there are men who have the gift of persuasion + to the utmost extent, and are well fitted for public life, and + are keen and ready, and particularly rich in all the charms of + language, yet there no longer arise really lofty and + transcendent natures unless it be quite peradventure. So great + and world-wide a dearth of high utterance attends our age. + Can it be,' he continued, 'we are to accept the common cant + that democracy is the nursing mother of genius, and that great + men of letters flourish and die with it? For freedom, they say, + has the power to cherish and encourage magnanimous minds, and + with it is disseminated eager mutual rivalry and the emulous + thirst to excel. Moreover, by the prizes open under a popular + government, the mental faculties of orators are perpetually + practised and whetted, and as it were, rubbed bright, so that + they shine free as the state itself. Whereas to-day,' he went + on, 'we seem to have learnt as an infant-lesson that servitude + is the law of life; being all wrapped, while our thoughts are + yet young and tender, in observances and customs as in + swaddling clothes, bound without access to that fairest and + most fertile source of man's speech (I mean Freedom) so that we + are turned out in no other guise than that of servile + flatterers. And servitude (it has been well said) though + it be even righteous, is the cage of the soul and a public + prison-house.' + + But I answered him thus.--'It is easy, my good sir, and + characteristic of human nature, to gird at the age in which + one lives. Yet consider whether it may not be true that it is + less the world's peace that ruins noble nature than this war + illimitable which holds our aspirations in its fist, and + occupies our age with passions as with troops that utterly + plunder and harry it. The love of money and the love of + pleasure enslave us, or rather, as one may say, drown us + body and soul in their depths. For vast and unchecked + wealth marches with lust of pleasure for comrade, and when + one opens the gate of house or city, the other at once enters + and abides. And in time these two build nests in the hearts + of men, and quickly rear a progeny only too legitimate: and + the ruin within the man is gradually consummated as the + sublimities of his soul wither away and fade, and in ecstatic + contemplation of our mortal parts we omit to exalt, and + come to neglect in nonchalance, that within us which is + immortal.' + +I had a friend once who, being in doubt with what picture to +decorate the chimney-piece in his library, cast away choice and +wrote up two Greek words--[Greek: PSYCHES 'IATREION]; that is, +the hospital--the healing-place--of the soul. + + + +[Footnote 1: 'Well! ... my education is at last finished: indeed +it would be strange, if, after five years' hard application, +anything were left incomplete. Happily that is all over now; and +I have nothing to do, but to exercise my various accomplishments. + +'Let me see!