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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/17470-8.txt b/17470-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e243d66 --- /dev/null +++ b/17470-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7455 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Art of Writing, 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 Writing + Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 + +Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: January 5, 2006 [EBook #17470] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ART OF WRITING *** + + + + +Produced by James Tenison + + + + + +ON THE ART OF WRITING + + + +CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS +C.F. CLAY, Manager +London: FETTER LANE, E.C. +Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET. + + + +Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: MACMILLAN & CO. LTD. +Toronto: J.M. DENT AND SONS, LTD. +Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA. + + +Copyrighted in the United States of America by +G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, +2, 4 AND 6, WEST 45TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. + + +All rights reserved + + + + +ON THE ART OF WRITING + +LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE +UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE +1913-1914 + +BY + +SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, M.A. +Fellow of Jesus College +King Edward VII Professor of English Literature + + + + +Cambridge: at the University Press +1917 + + +First Edition 1916 +Reprinted 1916,1917 + + + +TO JOHN HAY LOBBAN + + + + + + +PREFACE + + +By recasting these lectures I might with pains have turned them into a +smooth treatise. But I prefer to leave them (bating a very few +corrections and additions) as they were delivered. If, as the reader will +all too easily detect, they abound no less in repetitions than in +arguments dropped and left at loose ends--the whole bewraying a man +called unexpectedly to a post where in the act of adapting himself, of +learning that he might teach, he had often to adjourn his main purpose +and skirmish with difficulties--they will be the truer to life; and so +may experimentally enforce their preaching, that the Art of Writing is a +living business. + +Bearing this in mind, the reader will perhaps excuse certain small +vivacities, sallies that meet fools with their folly, masking the main +attack. _That_, we will see, is serious enough; and others will carry it +on, though my effort come to naught. + +It amounts to this--Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but +an Art, to be practised. Great as is our own literature, we must consider +it as a legacy to be improved. Any nation that potters with any glory of +its past, as a thing dead and done for, is to that extent renegade. If +that be granted, not all our pride in a Shakespeare can excuse the +relaxation of an effort--however vain and hopeless--to better him, or +some part of him. If, with all our native exemplars to give us courage, +we persist in striving to write well, we can easily resign to other +nations all the secondary fame to be picked up by commentators. + +Recent history has strengthened, with passion and scorn, the faith in +which I wrote the following pages. + +ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH +November 1915 + + + + +CONTENTS + + + + +LECTURE + +I INAUGURAL + +II THE PRACTICE OF WRITING + +III ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE + +IV ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE + +V INTERLUDE: ON JARGON + +VI ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE + +VII SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED + +VIII ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I) + +IX ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II) + +X ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I) + +XI ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (II) + +XII ON STYLE + + + INDEX + + + + +LECTURE I. + +INAUGURAL + +Wednesday, January 29, 1913 + + +In all the long quarrel set between philosophy and poetry I know of +nothing finer, as of nothing more pathetically hopeless, than Plato's +return upon himself in his last dialogue 'The Laws.' There are who find +that dialogue (left unrevised) insufferably dull, as no doubt it is +without form and garrulous. But I think they will read it with a new +tolerance, may-be even with a touch of feeling, if upon second thoughts +they recognise in its twisting and turnings, its prolixities and +repetitions, the scruples of an old man who, knowing that his time in +this world is short, would not go out of it pretending to know more than +he does, and even in matters concerning which he was once very sure has +come to divine that, after all, as Renan says, 'La Verité consiste dans +les nuances.' Certainly 'the mind's dark cottage battered and decayed' +does in that last dialogue admit some wonderful flashes, + + From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house + Of Socrates, + +or rather to that noble 'banquet-hall deserted' which aforetime had +entertained Socrates. + +Suffer me, Mr Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, before reaching my text, to +remind you of the characteristically beautiful setting. The place is +Crete, and the three interlocutors--Cleinias a Cretan, Megillus a +Lacedaemonian, and an Athenian stranger--have joined company on a +pilgrimage to the cave and shrine of Zeus, from whom Minos, first +lawgiver of the island, had reputedly derived not only his parentage but +much parental instruction. Now the day being hot, even scorching, and the +road from Cnossus to the Sacred Cave a long one, our three pilgrims, who +have foregathered as elderly men, take it at their leisure, and propose +to beguile it with talk upon Minos and his laws. 'Yes, and on the way,' +promises the Cretan, 'we shall come to cypress-groves exceedingly tall +and fair, and to green meadows, where we may repose ourselves and +converse.' 'Good,' assents the Athenian. 'Ay, very good indeed, and +better still when we arrive at them. Let us push on.' + +So they proceed. I have said that all three are elderly men; that is, men +who have had their opportunities, earned their wages, and so nearly +earned their discharge that now, looking back on life, they can afford to +see Man for what he really is--at his best a noble plaything for the +gods. Yet they look forward, too, a little wistfully. They are of the +world, after all, and nowise so tired of it, albeit disillusioned, as to +have lost interest in the game or in the young who will carry it on. So +Minos and his laws soon get left behind, and the talk (as so often +befalls with Plato) is of the perfect citizen and how to train him--of +education, in short; and so, as ever with Plato, we are back at length +upon the old question which he could never get out of his way--What to do +with the poets? + +It scarcely needs to be said that the Athenian has taken hold of the +conversation, and that the others are as wax in his hands. 'O Athenian +stranger,' Cleinias addresses him--'inhabitant of Attica I will not call +you, for you seem to deserve rather the name of Athene herself, because +you go back to first principles.' Thus complimented, the stranger lets +himself go. Yet somehow he would seem to have lost speculative nerve. + +It was all very well in the 'Republic,' the ideal State, to be bold and +declare for banishing poetry altogether. But elderly men have given up +pursuing ideals; they have 'seen too many leaders of revolt.' Our +Athenian is driving now at practice (as we say), at a well-governed State +realisable on earth; and after all it is hard to chase out the poets, +especially if you yourself happen to be something of a poet at heart. +Hear, then, the terms on which, after allowing that comedies may be +performed, but only by slaves and hirelings, he proceeds to allow serious +poetry. + + And if any of the serious poets, as they are termed, who write tragedy, + come to us and say--'O strangers, may we go to your city and country, + or may we not, and shall we bring with us our poetry? What is your will + about these matters?'--how shall we answer the divine men? I think that + our answer should be as follows:-- + + 'Best of strangers,' we will say to them, 'we also, according to our + ability, are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest: for + our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life.... You are + poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and + antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law alone can perfect, + as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow + you to erect your stage in the Agora, and introduce the fair voices of + your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our + women and children and the common people in language other than our + own, and very often the opposite of our own. For a State would be mad + which gave you this license, until the magistrates had determined + whether your poetry might be recited and was fit for publication or + not. Wherefore, O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses! first of all + show your songs to the Magistrates and let them compare them with our + own, and if they are the same or better, we will give you a chorus; but + if not, then, my friends, we cannot.' + +Lame conclusion! Impotent compromise! How little applicable, at all +events, to our Commonwealth! though, to be sure (you may say) we possess +a relic of it in His Majesty's Licenser of Plays. As you know, there has +been so much heated talk of late over the composition of the County +Magistracy; yet I give you a countryman's word, Sir, that I have heard +many names proposed for the Commission of the Peace, and on many grounds, +but never one on the ground that its owner had a conservative taste in +verse! + +Nevertheless, as Plato saw, we must deal with these poets somehow. It is +possible (though not, I think, likely) that in the ideal State there +would be no Literature, as it is certain there would be no Professors of +it; but since its invention men have never been able to rid themselves of +it for any length of time. _Tamen usque recurrit._ They may forbid +Apollo, but still he comes leading his choir, the Nine:-- + + [Greek: Akletos men egoge menoimi ken es de kaleunton + Tharsesas Moisaisi snu amepeaisin ikoiman.] + +And he may challenge us English boldly! For since Chaucer, at any rate, +he and his train have never been [Greek: akletoi] to us--least of all +here in Cambridge. + +Nay, we know that he should be welcome. Cardinal Newman, proposing the +idea of a University to the Roman Catholics of Dublin, lamented that the +English language had not, like the Greek, 'some definite words to +express, simply and generally, intellectual proficiency or perfection, +such as "health," as used with reference to the animal frame, and +"virtue," with reference to our moral nature.' Well, it is a reproach to +us that we do not possess the term: and perhaps again a reproach to us +that our attempts at it--the word 'culture' for instance--have been apt +to take on some soil of controversy, some connotative damage from +over-preaching on the one hand and impatience on the other. But we do +earnestly desire the thing. We do prize that grace of intellect which +sets So-and-so in our view as 'a scholar and a gentleman.' We do wish as +many sons of this University as may be to carry forth that lifelong stamp +from her precincts; and--this is my point--from our notion of such a man +the touch of literary grace cannot be excluded. I put to you for a test +Lucian's description of his friend Demonax-- + + His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just + a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his + discourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither + disgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on + the contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to + more orderly, contented, hopeful lives. + +I put it to you, Sir, that Lucian needs not to say another word, but we +know that Demonax had loved letters, and partly by aid of them had +arrived at being such a man. No; by consent of all, Literature is a nurse +of noble natures, and right reading makes a full man in a sense even +better than Bacon's; not replete, but complete rather, to the pattern for +which Heaven designed him. In this conviction, in this hope, public +spirited men endow Chairs in our Universities, sure that Literature is a +good thing if only we can bring it to operate on young minds. + +That he has in him some power to guide such operation a man must believe +before accepting such a Chair as this. And now, Sir, the terrible moment +is come when your [Greek: xenos] must render some account--I will not say +of himself, for that cannot be attempted--but of his business here. Well, +first let me plead that while you have been infinitely kind to the +stranger, feasting him and casting a gown over him, one thing not all +your kindness has been able to do. With precedents, with traditions such +as other Professors enjoy, you could not furnish him. The Chair is a new +one, or almost new, and for the present would seem to float in the void, +like Mahomet's coffin. Wherefore, being one who (in my Lord Chief Justice +Crewe's phrase) would 'take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it'; +being also prone (with Bacon) to believe that 'the counsels to which Time +hath not been called, Time will not ratify'; I do assure you that, had +any legacy of guidance been discovered among the papers left by my +predecessor, it would have been eagerly welcomed and as piously honoured. +O, trust me, Sir!--if any design for this Chair of English Literature had +been left by Dr Verrall, it is not I who would be setting up any new +stage in your agora! But in his papers--most kindly searched for me by +Mrs Verrall--no such design can be found. He was, in truth, a stricken +man when he came to the Chair, and of what he would have built we can +only be sure that, had it been this or had it been that, it would +infallibly have borne the impress of one of the most beautiful minds of +our generation. The gods saw otherwise; and for me, following him, I came +to a trench and stretched my hands to a shade. + +For me, then, if you put questions concerning the work of this Chair, I +must take example from the artist in Don Quixote, who being asked what he +was painting, answered modestly, 'That is as it may turn out.' The course +is uncharted, and for sailing directions I have but these words of your +Ordinance: + + It shall be the duty of the Professor 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. + +And I never even knew that English Literature had a 'subject'; or, +rather, supposed it to have several! To resume: + + The Professor shall treat this subject on literary and critical + rather than on philological and linguistic lines: + +--a proviso which at any rate cuts off a cantle, large in itself, if not +comparatively, of the new Professor's ignorance. But I ask you to note +the phrase 'to promote, so far as may be in his power, the study'--not, +you will observe, 'to teach'; for this absolves me from raising at the +start a question of some delicacy for me, as Green launched his +"Prolegomena to Ethics" upon the remark that 'an author who seeks to gain +general confidence scarcely goes the right way to work when he begins +with asking whether there really is such a subject as that of which he +proposes to treat.' In spite of--mark, pray, that I say _in spite +of_--the activity of many learned Professors, some doubt does lurk in +the public mind if, after all, English Literature can, in any ordinary +sense, be taught, and if the attempts to teach it do not, after all, +justify (as Wisdom is so often justified of her grandparents) the +silence sapience of those old benefactors who abstained from endowing +any such Chairs. + +But that the study of English Literature can be promoted in young minds +by an elder one, that their zeal may be encouraged, their tastes +directed, their vision cleared, quickened, enlarged--this, I take it, no +man of experience will deny. Nay, since our two oldest Universities have +a habit of marking one another with interest--an interest, indeed, +sometimes heightened by nervousness--I may point out that all this has +been done of late years, and eminently done, by a Cambridge man you gave +to Oxford. This, then, Mr Vice-Chancellor--this or something like this, +Gentlemen--is to be my task if I have the good fortune to win your +confidence. + +Let me, then, lay down two or three principles by which I propose to be +guided. (1) For the first principle of all I put to you that in studying +any work of genius we should begin by taking it _absolutely_; that is to +say, with minds intent on discovering just what the author's mind +intended; this being at once the obvious approach to its meaning (its +[Greek: to ti en einai], the 'thing it was to be'), and the merest duty +of politeness we owe to the great man addressing us. We should lay our +minds open to what he wishes to tell, and if what he has to tell be noble +and high and beautiful, we should surrender and let soak our minds in it. + +Pray understand that in claiming, even insisting upon, the first place +for this _absolute_ study of a great work I use no disrespect towards +those learned scholars whose labours will help you, Gentlemen, to enjoy +it afterwards in other ways and from other aspects; since I hold there is +no surer sign of intellectual ill-breeding than to speak, even to feel, +slightingly of any knowledge oneself does not happen to possess. Still +less do I aim to persuade you that anyone should be able to earn a +Cambridge degree by the process (to borrow Macaulay's phrase) of reading +our great authors 'with his feet on the hob,' a posture I have not even +tried, to recommend it for a contemplative man's recreation. These +editors not only set us the priceless example of learning for learning's +sake: but even in practice they clear our texts for us, and +afterwards--when we go more minutely into our author's acquaintance, +wishing to learn all we can about him--by increasing our knowledge of +detail they enchance our delight. Nay, with certain early writers--say +Chaucer or Dunbar, as with certain highly allusive ones--Bacon, or +Milton, or Sir Thomas Browne--some apparatus must be supplied from the +start. But on the whole I think it a fair contention that such helps to +studying an author are secondary and subsidiary; that, for example, with +any author who by consent is less of his age than for all time, to study +the relation he bore to his age may be important indeed, and even highly +important, yet must in the nature of things be of secondary importance, +not of the first. + +But let us examine this principle a little more attentively--for it is +the palmary one. As I conceive it, that understanding of literature which +we desire in our Euphues, our gracefully-minded youth, will include +knowledge in varying degree, yet is itself something distinct from +knowledge. Let us illustrate this upon Poetry, which the most of us will +allow to be the highest form of literary expression, if not of all +artistic expression. Of all the testimony paid to Poetry, none commands +better witness than this--that, as Johnson said of Gray's Elegy 'it +abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with +sentiments to which every heart returns an echo.' When George Eliot said, +'I never before met with so many of my own feelings expressed just as I +should like them,' she but repeated of Wordsworth (in homelier, more +familiar fashion) what Johnson said of Gray; and the same testimony lies +implicit in Emerson's fine remark that 'Universal history, the poets, the +romancers'--all good writers, in short--'do not anywhere make us feel +that we intrude, that this is for our betters. Rather it is true that, in +their greatest strokes, there we feel most at home.' The mass of +evidence, of which these are samples, may be summarised thus:--As we +dwell here between two mysteries, of a soul within and an ordered +Universe without, so among us are granted to dwell certain men of more +delicate intellectual fibre than their fellows--men whose minds have, as +it were, filaments to intercept, apprehend, conduct, translate home to us +stray messages between these two mysteries, as modern telegraphy has +learnt to search out, snatch, gather home human messages astray over +waste waters of the Ocean. + +If, then, the ordinary man be done this service by the poet, that (as Dr +Johnson defines it) 'he feels what he remembers to have felt before, but +he feels it _with a great increase of sensibility_'; or even if, though +the message be unfamiliar, it suggests to us, in Wordsworth's phrase, to +'feel that we are greater than we know,' I submit that we respond to it +less by anything that usually passes for knowledge, than by an +improvement of sensibility, a tuning up of the mind to the poet's pitch; +so that 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,' a man of +unmistakable intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust +to choose the better and reject the worse. + +But since this refining of the critical judgment happens to be less easy +of practice than the memorising of much that passes for knowledge--of +what happened to Harriet or what Blake said to the soldier--and far less +easy to examine on, the pedagogic mind (which I implore you not to +suppose me confusing with the scholarly) for avoidance of trouble tends +all the while to dodge or obfuscate what is essential, piling up +accidents and irrelevancies before it until its very face is hidden. And +we should be the more watchful not to confuse the pedagogic mind with the +scholarly since it is from the scholar that the pedagogue pretends to +derive his sanction; ransacking the great genuine commentators--be it a +Skeat or a Masson or (may I add for old reverence' sake?) an Aldis +Wright--fetching home bits of erudition, _non sua poma_, and announcing +'This _must_ be the true Sion, for we found it in a wood.' + +Hence a swarm of little school books pullulates annually, all upside down +and wrong from beginning to end; and hence a worse evil afflicts us, that +the English schoolboy starts with a false perspective of any given +masterpiece, his pedagogue urging, obtruding lesser things upon his +vision until what is really important, the poem or the play itself, is +seen in distorted glimpses, if not quite blocked out of view. + +This same temptation--to remove a work of art from the category for which +the author designed it into another where it can be more conveniently +studied--reaches even above the schoolmaster to assail some very eminent +critics. I cite an example from a book of which I shall hereafter have to +speak with gratitude as I shall always name it with respect--"The History +of English Poetry," by Dr Courthope, sometime Professor of Poetry at +Oxford. In his fourth volume, and in his estimate of Fletcher as a +dramatist, I find this passage:-- + + But the crucial test of a play's quality is only applied when it is + read. So long as the illusion of the stage gives credit to the + action, and the words and gestures of the actor impose themselves on + the imagination of the spectator, the latter will pass over a + thousand imperfections, which reveal themselves to the reader, who, + as he has to satisfy himself with the drama of silent images, will + nor be content if this or that in any way fall short of his + conception of truth and nature, + +--which seems equivalent to saying that the crucial test of the frieze of +the Parthenon is its adaptability to an apartment in Bloomsbury. So long +as the illusion of the Acropolis gave credit to Pheidias' design, and the +sunlight of Attica imposed its delicate intended shadows edging the +reliefs, the countrymen of Pericles might be tricked; but the visitor to +the British Museum, as he has to satisfy himself with what happens +indoors in the atmosphere of the West Central Postal Division of London, +will not be content if Pheidias in any way fall short of _his_ conception +of truth and nature. Yet Fletcher (I take it) constructed his plays as +plays; the illusion of the stage, the persuasiveness of the actor's +voice, were conditions for which he wrought, and on which he had a right +to rely; and, in short, any critic behaves uncritically who, distrusting +his imagination to recreate the play as a play, elects to consider it in +the category of something else. + +In sum, if the great authors never oppress us with airs of condescension, +but, like the great lords they are, put the meanest of us at our ease in +their presence, I see no reason why we should pay to any commentator a +servility not demanded by his master. + +My next two principles may be more briefly stated. + +(2) I propose next, then, that since our investigations will deal largely +with style, that curiously personal thing; and since (as I have said) +they cannot in their nature be readily brought to rule-of-thumb tests, +and may therefore so easily be suspected of evading all tests, of being +mere dilettantism; I propose (I say) that my pupils and I rebuke this +suspicion by constantly aiming at the concrete, at the study of such +definite beauties as we can see presented in print under our eyes; always +seeking the author's intention, but eschewing, for the present at any +rate, all general definitions and theories, through the sieve of which +the particular achievement of genius is so apt to slip. And having +excluded them at first in prudence, I make little doubt we shall go on to +exclude them in pride. Definitions, formulć (some would add, creeds) have +their use in any society in that they restrain the ordinary +unintellectual man from making himself a public nuisance with his private +opinions. But they go a very little way in helping the man who has a real +sense of prose or verse. In other words, they are good discipline for +some thyrsus-bearers, but the initiated have little use for them. As +Thomas ŕ Kempis 'would rather feel compunction than understand the +definition thereof,' so the initiated man will say of the 'Grand Style,' +for example--'Why define it for me?' When Viola says simply: + + I am all the daughters of my father's house, + And all the brothers too, + +or Macbeth demands of the Doctor + + Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, + Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow..? + +or Hamlet greets Ophelia, reading her Book of Hours, with + + Nymph, in thy orisons + Be all my sins remembered! + +or when Milton tells of his dead friend how + + Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd + Under the opening eyelids of the morn, + We drove afield, + +or describes the battalions of Heaven + + On they move + Indissolubly firm: nor obvious hill, + Nor strait'ning vale, nor wood, nor stream divide + Their perfect ranks, + +or when Gray exalts the great commonplace + + The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, + And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, + Awaits alike th' inevitable hour; + The paths of glory lead but to the grave, + +or when Keats casually drops us such a line as + + The journey homeward to habitual self, + +or, to come down to our own times and to a living poet, when I open on a +page of William Watson and read + + O ancient streams, O far descended woods, + Full of the fluttering of melodious souls!... + +'why then (will say the initiated one), why worry me with any definition +of the Grand Style in English, when here, and here, and again here--in +all these lines, simple or intense or exquisite or solemn--I recognise +and feel the _thing_?' + +Indeed, Sir, the long and the short of the argument lie just here. +Literature is not an abstract Science, to which exact definitions can be +applied. It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal +persuasiveness, on the author's skill to give as on ours to receive. + +(3) For our third principle I will ask you to go back with me to Plato's +wayfarers, whom we have left so long under the cypresses; and loth as we +must be to lay hands on our father Parmenides, I feel we must treat the +gifted Athenian stranger to a little manhandling. For did you not +observe--though Greek was a living language and to his metropolitan mind +the only language--how envious he showed himself to seal up the well, or +allow it to trickle only under permit of a public analyst: to treat all +innovation as suspect, even as, a hundred odd years ago, the Lyrical +Ballads were suspect? + +But the very hope of this Chair, Sir (as I conceive it), relies on the +courage of the young. As Literature is an Art and therefore not to be +pondered only, but practised, so ours is a living language and therefore +to be kept alive, supple, active in all honourable use. The orator can +yet sway men, the poet ravish them, the dramatist fill their lungs with +salutary laughter or purge their emotions by pity or terror. +The historian 'superinduces upon events the charm of order.' +The novelist--well, even the novelist has his uses; and I would warn you +against despising any form of art which is alive and pliant in the hands +of men. For my part, I believe, bearing in mind Mr. Barrie's "Peter Pan" +and the old bottles he renovated to hold that joyous wine, that even +Musical Comedy, in the hands of a master, might become a thing of +beauty. Of the Novel, at any rate--whether we like it or not--we have to +admit that it does hold a commanding position in the literature of our +times, and to consider how far Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie was right the +other day when he claimed, on the first page of his brilliant study of +Thomas Hardy, that 'the right to such a position is not to be disputed; +for here, as elsewhere, the right to a position is no more than the +power to maintain it.' You may agree with that or you may not; you may +or may not deplore the forms that literature is choosing now-a-days; but +there is no gainsaying that it is still very much alive. And I would say +to you, Gentlemen, 'Believe, and be glad that Literature and the English +tongue are both alive.' Carlyle, in his explosive way, once demanded of +his countrymen, 'Shakespeare or India? If you had to surrender one to +retain the other, which would you choose?' Well, our Indian Empire is +yet in the making, while the works of Shakespeare are complete and +purchasable in whole calf; so the alternatives are scarcely _in pari +materia_; and moreover let us not be in a hurry to meet trouble half +way. But in English Literature, which, like India, is still in the +making, you have at once an Empire and an Emprise. In that alone you +have inherited something greater than Sparta. Let us strive, each in his +little way, to adorn it. + +But here at the close of my hour, the double argument, that Literature is +an Art and English a living tongue, has led me right up to a fourth +principle, the plunge into which (though I foresaw it from the first) all +the coward in me rejoices at having to defer to another lecture. I +conclude then, Gentlemen, by answering two suspicions, which very likely +have been shaping themselves in your minds. In the first place, you will +say, 'It is all very well for this man to talk about "cultivating an +increased sensibility," and the like; but we know what that leads to--to +quackery, to aesthetic chatter: "Isn't this pretty? Don't you admire +that?"' Well, I am not greatly frightened. To begin with, when we come to +particular criticism I shall endeavour to exchange it with you in plain +terms; a manner which (to quote Mr Robert Bridges' "Essay on Keats") 'I +prefer, because by obliging the lecturer to say definitely what he means, +it makes his mistakes easy to point out, and in this way the true +business of criticism is advanced.' But I have a second safeguard, more +to be trusted: that here in Cambridge, with all her traditions of austere +scholarship, anyone who indulges in loose distinct talk will be quickly +recalled to his tether. Though at the time Athene be not kind enough to +descend from heaven and pluck him backward by the hair, yet the very +_genius loci_ will walk home with him from the lecture room, whispering +monitions, cruel to be kind. + +'But,' you will say alternatively, 'if we avoid loose talk on these +matters we are embarking on a mighty difficult business.' Why, to be sure +we are; and that, I hope, will be half the enjoyment. After all, we have +a number of critics among whose methods we may search for help--from the +Persian monarch who, having to adjudicate upon two poems, caused the one +to be read to him, and at once, without ado, awarded the prize to the +other, up to the great Frenchman whom I shall finally invoke to sustain +my hope of building something; that is if you, Gentlemen, will be content +to accept me less as a Professor than as an Elder Brother. + +The Frenchman is Sainte-Beuve, and I pay a debt, perhaps appropriately +here, by quoting him as translated by the friend of mine, now dead, who +first invited me to Cambridge and taught me to admire her--one Arthur +John Butler, sometime a Fellow of Trinity, and later a great pioneer +among Englishmen in the study of Dante. Thus while you listen to the +appeal of Sainte-Beuve, I can hear beneath it a more intimate voice, not +for the first time, encouraging me. + +Sainte-Beuve then--_si magna licet componere parvis_--is delivering an +Inaugural Lecture in the École Normale, the date being April 12th, 1858. +'Gentlemen,' he begins, 'I have written a good deal in the last thirty +years; that is, I have scattered myself a good deal; so that I need to +gather myself together, in order that my words may come before you with +all the more freedom and confidence.' That is his opening; and he ends:-- + + As time goes on, you will make me believe that I can for my part be + of some good to you: and with the generosity of your age you will + repay me, in this feeling alone, far more than I shall be able to + give you in intellectual freedom, in literary thought. If in one + sense I bestow on you some of my experience, you will requite me, + and in a more profitable manner, by the sight of your ardour for + what is noble: you will accustom me to turn oftener and more + willingly towards the future in your company. You will teach me + again to hope. + + + + +LECTURE II. + +THE PRACTICE OF WRITING. + +Wednesday, February 12 + + +We found, Gentlemen, towards the close of our first lecture, that the +argument had drawn us, as by a double chain, up to the edge of a bold +leap, over which I deferred asking you to take the plunge with me. Yet +the plunge must be taken, and to-day I see nothing for it but to harden +our hearts. + +Well, then, I propose to you that, English Literature being (as we +agreed) an Art, with a living and therefore improvable language for its +medium or vehicle, a part--and no small part--of our business is _to +practise it._ Yes, I seriously propose to you that here in Cambridge we +_practise writing_: that we practise it not only for our own improvement, +but to make, or at least try to make, appropriate, perspicuous, accurate, +persuasive writing a recognisable hall-mark of anything turned out by our +English School. By all means let us study the great writers of the past +for their own sakes; but let us study them for our guidance; that we, in +our turn, having (it is to be hoped) something to say in our span of +time, say it worthily, not dwindling out the large utterance of +Shakespeare or of Burke. Portraits of other great ones look down on you +in your college halls: but while you are young and sit at the brief +feast, what avails their serene gaze if it do not lift up your hearts and +movingly persuade you to match your manhood to its inheritance? + +I protest, Gentlemen, that if our eyes had not been sealed, as with wax, +by the pedagogues of whom I spoke a fortnight ago, this one habit of +regarding our own literature as a _hortus siccus_, this our neglect to +practise good writing as the constant auxiliary of an Englishman's +liberal education, would be amazing to you seated here to-day as it will +be starkly incredible to the future historian of our times. Tell me, +pray; if it concerned _Painting_--an art in which Englishmen boast a +record far briefer, far less distinguished--what would you think of a +similar acquiescence in the past, a like haste to presume the dissolution +of aptitude and to close accounts, a like precipitancy to divorce us from +the past, to rob the future of hope and even the present of lively +interest? Consider, for reproof of these null men, the Discourses +addressed (in a pedantic age, too) by Sir Joshua Reynolds to the Members +and Students of the Royal Academy. He has (as you might expect) enough to +say of Tintoretto, of Titian, of Caracci, and of the duty of studying +their work with patience, with humility. But why does he exhort his +hearers to con them?--Why, because he is all the time _driving at +practice_. Hear how he opens his second Discourse (his first to the +Students). After congratulating the prize-winners of 1769, he desires 'to +lead them into such a course of study as may render their future progress +answerable to their past improvement'; and the great man goes on:-- + + I flatter myself that from the long experience I have had, and the + necessary assiduity with which I have pursued these studies in which + like you I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in + offering some hints to your consideration. They are indeed in a + great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit.... + +Mark the noble modesty of that! To resume-- + + In speaking to you of the Theory of the Art, I shall only consider + it as it has relation to the method of your studies. + +And then he proceeds to preach the Old Masters.--But how?--why?--to what +end? Does he recite lists of names, dates, with formulae concerning +styles? He does nothing of the sort. Does he recommend his old masters +for copying, then?--for mere imitation? Not a bit of it!--he comes down +like a hammer on copying. Then for what, in fine, will he have them +studied? Listen:-- + + The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who + have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention. + +Yes, of _invention_, your power to make something new: + + --and what may appear still more like a paradox, _the more original + will be your conceptions_. + +There spake Sir Joshua Reynolds: and I call that the voice of a true +Elder Brother. He, standing face to face with the young, thought of the +old masters mainly as spiritual begetters of practice. And will anyone in +this room tell me that what Reynolds said of painting is not to-day, for +us, applicable to writing? + +We accept it of Greek and Latin. An old Sixth Form master once said to +me, 'You may give up Latin Verse for this term, if you will: but I warn +you, no one can be a real scholar who does not constantly practise +verse.' He was mistaken, belike. I hold, for my part, that in our Public +Schools, we give up a quite disproportionate amount of time to +'composition' (of Latin Prose especially) and starve the boys' reading +thereby. But at any rate we do give up a large share of the time to it. +Then if we insist on this way with the tongues of Homer and Virgil, why +do we avoid it with the tongue of Shakespeare, our own living tongue? I +answer by quoting one of the simplest wisest sayings of Don Quixote +(Gentlemen, you will easily, as time goes on, and we better our +acquaintance, discover my favourite authors):-- + + The great Homer wrote not in Latin, for he was a Greek; and Virgil + wrote not in Greek, because he was a Latin. In brief, all the + ancient poets wrote in the tongue which they sucked in with their + mother's milk, nor did they go forth to seek for strange ones to + express the greatness of their conceptions: and, this being so, it + should be a reason for the fashion to extend to all nations. + +Does the difference, then, perchance lie in ourselves? Will you tell me, +'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably +well'? Can he, indeed?... Can _you,_ sir? Nay, believe me, you are either +an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having +spoken English prose all your life without knowing it. + +Indeed, when we try to speak prose without having practised it the result +is apt to be worse than our own vernacular. How often have I heard some +worthy fellow addressing a public audience!--say a Parliamentary +candidate who believes himself a Liberal Home Ruler, and for the moment +is addressing himself to meet some criticism of the financial proposals +of a Home Rule Bill. His own vernacular would be somewhat as follows:-- + + Oh, rot! Give the Irish their heads and they'll run straight enough. + Look at the Boers, don't you know. Not half such a decent sort as + the Irish. Look at Irish horses, too. Eh? What? + +But this, he is conscious, would hardly suit the occasion. He therefore +amends it thus:-- + + Mr Chairman--er--as regards the financial proposals of His Majesty's + Government, I am of the deliberate--er--opinion that our national + security--I may say, our Imperial security--our security as--er--a + governing people--lies in trusting the Irish as we did in the--er + --case of the Boers--H'm Mr Gladstone, Mr Chairman--Mr Chairman, Mr + Gladstone---- + +and so on. You perceive that the style is actually worse than in the +sample quoted before; it has become flabby whereas that other was at any +rate nervous? But now suppose that, having practised it, our candidate +was able to speak like this:-- + + 'But what (says the Financier) is peace to us without money? Your plan + gives us no revenue.' No? But it does--for it secures to the subject + the power of Refusal, the first of all Revenues. Experience is a cheat, + and fact is a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his + grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine + of Revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man. It + does not indeed vote you 152,750 pounds 11 shillings 2 3/4 pence, nor + any other paltry limited sum--but it gives you the strong box itself, + the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise among a people + sensible of freedom: _Positâ luditur arcâ_.... Is this principle to be + true in England, and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? + Has it not hitherto been true in the Colonies? Why should you presume + that in any country a body duly constituted for any function will + neglect to perform its duty and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption + would go against all Governments in all nations. But in truth this + dread of penury of supply, from a free assembly, has no foundation in + nature. For first, observe that, besides the desire which all men have + naturally of supporting the honour of their own Government, that sense + of dignity, and that security to property, which ever attend freedom, + have a tendency to increase the stock of a free community. Most may be + taken where most is accumulated. And what is the soil or climate where + experience has not uniformly proved that the voluntary flow of + heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight of its own luxuriance, has + ever run with a more copious stream of revenue than could be squeezed + from the dry husks of oppressed indigence by the straining of all the + politic machinery in the world? + +That, whether you agree or disagree with its doctrine, is great prose. +That is Burke. 'O Athenian stranger,' said the Cretan I quoted in my +first lecture,--'inhabitant of Attica I will not call you, since you +deserve the name of Athene herself, because you go back to first +principles!' + +But, you may object, 'Burke is talking like a book, and I have no wish to +talk like a book.' Well, as a fact, Burke is here at the culmen of a long +sustained argument, and his language has soared with it, as his way +was--logic and emotion lifting him together as upon two balanced majestic +wings. But you are shy of such heights? Very well again, and all credit +to your modesty! Yet at least (I appeal to that same modesty) when you +talk or write, you would wish to _observe the occasion_; to say what you +have to say without impertinence or ill-timed excess. You would not +harangue a drawing-room or a subcommittee, or be facetious at a funeral, +or play the skeleton at a banquet: for in all such conduct you would be +mixing up things that differ. Be cheerful, then: for this desire of yours +to be appropriate is really the root of the matter. Nor do I ask you to +accept this on my sole word, but will cite you the most respectable +witnesses. Take, for instance, a critic who should be old enough to +impress you--Dionysius of Halicarnassus. After enumerating the qualities +which lend charm and nobility to style, he closes the list with +'appropriateness, which all these need':-- + + As there is a charming diction, so there is another that is noble; + as there is a polished rhythm, so there is another that is + dignified; as variety adds grace in one passage, so in another it + adds fulness; _and as for appropriation, it will prove the chief + source of beauty, or else of nothing at all_. + +Or listen to Cicero, how he sets appropriateness in the very heart of his +teaching, as the master secret:-- + + Is erit eloquens qui poterit parva summisse, modica temperate, magna + graviter dicere.... Qui ad id quodcunque decebit poterit accommodare + orationem. Quod quum statuerit, tum, ut quidque erit dicendum, ita + dicet, nec satura jejune, nec grandia minute, nec item contra, sed + erit rebus ipsis par et aequalis oratio. + + 'Whatever his theme he will speak as becomes it; neither meagrely + where it is copious, nor meanly where it is ample, nor in _this_ way + where it demands _that_; but keeping his speech level with the + actual subject and adequate to it.' + +I might quote another great man, Quintilian, to you on the first +importance of this appropriateness, or 'propriety'; of speaking not only +to the purpose but _becomingly_--though the two as (he rightly says) are +often enough one and the same thing. But I will pass on to what has ever +seemed, since I found it in one of Jowett's 'Introductions' to Plato, the +best definition known to me of good style in literature:-- + + The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease, + clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in + the scale of human feelings, without impropriety. + +You see, O my modest friend! that your gamut needs not to be very wide, +to begin with. The point is that within it you learn to play becomingly. + +Now I started by proposing that we try together to make appropriate, +perspicuous, accurate, persuasive writing a hall-mark of anything turned +out by our English School here, and I would add (growing somewhat +hardier) a hall-mark of all Cambridge style so far as our English School +can influence it. I chose these four epithets _accurate, perspicuous, +persuasive, appropriate_, with some care, of course as my duty was; and +will assume that by this time we are agreed to desire _appropriateness_. +Now for the other three:-- + +_Perspicuity._--I shall waste no words on the need of this: since the +first aim of speech is to be understood. The more clearly you write the +more easily and surely you will be understood. I propose to demonstrate +to you further, in a minute or so, that the more clearly you write the +more clearly you will understand yourself. But a sufficient reason has +been given in ten words why you should desire perspicuity. + +_Accuracy._--Did I not remind myself in my first lecture, that Cambridge +is the home of accurate scholarship? Surely no Cambridge man would +willingly be a sloven in speech, oral or written? Surely here, if +anywhere, should be acknowledged of all what Newman says of the classics, +that 'a certain unaffected neatness and propriety and grace of diction +may be required of any author, for the same reason that a certain +attention to dress is expected of every gentleman.' After all, what are +the chief differentiae between man and the brute creation but that he +clothes himself, that he cooks his food, that he uses articulate speech? +Let us cherish and improve all these distinctions. + +But shall we now look more carefully into these twin questions of +perspicuity and accuracy: for I think pursuing them, we may almost reach +the philosophic kernel of good writing. I quoted Newman playfully a +moment ago. I am going to quote him in strong earnest. And here let me +say that of all the books written in these hundred years there is perhaps +none you can more profitably thumb and ponder than that volume of his in +which, under the title of "The Idea of a University," he collected nine +discourses addressed to the Roman Catholics of Dublin with some lectures +delivered to the Catholic University there. It is fragmentary, because +its themes were occasional. It has missed to be appraised at its true +worth, partly no doubt by reason of the colour it derives from a religion +still unpopular in England. But in fact it may be read without offence by +the strictest Protestant; and the book is so wise--so eminently wise--as +to deserve being bound by the young student of literature for a frontlet +on his brow and a talisman on his writing wrist. + +Now you will find much pretty swordsmanship in its pages, but nothing +more trenchant than the passage in which Newman assails and puts to rout +the Persian host of infidels--I regret to say, for the most part Men of +Science--who would persuade us that good writing, that style, is +something extrinsic to the subject, a kind of ornamentation laid on to +tickle the taste, a study for the _dilettante_, but beneath the notice of +_their_ stern and masculine minds. + +Such a view, as he justly points out, belongs rather to the Oriental mind +than to our civilisation: it reminds him of the way young gentlemen go to +work in the East when they would engage in correspondence with the object +of their affection. The enamoured one cannot write a sentence himself: +_he_ is the specialist in passion (for the moment); but thought and words +are two things to him, and for words he must go to another specialist, +the professional letter-writer. Thus there is a division of labour. + + The man of words, duly instructed, dips the pen of desire in the ink of + devotedness and proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then + the nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of + loveliness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the brow of + expectation. That is what the Easterns are said to consider fine + writing; and it seems pretty much the idea of the school of critics to + which I have been referring. + +Now hear this fine passage:-- + + Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and + expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language. + That is what I have been laying down, and this is literature; not + _things_, but the verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere + _words_; but thoughts expressed in language. Call to mind, gentlemen, + the meaning of the Greek word which expresses this special prerogative + of man over the feeble intelligence of the lower animals. It is called + Logos; what does Logos mean? it stands both for _reason_ and for + _speech_, and it is difficult to say which it means more properly. It + means both at once: why? because really they cannot be divided.... When + we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and + the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread + speech under foot and to hope to do without it--then will it be + conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its + own double, its instrument of expression and the channel of its + speculations and emotions. + +'As if,' he exclaims finely, 'language were the hired servant, the mere +mistress of reason, and not the lawful wife in her own house!' + +If you need further argument (but what serves it to slay the slain?) let +me remind you that you cannot use the briefest, the humblest process of +thought, cannot so much as resolve to take your bath hot or cold, or +decide what to order for breakfast, without forecasting it to yourself in +some form of words. Words are, in fine, the only currency in which we can +exchange thought even with ourselves. Does it not follow, then, that the +more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall give to our +thoughts? Does it not follow that by drilling ourselves to write +perspicuously we train our minds to clarify their thought? Does it not +follow that some practice in the deft use of words, with its +correspondent defining of thought, may well be ancillary even to the +study of Natural Science in a University? + +But I have another word for our men of science. It was inevitable, +perhaps, that Latin--so long the Universal Language--should cease in time +to be that in which scientific works were written. It was impossible, +perhaps, to substitute, by consent, some equally neat and austere modern +language, such as French. But when it became an accepted custom for each +nation to use its own language in scientific treatises, it certainly was +not foreseen that men of science would soon be making discoveries at a +rate which left their skill in words outstripped; that having to invent +their terms as they went along, yet being careless and contemptuous of a +science in which they have no training, they would bombast out our +dictionaries with monstrously invented words that not only would have +made Quintilian stare and gasp, but would affront the decently literate +of any age. + +After all, and though we must sigh and acquiesce in the building of +Babel, we have some right to examine the bricks. I was waiting, the other +day, in a doctor's anteroom, and picked up one of those books--it was a +work on pathology--so thoughtfully left lying in such places; to persuade +us, no doubt, to bear the ills we have rather than fly to others capable +of being illustrated. I found myself engaged in following the manoeuvres +of certain well-meaning bacilli generically described as 'Antibodies.' I +do not accuse the author (who seemed to be a learned man) of having +invented this abominable term: apparently it passed current among +physiologists and he had accepted it for honest coin. I found it, later +on, in Webster's invaluable dictionary: Etymology, 'anti' up against +'body', some noxious 'foreign body' inside your body or mine. + +Now gin a body meet a body for our protection and in this gallant spirit, +need a body reward him with this hybrid label? Gratitude apart, I say +that for our own self-respect, whilst we retain any sense of intellectual +pedigree, 'antibody' is no word to throw at a friendly bacillus. Is it +consonant with the high dignity of science to make her talk like a cheap +showman advertising a 'picture-drome'? The man who eats peas with his +knife can at least claim a historical throwback to the days when forks +had but two prongs and the spoons had been removed with the soup. But +'antibody' has no such respectable derivation. It is, in fact, a +barbarism, and a mongrel at that. The man who uses it debases the +currency of learning: and I suggest to you that it is one of the many +functions of a great University to maintain the standard of that +currency, to guard the _jus et norma loquendi_, to protect us from such +hasty fellows or, rather, to suppeditate them in their haste. + +Let me revert to our list of the qualities necessary to good writing, and +come to the last--_Persuasiveness_; of which you may say, indeed, that it +embraces the whole--not only the qualities of propriety, perspicuity, +accuracy, we have been considering, but many another, such as harmony, +order, sublimity, beauty of diction; all in short that--writing being an +art, not a science, and therefore so personal a thing--may be summed up +under the word _Charm_. Who, at any rate, does not seek after Persuasion? +It is the aim of all the arts and, I suppose, of all exposition of the +sciences; nay, of all useful exchange of converse in our daily life. It +is what Velasquez attempts in a picture, Euclid in a proposition, the +Prime Minister at the Treasury box, the journalist in a leading article, +our Vicar in his sermon. Persuasion, as Matthew Arnold once said, is the +only true intellectual process. The mere cult of it occupied many of the +best intellects of the ancients, such as Longinus and Quintilian, whose +writings have been preserved to us just because they were prized. Nor can +I imagine an earthly gift more covetable by you, Gentlemen, than that of +persuading your fellows to listen to your views and attend to what you +have at heart. + +Suppose, sir, that you wish to become a journalist? Well, and why not? Is +it a small thing to desire the power of influencing day by day to better +citizenship an unguessed number of men, using the best thought and +applying it in the best language at your command?... Or are you, perhaps, +overawed by the printed book? On that, too, I might have a good deal to +say; but for the moment would keep the question as practical as I can. + +Well, it is sometimes said that Oxford men make better journalists than +Cambridge men, and some attribute this to the discipline of their great +School of _Literae Humaniores_, which obliges them to bring up a weekly +essay to their tutor, who discusses it. Cambridge men retort that all +Oxford men are journalists, and throw, of course, some accent of scorn on +the word. But may I urge--and remember please that my credit is pledged +to _you_ now--may I urge that this is not a wholly convincing answer? +For, to begin with, Oxford men have not changed their natures since +leaving school, but are, by process upon lines not widely divergent from +your own, much the same pleasant sensible fellows you remember. And, +next, if you truly despise journalism, why then despise it, have done +with it and leave it alone. But I pray you, do not despise it if you mean +to practise it, though it be but as a step to something better. For while +the ways of art are hard at the best, they will break you if you go +unsustained by belief in what you are trying to do. + +In asking you to practise the written word, I began with such +low but necessary things as propriety, perspicuity, accuracy. +But _persuasion_--the highest form of persuasion at any rate--cannot be +achieved without a sense of beauty. And now I shoot a second rapid--_I +want you to practise verse, and to practise it assiduously_.... I am +quite serious. Let me remind you that, if there ever was an ancient +state of which we of Great Britain have great right and should have +greater ambition to claim ourselves the spiritual heirs, that state was +Imperial Rome. And of the Romans (whom you will allow to have been a +practical people) nothing is more certain than the value they set upon +acquiring verse. To them it was not only (as Dr Johnson said of Greek) +'like old lace--you can never have too much of it.' They cultivated it +with a straight eye to national improvement. Among them, as a scholar +reminded us the other day, you find 'an educational system deliberately +and steadily directed towards the development of poetical talent. They +were not a people of whom we can say, as we can of the Greeks, that they +were born to art and literature.... The characteristic Roman triumphs +are the triumphs of a material civilisation.' Rome's rôle in the world +was 'the absorption of outlying genius.' Themselves an unimaginative +race with a language not too tractable to poetry, they made great +poetry, and they made it of patient set purpose, of hard practice. I +shall revert to this and maybe amplify reasons in another lecture. For +the moment I content myself with stating the fact that no nation ever +believed in poetry so deeply as the Romans. + +Perpend this then, and do not too hastily deride my plea that you should +practise verse-writing. I know most of the objections, though I may not +remember all. _Mediocribus esse poetis_, etc.--that summarises most of +them: yet of an infliction of much bad verse from you, if I am prepared +to endure it, why should anyone else complain? I say that the youth of a +University ought to practise verse-writing; and will try to bring this +home to you by an argument convincing to me, though I have never seen it +in print. + +What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? +Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, +Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne--we may stop there. Of these all but +Keats, Browning, Rossetti were University men; and of these three Keats, +who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly +well-to-do. It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to +say: but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius +bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little +truth. As a matter of hard fact, nine out of those twelve were +University men: which means that somehow or other they procured the +means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard +fact, of the remaining three you know that Browning was well-to-do, and +I challenge you that, if he had not been well-to-do, he would no more +have attained to writing "Saul" or "The Ring and the Book" than Ruskin +would have attained to writing "Modern Painters" if his father had not +dealt prosperously in business. Rossetti had a small private income; +and, moreover, he painted. There remains but Keats; whom Atropos slew +young, as she slew John Clare in a madhouse, and James Thomson by the +laudanum he took to drug disappointment. These are dreadful facts, but +let us face them. It is--however dishonouring to us as a nation--certain +that, by some fault in our commonwealth, the poor poet has not in these +days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog's chance. Believe me--and +I have spent a great part of the last ten years in watching some 320 +Elementary Schools--we may prate of democracy, but actually a poor child +in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to +be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings +are born. + +What do I argue from this? I argue that until we can bring more +intellectual freedom into our State, more 'joy in widest commonalty +spread,' upon you, a few favoured ones, rests an obligation to see that +the springs of English poetry do not fail. I put it to you that of this +glory of our birth and state _you_ are the temporary stewards. I put it +to the University, considered as a dispenser of intellectual light, that +to treat English poetry as though it had died with Tennyson and your +lecturers had but to compose the features of a corpse, is to abnegate +high hope for the sake of a barren convenience. I put it to the Colleges, +considered as disciplinary bodies, that the old way of letting Coleridge +slip, chasing forth Shelley, is, after all, not the wisest way. Recollect +that in Poesy as in every other human business, the more there are who +practise it the greater will be the chance of _someone's_ reaching +perfection. It is the impetus of the undistinguished host that flings +forward a Diomed or a Hector. And when you point with pride to Milton's +and those other mulberry trees in your Academe, bethink you 'What poets +are they shading to-day? Or are their leaves but feeding worms to spin +gowns to drape Doctors of Letters?' + +In the life of Benvenuto Cellini you will find this passage worth your +pondering.