--as to French, I am mistress of that, and speak it, +if possible, with more fluency than English. Italian I can read +with ease, and pronounce very well: as well at least, and better, +than any of my friends; and that is all one need wish for in +Italian. Music I have learned till I am perfectly sick of it. But +... it will be delightful to play when we have company. I must +still continue to practise a little;--the only thing, I think, +that I need now to improve myself in. And then there are my +Italian songs! which everybody allows I sing with taste, and as +it is what so few people can pretend to, I am particularly glad +that I can. + +'My drawings are universally admired; especially the shells and +flowers; which are beautiful, certainly; besides this, I have a +decided taste in all kinds of fancy ornaments. + +'And then my dancing and waltzing! in which our master himself +owned that he could take me no further! just the figure for it +certainly; it would be unpardonable if I did not excel. + +'As to common things, geography, and history, and poetry, and +philosophy, thank my stars, I have got through them all! so that +I may consider myself not only perfectly accomplished, but also +thoroughly well-informed. + +'Well, to be sure, how much have I fagged through--; the only +wonder is that one head can contain it all.' + +I found this in a little book "Thoughts of Divines and +Philosophers," selected by Basil Montagu. The quotation is +signed 'J. T.' I cannot trace it, but suspect Jane Taylor.] + +[Footnote 2: Samuel Daniel, "Epistle to the Lady Margaret, +Countess of Cumberland."] + + + + +INDEX + + +"Acts of the Apostles, The," 165 +Addison, Joseph, 146, 192 +"Adonais," Shelley's, 79 +Adrian VI, Pope, 77 +Aeschylus, 1, 121, 179, 183 +"Aesop and Rhodope," Landor's 117 +"Agamemnon, The," 79 +"Aims of Literary Study, The," 6 +"Allegro,L'," 62, 63, 64 +Ameipsias, 21 +"Anatomy of Melancholy," Burton's, 155 +"Ancient Mariner, The," 59 +Andersen, Hans Christian, 46 +"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The," 154 +"Annual Register, The," 155 +"Anti-Jacobin, The," 194 +"Apologia," Newman's, 155 +"Arabian Nights," M. Galland's, 43 +"Arabian Nights, The," 139 +Arber, 99 +Aristophanes, 21, 147 +Aristotle, 1, 25, 48, 51, 52, 58, 59, 60, 121, 129, 148, 150, + 174, 207 +Arnold, Matthew, 38, 99, 104, 124, 153, 205, 213 +"Arraignment of Paris," Peele's, 80 +"As You Like It," 71 +Aulnoy, Madame D', 43 +Aurispa, 209 +Austen, Jane, 102, 194, 197 + +Bacon, Francis 21, 22, 23, 73, 94, 114, 126, 155, 205 +Bagehot, Walter, 36, 113 +Bailey, Philip James, 155 +Baker, Sir William, 170 +"Balder Dead" 163 +Ballad. The, 55 +Barboar, John, 155 +Bede, 207. 209 +Beethoven, 139 +"Beginnings of Poetry," Dr Gummere's, 55, 56, 58 +"Beowulf,". 99 +Berkeley, George, 191 +Berners, 193 +"Bible, The," 97, 126 et seq. +"Bible, The Geneva," 155 +"Blackwood's Magazine," 80 +Blair, Robert, 155 +Blake, William, 33, 155 +Boileau, 193 +Bologna, University of, 73 +"Book of Nonsense," Lear's, 111 +Boswell, James, 93, 155 +Bottomley, Horatio, 185 +Brady, Nicholas, 170 +Brooke, Stopford, 94 +Brown, Dr John, 56 +Browne, Sir Thomas, 145, 185, 189, 190 +Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 72 +Browning, Robert, 5, 6, 7, 15, 152, 155, 205 +"Bruce, The," Barbour's, 155 +Bunyan, John, 97, 134, 135, 145, 152 +Burke, Edmund, 94, 104, 116, 155, 192 +Burns, Robert, 97, 132, 133 +Burton, Robert, 155 +Butcher, Professor, 129 +Byron, Lord, 5, 80, 168 + +"Cabinet des Fees, Le," 43 +"Cambridge Essays on Education," Inge's essay in, 112 +"Cambridge History of English Literature, The," 5, 152, 208 +Cambridge Platonists, The, 29, 193 +Cambridge, University of, 1, 2 et seq., 57, 76, 77, 87, 88, + 105, 121, 209 +Campbell, John, 155 +Canning, 193 +"Canterbury Tales, The," 71, 161 +"Canterbury Tales, The Prologue to the," 71, 94, 144, 161 +Canton, William, 38 +Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 38, 106 +Casaubon, 70, 197 +"Centuries of Meditations," Thomas Traherne's, 44 +Chatham, Earl of, 115, 116, 192, 211 +Chaucer, 4, 27, 65, 66, 71, 88, 94, 102, 164, 105, 124, 144, + 164, 193 +Chicago, University of, 154 +"Choephori," 175 +"Chronicles, Book of," 138 +Clarendon, Lord, 155 +Clark, William George, 94, 99 +"Cloister and the Hearth, The," Charles Reade's, 189 +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 65 +Collins, William, 124 +Colvin, Sir Sidney, 86 +"Complaint of Deor, The," 155 +Comte, Auguste, 51 +Congreve, William, 192 +"Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra," Landor's, 124, 125 +"Corinthians, St Paul's First Epistle to the," 81, 82 +Corson, Dr, 6, 66, 100 +Cory, William (Johnson), 123 +"Cotter's Saturday Night, The," Burns's, 132, 139 +Coverdale, Miles, 97,145, 158 +Cowper, William, 100, 115, 192 +Cranmer, Thomas, 97 +Crashaw, Richard, 193 +Cuthbert, 207 +"Cyrano de Bergerac," 111 + +Daniel, Samuel, 215 +Dante, 27, 79, 104, 153, 164. 197 +Darwin, Charles, 154 +Davenant, Sir William, 151 +"Death in the Desert, A," Browning's, 6, 7 +"Descent of Man," Darwin's, 154 +"Deserted Village, The," 155 +Dickens, Charles, 5, 193 +Dionysius, 212 +"Divina Commedia," 52 +"Doctor's Tale, The," 71 +"Dolores," Swinburne's, 155 +"Domesday Book," 155 +"Don Quixote," 105 +Donne, John, 82, 89, 105, 114, 155, 193 +"Dream of Boccaccio," Landor's, 82 +Dryden, John, 54 +Dublin, University of, 131 +Dunbar, William, 193 +"Dutch Republic," Motley's, 82 + +Earle, John, 44, 49 +"Ecclesiastes," 161 +"Ecclesiastical Polity," Richard Hooker's, 155 +"Ecclesiasticus" 144 +Education, 35 et seq. +Ehrenreich, Dr Paul, 55 +"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," Gray's, 61, 144, 164 +Eliot, George, 14 +Ellis, A. J., 99 +Elyot, Sir Thomas, 11 +Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 33, 203 +"Eoethen," Kinglake's, 196 +"Epipsychidion," Shelley's, 89 +"Epistle to the Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland," + Samuel Daniel's, 214, 215 +Erasmus, 121, 209 +"Erster Schulgang," 39 +"Esmond," Thackeray's, 82, 83 +"Essay on Comedy," Meredith's, 110 +"Essay on Man," Pope's, 144 +"Essays," Bacon's, 94, 155 +"Esther," 161 +"Ethics," Aristotle's, 1 +Euclid, 93, 131 +Euripides, 19, 21, 123, 157 +"Everyman," 176 +"Everyman's Library," 198 +Ezekiel, 161 + +"Faerie Queene, The," 155 +"Fairchild Family, The," 40 +"Festus," Bailey's, 155 +"Fetch a pail of water," 53 +Fitzgerald, Edward, 118, 