--He is telling how, while giving the last touches to his +Perseus in the great square of Florence, he and his workmen inhabited a +shed built around the statue. He goes on:-- + + The folk kept on attaching sonnets to the posts of the door....I believe + that, on the day when I opened it for a few hours to the public, more + than twenty were nailed up, all of them overflowing with the highest + panegyrics. Afterwards, when I once more shut it off from view, + everyone brought sonnets, with Latin and Greek verses: for the + University of Pisa was then in vacation, and all the doctors and + scholars kept vying with each other who could produce the best. + +I may not live to see the doctors and scholars of this University thus +employing the Long Vacation; as perhaps we shall wait some time for +another Perseus to excite them to it. But I do ask you to consider that +the Perseus was not entirely cause nor the sonnets entirely effect; that +the age when men are eager about great work is the age when great work +gets itself done; nor need it disturb us that most of the sonnets were, +likely enough, very bad ones--in Charles Lamb's phrase, very like what +Petrarch might have written if Petrarch had been born a fool. It is the +impetus that I ask of you: the will to try. + +Lastly, Gentlemen, do not set me down as one who girds at your +preoccupation, up here, with bodily games; for, indeed, I hold +'gymnastic' to be necessary as 'music' (using both words in the Greek +sense) for the training of such youths as we desire to send forth from +Cambridge. But I plead that they should be balanced, as they were in the +perfect young knight with whose words I will conclude to-day:-- + + Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance + Guided so well that I obtained the prize, + Both by the judgment of the English eyes + And of some sent by that sweet enemy France; + Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance, + Town-folk my strength, a daintier judge applies + His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; + Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; + Others, because of both sides I do take + My blood from them who did excel in this, + Think Nature me a man-at-arms did make. + How far they shot awry! the true cause is, + Stella looked on; and from her heavenly face + Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. + +'Untrue,' you say? Well, there is truth of emotion as well as of fact; +and who is there among you but would fain be able not only to win such a +guerdon but to lay it in such wise at your lady's feet? + +That then was Philip Sidney, called the peerless one of his age; and +perhaps no Englishman ever lived more graciously or, having used life, +made a better end. But you have seen this morning's newspaper: you have +read of Captain Scott and his comrades, and in particular of the death of +Captain Oates; and you know that the breed of Sidney is not extinct. +Gentlemen, let us keep our language noble: for we still have heroes to +commemorate![1] + + +[Footnote 1: The date of the above lecture was Wednesday, February 12th, +1913, the date on which our morning newspapers printed the first +telegrams giving particulars of the fate of Captain Scott's heroic +conquest of the South Pole, and still more glorious, though defeated, +return. The first brief message concerning Captain Oates, ran as +follows:-- + +'From the records found in the tent where the bodies were discovered it +appeared that Captain Oates's feet and hands were badly frost-bitten, +and, although he struggled on heroically, his comrades knew on March 16 +that his end was approaching. He had borne intense suffering for weeks +without complaint, and he did not give up hope to the very end. + +"He was a brave soul. He slept through the night hoping not to wake; but +he awoke in the morning. + +"It was blowing a blizzard. Oates said: 'I am just going outside, and I +may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard, and we have not seen +him since. + +"We knew that Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to +dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English +gentleman."'] + + + + +LECTURE III. + +ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE + +Wednesday, February 26 + + +You will forgive me, Gentlemen, that having in my second lecture +encouraged you to the practice of verse as well as of prose, I seize the +very next opportunity to warn you against confusing the two, which differ +on some points essentially, and always so as to demand separate rules--or +rather (since I am shy of the word 'rules') a different concept of what +the writer should aim at and what avoid. But you must, pray, understand +that what follows will be more useful to the tiro in prose than to the +tiro in verse; for while even a lecturer may help you to avoid writing +prose in the manner of Milton, only the gods--and they hardly--can cure a +versifier of being prosaic. + +We started upon a promise to do without scientific definitions; and in +drawing some distinctions to-day between verse and prose I shall use only +a few rough ones; good, as I hope, so far as they go; not to be found +contrary to your scientific ones, if ever, under another teacher you +attain to them; yet for the moment used only as guides to practice, and +pretending to be no more. + +Thus I go some way--though by no means all the way--towards defining +literature when I remind you that its very name (_litterae_--letters) +implies the written rather than the spoken word; that, for example, +however closely they approximate one to the other as we trace them back, +and even though we trace them back to identical beginnings, the +Writer--the Man of Letters--does to-day differ from the Orator. There was +a time, as you know, when the poet and the historian had no less than the +orator, and in the most literal sense, to 'get a hearing.' Nay, he got it +with more pains: for the orator had his senate-house or his law-court +provided, whereas Thespis jogged to fairs in a cart, and the Muse of +History, like any street acrobat, had to collect her own crowd. Herodotus +in search of a public packed his history in a portmanteau, carted it to +Olympia, found a favourable 'pitch,' as we should say, and wooed an +audience to him much as on a racecourse nowadays do those philanthropic +gentlemen who ply a dubious trade with three half-crowns and a gold +chain. It would cost us an effort to imagine the late Bishop Stubbs thus +trying his fortune with a bag full of select Charters at Queen's Club or +at Kempton Park, and exerting his lungs to retrieve a crowd that showed +some disposition to edge off towards the ring or the rails. + +The historian's conditions have improved; and like any other sensible man +he has advanced his claim with them, and revised his method. He writes +nowadays with his eye on the printed book. He may or may not be a dull +fellow: being a dull fellow, he may or may not be aware of it; but at +least he knows that, if you lay him upside down on your knee, you can on +awaking pick him up, resume your absorption, and even turn back some +pages to discover just where or why your interest flagged: whereas a +Hellene who deserted Herodotus, having a bet on the Pentathlon, not only +missed what he missed but missed it for life. + +The invention of print, of course, has made all, or almost all, the +difference. + +I do not forget that the printed book--the written word--presupposes a +speaking voice, and must ever have at its back some sense in us of the +speaking voice. But in writing prose nowadays, while always recollecting +that prose has its origin in speech--even as it behoves us to recollect +that Homer intoned the Iliad to the harp and Sappho plucked her passion +from the lyre--we have to take things as they are. Except Burns, Heine, +Béranger (with Moore, if you will), and you will find it hard to compile +in all the lyrical poetry of the last 150 years a list of half a dozen +first-class or even second-class bards who wrote primarily to be sung. It +may help you to estimate how far lyrical verse has travelled from its +origins if you will but remind yourselves that a _sonnet_ and a _sonata_ +were once the same thing, and that a _ballad_ meant a song accompanied by +dancing--the word _ballata_ having been specialised down, on the one line +to the _ballet_, in which Mademoiselle Genée or the Russian performers +will dance for our delight, using no words at all; on the other to "Sir +Patrick Spens" or "Clerk Saunders," 'ballads' to which no one in his +senses would dream of pointing a toe. + +Thus with Verse the written (or printed) word has pretty thoroughly +ousted the speaking voice and its auxiliaries--the pipe, the lute, the +tabor, the chorus with its dance movements and swaying of the body; and +in a quieter way much the same thing is happening to prose. In the Drama, +to be sure, we still write (or we should) for the actors, reckon upon +their intonations, their gestures, lay account with the tears in the +heroine's eyes and her visible beauty: though even in the Drama to-day +you may detect a tendency to substitute dialectic for action and +paragraphs for the [Greek: Stichomuthia], the sharp outcries of passion +in its give-and-take. Again we still--some of us--deliver sermons from +pulpits and orations in Parliament or upon public platforms. Yet I am +told that the vogue of the sermon is passing; and (by journalists) that +the leading article has largely superseded it. On that point I can offer +you no personal evidence; but of civil oratory I am very sure that the +whole pitch has been sensibly lowered since the day of Chatham, Burke, +Sheridan; since the day of Brougham and Canning; nay, ever since the day +of Bright, Gladstone, Disraeli. Burke, as everyone knows, once brought +down a Brummagem dagger and cast it on the floor of the House. Lord +Chancellor Brougham in a peroration once knelt to the assembled peers, +'_Here the noble lord inclined his knee to the Woolsack_' is, if I +remember, the stage direction in Hansard. Gentlemen, though in the course +of destiny one or another of you may be called upon to speak daggers to +the Treasury Bench, I feel sure you will use none; while, as for Lord +Brougham's genuflexions, we may agree that to emulate them would cost +Lord Haldane an effort. These and even far less flagrant or flamboyant +tricks of virtuosity have gone quite out of fashion. You could hardly +revive them to-day and keep that propriety to which I exhorted you a +fortnight ago. They would be out of tune; they would grate upon the +nerves; they would offend against the whole style of modern oratory, +which steadily tends to lower its key, to use the note of quiet +business-like exposition, to adopt more and more the style of written +prose. + +Let me help your sense of this change, by a further illustration. Burke, +as we know, was never shy of declaiming--even of declaiming in a +torrent--when he stood up to speak: but almost as little was he shy of +it when he sat down to write. If you turn to his "Letters on the +Regicide Peace" --no raw compositions, but penned in his latter days and +closing, or almost closing, upon that tenderest of farewells to his +country-- + + In this good old House, where everything at least is well aired, I + shall be content to put up my fatigued horses and here take a bed + for the long night that begins to darken upon me-- + +if, I say, you turn to these "Letters on the Regicide Peace" and consult +the title-page, you will find them ostensibly addressed to 'a Member of +the present Parliament'; and the opening paragraphs assume that Burke and +his correspondent are in general agreement. But skim the pages and your +eyes will be arrested again and again by sentences like these:-- + + The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing + the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are + purchased at ten thousand times their price--the blood of man should + never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for + our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our + kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. + +Magnificent, truly! But your ear has doubtless detected the blank +verse--three iambic lines:-- + + Are purchased at ten thousand times their price... + Be shed but to redeem the blood of man... + The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. + +Again Burke catches your eye by rhetorical inversions:-- + + But too often different is rational conjecture from melancholy fact, + + Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar, + +by repetitions:-- + + Never, no never, did Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another ... + Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our + neighbour; Algiers is not infectious. Algiers, whatever it may be, + is an old creation; and we have good data to calculate all the + mischief to be apprehended from it. When I find Algiers transferred + to Calais, I will tell you what I think of that point-- + +by quick staccato utterances, such as:-- + + And is this example nothing? It is everything. Example is the school + of mankind, and they will learn at no other-- + +or + + Our dignity? That is gone. I shall say no more about it. Light lie + the earth on the ashes of English pride! + +I say that the eye or ear, caught by such tropes, must (if it be +critical) recognise them at once as _rhetoric_, as the spoken word +masquerading under guise of the written. Burke may pretend to be seated, +penning a letter to a worthy man who will read it in his slippers: but +actually Burke is up and pacing his library at Beaconsfield, now striding +from fire-place to window with hands clasped under his coat tails, anon +pausing to fling out an arm with some familiar accustomed gesture in a +House of Commons that knows him no more, towards a Front Bench peopled by +shades. In fine the pretence is Cicero writing to Atticus, but the style +is Cicero denouncing Catiline. + +As such it is not for your imitation. Burke happened to be a genius, with +a swoop and range of mind, as of language to interpret it, with a gift to +enchant, a power to strike and astound, which together make him, to my +thinking, the man in our literature most nearly comparable with +Shakespeare. Others may be more to your taste; you may love others +better: but no other two leave you so hopeless of discovering _how it is +done_. Yet not for this reason only would I warn you against imitating +either. For like all great artists they accepted their conditions and +wrought for them, and those conditions have changed. When Jacques wished +to recite to an Elizabethan audience that + + All the world's a stage, + And all the men and women merely players-- + +or Hamlet to soliloquise + + To be, or not to be: that is the question-- + +the one did not stretch himself under a property oak, nor did the other +cast himself back in a chair and dangle his legs. They both advanced +boldly from the stage, down a narrow platform provided for such +recitations and for that purpose built boldly forward into the +auditorium, struck an attitude, declaimed the purple passage, and +returned, covered with applause, to continue the action of the play. This +was the theatrical convention; this the audience expected and understood; +for this Shakespeare wrote. Similarly, though the device must have been +wearing thin even in 1795-6, Burke cast a familiar epistle into language +proper to be addressed to Mr Speaker of the House of Commons. Shakespeare +wrote, as Burke wrote, for his audience; and their glory is that they +have outlasted the conditions they observed. Yet it was by observing them +that they gained the world's ear. Let us, who are less than they, beware +of scorning to belong to our own time. + +For my part I have a great hankering to see English Literature feeling +back through these old modes to its origins. I think, for example, that +if we studied to write verse that could really be sung, or if we were +more studious to write prose that could be read aloud with pleasure to +the ear, we should be opening the pores to the ancient sap; since the +roots are always the roots, and we can only reinvigorate our growth +through them. + +Unhappily, however, I cannot preach this just yet; for we are aiming at +practice, and at Cambridge (they tell me) while you speak well, you write +less expertly. A contributor to "The Cambridge Review," a fortnight ago, +lamented this at length: so you will not set the aspersion down to me, +nor blame me if these early lectures too officiously offer a kind of +'First Aid': that, while all the time eager to descant on the +_affinities_ of speech and writing, I dwell first on their _differences_; +or that, in speaking of Burke, an author I adore only 'on this side +idolatry,' I first present him in some aspects for your avoidance. +Similarly I adore the prose of Sir Thomas Browne, yet should no more +commend it to you for instant imitation than I could encourage you to +walk with a feather in your cap and a sword under your gown. Let us +observe proprieties. + +To return to Burke.--At his most flagrant, in these "Letters on the +Regicide Peace," he boldly raids Shakespeare. You are all, I doubt not, +conversant with the Prologue to "Henry the Fifth":-- + + O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend + The brightest heaven of invention! + A kingdom for a stage, princes to act + And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! + Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, + Assume the port of Mars: and at his heels, + Leash'd in like hounds, should Famine, Sword and Fire + Crouch for employment. + +Well, this passage Burke, assuming his correspondent to be familiar with +it, boldly claps into prose and inserts into a long diatribe against Pitt +for having tamely submitted to the rebuffs of the French Directory. Thus +it becomes:-- + + On that day it was thought he would have assumed the port of Mars: that + he would bid to be brought forth from their hideous Kennel (where his + scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those impatient dogs + of War, whose fierce regards affright even the minister of vengeance + that feeds them; that he would let them loose in Famine, Plagues and + Death, upon a guilty race to whose frame and to all whose habit, Order, + Peace, Religion and Virtue, are alien and abhorrent. + +Now Shakespeare is but apologising for the shortcomings of his' +play-house, whereas Burke is denouncing his country's shame and +prophesying disaster to Europe. Yet do you not feel with me that while +Shakespeare, using great words on the lowlier subject, contrives to make +them appropriate, with Burke, writing on the loftier subject, the same or +similar words have become tumid, turgid? + +Why? I am sure that the difference lies not in the two men: nor is it all +the secret, or even half the secret, that Burke is mixing up the spoken +with the written word, using the one while pretending to use the other. +That has carried us some way; but now let us take an important step +farther. The root of the matter lies in certain essential differences +between verse and prose. We will keep, if you please, to our rough +practical definitions. Literature--the written word--is a permanent +record of memorable speech; a record, at any rate, intended to be +permanent. We set a thing down in ink--we print it in a book--because we +feel it to be memorable, to be worth preserving. But to set this +memorable speech down we must choose one of two forms, verse or prose; +and I define verse to be a record in metre and rhythm, prose to be a +record which, dispensing with metre (abhorring it indeed), uses rhythm +laxly, preferring it to be various and unconstrained, so always that it +convey a certain pleasure to the ear. + +You observe that I avoid the term Poetry, over which the critics have +waged, and still are waging, a war that promises to be endless. Is Walt +Whitman a poet? Is the Song of Songs (which is not Solomon's)--is the +Book of Job--are the Psalms--all of these as rendered in our Authorised +Version of Holy Writ--are all of these poetry? Well 'yes,' if you want my +opinion; and again 'yes,' I am sure. But truly on this field, though +scores of great men have fought across it--Sidney, Shelley, Coleridge, +Scaliger (I pour the names on you at random), Johnson, Wordsworth, the +two Schlegels, Aristotle with Twining his translator, Corneille, Goethe, +Warton, Whately, Hazlitt, Emerson, Hegel, Gummere--but our axles grow +hot. Let us put on the brake: for in practice the dispute comes to very +little: since literature is an art and treats scientific definitions as +J. K. Stephen recommended. From them + + It finds out what it cannot do, + And then it goes and does it. + +I am journeying, say, in the West of England. I cross a bridge over a +stream dividing Devon from Cornwall. These two counties, each beautiful +in its way, are quite unlike in their beauty: yet nothing happened as I +stepped across the brook, and for a mile or two or even ten I am aware of +no change. Sooner or later that change will break upon the mind and I +shall be startled, awaking suddenly to a land of altered features. But at +what turn of the road this will happen, just how long the small +multiplied impressions will take to break into surmise, into +conviction--that nobody can tell. So it is with poetry and prose. They +are different realms, but between them lies a debatable land which a De +Quincey or a Whitman or a Paul Fort or a Marinetti may attempt. I advise +you who are beginners to keep well one side or other of the frontier, +remembering that there is plenty of room and what happened to Tupper. + +If we restrict ourselves to the terms 'verse' and 'prose,' we shall find +the line much easier to draw. Verse is memorable speech set down in metre +with strict rhythms; prose is memorable speech set down without +constraint of metre and in rhythms both lax and various--so lax, so +various, that until quite recently no real attempt has been made to +reduce them to rule. I doubt, for my part, if they can ever be reduced to +rule; and after a perusal of Professor Saintsbury's latest work, "A +History of English Prose Rhythm," I am left doubting. I commend this book +to you as one that clears up large patches of forest. No one has yet so +well explained what our prose writers, generation after generation, have +tried to do with prose: and he has, by the way, furnished us with a +capital anthology--or, as he puts it, with 'divers delectable draughts of +example.' But the road still waits to be driven. Seeking practical +guidance--help for our present purpose--I note first that many a passage +he scans in one way may as readily be scanned in another; that when he +has finished with one and can say proudly with Wordsworth:-- + + I've measured it from side to side, + 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide, + +we still have a sensation of coming out (our good master with us) by that +same door wherein we went; and I cannot as yet after arduous trial +discover much profit in his table of feet--Paeons, Dochmiacs, Antispasts, +Proceleusmatics and the rest--an Antispast being but an iamb followed by +a trochee, and Proceleusmatic but two pyrrhics, or four consecutive short +syllables--when I reflect that, your possible number of syllables being +as many as five to a foot, you may label them (as Aristotle would say) +until you come to infinity, where desire fails, without getting nearer +any rule of application. + +Let us respect a genuine effort of learning, though we may not detect its +immediate profit. In particular let us respect whatever Professor +Saintsbury writes, who has done such splendid work upon English +verse-prosody. I daresay he would retort upon my impatience grandly +enough, quoting Walt Whitman:-- + +I am the teacher of athletes; +He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own + proves the width of my own; +He most honours my style who learns under it to destroy the + teacher. + +His speculations may lead to much in time; though for the present they +yield us small instruction in the path we seek. + +It is time we harked back to our own sign-posts. Verse is written in +metre and strict rhythm; prose, without metre and with the freest +possible rhythm. That distinction seems simple enough, but it carries +consequences very far from simple. Let me give you an illustration taken +almost at hazard from Milton, from the Second Book of "Paradise +Regained":-- + + Up to a hill anon his steps he reared + From whose high top to ken the prospect round, + If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +These few lines are verse, are obviously verse with the accent of poetry; +while as obviously they are mere narrative and tell us of the simplest +possible incident--how Christ climbed a hill to learn what could be seen +from the top. Yet observe, line for line and almost word for word, how +strangely they differ from prose. Mark the inversions: 'Up to a hill anon +his steps he reared,' 'But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.' +Mark next the diction--'his steps he reared.' In prose we should not rear +our steps up the Gog-magog hills, or even more Alpine fastnesses; nor, +arrived at the top, should we 'ken' the prospect round; we might 'con,' +but should more probably 'survey' it. Even 'anon' is a tricky word in +prose, though I deliberately palmed it off on you a few minutes ago. Mark +thirdly the varied repetition, 'if cottage were in view, sheep-cote or +herd--but cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.' Lastly compare the +whole with such an account as you or I or Cluvienus would write in plain +prose:-- + + Thereupon he climbed a hill on the chance that the view from its + summit might disclose some sign of human habitation--a herd, a + sheep-cote, a cottage perhaps. But he could see nothing of the sort. + +But you will ask, '_Why_ should verse and prose employ diction so +different? _Why_ should the one invert the order of words in a fashion +not permitted to the other?' and I shall endeavour to answer these +questions together with a third which, I dare say, you have sometimes +been minded to put when you have been told--and truthfully told--by your +manuals and histories, that when a nation of men starts making literature +it invariably starts on the difficult emprise of verse, and goes on to +prose as by an afterthought. Why should men start upon the more difficult +form and proceed to the easier? It is not their usual way. In learning to +skate, for instance, they do not cut figures before practising loose and +easy propulsion. + +The answer is fairly simple. Literature (once more) is a record of +memorable speech; it preserves in words a record of such thoughts or of +such deeds as we deem worth preserving. Now if you will imagine yourself +a very primitive man, lacking paper or parchment; or a slightly less +primitive, but very poor, man to whom the price of parchment and ink is +prohibitive; you have two ways of going to work. You can carve your words +upon trees or stones (a laborious process) or you can commit them to +memory and carry them about in your head; which is cheaper and handier. +For an illustration, you find it useful, anticipating the tax-collector, +to know how many days there are in the current month. But further you +find it a nuisance and a ruinous waste of time to run off to the tribal +tree or monolith whenever the calculation comes up; so you invent a +formula, and you cast that formula into _verse_ for the simple reason +that verse, with its tags, alliterations, beat of syllables, jingle of +rhymes (however your tribe has chosen to invent it), has a knack, not +possessed by prose, of sticking in your head. You do not say, 'Quick thy +tablets, memory! Let me see--January has 31 days, February 28 days, March +31 days, April 30 days.' You invent a verse:-- + + Thirty days hath September, + April, June and November... + +Nay, it has been whispered to me, Gentlemen, that in this University some +such process of memorising in verse has been applied by bold bad +irreverently-minded men even to the "Evidences" of our cherished Paley. + +This, you will say, is mere verse, and not yet within measurable distance +of poetry. But wait! The men who said the more memorable things, or sang +them--the men who recounted deeds and genealogies of heroes, plagues and +famines, assassinations, escapes from captivity, wanderings and conquests +of the clan, all the 'old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long +ago'--the men who sang these things for their living, for a supper, a +bed in the great hall, and something in their wallet to carry them on to +the next lordship--these were gentlemen, scôps, bards, minstrels (call +them how you will), a professional class who had great need of a full +repertory in a land swarming with petty chieftains, and to adapt their +strains to the particular hall of entertainment. It would never do, for +example, to flatter the prowess of the Billings in the house of the +Hoppings, their hereditary foes, or to bore the Wokings (who lived where +the crematorium now is) with the complicated genealogy of the Tootings: +for this would have been to miss that appropriateness which I preached +to you in my second lecture as a preliminary rule of good writing. Nay, +when the Billings intermarried with the Tootings--when the Billings took +to cooing, so to speak--a hasty blend of excerpts would be required for +the "Epithalamium." So it was all a highly difficult business, needing +adaptability, a quick wit, a goodly stock of songs, a retentive memory +and every artifice to assist it. Take "Widsith," for example, the +'far-travelled man.' He begins:-- + + Widsith spake: he unlocked his word-hoard. + +So he had a hoard of words, you see: and he must have needed them, for he +goes on:-- + + Forthon ic maeg singan and secgan spell, + Maenan fore mengo in meoduhealle, + Hu me cynegode cystum dohten. + Ic waes mid Hunum and mid Hreth-gotum, + Mid Sweom and mid Geatum, and mid Suth-Denum. + Mid Wenlum ic waes and mid Waernum and mid Wicingum. + Mid Gefthum ic waes and mid Winedum.... + + (Therefore I can sing and tell a tale, recount in the Mead Hall, how + men of high race gave rich gifts to me. I was with Huns and with Hreth + Goths, with the Swedes, and with the Geats, and with the South Danes; + I was with the Wenlas, and with the Waernas, and with the Vikings; I + was with the Gefthas and with the Winedae....) + +and so on for a full dozen lines. I say that the memory of such men must +have needed every artifice to help it: and the chief artifice to their +hand was one which also delighted the ears of their listeners. They sang +or intoned to the harp. + +There you get it, Gentlemen. I have purposely, skimming a wide subject, +discarded much ballast; but you may read and scan and read again, and +always you must come back to this, that the first poets sang their words +to the harp or to some such instrument: and just there lies the secret +why poetry differs from prose. The moment you introduce music you let in +emotion with all its sway upon speech. From that moment you change +everything, down to the order of the words--the _natural_ order of the +words: and (remember this) though the harp be superseded, the voice never +forgets it. You may take up a Barrack Room Ballad of Kipling's, and it is +there, though you affect to despise it for a banjo or concertina:-- + + Ford--ford--ford of Kabul river... + +'Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.' From the +moment men introduced music they made verse a thing essentially separate +from prose, from its natural key of emotion to its natural ordering of +words. Do not for one moment imagine that when Milton writes:-- + + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +or + + Of man's first disobedience and the fruit + Of that forbidden tree... + +--where you must seek down five lines before you come to the verb, and +then find it in the imperative mood--do not suppose for a moment that he +is here fantastically shifting words, inverting phrases out of their +natural order. For, as St Paul might say, there is a natural order of +prose and there is a natural order of verse. The natural order of prose +is:-- + + I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, + though not of that county; my father being a foreigner of Bremen, + who settled first in Hull.--[_Defoe._] + +or + + Further I avow to your Highness that with these eyes I have beheld + the person of William Wooton, B.D., who has written a good sizeable + volume against a friend of your Governor (from whom, alas! he must + therefore look for little favour) in a most gentlemanly style, + adorned with the utmost politeness and civility.--[_Swift._] + +The natural order of poetry is:-- + + Thus with the year + Seasons return, but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's Rose, + Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. + +or + + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +and this basal difference you must have clear in your minds before, in +dealing with prose or verse, you can practise either with profit or read +either with intelligent delight. + + + + +LECTURE IV. + +ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE + +Thursday, April 17 + + +In our last lecture, Gentlemen, we discussed the difference between +verse, or metrical writing, and prose. We traced that difference (as you +will remember) to Music--to the harp, the lyre, the dance, the chorus, +all those first necessary accompaniments which verse never quite forgets; +and we concluded that, as Music ever introduces emotion, which is indeed +her proper and only means of persuading, so the natural language of verse +will be keyed higher than the natural language of prose; will be keyed +higher throughout and even for its most ordinary purposes--as for +example, to tell us that So-and-so sailed to Troy with so many ships. + +I grant you that our steps to this conclusion were lightly and rapidly +taken: yet the stepping-stones are historically firm. Verse does precede +prose in literature; verse does start with musical accompaniment; musical +accompaniment does introduce emotion; and emotion does introduce an order +of its own into speech. I grant you that we have travelled far from the +days when a prose-writer, Herodotus, labelled the books of his history by +the names of the nine Muses. I grant you that if you go to the Vatican +and there study the statues of the Muses (noble, but of no early date) +you may note that Calliope, Muse of the Epic--unlike her sisters Euterpe, +Erato, Thalia--holds for symbol no instrument of music, but a stylus and +a tablet. Yet the earlier Calliope, the Calliope of Homer, was a Muse of +Song. + + [Greek: Menin aeide, Thea--] + +'Had I a thousand tongues, a thousand hands.'--For what purpose does the +poet wish for a thousand tongues, but to sing? for what purpose a +thousand hands, but to pluck the wires? not to dip a thousand pens in a +thousand inkpots. + +I doubt, in fine, if your most learned studies will discover much amiss +with the frontier we drew between verse and prose, cursorily though we +ran its line. Nor am I daunted on comparing it with Coleridge's more +philosophical one, which you will find in the "Biographia Literaria" +(c. XVIII)-- + + And first for the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance + in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to + hold in check the workings of passion. It might be easily explained + likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the + very state which it counteracts, and how this balance of antagonism + becomes organised into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term) + by a supervening act of the will and judgment consciously and for + the foreseen purpose of pleasure. + +I will not swear to understand precisely what Coleridge means here, +though I believe that I do. But at any rate, and on the principle that of +two hypotheses, each in itself adequate, we should choose the simpler, I +suggest in all modesty that we shall do better with our own than with +Coleridge's, which has the further disadvantage of being scarcely +amenable to positive evidence. We can say with historical warrant that +Sappho struck the lyre, and argue therefrom, still within close range of +correction, that her singing responded to the instrument: whereas to +assert that Sappho's mind 'was balanced by a spontaneous effort which +strove to hold in check the workings of passion' is to say something for +which positive evidence will be less handily found, whether to contradict +or to support. + +Yet if you choose to prefer Coleridge's explanation, no great harm will +be done: since Coleridge, who may be presumed to have understood it, +promptly goes on to deduce that, + + as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased + excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural + language of excitement. + +which is precisely where we found ourselves, save that where Coleridge +uses the word 'excitement' we used the word 'emotion.' + +Shall we employ an illustration before proceeding?--some sentence easily +handled, some commonplace of the moralist, some copybook maxim, I care +not what. 'Contentment breeds Happiness'--That is a proposition with +which you can hardly quarrel; sententious, sedate, obviously true; +provoking delirious advocacy as little as controversial heat; in short a +very fair touchstone. Now hear how the lyric treats it, in these lines of +Dekker-- + + Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? + O sweet content! + Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex'd? + O punishment! + Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex'd + To add to golden numbers golden numbers? + O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! + Work apace, apace, apace, apace; + Honest labour wears a lovely face; + Then hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny! + + Canst drink the waters of the crystal spring? + O sweet content! + Swim'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears? + O punishment! + Then he that patiently want's burden bears + No burden bears, but is a king, a king! + O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! + Work apace, apace, apace, apace; + Honest labour wears a lovely face; + Then hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny! + +There, in lines obviously written for music, you have our sedate +sentence, 'Contentment breeds Happiness,' converted to mere emotion. Note +(to use Coleridge's word) the 'excitement' of it. There are but two plain +indicative sentences in the two stanzas--(1) 'Honest labour wears a +lovely face' (used as a refrain), and (2) 'Then he that patiently want's +burden bears no burden bears, but is a king, a king!' (heightened +emotionally by inversion and double repetition). Mark throughout how +broken is the utterance; antithetical question answered by exclamations: +both doubled and made more antithetical in the second stanza: with +cunning reduplicated inversions to follow, and each stanza wound up by an +outburst of emotional nonsense--'hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny!'--as +a man might skip or whistle to himself for want of thought. + +Now (still keeping to our same subject of Contentment) let us _prosify_ +the lyrical order of language down to the lowest pitch to which genius +has been able to reduce it and still make noble verse. You have all read +Wordsworth's famous Introduction to the "Lyrical Ballads," and you know +that Wordsworth's was a genius working on a theory that the languages of +verse and of prose are identical. You know, too, I dare say, into what +banalities that theory over and over again betrayed him: banalities such +as-- + + His widowed mother, for a second mate + Espoused the teacher of the village school: + Who on her offspring zealously bestowed + Needful instruction. + +--and the rest. Nevertheless Wordsworth was a genius; and genius working +persistently on a narrow theory will now and again 'bring it off' (as +they say). So he, amid the flat waste of his later compositions, did +undoubtedly 'bring it off' in the following sonnet:-- + + These times strike monied worldlings with dismay: + Ev'n rich men, brave by nature, taint the air + With words of apprehension and despair; + While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray, + Men unto whom sufficient for the day + And minds not stinted or untill'd are given, + Sound healthy children of the God of Heaven, + Are cheerful as the rising sun in May. + What do we gather hence but firmer faith + That every gift of noble origin + Is breath'd upon by Hope's perpetual breath; + That Virtue and the faculties within + Are vital; and that riches are akin + To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death? + +Here, I grant, are no repetitions, no inversions. The sentences, though +metrical, run straightforwardly, verb following subject, object verb, as +in strict prose. In short here you have verse reduced to the order and +structure of prose as nearly as a man of genius, working on a set theory, +could reduce it while yet maintaining its proper emotional key. But first +let me say that you will find very few like instances of success even in +Wordsworth; and few indeed to set against innumerable passages wherein +either his verse defies his theory and triumphs, or succumbs to it and, +succumbing, either drops sheer to bathos or spreads itself over dead +flats of commonplace. Let me tell you next that the instances you will +find in other poets are so few and so far between as to be negligible; +and lastly that even such verse as the above has only to be compared with +a passage of prose and its emotional pitch is at once betrayed. Take +this, for example, from Jeremy Taylor:-- + + Since all the evil in the world consists in the disagreeing between the + object and the appetite, as when a man hath what he desires not, or + desires what he hath not, or desires amiss, he that compares his spirit + to the present accident hath variety of instance for his virtue, but + none to trouble him, because his desires enlarge not beyond his present + fortune: and a wise man is placed in a variety of chances, like the + nave or centre of a wheel in the midst of all the circumvolutions and + changes of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns + gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indifferent which + part is up, and which is down; for there is some virtue or other to be + exercised whatever happens--either patience or thanksgiving, love or + fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness. + +Or, take this from Samuel Johnson:-- + + The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind; and he who has + so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing + anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless + efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove. + +Now, to be frank, I do not call that first passage very good prose. Like +much of Jeremy Taylor's writing it is prose tricked out with the +trappings and odds-and-ends of verse. It starts off, for example, with a +brace of heroics--'Since all the evil in the world consists'...'between +the object and the appetite.' You may say, further, that the simile of +the wheel, though proper enough to prose, is poetical too: that Homer +might have used it ('As in a wheel the rim turns violently, while the +nave, though it turns also, yet seems to be at rest'--something of that +sort). Nevertheless you will agree with me that, in exchanging +Wordsworth for Taylor and Johnson, we have relaxed something with the +metre, something that the metre kept taut; and this something we +discover to be the emotional pitch. + +But let me give you another illustration, supplied (I dare say quite +unconsciously) by one who combined a genuine love of verse--in which, +however, he was no adept--with a sure instinct for beautiful prose. +Contentment was a favourite theme with Isaak Walton: "The Compleat +Angler" is packed with praise of it: and in "The Compleat Angler" occurs +this well-known passage:-- + + But, master, first let me tell you, that very hour which you were + absent from me, I sat down under a willow tree by the waterside, and + considered what you had told me of the owner of that pleasant meadow in + which you then had left me; that he had a plentiful estate, and not a + heart to think so; that he had at this time many law-suits depending, + and that they both damped his mirth and took up so much of his time and + thoughts that he had no leisure to take the sweet content that I, who + pretended no title to them, took in his fields: for I could there sit + quietly; and looking on the water, see some fishes sport themselves in + the silver streams, others leaping at flies of several shapes and + colours; looking on the hills, I could behold them spotted with woods + and groves; looking down the meadows, could see, here a boy gathering + lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culverlocks and + cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present month of May. + These and many other field-flowers so perfumed the air that I thought + that very meadow like that field in Sicily of which Diodorus speaks, + where the perfumes arising from the place make all dogs that hunt in it + to fall off and lose their hottest scent. I say, as I thus sat, joying + in my own happy condition, and pitying this poor rich man that owned + this and many other pleasant groves and meadows about me, I did + thankfully remember what my Saviour said, that the meek possess the + earth; or rather they enjoy what the others possess and enjoy not; for + Anglers and meek quiet-spirited men are free from those high, those + restless thoughts which corrode the sweets of life; and they, and they + only can say as the poet has happily exprest it: + + 'Hail, blest estate of lowliness! + Happy enjoyments of such minds + As, rich in self-contentedness, + Can, like the reeds in roughest winds, + By yielding make that blow but small + At which proud oaks and cedars fall.' + +There you have a passage of felicitous prose culminating in a stanza of +trite and fifth-rate verse. Yes, Walton's instinct is sound; for he is +keying up the pitch; and verse, even when mediocre in quality, has its +pitch naturally set above that of prose. So, if you will turn to your +Walton and read the page following this passage, you will see that, still +by a sure instinct, he proceeds from this scrap of reflective verse to a +mere rollicking 'catch': + + Man's life is but vain, for 'tis subject to pain + And sorrow, and short as a bubble; + 'Tis a hodge-podge of business and money and care, + And care, and money and trouble... + +--which is even worse rubbish, and yet a step upwards in emotion because +Venator actually sings it to music. 'Ay marry, sir, this is music +indeed,' approves Brother Peter; 'this cheers the heart.' + +In this and the preceding lecture, Gentlemen, I have enforced at some +length the opinion that to understand the many essential differences +between verse and prose we must constantly bear in mind that verse, being +metrical, keeps the character originally imposed on it by musical +accompaniment and must always, however far the remove, be referred back +to its origin and to the emotion which music excites. + +Mr George Bernard Shaw having to commit his novel "Cashel Byron's +Profession" to paper in a hurry, chose to cast it in blank verse as being +more easily and readily written so: a performance which brilliantly +illuminates a half-truth. Verse--or at any rate, unrhymed iambic +verse--is easier to write than prose, if you care to leave out the +emotion which makes verse characteristic and worth writing. I have +little doubt that, had he chosen to attempt it, Mr Shaw would have found +his story still more ductile in the metre of "Hiawatha." But the +experiment proves nothing: or no more than that, all fine art costing +labour, it may cost less if burlesqued in a category not its own. + +Let me take an example from a work with which you are all familiar--"The +Student's Handbook to the University and Colleges of Cambridge." On +p. 405 we read:-- + + The Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos is divided into ten sections, + A, A2, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I. A student may take either one or two + sections at the end of his second year of residence, and either one or + two more sections at the end of his third or fourth year of residence; + or he may take two sections at the end of his third year only. Thus + this Tripos can be treated either as a divided or as an undivided + Tripos at the option of the candidate. + +Now I do not hold that up to you for a model of prose. Still, lucidity +rather than emotion being its aim, I doubt not that the composer spent +pains on it; more pains than it would have cost him to convey his +information metrically, thus:-- + + There is a Tripos that aspires to blend + The Medieval and the Modern tongues + In one red burial (Sing Heavenly Muse!) + Divided into sections A, A2, + B, C, D, E, F, G and H and I. + A student may take either one or two + (With some restrictions mention'd in a footnote) + At th' expiration of his second year: + Or of his third, or of his fourth again + Take one or two; or of his third alone + Take two together. Thus this tripos is + (Like nothing in the Athanasian Creed) + Divisible or indivisible + At the option of the candidate--Gadzooks! + +This method has even some advantage over the method of prose in that it +is more easily memorised; but it has, as you will admit, the one fatal +flaw that it imports emotion into a theme which does not properly admit +of emotion, and that so it offends against our first rule of +writing--that it should be appropriate. + +Now if you accept the argument so far as we have led it--that verse is by +nature more emotional than prose--certain consequences would seem to +follow: of which the first is that while the capital difficulty of verse +consists in saying ordinary things the capital difficulty of prose +consists in saying extraordinary things; that while with verse, keyed for +high moments, the trouble is to manage the intervals, with prose the +trouble is to manage the high moments. + +Let us dwell awhile on this difference, for it is important. You remember +my quoting to you in my last lecture these lines of Milton's:-- + + Up to a hill anon his steps he reared + From whose high top to ken the prospect round, + If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +We agreed that these were good lines, with the accent of poetry: but we +allowed it to be a highly exalted way of telling how So-and-so climbed a +hill for a better view but found none. Now obviously this exaltation does +not arise immediately out of the action described (which is as ordinary +as it well could be), but is _derivative_. It borrows its wings, its +impetus, from a previous high moment, from the emotion proper to that +moment, from the speech proper to that emotion: and these sustain us +across to the next height as with the glide of an aeroplane. Your own +sense will tell you at once that the passage would be merely bombastic if +the poet were starting to set forth how So-and-so climbed a hill for the +view--just that, and nothing else: as your own sense tells you that the +swoop is from one height to another. For if bathos lay ahead, if Milton +had but to relate how the Duke of York, with twenty thousand men, +'marched up a hill and then marched down again,' he certainly would not +use diction such as:-- + + Up to a hill anon his steps he reared. + +Even as it is, I think we must all detect a certain artificiality in the +passage, and confess to some relief when Satan is introduced to us, ten +lines lower down, to revivify the story. For let us note that, in the +nature of things, the more adorned and involved our style (and Milton's +is both ornate and involved) the more difficulty we must find with these +flat pedestrian intervals. Milton may 'bring it off,' largely through +knowing how to dodge the interval and contrive that it shall at any rate +be brief: but, as Bagehot noted, when we come to Tennyson and find +Tennyson in "Enoch Arden" informing us of a fish-jowter, that:-- + + Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil + In ocean-smelling osier-- + +(_i.e._ in a fish-basket) + + --and his face + Rough-reddened with a thousand winter gales, + Not only to the market town were known, + But in the leafy lanes beyond the down + Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp + And peacock yewtree of the lonely Hall + Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering, + +why, then we feel that the vehicle is altogether too pompous for its +load, and those who make speech too pompous for its content commit, +albeit in varying degrees, the error of Defoe's religious lady who, +seeing a bottle of over-ripe beer explode and cork and froth fly up to +the ceiling, cried out, 'O, the wonders of Omnipotent Power!' The poet +who commends fresh fish to us as 'ocean-spoil' can cast no stone at his +brother who writes of them as 'the finny denizens of the deep,' or even +at his cousin the journalist, who exalts the oyster into a 'succulent +bivalve'-- + + The feathered tribes on pinions cleave the air; + Not so the mackerel, and, still less, the bear! + +I believe this difficulty, which verse, by nature and origin emotional, +encounters in dealing with ordinary unemotional narrative, to lie as a +technical reason at the bottom of Horace's advice to the writer of Epic +to plunge _in medias res_, thus avoiding flat preparative and catching at +once a high wind which shall carry him hereafter across dull levels and +intervals. I believe that it lay--though whether consciously or not he +scarcely tells us--at the bottom of Matthew Arnold's mind when, selecting +certain qualities for which to praise Homer, he chose, for the very +first, Homer's _rapidity_. 'First,' he says, 'Homer is eminently rapid; +and,' he adds justly, 'to this rapidity the elaborate movement of +Miltonic blank verse is alien.' + +Now until one studies writing as an art, trying to discover what this or +that form of it accomplishes with ease and what with difficulty, and why +verse can do one thing and prose another, Arnold's choice of _rapidity_ +to put in the forefront of Homer's merits may seem merely capricious. +'Homer (we say) has other great qualities. Arnold himself indicates +Homer's simplicity, directness, nobility. Surely either one of these +should be mentioned before rapidity, in itself not comparable as a virtue +with either?' + +But when we see that the difficulty of verse-narrative lies just _here_; +that the epic poet who is rapid has met, and has overcome, the capital +difficulty of his form, then we begin to do justice not only to Arnold as +a critic but (which is of far higher moment) to Homer as a craftsman. + +The genius of Homer in this matter is in fact something daemonic. He +seems to shirk nothing: and the effect of this upon critics is +bewildering. The acutest of them are left wondering how on earth an +ordinary tale--say of how some mariners beached ship, stowed sail, walked +ashore and cooked their dinner--can be made so poetical. They are +inclined to divide the credit between the poet and his fortunate age--'a +time' suggests Pater 'in which one could hardly have spoken at all +without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without +making a picture "in the great style" against a sky charged with +marvels.' + +Well, the object of these lectures is not to explain genius. Just here it +is rather to state a difficulty; to admit that, once in history, genius +overcame it; yet warn you how rare in the tale of poetical achievement is +such a success. Homer, indeed, stands first, if not unmatched, among +poets in this technical triumph over the capital disability of +annihilating flat passages. I omit Shakespeare and the dramatists; +because they have only to give a stage direction 'Enter Cassius, looking +lean,' and Cassius comes in looking leaner than nature; whereas Homer has +in his narrative to walk Hector or Thersites on to the scene, describe +him, walk him off. I grant the rapidity of Dante. It is amazing; and we +may yield him all the credit for choosing (it was his genius that chose +it) a subject which allowed of the very highest rapidity; since Hell, +Purgatory and Paradise, though they differ in other respects, have this +in common, that they are populous and the inhabitants of each so +compendiously shepherded together that the visitor can turn from one +person to another without loss of time. But Homer does not escort us +around a menagerie in which we can move expeditiously from one cage to +another. He proposes at least, both in the "Iliad" and in the "Odyssey," +to unfold a story; and he _seems_ to unfold it so artlessly that we +linger on the most pedestrian intervals while he tells us, for example, +what the heroes ate and how they cooked it. A modern writer would serve +us a far better dinner. Homer brings us to his with our appetite all the +keener for having waited and watched the spitting and roasting. + +I would point out to you what art this genius conceals; how cunning is +this apparent simplicity: and for this purpose let me take Homer at the +extreme of his difficulty--when he has to describe a long sea-voyage. + +Some years ago, in his last Oxford lectures, Mr Froude lamented that no +poet in this country had arisen to write a national epic of the great +Elizabethan seamen, to culminate (I suppose) as his History culminated, +in the defeat of the Armada: and one of our younger poets; Mr Alfred +Noyes, acting on this hint has since given us an epic poem on "Drake," in +twelve books. But Froude probably overlooked, as Mr Noyes has not +overcome, this difficulty of the flat interval which, while ever the +bugbear of Epic, is magnified tenfold when our action takes place on the +sea. For whereas the verse should be rapid and the high moments frequent, +the business of seafaring is undeniably monotonous, as the intervals +between port and port, sea-fight and sea-fight, must be long and lazy. +Matters move more briskly in an occasional gale; but even a gale lasts, +and must be ridden out; and the process of riding to a gale of wind:-- + + For ever climbing up the climbing wave + +--your ship taking one wave much as she takes another--is in its nature +monotonous. Nay, you have only to read Falconer's "Shipwreck" to discover +how much of dulness may lie enwrapped, to discharge itself, even in a +first-class tempest. Courses, reckonings, trimmings of canvas--these +occur in real life and amuse the simple mariner at the time. But to the +reader, if he be a landsman, their repetition in narrative may easily +become intolerable; and when we get down to the 'trades,' even the seaman +sets his sail for a long spell of weather and goes to sleep. In short you +cannot upon the wide Atlantic push action and reaction to and fro as upon +the plains of windy Troy: nor could any but a superhuman genius make +sustained poetry (say) out of Nelson's untiring pursuit of Villeneuve, +which none the less was one of the most heroic feats in history. + +This difficulty, inherent in navigation as a subject for the Epic Muse, +has, I think, been very shrewdly detected and hit off in a parody of Mr +Noyes' poem by a young friend of mine, Mr Wilfred Blair:-- + + Meanwhile the wind had changed, and Francis Drake + Put down the helm and drove against the seas-- + Once more the wind changed, and the simple seaman, + Full fraught with weather wisdom, once again + Put down the helm and so drove on--_et cetera_. + +Now Homer actually has performed this feat which we declare to be next to +impossible. He actually does convey Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca, by a +ten years' voyage too; he actually has narrated that voyage to us in +plain straightforward words; and, what is more, he actually has made a +superb epic of it. Yes, but when you come to dissect the Odyssey, what +amazing artifice is found under that apparently straightforward +tale!--eight years of the ten sliced out, to start with, and +magnificently presented to Circe + + Where that Aeaean isle forgets the main + +--and (one may add), so forgetting, avoids the technical difficulties +connected therewith. + +Note the space given to Telemachus and his active search for the lost +hero: note too how the mass of Odysseus' seafaring adventures is +condensed into a reported speech--a traveller's tale at the court of +Alcinoüs. Virgil borrowed this trick, you remember; and I dare to swear +that had it fallen to Homer to attempt the impossible saga of Nelson's +pursuit after Villeneuve he would have achieved it triumphantly--by means +of a tale told in the first person by a survivor to Lady Hamilton. Note, +again, how boldly (being free to deal with an itinerary of which his +audience knew nothing but surmised that it comprehended a vast deal of +the marvellous, spaced at irregular distances) Homer works in a shipwreck +or a miracle wherever the action threatens to flag. Lessing, as you know, +devoted several pages of the "Laoköon" to the shield of Achilles; to +Homer's craft in depicting it as it grew under Hephaestus' hammer: so +that we are intrigued by the process of manufacture instead of being +wearied by a description of the ready-made article; so also (if one may +presume to add anything to Lessing) that we are cunningly flattered in a +sense that the shield is being made for _us._ Well, that is one artifice +out of many: but if you would gauge at all Homer's resource and subtlety +in technique I recommend you to analyse the first twelve books of +the "Odyssey" and count for yourselves the device by which the +poet--[Greek: polutropos] as was never his hero--evades or hurries over +each flat interval as he happens upon it. + + These things, Ulysses, + The wise bards also + Behold and sing. + But O, what labour! + O Prince, what pain! + +You may be thinking, Gentlemen, that I take up a disproportionate amount +of your time on such technical matters at these. But literature being an +art (forgive the reiteration!) and therefore to be practised, I want us +to be seeking all the time _how it is done_; to hunt out the principles +on which the great artists wrought; to face, to rationalise, the +difficulties by which they were confronted, and learn how they overcame +the particular obstacle. Surely even for mere criticism, apart from +practice, we shall equip ourselves better by seeking, so far as we may, +how the thing is done than by standing at gaze before this or that +masterpiece and murmuring 'Isn't that beautiful! How in the world, now...!' + +I am told that these lectures are criticised as tending to make you +conceited: to encourage in you a belief that you can do things, when it +were better that you merely admired. Well I would not dishearten you by +telling to what a shred of conceit, even of hope, a man can be reduced +after twenty-odd years of the discipline. But I can, and do, affirm that +the farther you penetrate in these discoveries the more sacred the +ultimate mystery will become for you: that the better you understand the +great authors as exemplars of practice, the more certainly you will +realise what is the condescension of the gods. + +Next time, then, we will attempt an enquiry into the capital difficulty +of Prose. + + + + +LECTURE V. + +INTERLUDE: ON JARGON + +Thursday, May 1 + + +We parted, Gentlemen, upon a promise to discuss the capital difficulty of +Prose, as we have discussed the capital difficulty of Verse. But, +although we shall come to it, on second thoughts I ask leave to break the +order of my argument and to interpose some words upon a kind of writing +which, from a superficial likeness, commonly passes for prose in these +days, and by lazy folk is commonly written for prose, yet actually is not +prose at all; my excuse being the simple practical one that, by first +clearing this sham prose out of the way, we shall the better deal with +honest prose when we come to it. The proper difficulties of prose will +remain: but we shall be agreed in understanding what it is, or at any +rate what it is not, that we talk about. I remember to have heard +somewhere of a religious body in the United States of America which had +reason to suspect one of its churches of accepting Spiritual consolation +from a coloured preacher--an offence against the laws of the Synod--and +despatched a Disciplinary Committee with power to act; and of the +Committee's returning to report itself unable to take any action under +its terms of reference, for that while a person undoubtedly coloured had +undoubtedly occupied the pulpit and had audibly spoken from it in the +Committee's presence, the performance could be brought within no +definition of preaching known or discoverable. So it is with that +infirmity of speech--that flux, that determination of words to the mouth, +or to the pen--which, though it be familiar to you in parliamentary +debates, in newspapers, and as the staple language of Blue Books, +Committees, Official Reports, I take leave to introduce to you as prose +which is not prose and under its real name of Jargon. + +You must not confuse this Jargon with what is called Journalese. The two +overlap, indeed, and have a knack of assimilating each other's vices. But +Jargon finds, maybe, the most of its votaries among good douce people who +have never written to or for a newspaper in their life, who would never +talk of 'adverse climatic conditions' when they mean 'bad weather'; who +have never trifled with verbs such as 'obsess,' 'recrudesce,' 'envisage,' +'adumbrate,' or with phrases such as 'the psychological moment,' 'the +true inwardness,' 'it gives furiously to think.' It dallies with +Latinity--'sub silentio,' 'de die in diem,' 'cui bono?' (always in the +sense, unsuspected by Cicero, of 'What is the profit?')--but not for the +sake of style. Your journalist at the worst is an artist in his way: he +daubs paint of this kind upon the lily with a professional zeal; the more +flagrant (or, to use his own word, arresting) the pigment, the happier is +his soul. Like the Babu he is trying all the while to embellish our poor +language, to make it more floriferous, more poetical--like the Babu for +example who, reporting his mother's death, wrote, 'Regret to inform you, +the hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket.' + +_There_ is metaphor: _there_ is ornament: _there_ is a sense of poetry, +though as yet groping in a world unrealised. No such gusto marks--no such +zeal, artistic or professional, animates--the practitioners of Jargon, +who are, most of them (I repeat), douce respectable persons. Caution is +its father: the instinct to save everything and especially trouble: its +mother, Indolence. It looks precise, but it is not. It is, in these +times, _safe_: a thousand men have said it before and not one to your +knowledge had been prosecuted for it. And so, like respectability in +Chicago, Jargon stalks unchecked in our midst. It is becoming the +language of Parliament: it has become the medium through which Boards of +Government, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, Commercial Firms, +express the processes as well as the conclusions of their thought and so +voice the reason of their being. + +Has a Minister to say 'No' in the House of Commons? Some men are +constitutionally incapable of saying no: but the Minister conveys it +thus--'The answer to the question is in the negative.' That means 'no.' +Can you discover it to mean anything less, or anything more except that +the speaker is a pompous person?--which was no part of the information +demanded. + +That is Jargon, and it happens to be accurate. But as a rule Jargon is by +no means accurate, its method being to walk circumspectly around its +target; and its faith, that having done so it has either hit the +bull's-eye or at least achieved something equivalent, and safer. + +Thus the Clerk of a Board of Guardians will minute that-- + + In the case of John Jenkins deceased the coffin provided was of the + usual character. + +Now this is not accurate. 