122, 155 +Fort, Paul, 174 +Fowler, F. G., 108 +Fowler, H. W., 108 +Franklin, Benjamin, 90 +Frere, J. H., 193 +"Friar's Tale, The," 71 +"Friendship's Garland," Matthew Arnold's, 38 +Froissart, 155 +Furnivall, 99 + +Galileo, 27 +Galland, M., 43 +"Gammer Grethel," 43 +Gautier, Theophile, 197 +"Genesis, Book of," 213 +"Geneva Bible, The," 155 +Gibbon, Edward, 20, 21, 121, 131, 146, 149, 192 +"Golden Treasury," Palgrave's, 155 +Goldsmith, Oliver, 102, 105 +"Gondibert," Sir William Davenant's, 151 +"Grammarian's Funeral, A," Browning's, 15 +Grave, Robert Blair's, 155 +Gray, Thomas, 61, 144, 164 +Gregory the Great, 207 +Grimm, the brothers, 43 +Grocyn, 121 +Grosart, Alexander Balloch, 99 +Gummere, Dr, 55, 56, 58 + +Hakluyt, Richard, 155 Hales, Dr, 99 +Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, 3, 41 11, 23, 24 +"Hamlet," 71, 127, 144, 161, 163, 203 +Hammond, Mr, 190 +Hammond, Mrs, 190 +Hay, 211 +Hazlitt, William, 202 Hegel, 25, 26 +Heidelberg, University of, 76 +"Here Come Three Dukes a riding," 53 +"Here we go Gathering Nuts in May," 53 +Herodotus, 123 +Hesiod, 197 +Hobbes, Thomas, 197 +Holmes, Mr, 47, 50, 51, 52 +Homer, 83, 118, 146 147, 148, 149, 153, 164, 167, 195, 196 +Hooker, Richard, 155 +Hopkins, John, 170 +Horace, 1 +"Hound of Heaven, The," Thompson's, 155 +"Household Tales," the Grimms; 43 +Hugo, Victor, 164 +Hume, David, 192 +"Hymns Ancient and Modern," 170 + +"Idea of a University, The," Newman's, 114 +"Iliad, The," 99, 147, 148 +"Imitatione Christi, De," 138 +"In Memoriam," Tennyson's, 58 +Inge, Dean, 112 +"Intellectual Life, The," Hamerton's, 3, 4, 23, 24 +"Intimations of Immortality," Wordsworth's, 44 +"Invisible Playmate, The," William Canton's, 38 +"Irish R.M., The Adventures of an," Somerville's and Ross's, 135 +Irwin, Sidney, 121 +Isaiah, 138, 153, 156, 161 +"Isaiah, Book of," 138, 144, 153, 161 +"Isthmian Odes," Pindar's, 98 + +Jansen, 77, +Jenkinson, Mr, 184, 185 +Job, 166, 167, 168, 175 et seq. +"Job, Book of," 139, 144, 161 et seq. +"John Bull," Bottomley's, 185 +John, St, of Patmos, 7, 130, 151 +Johnson, Samuel, 61, 89, 93, 105, 131, 146, 192, 193 +Jonson, Ben, 102 +"Joshua, Book of," 47, 136, 137 +Joubert, 117 +Jowett, Benjamin, 186 +Jusserand, J. J., 104 + +Keats, John, 84, 85, 87 +Keble, John, 114 +"King Henry IV," Part I, 71 +"King John," 71 +"King Lear," 16, 71, 163, 201 +Kinglake, Alexander William, 196 +"Kings, Book of," 138, 139, 141 +"Kings' Treasuries, Of," Ruskin's, 195 +"Knight's Tale, The," 71 + +Lamb, Charles, 102, 106, 156, 197, 200 +Landor, Walter Savage, 82, 117, 124, 130 +Latymer, Lord (F. B. Money-Coutts), 154, 162, 167, 183 +Laus Veneris, Swinburne's, 155 +Lear, Edward, 111 +"Lectures on Poetry," Keble's, 114 +Leipsic, University of, 76 +"Letters on a Regicide Peace," Burke's, 155 +"Life of Cowley," Johnson's, 193 +"Life of Johnson," Boswell's, +Lincoln, Abraham, 124 +"Literary Study of the Bible," Moulton's, 162 +"Lives of the Lord Chancellors," John Campbell's, 155 +Longinus, 148, 149, 150, 151, 212 et seq. +"Longinus on the Sublime," 149, 150, 212 et seq. +Louvain, University of, 76 +Lowell, James Russell, 211 +Lucian, 108 +"Luke, Gospel