'In the case of John Jenkins deceased,' for +whom a coffin was supplied, it is wholly superfluous to tell us that he +is deceased. But actually John Jenkins never had more than one case, and +that was the coffin. The Clerk says he had two,--a coffin in a case: but +I suspect the Clerk to be mistaken, and I am sure he errs in telling us +that the coffin was of the usual character: for coffins have no +character, usual or unusual. + +For another example (I shall not tell you whence derived)-- + + In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class [So you + see the lucky fellow gets a case as well as a first-class. He might be + a stuffed animal: perhaps he is] In the case of every candidate who is + placed in the first class the class-list will show by some convenient + mark (1) the Section or Sections for proficiency in which he is placed + in the first class and (2) the Section or Sections (if any) in which he + has passed with special distinction. + +'The Section or Sections (if any)'--But, how, if they are not any, could +they be indicated by a mark however convenient? + + The Examiners will have regard to the style and method of the + candidate's answers, and will give credit for excellence _in these + respects_. + +Have you begun to detect the two main vices of Jargon? The first is that +it uses circumlocution rather than short straight speech. It says 'In the +case of John Jenkins deceased, the coffin' when it means 'John Jenkins's +coffin': and its yea is not yea, neither is its nay nay: but its answer +is in the affirmative or in the negative, as the foolish and superfluous +'case' may be. The second vice is that it habitually chooses vague woolly +abstract nouns rather than concrete ones. I shall have something to say +by-and-by about the concrete noun, and how you should ever be struggling +for it whether in prose or in verse. For the moment I content myself with +advising you, if you would write masculine English, never to forget the +old tag of your Latin Grammar-- + + Masculine will only be + Things that you can touch and see. + +But since these lectures are meant to be a course in First Aid to +writing, I will content myself with one or two extremely rough rules: yet +I shall be disappointed if you do not find them serviceable. + +The first is:--Whenever in your reading you come across one of these +words, _case, instance, character, nature, condition, persuasion, +degree_--whenever in writing your pen betrays you to one or another of +them--pull yourself up and take thought. If it be 'case' (I choose it as +Jargon's dearest child--'in Heaven yclept Metonomy') turn to the +dictionary, if you will, and seek out what meaning can be derived from +_casus_, its Latin ancestor: then try how, with a little trouble, you can +extricate yourself from that case. The odds are, you will feel like a +butterfly who has discarded his chrysalis. + +Here are some specimens to try your hand on-- + + (1) All those tears which inundated Lord Hugh Cecil's head were + dry in the case of Mr Harold Cox. + +Poor Mr Cox! left gasping in his aquarium! + + (2) [From a cigar-merchant] In any case, let us send you a case + on approval. + + (3) It is contended that Consols have fallen in consequence: + but such is by no means the case. + +'Such,' by the way, is another spoilt child of Jargon, especially in +Committee's Rules--'Co-opted members may be eligible as such; such +members to continue to serve for such time as'--and so on. + + (4) Even in the purely Celtic areas, only in two or three cases + do the Bishops bear Celtic names. + +For 'cases' read 'dioceses.' + + _Instance._ In most instances the players were below their form. + +But what were they playing at? Instances? + + _Character--Nature._ There can be no doubt that the accident was + caused through the dangerous nature of the spot, the hidden + character of the by-road, and the utter absence of any warning + or danger signal. + +Mark the foggy wording of it all! And yet the man hit something and broke +his neck! Contrast that explanation with the verdict of a coroner's jury +in the West of England on a drowned postman--'We find that deceased met +his death by an act of God, caused by sudden overflowing of the river +Walkhan and helped out by the scandalous neglect of the way-wardens.' + + The Aintree course is notoriously of a trying nature. + + On account of its light character, purity and age, Usher's whiskey + is a whiskey that will agree with you. + + _Order._ The mésalliance was of a pronounced order. + + _Condition._ He was conveyed to his place of residence in an + intoxicated condition. + +'He was carried home drunk.' + + _Quality and Section._ Mr ----, exhibiting no less than five works, + all of a superior quality, figures prominently in the oil section. + +This was written of an exhibition of pictures. + + _Degree._ A singular degree of rarity prevails in the earlier + editions of this romance. + +That is Jargon. In prose it runs simply 'The earlier editions of this +romance are rare'--or 'are very rare'--or even (if you believe what I take +leave to doubt), 'are singularly rare'; which should mean that they are +rarer than the editions of any other work in the world. + +Now what I ask you to consider about these quotations is that in each the +writer was using Jargon to shirk prose, palming off periphrases upon us +when with a little trouble he could have gone straight to the point. 'A +singular degree of rarity prevails,' 'the accident was caused through the +dangerous nature of the spot,' 'but such is by no means the case.' We may +not be capable of much; but we can all write better than that, if we take +a little trouble. In place of, 'the Aintree course is of a trying nature' +we can surely say 'Aintree is a trying course' or 'the Aintree course is +a trying one'--just that and nothing more. + +Next, having trained yourself to keep a look-out for these worst +offenders (and you will be surprised to find how quickly you get into the +way of it), proceed to push your suspicions out among the whole cloudy +host of abstract terms. 'How excellent a thing is sleep,' sighed Sancho +Panza; 'it wraps a man round like a cloak'--an excellent example, by the +way, of how to say a thing concretely: a Jargoneer would have said that +'among the beneficent qualities of sleep its capacity for withdrawing the +human consciousness from the contemplation of immediate circumstances may +perhaps be accounted not the least remarkable.' How vile a thing--shall +we say?--is the abstract noun! It wraps a man's thoughts round like +cotton wool. + +Here is a pretty little nest of specimens, found in "The Times" newspaper +by Messrs. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, authors of that capital little book +"The King's English":-- + + One of the most important reforms mentioned in the rescript is the + unification of the organisation of judicial institutions and the + guarantee for all the tribunals of the independence necessary for + securing to all classes of the community equality before the law. + +I do not dwell on the cacophony; but, to convey a straightforward piece +of news, might not the Editor of "The Times" as well employ a man to +write:-- + + One of the most important reforms is that of the Courts, which need + a uniform system and to be made independent. In this way only can + men be assured that all are equal before the law. + +I think he might. + +A day or two ago the musical critic of the "Standard" wrote this:-- + + MR LAMOND IN BEETHOVEN + + Mr Frederick Lamond, the Scottish pianist, as an interpreter of + Beethoven has few rivals. At his second recital of the composer's works + at Bechstein Hall on Saturday afternoon he again displayed a complete + sympathy and understanding of his material that extracted the very + essence of aesthetic and musical value from each selection he + undertook. The delightful intimacy of his playing and his unusual force + of individual expression are invaluable assets, which, allied to his + technical brilliancy, enable him to achieve an artistic triumph. The + two lengthy Variations in E flat major (Op. 35) and in D major, the + latter on the Turkish March from 'The Ruins of Athens,' when included + in the same programme, require a master hand to provide continuity of + interest. _To say that Mr Lamond successfully avoided moments that + might at times, in these works, have inclined to comparative + disinterestedness, would be but a moderate way of expressing the + remarkable fascination with which his versatile playing endowed them_, + but _at the same time_ two of the sonatas given included a similar form + of composition, and no matter how intellectually brilliant may be the + interpretation, the extravagant use of a certain mode is bound in time + to become somewhat ineffective. In the Three Sonatas, the E major (Op. + 109), the A major (Op. 2), No. 2, and the C minor (Op. 111), Mr Lamond + signalised his perfect insight into the composer's varying moods. + +Will you not agree with me that here is no writing, here is no prose, +here is not even English, but merely a flux of words to the pen? + +Here again is a string, a concatenation--say, rather, a tiara--of gems of +purest ray serene from the dark unfathomed caves of a Scottish +newspaper:-- + + The Chinese viewpoint, as indicated in this letter, may not be without + interest to your readers, because it evidently is suggestive of more + than an academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things + which, if allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate in disaster + resembling the Chang-Sha riots. It also ventures to illustrate + incidents having their inception in recent premature endeavours to + accelerate the development of Protestant missions in China; but we + would hope for the sake of the interests involved that what my + correspondent describes as 'the irresponsible ruffian element' may be + known by their various religious designations only within very + restricted areas. + +Well, the Chinese have given it up, poor fellows! and are asking the +Christians--as to-day's newspapers inform us--to pray for them. Do you +wonder? But that is, or was, the Chinese 'viewpoint,'--and what a +willow-pattern viewpoint! Observe its delicacy. It does not venture to +interest or be interesting; merely 'to be not without interest.' But it +does 'venture to illustrate incidents'--which, for a viewpoint, is brave +enough: and this illustration 'is suggestive of something more than an +academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things which, if +allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate.' What materialises? The +unpleasant aspect? or the things? Grammar says the 'things,' 'things +which if allowed to materialise.' But things are materialised already, +and as a condition of their being things. It must be the aspect, then, +that materialises. But, if so, it is also the aspect that culminates, and +an aspect, however unpleasant, can hardly do that, or at worst cannot +culminate in anything resembling the Chang-Sha riots.... I give it up. + +Let us turn to another trick of Jargon: the trick of Elegant Variation, +so rampant in the Sporting Press that there, without needing to attend +these lectures, the Undergraduate detects it for laughter:-- + + Hayward and C. B. Fry now faced the bowling; which apparently had + no terrors for the Surrey crack. The old Oxonian, however, + took some time in settling to work.... + +Yes, you all recognise it and laugh at it. But why do you practise it in +your Essays? An undergraduate brings me an essay on Byron. In an essay on +Byron, Byron is (or ought to be) mentioned many times. I expect, nay +exact, that Bryon shall be mentioned again and again. But my +undergraduate has a blushing sense that to call Byron Byron twice on one +page is indelicate. So Byron, after starting bravely as Byron, in the +second sentence turns into 'that great but unequal poet' and +thenceforward I have as much trouble with Byron as ever Telemachus with +Proteus to hold and pin him back to his proper self. Half-way down the +page he becomes 'the gloomy master of Newstead': overleaf he is +reincarnated into 'the meteoric darling of society': and so proceeds +through successive avatars--'this arch-rebel,' 'the author of Childe +Harold,' 'the apostle of scorn,' 'the ex-Harrovian, proud, but abnormally +sensitive of his club-foot,' 'the martyr of Missolonghi,' 'the +pageant-monger of a bleeding heart.' Now this again is Jargon. It does +not, as most Jargon does, come of laziness; but it comes of timidity, +which is worse. In literature as in life he makes himself felt who not +only calls a spade a spade but has the pluck to double spades and +re-double. + +For another rule--just as rough and ready, but just as useful: Train your +suspicions to bristle up whenever you come upon 'as regards,' 'with +regard to,' 'in respect of,' 'in connection with,' 'according as to +whether,' and the like. They are all dodges of Jargon, circumlocutions +for evading this or that simple statement: and I say that it is not +enough to avoid them nine times out of ten, or nine-and-ninety times out +of a hundred. You should never use them. That is positive enough, I hope? +Though I cannot admire his style, I admire the man who wrote to me, 'Re +Tennyson--your remarks anent his "In Memoriam" make me sick': for though +re is not a preposition of the first water, and 'anent' has enjoyed its +day, the finish crowned the work. But here are a few specimens far, very +far, worse:-- + + The special difficulty in Professor Minocelsi's case [our old friend + 'case' again] arose _in connexion with_ the view he holds _relative + to_ the historical value of the opening pages of Genesis. + +That is Jargon. In prose, even taking the miserable sentence as it stands +constructed, we should write 'the difficulty arose over the views he +holds about the historical value,' etc. + +From a popular novelist:-- + + I was entirely indifferent _as to_ the results of the game, caring + nothing at all _as to_ whether _I had losses or gains_-- + +Cut out the first 'as' in 'as to,' and the second 'as to' altogether, and +the sentence begins to be prose--'I was indifferent to the results of the +game, caring nothing whether I had losses or gains.' + +But why, like Dogberry, have 'had losses'? Why not simply 'lose.' Let us +try again. 'I was entirely indifferent to the results of the game, caring +nothing at all whether I won or lost.' + +Still the sentence remains absurd: for the second clause but repeats the +first without adding one jot. For if you care not at all whether you win +or lose, you must be entirely indifferent to the results of the game. So +why not say 'I was careless if I won or lost,' and have done with it? + + A man of simple and charming character, he was fitly _associated + with_ the distinction of the Order of Merit. + +I take this gem with some others from a collection made three years ago, +by the "Oxford Magazine"; and I hope you admire it as one beyond price. +'He was associated with the distinction of the Order of Merit' means 'he +was given the Order of Merit.' If the members of that Order make a +society then he was associated with them; but you cannot associate a man +with a distinction. The inventor of such fine writing would doubtless +have answered Canning's Needy Knife-grinder with:-- + + I associate thee with sixpence! I will see thee in another + association first! + +But let us close our _florilegium_ and attempt to illustrate Jargon by +the converse method of taking a famous piece of English (say Hamlet's +soliloquy) and remoulding a few lines of it in this fashion:-- + + To be, or the contrary? Whether the former or the latter be preferable + would seem to admit of some difference of opinion; the answer in the + present case being of an affirmative or of a negative character + according as to whether one elects on the one hand to mentally suffer + the disfavour of fortune, albeit in an extreme degree, or on the other + to boldly envisage adverse conditions in the prospect of eventually + bringing them to a conclusion. The condition of sleep is similar to, if + not indistinguishable from, that of death; and with the addition of + finality the former might be considered identical with the latter: so + that in this connection it might be argued with regard to sleep that, + could the addition be effected, a termination would be put to the + endurance of a multiplicity of inconveniences, not to mention a number + of downright evils incidental to our fallen humanity, and thus a + consummation achieved of a most gratifying nature. + +That is Jargon: and to write Jargon is to be perpetually shuffling around +in the fog and cotton-wool of abstract terms; to be for ever hearkening, +like Ibsen's Peer Gynt, to the voice of the Boyg exhorting you to +circumvent the difficulty, to beat the air because it is easier than to +flesh your sword in the thing. The first virtue, the touchstone of a +masculine style, is its use of the active verb and the concrete noun. +When you write in the active voice, 'They gave him a silver teapot,' you +write as a man. When you write 'He was made the recipient of a silver +teapot,' you write jargon. But at the beginning set even higher store on +the concrete noun. Somebody--I think it was FitzGerald--once posited the +question 'What would have become of Christianity if Jeremy Bentham had +had the writing of the Parables?' Without pursuing that dreadful enquiry +I ask you to note how carefully the Parables--those exquisite short +stories--speak only of 'things which you can touch and see'--'A sower +went forth to sow,' 'The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a +woman took,'--and not the Parables only, but the Sermon on the Mount and +almost every verse of the Gospel. The Gospel does not, like my young +essayist, fear to repeat a word, if the word be good. The Gospel says +'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's'--not 'Render unto +Caesar the things that appertain to that potentate.' The Gospel does not +say 'Consider the growth of the lilies,' or even 'Consider how the lilies +grow.' It says, 'Consider the lilies, how they grow.' + +Or take Shakespeare. I wager you that no writer of English so constantly +chooses the concrete word, in phrase after phrase forcing you to touch +and see. No writer so insistently teaches the general through the +particular. He does it even in "Venus and Adonis" (as Professor Wendell, +of Harvard, pointed out in a brilliant little monograph on Shakespeare, +published some ten years ago). Read any page of "Venus and Adonis" side +by side with any page of Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and you cannot but +mark the contrast: in Shakespeare the definite, particular, visualised +image, in Marlowe the beautiful generalisation, the abstract term, the +thing seen at a literary remove. Take the two openings, both of which +start out with the sunrise. Marlowe begins:-- + + Now had the Morn espied her lover's steeds: + Whereat she starts, puts on her purple weeds, + And, red for anger that he stay'd so long, + All headlong throws herself the clouds among. + +Shakespeare wastes no words on Aurora and her feelings, but gets to his +hero and to business without ado:-- + + Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face-- +(You have the sun visualised at once), + Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face + Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, + Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase; + Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn. + +When Shakespeare has to describe a horse, mark how definite he is:-- + + Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, + Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, + High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong; + Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide. + +Or again, in a casual simile, how definite:-- + + Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper peering through a wave, + Which, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. + +Or take, if you will, Marlowe's description of Hero's first meeting +Leander:-- + + It lies not in our power to love or hate, + For will in us is over-ruled by fate..., + +and set against it Shakespeare's description of Venus' last meeting with +Adonis, as she came on him lying in his blood:-- + + Or as a snail whose tender horns being hit + Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, + And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit, + Long after fearing to creep forth again; + So, at his bloody view-- + +I do not deny Marlowe's lines (if you will study the whole passage) to be +lovely. You may even judge Shakespeare's to be crude by comparison. But +you cannot help noting that whereas Marlowe steadily deals in abstract, +nebulous terms, Shakespeare constantly uses concrete ones, which later on +he learned to pack into verse, such as:-- + + Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care. + +Is it unfair to instance Marlowe, who died young? Then let us take +Webster for the comparison; Webster, a man of genius or of something very +like it, and commonly praised by the critics for his mastery over +definite, detailed, and what I may call _solidified sensation_. Let us +take this admired passage from his "Duchess of Malfy":-- + + _Ferdinand._ How doth our sister Duchess bear herself + In her imprisonment? + + _Basola._ Nobly: I'll describe her. + She's sad as one long used to 't, and she seems + Rather to welcome the end of misery + Than shun it: a behaviour so noble + As gives a majesty to adversity +(Note the abstract terms.) + You may discern the shape of loveliness + More perfect in her tears than in her smiles; + She will muse for hours together; and her silence +(Here we first come on the concrete: and beautiful it is.) + Methinks expresseth more than if she spake. + +Now set against this the well-known passage from "Twelfth Night" where +the Duke asks and Viola answers a question about someone unknown to him +and invented by her--a mere phantasm, in short: yet note how much more +definite is the language:-- + +_Viola._ My father had a daughter lov'd a man; + As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, + _I_ should your lordship. + +_Duke._ And what's her history? + +_Viola._ A blank, my lord. She never told her love, + But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, + Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought, + And with a green and yellow melancholy + She sat like Patience on a monument + Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? + +Observe (apart from the dramatic skill of it) how, when Shakespeare _has_ +to use the abstract noun 'concealment,' on an instant it turns into a +visible worm 'feeding' on the visible rose; how, having to use a second +abstract word 'patience,' at once he solidifies it in tangible stone. + +Turning to prose, you may easily assure yourselves that men who have +written learnedly on the art agree in treating our maxim--to prefer the +concrete term to the abstract, the particular to the general, the +definite to the vague--as a canon of rhetoric. Whately has much to say on +it. The late Mr E. J. Payne, in one of his admirable prefaces to Burke +(prefaces too little known and valued, as too often happens to +scholarship hidden away in a schoolbook), illustrated the maxim by +setting a passage from Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America" +alongside a passage of like purport from Lord Brougham's "Inquiry into +the Policy of the European Powers." Here is the deadly parallel:-- + +BURKE. + + In large bodies the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the + extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Ćgypt and + Arabia and Curdistan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion + in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism + itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience + as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and + the whole of the force and vigour of his authority in his centre is + derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. + +BROUGHAM. + + In all the despotisms of the East, it has been observed that the + further any part of the empire is removed from the capital, the more do + its inhabitants enjoy some sort of rights and privileges: the more + inefficacious is the power of the monarch; and the more feeble and + easily decayed is the organisation of the government. + +You perceive that Brougham has transferred Burke's thought to his own +page: but will you not also perceive how pitiably, by dissolving Burke's +vivid particulars into smooth generalities, he has enervated its hold on +the mind? + +'This particularising style,' comments Mr Payne, 'is the essence of +Poetry; and in Prose it is impossible not to be struck with the energy it +produces. Brougham's passage is excellent in its way: but it pales before +the flashing lights of Burke's sentences. The best instances of this +energy of style, he adds, are to be found in the classical writers of the +seventeenth century. 'When South says, "An Aristotle was but the rubbish +of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise," he communicates +more effectually the notion of the difference between the intellect of +fallen and of unfallen humanity than in all the philosophy of his sermons +put together.' + +You may agree with me, or you may not, that South in this passage is +expounding trash; but you will agree with Mr Payne and me that he uttered +it vividly. + +Let me quote to you, as a final example of this vivid style of writing, a +passage from Dr John Donne far beyond and above anything that ever lay +within South's compass:-- + + The ashes of an Oak in the Chimney are no epitaph of that Oak, to tell + me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it + sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust + of great persons' graves is speechless, too; it says nothing, it + distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest + not, as of a prince whom thou couldest not look upon will trouble thine + eyes if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirle-wind hath blown the + dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust + of the Church into the Churchyard, who will undertake to sift those + dusts again and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble + flowre [flour], this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran? So is the + death of Iesabel (Iesabel was a Queen) expressed. They shall not say + _This is Iesabel_; not only not wonder that it is, nor pity that it + should be; but they shall not say, they shall not know, _This is + Iesabel._ + +Carlyle noted of Goethe, 'his emblematic intellect, his never-failing +tendency to transform into _shape_, into _life_, the feeling that may +dwell in him. Everything has form, has visual excellence: the poet's +imagination bodies forth the forms of things unseen, and his pen turns +them into shape.' + +Perpend this, Gentlemen, and maybe you will not hereafter set it down to +my reproach that I wasted an hour of a May morning in a denunciation of +Jargon, and in exhorting you upon a technical matter at first sight so +trivial as the choice between abstract and definite words. + +A lesson about writing your language may go deeper than language; for +language (as in a former lecture I tried to preach to you) is your +reason, your [Greek: logos]. So long as you prefer abstract words, which +express other men's summarised concepts of things, to concrete ones which +as near as can be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand +material for your thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at +second-hand. If your language be Jargon, your intellect, if not your +whole character, will almost certainly correspond. Where your mind should +go straight, it will dodge: the difficulties it should approach with a +fair front and grip with a firm hand it will be seeking to evade or +circumvent. For the Style is the Man, and where a man's treasure is there +his heart, and his brain, and his writing, will be also. + + + + +LECTURE VI. + +ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE + +Thursday, May 15 + + +To-day, Gentlemen, leaving the Vanity Fair of Jargon behind us, we have +to essay a difficult country; of which, though fairly confident of his +compass-bearings, your guide confesses, that wide tracts lie outside his +knowledge--outside of anything that can properly be called his knowledge. +I feel indeed somewhat as Gideon must have felt when he divided his host +on the slopes of Mount Gilead, warning back all who were afraid. In +asking the remnant to follow as attentively as they can, I promise only +that, if Heaven carry us safely across, we shall have 'broken the back' +of the desert. + +In my last lecture but one, then,--and before our small interlude with +Jargon--the argument had carried us, more or less neatly, up to this +point: that the capital difficulty of verse consisted in saying ordinary +unemotional things, of bridging the flat intervals between high moments. +This point, I believe, we made effectively enough. + +Now, for logical neatness, we should be able to oppose a corresponding +point, that the capital difficulty of prose consists in saying +extraordinary things, in running it up from its proper level to these +high emotional, musical, moments. And mightily convenient that would be, +Gentlemen, if I were here to help you to answer scientific questions +about prose and verse instead of helping you, in what small degree I can, +to write. But in Literature (which, let me remind you yet once again, is +an art) you cannot classify as in a science. + +Pray attend while I impress on you this most necessary warning. In +studying literature, and still more in studying to write it, distrust all +classification! All classifying of literature intrudes 'science' upon an +art, and is artificially 'scientific'; a trick of pedants, that they may +make it the easier to examine you on things with which no man should have +any earthly concern, as I am sure he will never have a heavenly one. +Beetles, minerals, gases, may be classified; and to have them classified +is not only convenient but a genuine advance of knowledge. But if you had +to _make_ a beetle, as men are making poetry, how much would +classification help? To classify in a science is necessary for the +purpose of that science: to classify when you come to art is at the best +an expedient, useful to some critics and to a multitude of examiners. It +serves the art-critic to talk about Tuscan, Flemish, Pre-Raphaelite, +schools of painting. The expressions are handy, and we know more or less +what they intend. Just so handily it may serve us to talk about +'Renaissance poets,' 'the Elizabethans,' 'the Augustan age.' But such +terms at best cannot be scientific, precise, determinate, as for examples +the terms 'inorganic,' 'mammal,' 'univalve,' 'Old Red Sandstone' are +scientific, precise, determinate. An animal is either a mammal or it is +not: you cannot say as assuredly that a man is or is not an Elizabethan. +We call Shakespeare an Elizabethan and the greatest of Elizabethans, +though as a fact he wrote his most famous plays when Elizabeth was dead. +Shirley was but seven years old when Elizabeth died; yet (if +'Elizabethan' have any meaning but a chronological one) Shirley belongs +to the Elizabethan firmament, albeit but as a pale star low on the +horizon: whereas Donne--a post-Elizabethan if ever there was one--had by +1603 reached his thirtieth year and written almost every line of those +wonderful lyrics which for a good sixty years gave the dominant note to +Jacobean and Caroline poetry. + +In treating of an art we classify for handiness, not for purposes of +exact knowledge; and man (_improbus homo_) with his wicked inventions is +for ever making fools of our formulae. Be consoled--and, if you are wise, +thank Heaven--that genius uses our best-laid logic to explode it. + +Be consoled, at any rate, on finding that after deciding the capital +difficulty of prose to lie in saying extraordinary things, in running up +to the high emotional moments, the prose-writers explode and blow our +admirable conclusions to ruins. + +You see, we gave them the chance to astonish us when we defined prose as +'a record of human thought, dispensing with metre and using rhythm +laxly.' When you give genius leave to use something laxly, at its will, +genius will pretty surely get the better of you. + +Observe, now, following the story of English prose, what has happened. +Its difficulty--the inherent, the native disability of prose--is to +handle the high emotional moments which more properly belong to verse. +Well, we strike into the line of our prose-writers, say as early as +Malory. We come on this; of the Passing of Arthur:-- + + 'My time hieth fast,' said the king. Therefore said Arthur unto Sir + Bedivere, 'Take thou Excalibur my good sword, and go with it to yonder + water side; and when thou comest there I charge thee throw my sword in + that water and come again and tell me what there thou seest.' 'My + lord,' said Bedivere, 'Your commandment shall be done; and lightly + bring you word again.' So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he + beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and the haft was all of + precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich + sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.' + And then Sir Bedivere hid Excaliber under a tree. And so, as soon as he + might, he came again unto the king, and said he had been at the water + and had thrown the sword into the water, 'What saw thou there?' said + the king, 'Sir,' he said, 'I saw nothing but waves and winds.' + +Now I might say a dozen things of this and of the whole passage that +follows, down to Arthur's last words. Specially might I speak to you of +the music of its monosyllables--'"What sawest you there?" said the king... +"Do as well as thou mayest; for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I +will into the Vale of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if +thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul."' But, before making +comment at all, I shall quote you another passage; this from Lord +Berners' translation of Froissart, of the death of Robert Bruce:-- + + It fortuned that King Robert of Scotland was right sore aged and + feeble: for he was greatly charged with the great sickness, so that + there was no way for him but death. And when he felt that his end drew + near, he sent for such barons and lords of his realm as he trusted + best, and shewed them how there was no remedy with him, but he must + needs leave this transitory life.... Then he called to him the gentle + knight, Sir William Douglas, and said before all the lords, 'Sir + William, my dear friend, ye know well that I have had much ado in my + days to uphold and sustain the right of this realm; and when I had most + ado I made a solemn vow, the which as yet I have not accomplished, + whereof I am right sorry; the which was, if I might achieve and make an + end of all my wars, so that I might once have brought this realm in + rest and peace, then I promised in my mind to have gone and warred on + Christ's enemies, adversaries to our holy Christian faith. To this + purpose mine heart hath ever intended, but our Lord would not consent + thereto... And sith it is so that my body can not go, nor achieve that my + heart desireth, I will send the heart instead of the body, to + accomplish mine avow... I will, that as soon as I am trespassed out of + this world, that ye take my heart out of my body, and embalm it, and + take of my treasure as ye shall think sufficient for that enterprise, + both for yourself and such company as ye will take with you, and + present my heart to the Holy Sepulchre, whereas our Lord lay, seeing my + body can not come there. And take with you such company and purveyance + as shall be appertaining to your estate. And, wheresoever ye come, let + it be known how ye carry with you the heart of King Robert of Scotland, + at his instance and desire to be presented to the Holy Sepulchre.' Then + all the lords, that heard these words, wept for pity. + +There, in the fifteenth century and early in the sixteenth, you have +Malory and Berners writing beautiful English prose; prose the emotion of +which (I dare to say) you must recognise if you have ears to hear. So you +see that already our English prose not only achieves the 'high moment,' +but seems to obey it rather and be lifted by it, until we ask ourselves, +'Who could help writing nobly, having to tell how King Arthur died or how +the Bruce?' Yes, but I bid you observe that Malory and Berners are both +relating what, however noble, is quite simple, quite straightforward. It +is when prose attempts to _philosophise_, to _express thoughts_ as well +as to relate simple sayings and doings--it is then that the trouble +begins. When Malory has to philosophise death, to _think_ about it, this +is as far as he attains:-- + + 'Ah, Sir Lancelot,' said he, 'thou wert head of all Christian Knights! + And now I dare say,' said Sir Ector, 'that, Sir Lancelot, there thou + liest, thou were never matched of none earthly hands; and thou were the + curtiest knight that ever bare shield: and thou were the truest friend + to thy lover that ever strood horse, and thou were the truest lover of + a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou were the kindest man that + ever strooke with sword; and thou were the goodliest person that ever + came among press of knights; and thou were the meekest man and gentlest + that ever sat in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest Knight + to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.' + +Beautiful again, I grant! But note you that, eloquent as he can be on the +virtues of his dead friend, when Sir Ector comes to the thought of death +itself all he can accomplish is, 'And now I dare say that, Sir Lancelot, +there thou liest.' + +Let us make a leap in time and contrast this with Tyndale and the +translators of our Bible, how they are able to make St Paul speak of +death:-- + + So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this + mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass + the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O + death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? + +There you have something clean beyond what Malory or Berners could +compass: there you have a different kind of high moment--a high moment of +philosophising: there you have emotion impregnated with thought. It was +necessary that our English verse even after Chaucer, our English prose +after Malory and Berners, should overcome this most difficult gap (which +stands for a real intellectual difference) if it aspired to be what +to-day it is--a language of the first class, comparable with Greek and +certainly no whit inferior to Latin or French. + + * * * * * + +Let us leave prose for a moment, and see how Verse threw its bridge over +the gap. If you would hear the note of Chaucer at its deepest, you will +find it in the famous exquisite lines of the Prioress' Prologue:-- + + O moder mayde! O maydë moder fre! + O bush unbrent, brenning in Moyses' sight! + +in the complaint of Troilus, in the rapture of Griselda restored to her +children:-- + + O tendre, O dere, O yongë children myne, + Your woful moder wendë stedfastly + That cruel houndës or some foul vermyne + Hadde eten you; but God of his mercy + And your benignë fader tendrely + Hath doon you kept... + +You will find a note quite as sincere in many a carol, many a ballad, of +that time:-- + + He came al so still + There his mother was, + As dew in April + That falleth on the grass. + + He came al so still + To his mother's bour, + As dew in April + That falleth on the flour. + + He came al so still + There his mother lay, + As dew in April + That falleth on the spray. + + Mother and maiden + Was never none but she; + Well may such a lady + Goddes mother be. + +You get the most emotional note of the Ballad in such a stanza +as this, from "The Nut-Brown Maid":-- + + Though it be sung of old and young + That I should be to blame, + Their's be the charge that speak so large + In hurting of my name; + For I will prove that faithful love + It is devoid of shame; + In your distress and heaviness + To part with you the same: + And sure all tho that do not so + True lovers are they none: + For, in my mind, of all mankind + I love but you alone. + +All these notes, again, you will admit to be exquisite: but they gush +straight from the unsophisticated heart: they are nowise deep save in +innocent emotion: they are not _thoughtful_. So when Barbour breaks out +in praise of Freedom, he cries + + A! Fredome is a noble thing! + +And that is really as far as he gets. He goes on + + Fredome mayse man to hafe liking. + +(Freedom makes man to choose what he likes; that is, makes him free) + + Fredome all solace to man giffis, + He livis at ese that frely livis! + A noble hart may haif nane ese, + Na ellys nocht that may him plese, + Gif fredome fail'th: for fre liking + Is yharnit ouer all othir thing... + +--and so on for many lines; all saying the same thing, that man yearns +for Freedom and is glad when he gets it, because then he is free; all +hammering out the same observed fact, but all knocking vainly on the door +of thought, which never opens to explain what Freedom _is_. + +Now let us take a leap as we did with prose, and 'taking off' from the +Nut-Brown Maid's artless confession, + + in my mind, of all mankind + I love but you alone, + +let us alight on a sonnet of Shakespeare's-- + + Thy bosom is endearéd with all hearts + Which I by lacking have supposéd dead: + And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, + And all those friends which I thought buriéd. + How many a holy and obsequious tear + Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye + As interest of the dead!--which now appear + But things removed, that hidden in thee lie. + Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, + Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, + Who all their parts of me to thee did give; + That due of many now is mine alone: + Their images I loved I view in thee, + And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. + +What a new way of talking about love! Not a happier way--there is less of +heart's-ease in these doubts, delicacies, subtleties--but how much more +thoughtful! How has our Nut-Brown Maid eaten of the tree of knowledge! + +Well, there happened a Shakespeare, to do this for English Verse: and +Shakespeare was a miracle which I cheerfully leave others to rationalise +for you, having, for my own part and so far as I have fared in life, +found more profit in a capacity for simple wonder. + +But I can tell you how the path was made straight to that miracle. The +shock of the New Learning upon Europe awoke men and unsealed men's +eyes--unsealed the eyes of Englishmen in particular--to discover a +literature, and the finest in the world, which _habitually philosophised +life_: a literature which, whether in a chorus of Sophocles or a talk +reported by Plato, or in a ribald page of Aristophanes or in a knotty +chapter of Thucydides, was in one guise or another for ever asking _Why?_ +'What is man doing here, and why is he doing it?' 'What is his purpose? +his destiny?' 'How stands he towards those unseen powers--call them the +gods, or whatever you will--that guide and thwart, provoke, madden, +control him so mysteriously?' 'What are these things we call good and +evil, life, love, death?' + +These are questions which, once raised, haunt Man until he finds an +answer--some sort of answer to satisfy him. Englishmen, hitherto content +with the Church's answers but now aware of this great literature which +answered so differently--and having other reasons to suspect what the +Church said and did--grew aware that their literature had been as a child +at play. It had never philosophised good and evil, life, love or death: +it had no literary forms for doing this; it had not even the vocabulary. +So our ancestors saw that to catch up their lee-way--to make their report +worthy of this wonderful, alluring discovery--new literary forms had to +be invented--new, that is, in English: the sonnet, the drama, the verse +in which the actors were to declaim, the essay, the invented tale. Then, +for the vocabulary, obviously our fathers had either to go to Greek, +which had invented the A.B.C. of philosophising; or to seek in the other +languages which were already ahead of English in adapting that alphabet; +or to give our English Words new contents, new connotations, new +meanings; or lastly, to do all three together. + +Well, it was done; and in verse very fortunately done; thanks of course +to many men, but thanks to two especially--to Sir Thomas Wyat, who led +our poets to Italy, to study and adopt the forms in which Italy had cast +its classical heritage; and to Marlowe, who impressed blank verse upon +the drama. Of Marlowe I shall say nothing; for with what he achieved you +are familiar enough. Of Wyat I may speak at length to you, one of these +days; but here, to prepare you for what I hope to prove--that Wyat is one +of the heroes of our literature--I will give you three brief reasons why +we should honour his memory:-- + +(1) He led the way. On the value of that service I shall content myself +with quoting a passage from Newman:-- + + When a language has been cultivated in any particular department of + thought, and so far as it has been generally perfected, an existing + want has been supplied, and there is no need for further workmen. In + its earliest times, while it is yet unformed, to write in it at all is + almost a work of genius. It is like crossing a country before roads are + made communicating between place and place. The authors of that age + deserve to be Classics both because of what they do and because they + can do it. It requires the courage and force of great talent to compose + in the language at all; and the composition, when effected, makes a + permanent impression on it. + +This Wyat did. He was a pioneer and opened up a new country to +Englishmen. But he did more. + +(2) Secondly, he had the instinct to perceive that the lyric, if it would +philosophise life, love, and the rest, must boldly introduce the personal +note: since in fact when man asks questions about his fortune or destiny +he asks them most effectively in the first person. 'What am _I_ doing? +Why are _we_ mortal? Why do _I_ love _thee_?' + +This again Wyat did: and again he did more. + +For (3) thirdly--and because of this I am surest of his genius--again and +again, using new thoughts in unfamiliar forms, he wrought out the result +in language so direct, economical, natural, easy, that I know to this day +no one who can better Wyat's best in combining straight speech with +melodious cadence. Take the lines _Is it possible?_-- + + Is it possible? + For to turn so oft; + To bring that lowest that was most aloft: + And to fall highest, yet to light soft? + Is it possible? + + All is possible! + Whoso list believe; + Trust therefore first, and after preve; + As men wed ladies by licence and leave, + All is possible! + +or again-- + + Forget not! O forget not this!-- + How long ago hath been, and is, + The mind that never meant amiss: + Forget not yet! + +or again (can personal note go straighter?)-- + + And wilt thou leave me thus? + Say nay, say nay, for shame! + To save thee from the blame + --Of all my grief and grame. + And wilt thou leave me thus? + Say nay! say nay! + +(Say 'nay,' say 'nay'; and don't say, 'the answer is in the negative.') + +No: I have yet to mention the straightest, most natural of them all, and +will read it to you in full-- + + What should I say? + Since Faith is dead + And Truth away + From you is fled? + Should I be led + With doubleness? + Nay! nay! mistress. + + I promised you + And you promised me + To be as true + As I would be: + But since I see + Your double heart, + Farewell my part! + + Thought for to take + Is not my mind; + But to forsake + One so unkind; + And as I find, + So will I trust, + Farewell, unjust! + + Can ye say nay + But that you said + That I alway + Should be obeyed? + And--thus betrayed + Or that I wist! + Farewell, unkist! + +I observe it noted on p. 169 of Volume iii of "The Cambridge History of +English Literature" that Wyat 'was a pioneer and perfection was not to be +expected of him. He has been described as a man stumbling over obstacles, +continually falling but always pressing forward.' I know not to what +wiseacre we owe that pronouncement: but what do you think of it, after +the lyric I have just quoted? I observe, further, on p. 23 of the same +volume of the same work, that the Rev. T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of +the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland, informs us of +Wilson's "Arte of Rhetorique" that + + there is little or no originality in the volume, save, perhaps, the + author's condemnation of the use of French and Italian phrases and + idioms, which he complains are 'counterfeiting the kinges Englishe.' + The warnings of Wilson will not seem untimely if to be remembered that + the earlier English poets of the period--Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, + and the Earl of Surrey--drew their inspiration from Petrarch and + Ariosto, that their earlier attempts at poetry were translations from + Italian sonnets, and that their maturer efforts were imitations of the + sweet and stately measures and style of Italian poesie. The polish + which men like Wyatt and Surrey were praised for giving to our 'rude + and homely manner of vulgar poesie' might have led to some + degeneration. + +Might it, indeed? As another Dominie would have said, 'Pro-digious.' + + (Thought for to take + Is not my mind; + But to forsake + +This Principal of the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of +Scotland-- + + Farewell unkiss'd!) + +But I have lingered too long with this favourite poet of mine and left +myself room only to hand you the thread by following which you will come +to the melodious philosophising of Shakespeare's Sonnets-- + + Let me not to the marriage of true Minds + Admit impediment. Love is not love + Which alters where it alteration finds + Or bends with the remover to remove. + +Note the Latin words 'impediment,' 'alteration,' 'remove.' We are using +the language of philosophy here or, rather, the 'universal language,' +which had taken over the legacy of Greek. You may trace the use of it +growing as, for example, you trace it through the Elizabethan song-books: +and then (as I said) comes Shakespeare, and with Shakespeare the miracle. + +The education of Prose was more difficult, and went through more violent +convulsions. I suppose that the most of us--if, after reading a quantity +of Elizabethan prose, we had the courage to tell plain truth, undaunted +by the name of a great epoch--would confess to finding the mass of it +clotted in sense as well as unmusical in sound, a disappointment almost +intolerable after the simple melodious clarity of Malory and Berners. I, +at any rate, must own that the most of Elizabethan prose pleases me +little; and I speak not of Elizabethan prose at its worst, of such stuff +as disgraced the already disgraceful Martin Marprelate Controversy, but +of such as a really ingenious and ingenuous man like Thomas Nashe could +write at his average. For a sample:-- + + English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences such as + 'Blood is a beggar' and so forth; and if you entreat him fair on a + frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls + of tragical speeches.... Sufficeth them [that is, modern followers of + Seneca] to bodge up a blank verse with if's and and's, and others, + while for recreation after their candle-stuff, having starched their + beards most curiously, to make a peripatetical path into the inner + parts of the city, and spend two or three hours in turning over the + French _Doudie_, where they attract more infection in one minute than + they can do eloquence all the days of their life by conversing with any + authors of like argument. + +This may be worth studying historically, to understand the difficulties +our prose had to encounter and overcome. But no one would seriously +propose it as a model for those who would write well, which is our +present business. I have called it 'clotted.' It is, to use a word of the +time, 'farced' with conceits; it needs straining. + +Its one merit consists in this, that it is struggling, fumbling, to say +something: that is, to _make_ something. It is not, like modern Jargon, +trying to dodge something. English prose, in short, just here is passing +through a period of puberty, of green sickness: and, looking at it +historically, we may own that its throes are commensurate with the +stature of the grown man to be. + +These throes tear it every way. On the one hand we have Ascham, +pendantically enough, apologising that he writes in the English tongue +(yet with a sure instinct he does it):-- + + If any man would blame me, either for taking such a matter in hand, or + else for writing it in the English tongue, this answer I may make him, + that what the best of the realm think it honest for them to use, I, one + of the meanest sort, ought not to suppose it vile for me to write... And + as for the Latin or Greek tongue, everything is so excellently done in + them that none can do better. In the English tongue, contrary, + everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and the handling, + that no man can do worse. + +On the other hand you have Euphuism with its antithetical tricks and +poises, taking all prose by storm for a time: Euphuism, to be revived two +hundred years later, and find a new avatar in the Johnsonian balance; +Euphuism, dead now, yet alive enough in its day. + +For all these writers were alive: and I tell you it is an inspiriting +thing to be alive and trying to write English. All these authors were +alive and trying to _do_ something. Unconsciously for the most part they +were striving to philosophise the vocabulary of English prose and find a +rhythm for its periods. + +And then, as already had happened to our Verse, to our Prose too there +befel a miracle. + +You will not ask me 'What miracle?' I mean, of course, the Authorised +Version of the Bible. + +I grant you, to be sure, that the path to the Authorised Version was made +straight by previous translators, notably by William Tyndale. I grant you +that Tyndale was a man of genius, and Wyclif before him a man of genius. +I grant you that the forty-seven men who produced the Authorised Version +worked in the main upon Tyndale's version, taking that for their basis. +Nay, if you choose to say that Tyndale was a miracle in himself, I +cheerfully grant you that as well. But, in a lecture one must not +multiply miracles _praeter necessitatem_; and when Tyndale has been +granted you have yet to face the miracle that forty-seven men--not one of +them known, outside of this performance, for any superlative talent--sat +in committee and almost consistently, over a vast extent of +work--improved upon what Genius had done. I give you the word of an old +committee-man that this is not the way of committees--that only by +miracle is it the way of any committee. Doubtless the forty-seven were +all good men and godly: but doubtless also good and godly were the Dean +and Chapter who dealt with Alfred Steven's tomb of the Duke of Wellington +in St Paul's Cathedral; and you know what _they_ did. Individual genius +such as Tyndale's or even Shakespeare's, though we cannot explain it, we +may admit as occurring somehow, and not incredibly, in the course of +nature. But that a large committee of forty-seven should have gone +steadily through the great mass of Holy Writ, seldom interfering with +genius, yet, when interfering, seldom missing to improve: that a +committee of forty-seven should have captured (or even, let us say, +should have retained and improved) a rhythm so personal, so constant, +that our Bible has the voice of one author speaking through its many +mouths: that, Gentlemen, is a wonder before which I can only stand humble +and aghast. + +Does it or does it not strike you as queer that the people who set you +'courses of study' in English Literature never include the Authorised +Version, which not only intrinsically but historically is out and away +the greatest book of English Prose. Perhaps they can pay you the silent +compliment of supposing that you are perfectly acquainted with it?... I +wonder. It seems as if they thought the Martin Marprelate Controversy, +for example, more important somehow. + + 'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this + mortal shall have put on immortality...' + + 'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: + if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it + would utterly be contemned.' + + 'The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of + wrought gold.' + + '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.' + +When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, those rhythms for its +dearest beliefs, a literature is surely established. Just there I find +the effective miracle, making the blind to see, the lame to leap. 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, thinking and speaking. 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 or Bunyan--have their lips touched and +speak to the homelier tune. Proud men, scholars,--Milton, Sir Thomas +Browne--practice 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. + +What madman, then, will say 'Thus or thus far shalt thou go' to a prose +thus invented and thus with its free rhythms, after three hundred years, +working on the imagination of Englishmen? Or who shall determine its +range, whether of thought or of music? You have received it by +inheritance, Gentlemen: it is yours, freely yours--to direct your words +through life as well as your hearts. + + + + +LECTURE VII + +SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED + +Thursday, May 29 + + +Let me begin to-day, Gentlemen, with a footnote to my last lecture. It +ended, as you may remember, upon an earnest appeal to you, if you would +write good English, to study the Authorised Version of the Scriptures; to +learn from it, moreover, how by mastering _rhythm_, our Prose overcame +the capital difficulty of Prose and attuned itself to rival its twin +instrument, Verse; compassing almost equally with Verse man's thought +however sublime, his emotion however profound. + +Now in the course of my remarks I happened--maybe a little +incautiously--to call the Authorised Version a 'miracle'; using that +word in a colloquial sense, in which no doubt you accepted it; meaning +no more than that the thing passed my understanding. I have allowed that +the famous forty-seven owed an immense deal to earlier translators--to +the Bishops, to Tyndale, to the Wyclif Version, as themselves allowed it +eagerly in their preface:-- + + Truly (good Christian reader) wee never thought from the beginning that + we should needs to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one + a good one ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones + one principall good one, not justly to be excepted against: that hath + bene our indeavour, that our marke. + +(See [Footnote 1] at the end of this lecture.) + +Nevertheless the Authorised Version astounds me, as I believe it will +astound you when you compare it with earlier translations. Aristotle (it +has been said) invented Chance to cover the astonishing fact that there +were certain phenomena for which he found himself wholly unable to +account. Just so, if one may compare very small things with very great, I +spoke of the Authorised Version as a 'miracle.' It was, it remains, +marvellous to me. + +Should these deciduous discourses ever come to be pressed within the +leaves of a book, I believe their general meaning will be as clear to +readers as I hope it is to you who give me so much pleasure by pursuing +them--almost (shall I say?) like Wordsworth's Kitten with those other +falling leaves:-- + + That almost I could repine + That your transports are not mine. + +But meanwhile certain writers in the newspapers are assuming that by this +word 'miracle' I meant to suggest to you a something like plenary +inspiration at once supernatural and so authoritative that it were +sacrilege now to alter their text by one jot or tittle. + +Believe me, I intended nothing of the sort: for that, in my plain +opinion, would be to make a fetish of the book. One of these days I hope +to discuss with you what inspiration is: with what accuracy--with what +meaning, if any--we can say of a poet that he is inspired; questions +which have puzzled many wise men from Plato downwards. + +But certainly I never dreamt of claiming plenary inspiration for the +forty-seven. Nay, if you will have it, they now and again wrote stark +nonsense. Remember that I used this very same word 'miracle' of +Shakespeare, meaning again that the total Shakespeare quite outpasses my +comprehension; yet Shakespeare, too, on occasion talks stark nonsense, or +at any rate stark bombast. He never blotted a line--'I would he had +blotted a thousand' says Ben Jonson: and Ben Jonson was right. +Shakespeare could have blotted out two or three thousand lines: he was +great enough to afford it. Somewhere Matthew Arnold supposes us as +challenging Shakespeare over this and that weak or bombastic passage, and +Shakespeare answering with his tolerant smile, that no doubt we were +right, but after all, 'Did it greatly matter?' + +So we offer no real derogation to the forty-seven in asserting that here +and there they wrote nonsense. They could afford it. But we do stultify +criticism if, adoring the grand total of wisdom and beauty, we prostrate +ourselves indiscriminately before what is good and what is bad, what is +sublime sense and what is nonsense, and forbid any reviser to put forth a +hand to the ark. + +The most of us Christians go to church on Christmas Day, and there we +listen to this from Isaiah, chapter ix, verses 1-7:-- + + Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, + when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the + land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her + by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. + + The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they + that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the + light shined. + + Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they + joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men + rejoice when they divide the spoil. + + For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his + shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. + + For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and + garments rolled in blood: but this shall be with burning and fuel + of fire. + + For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. + +The forty-seven keep their majestic rhythm. But have you ever, sitting in +church on a Christmas morning, asked yourself what it all means, or if it +mean anything more than a sing-song according somehow with the holly and +ivy around the pillars? _'Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not +increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in +harvest,'_ But why--if the joy be not increased? _'For every battle of +the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood: but +this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.'_ Granted the rhythmical +antithesis, where is the real antithesis, the difference, the +improvement? If a battle there must be, how is burning better than +garments rolled in blood? And, in fine, what is it all about? Now let us +turn to the Revised Version:-- + + But there shall be no gloom to her that was in anguish. In the + former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the + land of Naphtali, but in the latter time hath he made it glorious, + by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations. + + The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they + that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the + light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast + increased their joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in + harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. + + For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the + rod of his oppressor, thou hast broken as in the day of Midian. + + For all the armour of the armed man in the tumult, and the + garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, for fuel of + fire. + + For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the + government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be + called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, + Prince of Peace. + +I say (knowing no Hebrew, merely assuming our Revisers to be at least no +worse scholars than the forty-seven) that here, with the old cadences +kept so far as possible, we are given sense in place of nonsense: and I +ask you to come to the Revised Version with a fair mind. I myself came to +it with some prejudice; in complete ignorance of Hebrew, and with no more +than the usual amount of Hellenistic Greek. I grant at once that the +Revised New Testament was a literary fiasco; largely due (if gossip may +be trusted) to trouble with the Greek Aorist, and an unwise decision--in +my opinion the most gratuitously unwise a translator can take--to use one +and the same English word, always and in every connotation, as +representing one and the same Greek word: for in any two languages few +words are precisely equivalent. A fiasco at any rate the Revised New +Testament was, deserving in a dozen ways and in a thousand passages the +scorn which Professor Saintsbury has recently heaped on it. But I protest +against the injustice of treating the two Revisions--of the New Testament +and of the Old--as a single work, and saddling the whole with the sins of +a part. For two years I spent half-an-hour daily in reading the +Authorised and Revised Versions side by side, marking as I went, and in +this way worked through the whole--Old Testament, Apocrypha, New +Testament. I came to it (as I have said) with some prejudice; but I +closed the books on a conviction, which my notes sustain for me, that the +Revisers of the Old Testament performed their task delicately, +scrupulously, on the whole with great good judgment; that the critic does +a wrong who brings them under his indiscriminate censure; that on the +whole they have clarified the sense of the Authorised Version while +respecting its consecrated rhythms; and that--to name an example, that +you may test my words and judge for yourselves--the solemn splendour of +that most wonderful poem, the story of Job, [Greek: dialampei], 'shines +through' the new translation as it never shone through the old. + + * * * * * + +And now Gentlemen (as George Herbert said on a famous occasion), let us +tune our instruments. + +Before discussing with you another and highly important question of style +in writing, I will ask you to look back for a few moments on the road we +have travelled. + +We have agreed that our writing should be _appropriate_: that it should +fit the occasion; that it should rise and fall with the subject, be grave +where that is serious, where it is light not afraid of what Stevenson in +"The Wrong Box" calls 'a little judicious levity.' If your writing +observe these precepts, it will be well-mannered writing. + +To be sure, much in addition will depend on yourself--on what you are or +have made yourself, since in writing the style can never be separated +from the man. But neither can it in the practice of virtue: yet, though +men differ in character, I do not observe that moralists forbear from +laying down general rules of excellence. Now if you will recall our +further conclusion, that writing to be good must be persuasive (since +persuasion is the only true intellectual process), and will test this by +a passage of Newman's I am presently to quote to you, from his famous +'definition of a gentleman,' I think you will guess pretty accurately the +general law of excellence I would have you, as Cambridge men, tribally +and particularly obey. + +Newman says of a gentleman that among other things: + + He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair + advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, + or insinuates evil which he dare not say out.... If he engages in + controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from + the blundering discourtesy of better perhaps, but less educated minds; + who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who + mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, + misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than + they found it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion: but he is too + clear-sighted to be unjust. He is simple as he is forcible, and as + brief as he is decisive. + +Enough for the moment on this subject: but commit these words to your +hearts, and you will not only triumph in newspaper controversy. You will +do better: you will avoid it. + +To proceed.