of St," 161 +Lycidas, 164 + +Macaulay, Lord, 19, 155, 156 +"Macbeth," 71 +Macchiavelli, 197 +Maeterlinck, 174, 175 +Malherbe, 193 +Malory, Sir Thomas, 193 +"Man of Law's Tale, The," 71 +"Manfred," 155 +Map, Walter, 155, 156 +Martin, Violet, 136 +Marvell, Andrew, 201 +"Matthew, Gospel of St," 137 +"Memories, Irish," Somerville's and Ross's, 135 +"Merchant of Venice, The," 71 +Meredith, George, 5, 110 +"Microcosmography," John Earle's, 44 +Mill, John Stuart, 93, 155 +Milton, John, 27, 62, 65, 93, 94, 111, 127, 131, 145, 162, + 164, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 188 +Moliere, 79 +Money-Coutts, F. B. (Lord Latymer), 154, 162, 167, 183 +Montagu, Basil, 211 +Moore, Sturge, 124 +More, Hannah, 192 +More, Sir Thomas, 114 +Morris, Richard, 99 +"Morte d'Arthur, Le," 155 +Motley, 82, 211 +Moulton, Dr R. G., 154, 158, 162, 177 +"Much Ado About Nothing," 71 +Myers, F. W. H., 165, 166 + +Newman, John Henry, 113, 114, 131, 155, 206 +Newton, Sir Isaac, 27, 114 +Nicholas V, Pope (Tommaso Parentucelli), 209 +North, Sir Thomas, 123 +"Notes and Queries," 101 +"Nun Priest's Tale, The," 71 + +"Ode to a Grecian Urn," Keats's, 85,86 +"Ode to a Nightingale," Keats's, 85, 86 +"Ode to Evening," Collins's, 124 +"Ode to Psyche," Keats's, 85 +"Odyssey, The," 42, 147, 148 +"Of Studies," Bacon's, 21, 22, 23 +Omar, 20 +"Omar Khayyam," FitzGerald's, 155 +"On Liberty," John Stuart Mill's, 155 +"On the Art of Writing," 1 +"Ossian," 155 +"Othello," 52, 71, 89 +Oxford, University of, 9, 73, 75, 76, 77, 121 + +Page, 211 +Paine, Thomas, 192 +Paley, Frederick, 98, 123 +Palgrave, Francis Turner, 15 5 +"Pall Mall Gazette, The," 197, 198 +"Paradise Lost," 56, 58, 59, 62, 127, 144, 154, 161, 164, 166, + 167, 168, 169, 170, 182, 188, 202 +"Paradise Regained," 166, 170 +"Paradiso, The," 201 +"Pardoner's Tale, The," 71 +Parentucelli Tommaso (Pope Nicholas V), 209 +Paris, University of, 74, 75 +"Parlement of Fowls, The," 27, 71 +Pater, Walter, 99, 149 +Patmore, Coventry, 33 +Pattison, Mark, 70 +Paul, St, 32, 60, 81, 82, 147, 161, 165 +Peele, 80 +Pericles, 124 +Perrault, 43, 110 +"Pervigilium Veneris, The," 124 +"Phaedo, The," 147, 148, 201, 206 +"Phaedrus, The," 118, 186 +"Piers Ploughman," 155, 156 +"Pilgrim's Progress, The," 68 +Pindar, 57, 79, 98 +Plato, 8, 16, 25, 26, 27, 28, 36, 111, 118, 147, 150, 185 +Plutarch, 123 +"Poems and Ballads," Swinburne's, 155 +"Poet's Charter, The," Lord Latymer's (Money-Coutts), 162 +"Poetics," Aristotle's, 52, 58, 59, 129 +"Polonius," FitzGerald's, 122 +Pope, Alexander, 105, 131, 144, 164, 192, 196 +"Prince Charming," Perrault's, 111 +"Principia," Newton's, 114 +Prior, Matthew, 102 +"Prometheus Bound," Aeschylus's, 175, 179, 180, 183 +"Prometheus Unbound," Shelley's, 59, 155, 164, 167, 168, 169 +"Psalm of Life, The," 56 +"Psalm cvii," 158, 159, 160 +"Psalm cxiv," Milton's Paraphrase of, 169, +"Psalm cxxxvi," Milton's Paraphrase of, 169, 170 +"Psalms, The," 139, 144 142, 161 +Pythagoras, 27 +"Pythian Odes," Pindar's, 98 + +Quarles, Francis, 155 + +Rashdall, Hastings, 76 +Reade, Charles, 189 +"Reading without Tears," 38, 41 +"Reason of Church Government," Milton's, 167 +Reid, Captain