--We found further that our writing should be _accurate_: +because language expresses thought--is, indeed, the only expression of +thought--and if we lack the skill to speak precisely, our thought will +remain confused, ill-defined. The editor of a mining paper in Denver, +U.S.A., boldly the other day laid down this law, that niceties of +language were mere 'frills': all a man needed was to 'get there,' that +is, to say what he wished in his own way. But just here, we found, lies +the mischief. You will not get there by hammering away on your own +untutored impulse. You must first be your own reader, chiselling out the +thought definitely for yourself: and, after that, must carve out the +intaglio yet more sharply and neatly, if you would impress its image +accurately upon the wax of other men's minds. We found that even for Men +of Science this neat clean carving of words was a very necessary +accomplishment. As Sir James Barrie once observed, 'The Man of Science +appears to be the only man who has something to say, just now--and the +only man who does not know how to say it.' But the trouble by no means +ends with Science. Our poets--those gifted strangely prehensile men who, +as I said in my first lecture, seem to be born with filaments by which +they apprehend, and along which they conduct, the half-secrets of life to +us ordinary mortals--our poets would appear to be scamping artistic +labour, neglecting to reduce the vague impressions to the clearly cut +image which is, after all, what helps. It may be a triumph that they have +taught modern French poetry to be suggestive. I think it would be more +profitable could they learn from France--that nation of fine workmen--to +be definite. + +But about 'getting there'--I ask you to remember Wolfe, with the seal of +his fate on him, stepping into his bateau on the dark St. Lawrence River +and quoting as they tided him over:-- + + The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, + And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, + Await alike th' inevitable hour; + The paths of glory lead but to the grave. + +'I had rather have written those lines,' said Wolfe, 'than conquer +Canada.' That is how our forefathers valued noble writing. The Denver +editor holds that you may write as you please so long as you get there. +Well, Wolfe got there: and so, in Wolfe's opinion, did Gray: but perhaps +to Wolfe and Gray, and to the Denver editor, 'there' happened to mean two +different places. Wolfe got to the Heights of Abraham. + +Further, it was against this loose adaptation of words to thought and to +things that we protested in our interpolated lecture on Jargon, which is +not so much bad writing as the avoidance of writing. The man who employs +Jargon does not get 'there' at all, even in a raw rough pioneering +fashion: he just walks around 'there' in the ambient tracks of others. +Let me fly as high as I can and quote you two recent achievements by +Cabinet Ministers, as reported in the Press:--(1) 'Mr McKenna's reasons +for releasing from Holloway Prison Miss Lenton while on remand charged +_in connexion with_ (sweet phrase!) the firing of the tea pavilion in Kew +Gardens are given in a letter which he has _caused to be forwarded_ to a +correspondent who inquired _as to_ the circumstances of the release. The +letter says "I am desired by the Home Secretary to say that Lilian Lenton +was reported by the medical officer at Holloway Prison to be in a state +of collapse and in imminent danger of death _consequent upon_ her refusal +to take food. Three courses were open--(1) To leave her to die; (2) To +attempt to feed her forcibly, which the medical officer advised would +probably entail death in her existing condition: (3) To release her. The +Home Secretary adopted the last course."' + +'Would probably entail death in her existing condition'! Will anyone tell +me how Mr McKenna or anyone else could kill, or (as he prefers to put it) +entail death upon, Miss Lenton in a non-existing condition? + +(2) Next take the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As we know, the Chancellor +of the Exchequer can use incisive speech when he chooses. On May 8th as +reported in next day's "Morning Post," Mr Lloyd George, answering a +question, delivered himself of this to an attentive Senate:-- + + With regard to Mr Noel Buxton's questions, I cannot answer for an + enquiry which is _of a private and confidential character_, for + although I am associated with it I am not associated with it as a + Minister of the Crown.... Those enquiries are of a very careful + systematic and scientific character, and are being conducted by the + ablest investigators in this country, some of whom have reputations + of international character. I am glad to think that the + investigation is of a most impartial character. + +It must be a comforting thought, that an inquiry of a private and +confidential character is also of a very systematic and scientific +character, and besides being of a most impartial character, is conducted +by men of international character--whatever that may happen to mean. What +_is_ an international character, and what would you give for one? + +We found that this way of talking, while pretending to be something +pontifical, is really not prose at all, nor reputable speech at all, but +Jargon; nor is the offence to be excused by pleading, as I have heard it +pleaded, that Mr Lloyd George was not using his own phraseology but +quoting from a paper supplied him by some permanent official of the +Treasury: since we select our civil servants among men of decent +education and their salaries warrant our stipulating that they shall be +able, at least, to speak and write their mother tongue. + +We laid down certain rules to help us in the way of straight +Prose:-- + +(1) _Always always prefer the concrete word to the abstract._ + +(2) _Almost always prefer the direct word to the circumlocution._ + +(3) _Generally, use transitive verbs, that strike their object; and use +them in the active voice, eschewing the stationary passive, with its +little auxiliary its's and was's, and its participles getting into the +light of your adjectives, which should be few. For, as a rough law, by +his use of the straight verb and by his economy of adjectives you can +tell a man's style, if it be masculine or neuter, writing or +'composition.'_ + +The authors of that capital handbook "The King's English," which I have +already recommended to you, add two rules:-- + +(4) _Prefer the short word to the long._ +(5) _Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance._ + +But these two precepts you would have to modify by so long a string of +exceptions that I do not commend them to you. In fact I think them false +in theory and likely to be fatal in practice. For, as my last lecture +tried to show, you no sooner begin to philosophise things instead of +merely telling a tale of them than you must go to the Mediterranean +languages: because in these man first learnt to discuss his 'why' and +'how,' and these languages yet guard the vocabulary. + +Lastly, we saw how, by experimenting with rhythm, our prose 'broke its +birth's invidious bar' and learnt to scale the forbidden heights. + +Now by attending to the few plain rules given above you may train +yourselves to write sound, straightforward, work-a-day English. But if +you would write melodious English, I fear the gods will require of you +what they ought to have given you at birth--something of an ear. Yet the +most of us have ears, of sorts; and I believe that, though we can only +acquire it by assiduous practice, the most of us can wonderfully improve +our talent of the ear. + +If you will possess yourselves of a copy of Quintilian or borrow one from +any library (Bohn's translation will do) and turn to his 9th book, you +will find a hundred ways indicated, illustrated, classified, in which a +writer or speaker can vary his Style, modulate it, lift or depress it, +regulate its balance. + +All these rules, separately worth studying, if taken together may easily +bewilder and dishearten you. Let me choose just two, and try to hearten +you by showing that, even with these two only, you can go a long way. + +Take the use of right emphasis. What Quintilian says of right +emphasis--or the most important thing he says--is this:-- + + There is sometimes an extraordinary force in some particular word, + which, if it be placed in no very conspicuous position in the middle + part of a sentence, is likely to escape the attention of the hearer + and to be obscured by the words surrounding it; but if it be put at + the end of the sentence is urged upon the reader's sense and + imprinted on his mind. + +That seems obvious enough, for English use as well as for Latin. 'The +wages of sin is Death'--anyone can see how much more emphatic that is +than 'Death is the wages of sin.' But let your minds work on this matter +of emphasis, and discover how emphasis has always its right point +somewhere, though it be not at all necessarily at the end of the +sentence. Take a sentence in which the strong words actually repeat +themselves for emphasis:-- + + Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city. + +Our first impulse would be to place the emphasis at the end:-- + + Babylon, that great city, is fallen, is fallen. + +The Latin puts it at the beginning:-- + + Cecidit, cecidit, Babylonia illa magna. + Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city. + +The forty-seven preserved the 'falling close' so exquisite in the Latin; +the emphasis, already secured by repetition, they accentuated by +lengthening the pause. I would urge on you that in every sentence there +is just a right point of emphasis which you must train your ears to +detect. So your writing will acquire not only emphasis, but balance, and +you will instinctively avoid such an ill-emphasised sentence as this, +which, not naming the author, I will quote for your delectation:-- + + 'Are Japanese Aprils always as lovely as this?' asked the man in the + light tweed suit of two others in immaculate flannels with crimson + sashes round their waists and puggarees folded in cunning plaits + round their broad Terai hats. + +Explore, next, what (though critics have strangely neglected it) to my +mind stands the first, or almost the first, secret of beautiful writing +in English, whether in prose or in verse; I mean that inter-play of +vowel-sounds in which no language can match us. We have so many vowel +sounds indeed, and so few vowels to express them, that the foreigner, +mistaking our modesty, complains against God's plenty. We alone, for +example, sound by a natural vowel that noble _I_, which other nations can +only compass by diphthongs. Let us consider that vowel for a moment or +two and mark how it leads off the dance of the Graces, its sisters:-- + + Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the + Lord is risen upon thee. + +Mark how expressively it drops to the solemn vowel 'O,' and +anon how expressively it reasserts itself to express rearisen +delight:-- + + Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is + risen upon thee. For behold the darkness shall cover the earth, and + gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and + his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to + thy light, and Kings to the brightness of thy rising. + +Take another passage in which the first lift of this _I_ vowel yields to +its graver sisters as though the sound sank into the very heart of the +sense. + + I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, + I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more + worthy to be called thy son.' + +'And am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Mark the deep O's. 'For +this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' 'O my +son, my son Absalom'--observe the I and O how they interchime, until the O +of sorrow tolls the lighter note down:-- + + O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died + for thee, O Absolom, my son, my son! + +Or take this lyric, by admission one of the loveliest written in this +present age, and mark here too how the vowels play and ring and chime and +toll. + + I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, + And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; + Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, + And live alone in the bee-loud glade.[2] + And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping + slow, + Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket + sings; + There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, + And evening full of the linnet's wings. + I will arise and go now, for always night and day + I hear lake-water lapping, with low sounds by the shore; + While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, + I hear it in the deep heart's core. + +I think if you will but open your ears to this beautiful vowel-play which +runs through all the best of our prose and poetry, whether you ever learn +to master it or not, you will have acquired a new delight, and one +various enough to last you though you live to a very old age. + +All this of which I am speaking is Art: and Literature being an Art, do +you not see how personal a thing it is--how it cannot escape being +personal? No two men (unless they talk Jargon) say the same thing in the +same way. As is a man's imagination, as is his character, as is the +harmony in himself, as is his ear, as is his skill, so and not otherwise +he will speak, so and not otherwise than they can respond to that +imagination, that character, that order of his intellect, that harmony of +his soul, his hearers will hear him. Let me conclude with this great +passage from Newman which I beg you, having heard it, to ponder:-- + + If then the power of speech is as great as any that can be named, + --if the origin of language is by many philosophers considered + nothing short of divine--if by means of words the secrets of the + heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief + is carried off, sympathy conveyed, experience recorded, and wisdom + perpetuated,--if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, + national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the + future, the East and the West are brought into communication with + each other,--if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and the + prophets of the human family--it will not answer to make light of + Literature or to neglect its study: rather we may be sure that, in + proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its + spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers + of like benefits to others--be they many or few, be they in the + obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life--who are united to + us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal + influence. + + + + +[Footnote 1: I append the following specimen translations of the famous +passage in St Paul's "First Epistle to the Corinthians" xv. 51 sqq. I +choose this because (1) it is an important passage; (2) it touches a high +moment of philosophising; (3) the comparison seems to me to represent +with great fairness to Tyndale the extent of the forty-seven's debt to +him; (4) it shows that they meant exactly what they said in their +Preface; and (5) it illustrates, towards the close, their genius for +improvement. From the Greek, Wyclif translates:-- + + Lo, I seie to you pryvyte of holi thingis | and alle we schulen rise + agen | but not alle we schuln be chaungid | in a moment in the + twynkelynge of an yë, in the last trumpe | for the trumpe schal + sowne: and deed men schulen rise agen with out corrupcion, and we + schuln be changid | for it bihoveth this corruptible thing to clothe + uncorropcion and this deedly thing to putte aweye undeedlynesse. But + whanne this deedli thing schal clothe undeedlynesse | thanne schal + the word be don that is written | deeth is sopun up in victorie | + deeth, where is thi victorie? deeth, where is thi pricke? + +Tyndale:-- + + Beholde I shewe you a mystery. We shall not all slepe: but we shall + all be chaunged | and that in a moment | and in the twinclinge of an + eye | at the sounde of the last trompe. For the trompe shall blowe, + and the deed shall ryse incorruptible and we shalbe chaunged. For + this corruptible must put on incorruptibilite: and this mortall must + put on immortalite. When this corruptible hath put on + incorruptibilite | and this mortall hath put on immortalite: than + shalbe brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Deeth is + consumed in to victory.' Deeth, where is thy stynge? Hell, where is + thy victory? + +The Authorised Version:-- + + Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleepe, but wee shall + all be changed, in a moment, in the twinckling of an eye, at the + last trumpe, (for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be + raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed). For this corruptible + must put on incorruption, and this mortall must put on immortalitie. + So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this + mortall shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to + passe the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in + victory.' O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy + victory?] + + +[Footnote 2: I E O : I O E + I O : E OU A + 'As musing slow, I hail ('as m_u_sing sl_o_w _I_ ha_i_l) + Thy genial loved return.' (Th_y_ g_e_nial l_o_ved ret_u_rn.') + COLLINS, "Ode to Evening."] + + + + +LECTURE VIII. + +ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I) + +Wednesday, October 22 + + +You may think it strange, Gentlemen, that of a course of ten lectures +which aim to treat English Literature as an affair of practice, I should +propose to spend two in discussing our literary lineage: a man's lineage +and geniture being reckoned, as a rule, among the things he cannot be +reasonably asked to amend. But since of high breeding is begotten (as +most of us believe) a disposition to high thoughts, high deeds; since to +have it and be modestly conscious of it is to carry within us a faithful +monitor persuading us to whatsoever in conduct is gentle, honourable, of +good repute, and so silently dissuading us from base thoughts, low ends, +ignoble gains; seeing, moreover, that a man will often do more to match +his father's virtue than he would to improve himself; I shall endeavour, +in this and my next lecture, to scour that spur of ancestry and present +it to you as so bright and sharp an incentive that you, who read English +Literature and practise writing here in Cambridge, shall not pass out +from her insensible of the dignity of your studies, or without pride or +remorse according as you have interpreted in practice the motto, +_Noblesse oblige_. + + 'Tis wisdom, and that high, + For men to use their fortune reverently + Even in youth. + +Let me add that, just as a knowledge of his family failings will help one +man in economising his estate, or warn another to shun for his health the +pleasures of the table, so some knowledge of our lineage in letters may +put us, as Englishmen, on the watch for certain national defects (for +such we have), on our guard against certain sins which too easily beset +us. Nay, this watchfulness may well reach down from matters of great +moment to seeming trifles. It is good for us to recognise with Wordsworth +that + + We must be free or die, who speak the tongue + That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold + Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung + Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. + +But, though less important, it is good also to recognise that, as sons of +Cambridge, we equally offend against her breeding when in our scientific +writings we allow ourselves to talk of a microbe as an 'antibody.' + +Now, because a great deal of what I have to say this morning, if not +heretical, will yet run contrary to the vogue and practice of the Schools +for these thirty years, I will take the leap into my subject over a +greater man's back and ask you to listen with particular attention to the +following long passage from a writer whose opinion you may challenge, but +whose authority to speak as a master of English prose no one in this room +will deny. + + When (says Cardinal Newman) we survey the stream of human affairs for + the last three thousand years, we find it to run thus:--At first sight + there is so much fluctuation, agitation, ebbing and flowing, that we + may despair to discern any law in its movements, taking the earth as + its bed and mankind as its contents; but on looking more closely and + attentively we shall discern, in spite of the heterogeneous materials + and the various histories and fortunes which are found in the race of + man during the long period I have mentioned, a certain formation amid + the chaos--one and one only,--and extending, though not over the whole + earth, yet through a very considerable portion of it. Man is a social + being and can hardly exist without society, and in matter of fact + societies have ever existed all over the habitable earth. The greater + part of these associations have been political or religious, and have + been comparatively limited in extent and temporary. They have been + formed and dissolved by the force of accidents, or by inevitable + circumstances; and when we have enumerated them one by one we have made + of them all that can be made. But there is one remarkable association + which attracts the attention of the philosopher, not political nor + religious--or at least only partially and not essentially such--which + began in the earliest times and grew with each succeeding age till it + reached its complete development, and then continued on, vigorous and + unwearied, and still remains as definite and as firm as ever it was. + Its bond is a _common civilisation_: and though there are other + civilisations in the world, as there are other societies, yet _this_ + civilisation, 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 + on the face of the earth, that the association may fitly assume to + itself the title of 'Human Society,' and _its_ civilisation the + abstract term 'Civilisation.' + + There are indeed great outlying portions of mankind which are not, + perhaps never have been, included in this Human Society; still they are + outlying portions and nothing else, fragmentary, unsociable, solitary + and unmeaning, protesting and revolting against the grand central + formation of which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into + a second whole. I am not denying, of course, the civilisation of the + Chinese, for instance, though it be not our civilisation; but it is a + huge, stationary, unattractive, morose civilisation. Nor do I deny a + civilisation to the Hindoos, nor to the ancient Mexicans, nor to the + Saracens, nor (in a certain sense) to the Turks; but each of these + races has its own civilisation, as separate from one another as from + ours. + + I do not see how they can be all brought under one idea.... + + Gentlemen, let me here observe that I am not entering upon the question + of races, or upon their history. I have nothing to do with ethnology; I + take things as I find them on the surface of history and am but + classifying phenomena. 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 to + deserve to be called the Intellect and the Mind of the Human Kind. + Starting as it does, and advancing from certain centres, till their + respective influences intersect and conflict, and then at length + intermingle and combine, a common Thought has been generated, and a + common Civilisation defined and established. Egypt is one such starting + point, Syria, another, Greece a third, Italy a fourth and North Africa + a fifth--afterwards France and Spain. As time goes on, and as + colonisation and conquest work their changes, we see a great + association of nations formed, of which the Roman Empire is the + maturity and the most intelligible expression: an association, however, + not political but mental, based on the same intellectual ideas and + advancing by common intellectual methods.... In its earliest age it + included far more of the Eastern world than it has since; in these + later times it has taken into its compass a new hemisphere; in the + Middle Ages it lost Africa, Egypt and Syria, and extended itself to + Germany, Scandinavia and the British Isles. At one time its territory + was flooded by strange and barbarous races, but the existing + civilisation was vigorous enough to vivify what threatened to stifle + it, and to assimilate to the old social forms what came to expel them: + and thus the civilisation of modern times remains what it was of old; + not Chinese, or Hindoo, or Mexican, or Saracen ... but the lineal + descendant, or rather the continuation--_mutatis mutandis_--of the + civilisation which began in Palestine and Greece. + +To omit, then, all minor debts such as what of arithmetic, what of +astronomy, what of geography, we owe to the Saracen, from Palestine we +derive the faith of Europe shared (in the language of the Bidding Prayer) +by all Christian people dispersed throughout the world; as to Greece we +owe the rudiments of our Western art, philosophy, letters; and not only +the rudiments but the continuing inspiration, so that--though entirely +superseded in worship, as even in the Athens of Pericles they were +worshipped only by an easy, urbane, more than half humorous +tolerance--Apollo and the Muses, Zeus and the great ones of Olympus, +Hermes and Hephaestus, Athene in her armour, with her vanquisher the +foam-born irresistible Aphrodite, these remain the authentic gods of our +literature, beside whom the gods of northern Europe--Odin, Thor, +Freya--are strangers, unhomely, uncanny as the shadows of unfamiliar +furniture on the walls of an inn. Sprung though great numbers of us are +from the loins of Northmen, it is in these gracious deities of the South +that we find the familiar and the real, as from the heroes of the +sister-island, Cucullain and Concobar, we turn to Hercules, to Perseus, +to Bellerophon, even to actual men of history, saying 'Give us Leonidas, +give us Horatius, give us Regulus. These are the mighty ones we +understand, and from whom, in a direct line of tradition, we understand +Harry of Agincourt, Philip Sidney and our Nelson.' + +Now since, of the Mediterranean peoples, the Hebrews discovered the +Unseen God whom the body of Western civilisation has learnt to worship; +since the Greeks invented art, philosophy, letters; since Rome found and +developed the idea of imperial government, of imperial colonies as +superseding merely fissiparous ones, of settling where she conquered +(_ubi Romanus vicit ibi habitat_) and so extending with Government that +system of law which Europe still obeys; we cannot be surprised that +Israel, Greece, Rome--each in turn--set store on a pure ancestry. Though +Christ be the veritable Son of God, his ancestry must be traced back +through his supposed father Joseph to the stem of Jesse, and so to +Abraham, father of the race. Again, as jealously as the Evangelist +claimed Jesus for a Hebrew of the Hebrews, so, if you will turn to the +"Menexenus" of Plato in the Oration of Aspasia over the dead who perished +in battle, you hear her claim that 'No Pelopes nor Cadmians, nor +Egyptians, nor Dauni, nor the rest of the crowd of born foreigners dwell +with us; but ours is the land of pure Hellenes, free from admixture.' +These proud Athenians, as you know, wore brooches in the shape of golden +grasshoppers, to signify that they were [Greek: autochthones], children +of Attica, sprung direct from her soil. And so, again, the true Roman, +while enlarging Rome's citizenship over Asia, Africa, Gaul, to our remote +Britain, insisted, even in days of the later Empire, on his pure descent +from Ćneas and Romulus-- + + Unde Remnes et Quirites proque prole posterum + Romuli matrem crearet et nepotem Cćsarem. + + With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew + From Romulus down to our Cćsar-last, best of that blood, of that threw. + +Here is a boast that we English must be content to forgo. We may wear a +rose on St George's day, if we are clever enough to grow one. The Welsh, +I dare say, have less difficulty with the leek. But April the 23rd is not +a time of roses that we can pluck them as we pass, nor can we claim St +George as a compatriot--_Cappadocius nostras_. We have, to be sure, a few +legendary heroes, of whom King Arthur and Robin Hood are (I suppose) the +greatest; but, save in some Celtic corners of the land, we have few +fairies, and these no great matter; while, as for tutelary gods, our +springs, our wells, our groves, cliffs, mountain-sides, either never +possessed them or possess them no longer. Not of our landscape did it +happen that + + The lonely mountains o'er, + And the resounding shore, + A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; + From haunted spring and dale + Edg'd with poplar pale, + The parting Genius is with sighing sent. + +--for the sufficient reason that no tutelary gods of importance were ever +here to be dispersed. + +Let me press this home upon you by an illustration which I choose with +the double purpose of enforcing my argument and sending you to make +acquaintance (if you have not already made it) with one of the loveliest +poems written in our time. + +In one of Pliny's letters you will find a very pleasant description of +the source of the Clitumnus, a small Umbrian river which, springing from +a rock in a grove of cypresses, descends into the Tinia, a tributary of +the Tiber. 