Mayne, 138 +"Religio Medici," Sir Thomas Browne's, 189, 190 +"Republic," Plato's, 16, 26 +"Revelation of St John the Divine, The," 151 +"Revellers," Ameipsias's, 21 +Rhoades, James, 11, 110, 202, 205 +"Rifle Rangers, The," Mayne Reid's, 138 +Roberts, Prof. W. Rhys, 150 +Ronsard, 193 +Ruskin, John, 93, 138, 155, 195 +"Ruth," 139, 161 + +"Sally, Sally Waters," 53 +Sainte-Beuve, 99, 199 +"St Paul," Myers's, 165, 166 +"Samson Agonistes," 170 +"Sartor Resartus," Carlyle's, 38, 155 +"Scalp Hunters, The," Mayne Reid's, 138 +"School for Scandal, The," 89 +Scott, Sir Walter, 43, 131 +"Sermon on the Mount, The," 128 +"Sermon II preached at Pauls upon Christmas Day, in the + Evening." 1624, Donne's, 89 +"Sermons," Donne's, 155 +"Sesame and Lilies," Ruskin's, 138, 195 +Sevigne, Madame de, 197 +Shakespeare, William, 4, 33, 65, 66, 70, 71, 94, 97, + 104, 116, 123, 131, 145, 155, 200, 203, 204, 205 +Shelley, 79, 155, 167, 168, 169, 193, 194 +Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 192 +"Sicilian Vine-Dresser, The," Sturge Moore's, 124 +Skeat, Walter W., 99 +Smiles, Samuel, 194 +Smith, Adam, 56, 155, 156 +Socrates, 118, 147, 148, 186, 187, 188, 206, 207 +Solomon, 156, 157 +"Song of Songs," 139, 156, 157, 161 +Sophocles, 111 +Spenser, 164 +Stead, W. T., 197 +Steele, Sir Richard, 102, 192 +Sternhold, Thomas, 170 +"Sthenoboea," Euripides's, 21 +"Stradivarius," George Eliot's, 14 +"Strayed Reveller," Matthew Arnold's, 124 +Stubbs, 101 +"Sublimitate, De," Longinus's, 149 +Suckling, Sir John, 90 +Swift, Jonathan, 105, 131 +Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 155 + +"Table Talk," Johnson's, 131 +"Tale of a Tub, A," 89 +"Task, The," Cowper's, 100 +Tasso, 167 +Tate, Nahum, 170 +Taylor, Edgar, 43 +Taylor, Jane, 211 +"Tempest, The," 59, 71, 202, 203, 204, 205 +Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 5, 193, 194 +Tertullian, 207 +Thackeray, William Makepeace, 82, 146 +Theocritus, 124 +Thompson, Francis, 155 +"Thoughts of Divines and Philosophers," Basil Montagu's, 211 +"Thoughts on the Present Discontents," Burke's, 155 +Thucydides, 121 +"Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth's, 152 +Todhunter, Dr, 93 +Traherne, Thomas, 29, 44 +"Training of the Imagination, The," Rhoades's, 110 +"Troilus," 71 +Tyndale, William, 97, 145 + +"Utopia," More's, 114 + +Vaughan, Henry, 193 +"Vicar of Wakefield, The," 144 +Vienna, medical school of, 76 +"Village Labourer, The," Mr and Mrs Hammond's, 190, 191 +Villon, 193 +Virgil, 12, 116, 167 +"Voyages," Hakluyt's, 155 +"Vulgate, The," 170 + +Walpole, Sir Spencer, 192 +Walton, Isaak, 82, 145 +"Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith's, 155 +Wesley, John, 61 +Wessobrunn, 208 +"What is and What Might Be," Holmes's, 50, 51, 52 +White, Blanco, 31, 112 +Wilberforce, 192 +"Wisdom, Book of," 144 +Wolfe, General, 116 +Wordsworth, William, 5, 28, 33, 37, 44, 61, 66, 73, 116, 123, + 152, 155, 202, 207 +"World's Classics, The," 138 +Wright, Aldis, 94, 99 +Wyclif, 145 + +Zadkiel, 139 +Zenobia, 212 + + + +CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY W. 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