'Have you ever,' writes Pliny to his friend Romanus-- + + Have you ever seen the source of the Clitumnus? I suppose not, as I + never heard you mention it. Let me advise you to go there at once. I + have just visited it and am sorry that I put off my visit so long. At + the foot of a little hill, covered with old and shady cypress trees, a + spring gushes and bursts into a number of streamlets of various size. + Breaking, so to speak, forth from its imprisonment, it expands into a + broad basin, so clear and transparent that you may count the pebbles + and little pieces of money which are thrown into it. From this point + the force and weight of the water, rather than the slope of the ground, + hurry it onward. What was a mere spring becomes a noble river, broad + enough to allow vessels to pass each other as they sail with or against + the stream. The current is so strong, though the ground is level, that + barges of beam, as they go down, require no assistance of oars; while + to go up is as much as can be done with oars and long poles.... The banks + are clothed with abundant ash and poplar, so distinctly reflected in + the transparent waters that they seem to be growing at the bottom of + the river and can be counted with ease. The water is as cold as snow + and as pure in colour. Hard by the spring stands an ancient and + venerable temple with a statue of the river-god Clitumnus, clothed in + the customary robe of state. The Oracles here delivered attest the + presence of the deity. Close in the precinct stand several little + chapels dedicated to particular gods, each of whom owns his distinctive + name and special worship, and is the tutelary deity of a runlet. For + beside the principal spring, which is, as it were, the parent of all + the rest, there are several smaller ones which have their distinct + sources but unite their waters with the Clitumnus, over which a bridge + is thrown, separating the sacred part of the river from that which is + open to general use. Above the bridge you may only go in a boat; below + it, you may swim. The people of the town of Hispallum, to whom Augustus + gave this place, furnish baths and lodgings at the public expense. + There are several small dwelling-houses on the banks, in specially + picturesque situations, and they stand quite close to the waterside. In + short, everything in the neighbourhood will give you pleasure. You may + also amuse yourself with numberless inscriptions on the pillars and + walls, celebrating the praises of the stream and of its tutelary god. + Many of these you will admire, and some will make you laugh. But no! + You are too well cultivated to laugh at such things. Farewell. + +Clitumnus still gushes from its rocks among the cypresses, as in Pliny's +day. The god has gone from his temple, on the frieze of which you may +read this later inscription--'_Deus Angelorum, qui fecit Resurrectionem._' +After many centuries and almost in our day, by the brain of Cavour and +the sword of Garibaldi, he has made a resurrection for Italy. As part of +that resurrection (for no nation can live and be great without its poet) +was born a true poet, Carducci. He visited the bountiful, everlasting +source, and of what did he sing? Possess yourselves, as for a shilling +you may, of his Ode "Alle fonte del Clitumno," and read: for few nobler +poems have adorned our time. He sang of the weeping willow, the ilex, +ivy, cypress and the presence of the god still immanent among them. He +sang of Umbria, of the ensigns of Rome, of Hannibal swooping down over +the Alps; he sang of the nuptials of Janus and Comesena, progenitors of +the Italian people; of nymphs, naiads, and the moonlight dances of +Oreads; of flocks descending to the river at dusk, of the homestead, the +bare-footed mother, the clinging child, the father, clad in goat-skins, +guiding the ox-wagon; and he ends on the very note of Virgil's famous +apostrophe + + _Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra..._ + +with an invocation of Italy--Italy, mother of bullocks for agriculture, +of wild colts for battle, mother of corn and of the vine, Roman mother of +enduring laws and mediaeval mother of illustrious arts. The mountains, +woods and waters of green Umbria applaud the song, and across their +applause is heard the whistle of the railway train bearing promise of new +industries and a new national life. + + E tu, pia madre di giovenchi invitti + a franger glebe e rintegrar maggesi + e d' annitrenti in guerra aspri polledri, + Italia madre, + + madre di biade e viti e leggi eterne + ed incliti arti a raddolcir la vita + salve! a te i canti de l' antica lode + io rinovello. + + Plaudono i monti al carme e i boschi e l' acque + de l' Umbria verde: in faccia a noi fumando + ed anelando nuove industrie in corsa + fischia il vapore. + + And thou, O pious mother of unvanquished + Bullocks to break glebe, to restore the fallow, + And of fierce colts for neighing in the battle: + Italy, mother, + + Mother of corn and vines and of eternal + Laws and illustrious arts the life to sweeten, + Hail, hail, all hail! The song of ancient praises + Renew I to thee! + + The mountains, woods and waters of green Umbria + Applaud the song: and here before us fuming + And longing for new industries, a-racing + Whistles the white steam. + +(I quote from a translation by Mr E.J. Watson, recently published by +Messrs J.W. Arrowsmith, of Bristol.) + +I put it to you, Gentlemen, that, worthy as are the glories of England to +be sung, this note of Carducci's we cannot decently or honestly strike. +Great lives have been bled away into Tweed and Avon: great spirits have +been oared down the Thames to Traitor's Gate and the Tower. Deeds done on +the Cam have found their way into history. But I once traced the Avon to +its source under Naseby battlefield, and found it issuing from the +fragments of a stucco swan. No god mounts guard over the head-water of +the Thames; and the only Englishman who boldly claims a divine descent is +(I understand) an impostor who runs an Agapemone. In short we are a mixed +race, and our literature is derivative. Let us confine our pride to those +virtues, not few, which are honestly ours. A Roman noble, even to-day, +has some excuse for reckoning a god in his ancestry, or at least a wolf +among its wet-nurses: but of us English even those who came over with +William the Norman have the son of a tanner's daughter for escort. I very +well remember that, the other day, writers who vindicated our hereditary +House of Lords against a certain Parliament Act commonly did so on the +ground that since the Reform Bill of 1832, by inclusion of all that was +eminent in politics, war and commerce, the Peerage had been so changed as +to know itself no longer for the same thing. That is our practical way. + +At all events, the men who made our literature had never a doubt, as they +were careless to dissimulate, that they were conquering our tongue to +bring it into the great European comity, the civilisation of Greece and +Rome. An Elizabethan writer, for example, would begin almost as with a +formula by begging to be forgiven that he has sought to render the divine +accent of Plato, the sugared music of Ovid, into our uncouth and +barbarous tongue. There may have been some mock-modesty in this, but it +rested on a base of belief. Much of the glory of English Literature was +achieved by men who, with the splendour of the Renaissance in their eyes, +supposed themselves to be working all the while upon pale and borrowed +shadows. + +Let us pass the enthusiasms of days when 'bliss was it in that dawn to be +alive' and come down to Alexander Pope and the Age of Reason. Pope at one +time proposed to write a History of English Poetry, and the draft scheme +of that History has been preserved. How does it begin? Why thus:-- + + ERA I. + +1. School of Provence Chaucer's Visions. _Romaunt of the Rose._ + _Piers Plowman._ Tales from Boccace. Gower. + +2. School of Chaucer Lydgate. + T. Occleve. + Walt. de Mapes (a bad error, that!). + Skelton. + +3. School of Petrarch E. of Surrey. + Sir Thomas Wyatt. + Sir Philip Sidney. + G. Gascoyn. + +4. School of Dante Lord Buckhurst's _Induction. Gorboduc._ + Original of Good Tragedy. Seneca his model. + +--and so on. The scheme after Pope's death came into the hands of Gray, +who for a time was fired with the notion of writing the History in +collaboration with his friend Mason. Knowing Gray's congenital +self-distrust, you will not be surprised that in the end he declined the +task and handed it over to Warton. But, says Mant in his Life of Warton, +'their design'--that is, Gray's design with Mason--'was to introduce +specimens of the Proveçal poetry, and of the Scaldic, British and Saxon, +as preliminary to what first deserved to be called English poetry, about +the time of Chaucer, from whence their history properly so called was to +commence.' A letter of Gray's on the whole subject, addressed to Warton, +is extant, and you may read it in Dr Courthope's "History of English +Poetry." + +Few in this room are old enough to remember the shock of awed surmise +which fell upon young minds presented, in the late 'seventies or early +'eighties of the last century, with Freeman's "Norman Conquest" or +Green's "Short History of the English People"; in which as through paring +clouds of darkness, we beheld our ancestry, literary as well as +political, radiantly legitimised; though not, to be sure, in the England +that we knew--but far away in Sleswick, happy Sleswick! 'Its pleasant +pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, its prim little townships +looking down on inlets of purple water, were then but a wild waste of +heather and sand, girt along the coast with sunless woodland, broken here +and there with meadows which crept down to the marshes and to the sea.' +But what of that? There--surely there, in Sleswick--had been discovered +for us our august mother's marriage lines; and if the most of that bright +assurance came out of an old political skit, the "Germania" of Tacitus, +who recked at the time? For along followed Mr Stopford Brooke with an +admirable little Primer published at one shilling, to instruct the +meanest of us in our common father's actual name--Beowulf. + + _Beowulf_ is an old English Epic.... There is not one word about our + England in the poem.... The whole poem, pagan as it is, is English + to its very root. It is sacred to us; our Genesis, the book of + our origins. + +Now I am not only incompetent to discuss with you the more recondite +beauties of "Beowulf" but providentially forbidden the attempt by the +conditions laid down for this Chair. I gather--and my own perusal of the +poem and of much writing about it confirms the belief--that it has been +largely over-praised by some critics, who have thus naturally provoked +others to underrate it. Such things happen. I note, but without +subscribing to it, the opinion of Vigfússon and York Powell, the learned +editors of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," that in the "Beowulf" we have +'an epic completely metamorphosed in form, blown out with long-winded +empty repetitions and comments by a book poet, so that one must be +careful not to take it as a type of the old poetry,' and I seem to hear +as from the grave the very voice of my old friend the younger editor in +that unfaltering pronouncement. But on the whole I rather incline to +accept the cautious surmise of Professor W. P. Ker that 'a reasonable +view of the merit of Beowulf is not impossible, though rash enthusiasm +may have made too much of it; while a correct and sober taste may have +too contemptuously refused to attend to Grendel and the Firedrake,' and +to leave it at that. I speak very cautiously because the manner of the +late Professor Freeman, in especial, had a knack of provoking in gentle +breasts a resentment which the mind in its frailty too easily converted +to a prejudice against his matter: while to men trained to admire +Thucydides and Tacitus and acquainted with Lucian's 'Way to Write +History' ([Greek: Pos dei istorian suggraphein]) his loud insistence that +the art was not an art but a science, and moreover recently invented by +Bishop Stubbs, was a perpetual irritant. + +But to return to "Beowulf"--You have just heard the opinions of scholars +whose names you must respect. I, who construe Anglo-Saxon with +difficulty, must admit the poem to contain many fine, even noble, +passages. Take for example Hrothgar's lament for Ćschere:-- + + Hróthgar mathelode, helm Scyldinga: + 'Ne frin thú ćfter sćlum; sorh is geniwod + Denigea leódum; deád is Ćschere, + Yrmenláfes yldra bróthor, + Mín rún-wita, ond min rćd-bora; + Eaxl-gestealla, thonne we on orlege + Hafelan wéredon, thonne hniton fethan, + Eoferas cnysedan: swylc scolde eorl wesan + Ćtheling ćr-gód, swylc Ćschere wćs.' + + (Hrothgar spake, helm of the Scyldings: 'Ask not after good tidings. + Sorrow is renewed among the Dane-folk. Dead is Ćschere, Yrmenlaf's + elder brother, who read me rune and bore me rede; comrade at shoulder + when we fended our heads in war and the boar-helms rang. Even so + should we each be an atheling passing good, as Ćschere was.') + +This is simple, manly, dignified. It avoids the besetting sin of the +Anglo-Saxon gleeman--the pretentious trick of calling things 'out of +their right names' for the sake of literary effect (as if e.g. the sea +could be improved by being phrased into 'the seals' domain'). Its +Anglo-Saxon _staccato_, so tiresome in sustained narrative, here happens +to suit the broken utterance of mourning. In short, it exhibits the +Anglo-Saxon Muse at her best, not at her customary. But set beside it a +passage in which Homer tells of a fallen warrior--at haphazard, as it +were, a single corpse chosen from the press of battle-- + + [Greek: polla de chermadia megal aspidas estuphelixam + marnamenon amph auton o d en strophaliggi konies + keito megas megalosti, lelasmenos ipposunaom.] + +Can you--can anyone--compare the two passages and miss to see that they +belong to two different kingdoms of poetry? I lay no stress here on +'architectonics.' I waive that the "Iliad" is a well-knit epic and the +story of "Beowulf" a shapeless monstrosity. I ask you but to note the +difference of note, of accent, of mere music. And I have quoted you but a +passage of the habitual Homer. To assure yourselves that he can rise even +from this habitual height to express the extreme of majesty and of human +anguish in poetry which betrays no false note, no strain upon the store +of emotion man may own with self-respect and exhibit without derogation +of dignity, turn to the last book of the "Iliad" and read of Priam +raising to his lips the hand that has murdered his son. I say confidently +that no one unable to distinguish this, as poetry, from the very best of +"Beowulf" is fit to engage upon business as a literary critic. + +In "Beowulf" then, as an imported poem, let us allow much barbarian +merit. It came of dubious ancestry, and it had no progeny. The pretence +that our glorious literature derives its lineage from "Beowulf" is in +vulgar phrase 'a put up job'; a falsehood grafted upon our text-books by +Teutonic and Teutonising professors who can bring less evidence for it +than will cover a threepenny-piece. Its run for something like that +money, in small educational manuals, has been in its way a triumph of +pedagogic _réclame_. + +Our rude forefathers--the author of "The Rape of the Lock" and of the +"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard"--knew nothing of the Exeter and +Vercelli Books, nothing of the Ruthwell Cross. But they were poets, +practitioners of our literature in the true line of descent, and they +knew certain things which all such artists know by instinct. So, before +our historians of thirty-odd years ago started to make Chaucer and +Beowulf one, these rude forefathers made them two. 'Nor am I confident +they erred.' Rather I am confident, and hope in succeeding lectures to +convince you, that, venerable as Anglo-Saxon is, and worthy to be studied +as the mother of our vernacular speech (as for a dozen other reasons +which my friend Professor Chadwick will give you), its value is +historical rather than literary, since from it our Literature +is not descended. Let me repeat it in words that admit of no +misunderstanding--_From Anglo-Saxon Prose, from Anglo-Saxon Poetry our +living Prose and Poetry have, save linguistically, no derivation_. I +shall attempt to demonstrate that, whether or not Anglo-Saxon +literature, such as it was, died of inherent weakness, die it did, and +of its collapse the "Vision of Piers Plowman" may be regarded as the +last dying spasm. I shall attempt to convince you that Chaucer did not +inherit any secret from Caedmon or Cynewulf, but deserves his old title, +'Father of English Poetry,' because through Dante, through Boccaccio, +through the lays and songs of Provence, he explored back to the +Mediterranean, and opened for Englishmen a commerce in the true +intellectual mart of Europe. I shall attempt to heap proof on you that +whatever the agency--whether through Wyat or Spenser, Marlowe or +Shakespeare, or Donne, or Milton, or Dryden, or Pope, or Johnson, or +even Wordsworth--always our literature has obeyed, however +unconsciously, the precept _Antiquam exquirite matrem_, 'Seek back to +the ancient mother'; always it has recreated itself, has kept itself +pure and strong, by harking back to bathe in those native--yes, +_native_--Mediterranean springs. + +Do not presume me to be right in this. Rather, if you will, presume me to +be wrong until the evidence is laid out for your judgment. But at least +understand to-day how profoundly a man, holding that view, must deplore +the whole course of academical literary study during these thirty years +or so, and how distrust what he holds to be its basal fallacies. + +For, literature being written in language, yet being something quite +distinct, and the development of our language having been fairly +continuous, while the literature of our nation exhibits a false start--a +break, silence, repentance, then a renewal on right glorious lines--our +students of literature have been drilled to follow the specious +continuance while ignoring the actual break, and so to commit the one +most fatal error in any study; that of mistaking the inessential for the +essential. + +As I tried to persuade you in my Inaugural Lecture, our first duty to +Literature is to study it absolutely, to understand, in Aristotelian +phrase, its [Greek: to ti en einae]; what it _is_ and what it _means_. If +that be our quest, and the height of it be realised, it is nothing to +us--or almost nothing--to know of a certain alleged poet of the fifteenth +century, that he helped us over a local or temporary disturbance in our +vowel-endings. It is everything to have acquired and to possess such a +norm of Poetry within us that we know whether or not what he wrote was +POETRY. + +Do not think this easy. The study of right literary criticism is much +more difficult than the false path usually trodden; so difficult, indeed, +that you may easily count the men who have attempted to grasp the great +rules and apply them to writing as an art to be practised. But the names +include some very great ones--Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian, Corneille, +Boileau, Dryden, Johnson, Lessing, Coleridge, Goethe, Sainte-Beuve, +Arnold: and the study, though it may not find its pattern in our time, is +not unworthy to be proposed for another attempt before a great +University. + + + + +LECTURE IX. + +ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II) + +Wednesday, November 5 + + +Some of you whose avocations call them, from time to time, to Newmarket +may have noted, at a little distance out from Cambridge, a by-road +advertised as leading to Quy and Swaffham. It also leads to the site of +an old Roman villa; but you need not interrupt your business to visit +this, since the best thing discovered there--a piece of tessellated +pavement--has been removed and deposited in the Geological Museum here in +Downing Street, where you may study it very conveniently. It is not at +all a first-class specimen of its kind: not to be compared, for example, +with the wonderful pavement at Dorchester, or with that (measuring 35 +feet by 20) of the great villa unearthed, a hundred years ago, at +Stonesfield in Oxfordshire: but I take it as the handiest, and am going +to build a small conjecture upon it, or rather a small suggestion of a +guess. Remember there is no harm in guessing so long as we do not pretend +our guess-work to be something else. + +I will ask you to consider first that in these pavements, laid bare for +us as 'the whistling rustic tends his plough,' we have work dating +somewhere between the first and fifth centuries, work of unchallengeable +beauty, work of a beauty certainly not rivalled until we come to the +Norman builders of five or six hundred years later. I want you to let +your minds dwell on these long stretches of time--four hundred years or +so of Roman occupation (counting, not from Cćsar's raids, but from the +serious invasion of 43 A.D. under Aulus Plautius, say to some while after +the famous letter of Honorius, calling home the legions). You may safely +put it at four hundred years, and then count six hundred as the space +before the Normans arrive--a thousand years altogether, or but a +fraction--one short generation--less than the interval of time that +separates us from King Alfred. In the great Cathedral of Winchester +(where sleep, by the way, two gentle writers specially beloved, Isaak +Walton and Jane Austen) above the choir-screen to the south, you may see +a line of painted chests, of which the inscription on one tells you that +it holds what was mortal of King Canute. + + Here are sands, ignoble things, + Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of Kings. + +But if you walk around to the north of the altar you will find yourself +treading on tiles not so very far short of twice that antiquity. +Gentlemen, do not think that I would ever speak lightly of our lineage: +only let us make as certain as we may what that lineage is. + +I want you to-day to understand just what such a pavement as that +preserved for your inspection in Downing Street meant to the man who saw +it laid and owned it these fifteen hundred years--more or less--ago. _Ubi +Romanus vicit, ibi habitat_--'where the Roman has conquered, there he +settles': but whether he conquered or settled he carried these small +tiles, these _tessellć_, as religiously as ever Rachel stole her +teraphin. 'Wherever his feet went there went the tessellated pavement for +them to stand on. Even generals on foreign service carried in panniers on +muleback the little coloured cubes or _tessellć_ for laying down a +pavement in each camping-place, to be taken up again when they moved +forward. In England the same sweet emblems of the younger gods of poetic +legend, of love, youth, plenty, and all their happy naturalism, are found +constantly repeated.'[1] I am quoting these sentences from a local +historian, but you see how these relics have a knack of inspiring prose +at once scholarly and imaginative, as (for a more famous instance) the +urns disinterred at Walsingham once inspired Sir Thomas Browne's. To +continue and adapt the quotation-- + + Bacchus with his wild rout, Orpheus playing to a spell-bound audience, + Apollo singing to the lyre, Venus in Mars' embrace, Neptune with a host + of seamen, scollops, and trumpets, Narcissus by the fountain, Jove and + Ganymede, Leda and the swan, wood-nymphs and naiads, satyrs and fauns, + masks, hautboys, cornucopić, flowers and baskets of golden fruit--what + touches of home they must have seemed to these old dwellers in the + Cambridgeshire wilds! + +Yes, touches of home! For the owner of this villa (you may conceive) is +the grandson or even great-great-grandson of the colonist who first built +it, following in the wake of the legionaries. The family has prospered +and our man is now a considerable landowner. He was born in Britain: his +children have been born here: and here he lives a comfortable, +well-to-do, out-of-door life, in its essentials I daresay not so very +unlike the life of an English country squire to-day. Instead of chasing +foxes or hares he hunts the wolf and the wild boar; but the sport is +good and he returns with an appetite. He has added a summer parlour to +the house, with a northern aspect and no heating-flues: for the old +parlour he has enlarged the prćfurnium, and through the long winter +evenings sits far better warmed than many a master of a modern +country-house. A belt of trees on the brow of the rise protects him from +the worst winds, and to the south his daughters have planted violet-beds +which will breathe odorously in the spring. He has rebuilt and enlarged +the slave-quarters and outhouses, replaced the stucco pillars around the +atrium with a colonnade of polished stone, and, where stucco remains, +has repainted it in fresh colours. He knows that there are no gaps or +weak spots in his stockade fence--wood is always cheap. In a word he has +improved the estate; is modestly proud of it; and will be content, like +the old Athenian, to leave his patrimony not worse but something better +than he found it. + +Sensible men--and the Romans were eminently that--as a rule contrive to +live decently, or, at least, tolerably. What struck Arthur Young more +than anything else in his travels through France on the very eve of the +Revolution seems to have been the general good-tempered happiness of the +French gentry on their estates. We may moralise of the Roman colonists as +of the French proprietors that 'unconscious of their doom the little +victims played'; but we have no right to throw back on them the shadow of +what was to come or to cloud the picture of a useful, peaceable, maybe +more than moderately happy life, with our later knowledge of disaster +mercifully hidden from it. + +Although our colonist and his family have all been born in Britain, are +happy enough here on the whole, and talk without more than half meaning +it, and to amuse themselves with speculations half-wistful, of daring the +tremendous journey and setting eyes on Rome some day, their pride is to +belong to her, to Rome, the imperial City, the city afar: their windows +open back towards her as Daniel's did towards Jerusalem--_Urbs quam +dicunt Roman--the_ City. Along the great road, hard by, her imperial writ +runs. They have never subscribed to the vow of Ruth, 'Thy people shall be +my people and thy God my God.' They dwell under the Pax Romana, not +merely protected by it but as _citizens_. Theirs are the ancestral +deities portrayed on that unfading pavement in the very centre of the +villa--Apollo and Daphne, Bacchus and Ariadne-- + + For ever warm and still to be enjoyed, + For ever panting, and for ever young. + +Parcels come to them, forwarded from the near military station; come by +those trade-routes, mysterious to us, concerning which a most +illuminating book waits to be written by somebody. There are parcels of +seeds--useful vegetables and potherbs, helichryse (marigold as we call +them now) for the flower garden, for the colonnade even roses with real +Italian earth damp about their roots. There are parcels of books, +too--rolls rather, or tablets--wherein the family reads about Rome; of +its wealth, the uproar of its traffic, the innumerable chimneys smoking, +_fumum et opes strepitumque_. For they are always reading of Rome; +feeling themselves, as they read, to belong to it, to be neither savage +nor even rustic, but by birthright _of the city_, urbane; and what these +exiles read is of how Horace met a bore on the Sacred Road (which would +correspond, more or less, with our Piccadilly)-- + + Along the Sacred Road I strolled one day + Deep in some bagatelle (you know my way) + When up comes one whose face I scarcely knew-- + 'The dearest of dear fellows! how d'ye do?' + --He grasped my hand. 'Well, thanks! The same to you?' + +--or of how Horace apologises for protracting a summer jaunt to his +country seat:-- + + Five days I told you at my farm I'd stay, + And lo! the whole of August I'm away. + Well but, Maecenas, you would have me live, + And, were I sick, my absence you'd forgive. + So let me crave indulgence for the fear + Of falling ill at this bad time of year. + When, thanks to early figs and sultry heat, + The undertaker figures with his suite; + When fathers all and fond mammas grow pale + At what may happen to their young heirs male, + And courts and levees, town-bred mortals' ills, + Bring fevers on, and break the seals of wills. + + (Conington's translation.) + +Consider those lines; then consider how long it took the inhabitants +of this island--the cultured ones who count as readers or +writers--to recapture just that note of urbanity. Other things +our forefathers --Britons, Saxons, Normans, Dutch or French +refugees--discovered by the way; worthier things if you will; but not +until the eighteenth century do you find just that note recaptured; the +note of easy confidence that our London had become what Rome had been, +the Capital city. You begin to meet it in Dryden; with Addison it is +fairly established. Pass a few years, and with Samuel Johnson it is +taken for granted. His _London_ is Juvenal's Rome, and the same satire +applies to one as applied to the other. But against the urbane lines +written by one Horace some while before Juvenal let us set a passage +from another Horace--Horace Walpole, seventeen hundred years later and +some little while ahead of Johnson. He, like our Roman colonist, is a +settler in a new country, Twickenham; and like Flaccus he loves to +escape from town life. + + TWICKENHAM, June 8th, 1747. + + To the Hon. H. S. CONWAY. + + You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left + my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of + Mrs Chevenix's shop, and the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set + in enamelled meadows with filagree hedges: + + A small Euphrates through the place is roll'd, + And little finches wave their wings of gold. + + Two delightful roads; that you would call dusty, supply me continually + with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer + move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect; + but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of + Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and + Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by the most poetical + moonlight.... The Chevenixes had tricked it out for themselves; up two + pairs of stairs is what they call Mr Chevenix's library, furnished + with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton and a lame + telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville _predeceased_ me + here and instituted certain games called _cricketalia_, which has been + celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring + meadow. + + You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my + tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all tranquility while a + Parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be + dissolved.... They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand + pounds, to carry elections which he won't carry--he had much better + have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen. + +There you have Horatio Walpole, the man-about-town, almost precisely +echoing Horatius Flaccus, the man-about-town; and this (if you will bring +your minds to it) is just the sort of passage a Roman colonist in Britain +would open upon, out of his parcel of new books, and read, _and +understand_, some eighteen hundred years ago. + +What became of it all?--of that easy colonial life, of the men and women +who trod those tessellated pavements? 'Wiped out,' say the historians, +knowing nothing, merely guessing: for you may with small trouble assure +yourselves that the fifth and sixth centuries in the story of this island +are a blind spot, concerning which one man's guess may be as good as +another's. 'Wiped out,' they will commonly agree; for while, as I warned +you in another lecture, the pedantic mind, faced with a difficulty, tends +to remove it conveniently into a category to which it does not belong, +still more prone is the pedantic mind to remove it out of existence +altogether. So 'wiped out' is the theory; and upon it a sympathetic +imagination can invent what sorrowful pictures it will of departing +legions, the last little cloud of dust down the highway, the lovers by +the gate watching it, not comprehending; the peaceful homestead in the +background, ripe for doom--and what-not. + +Or, stay! There is another theory to which the late Professor Freeman +inclined (if so sturdy a figure could be said to incline), laying stress +on a passage in Gildas, that the Romans in Britain, faced by the Saxon +invader, got together their money, and bolted away into Gaul. 'The Romans +that were in Britain gathered together their gold-hoard, hid part in the +ground and carried the rest over to Gaul,' writes Gildas. 'The hiding in +the ground,' says Freeman, 'is of course a guess to explain the frequent +finding of Roman coins'--which indeed it _does_ explain better than the +guess that they were carried away, and perhaps better than the +schoolboy's suggestion that during their occupation of Britain the Romans +spent most of their time in dropping money about. Likely enough, large +numbers of the colonists did gather up what they could and flee before +the approaching storm; but by no means all, I think. For (since, where +all is uncertain, we must reason from what is probable of human nature) +in the first place men with large estates do not behave in that way +before a danger which creeps upon them little by little, as this Saxon +danger did. These colonists could not dig up their fields and carry them +over to Gaul. They did not keep banking accounts; and in the course of +four hundred years their main wealth had certainly been sunk in the land. +They could not carry away their villas. We know that many of them did not +carry away the _tessellć_ for which (as we have seen) they had so +peculiar a veneration; for these remain. Secondly, if the colonists left +Britain in a mass, when in the middle of the sixth century we find +Belisarius offering the Goths to trade Britain for Sicily, as being 'much +larger and this long time subservient to Roman rule,'[2] we must suppose +either (as Freeman appears to suppose) that Belisarius did not know what +he was offering, or that he was attempting a gigantic 'bluff,' or lastly +that he really was offering an exchange not flatly derisory; of which +three possible suppositions I prefer the last as the likeliest. Nor am I +the less inclined to choose it, because these very English historians go +on to clear the ground in a like convenient way of the Celtic +inhabitants, exterminating them as they exterminated the Romans, +with a wave of the hand, quite in the fashion of Mr Podsnap. 'This is +un-English: therefore for me it merely ceases to exist.' + +'_Probable extirpation of the Celtic inhabitants_' jots down Freeman in +his margin, and proceeds to write: + + In short, though the literal extirpation of a nation is an + impossibility, there is every reason to believe that the Celtic + inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the + end of the sixth century had been as nearly extinguished as a nation + could be. The women doubtless would be largely spared, but as far as + the male sex is concerned we may feel sure that death, emigration, or + personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found + at the hands of our fathers. + +Upon this passage, if brought to me in an undergraduate essay, I should +have much to say. The style, with its abstract nouns ('the literal +extirpation of a nation is an impossibility'), its padding and +periphrasis ('there is every reason to believe' ... 'as far as the male +sex is concerned we may feel sure') betrays the loose thought. It begins +with 'in short' and proceeds to be long-winded. It commits what even +schoolboys know to be a solecism by inviting us to consider three +'alternatives'; and what can I say of 'the women doubtless would be +largely spared,' save that besides scanning in iambics it says what +Freeman never meant and what no-one outside of an Aristophanic comedy +could ever suggest? 'The women doubtless would be largely spared'! It +reminds me of the young lady in Cornwall who, asked by her vicar if she +had been confirmed, admitted blushingly that 'she had reason to believe, +partially so.' + +'The women doubtless would be largely spared'!--But I thank the Professor +for teaching me that phrase, because it tries to convey just what I am +driving at. The Jutes, Angles, Saxons, did not extirpate the Britons, +whatever you may hold concerning the Romans. For, once again, men do not +behave in that way, and certainly will not when a live slave is worth +money. Secondly, the very horror with which men spoke, centuries after, +of Anderida quite plainly indicates that such a wholesale massacre was +exceptional, monstrous. If not exceptional, monstrous, why should this +particular slaughter have lingered so ineffaceably in their memories? +Finally,--and to be as curt as the question deserves--the Celtic Briton +in the island was not exterminated and never came near to being +exterminated: but on the contrary, remains equipollent with the Saxon in +our blood, and perhaps equipollent with that mysterious race we call +Iberian, which came before either and endures in this island to-day, as +anyone travelling it with eyes in his head can see. Pict, Dane, Norman, +Frisian, Huguenot French--these and others come in. If mixture of blood +be a shame, we have purchased at the price of that shame the glory of +catholicism; and I know of nothing more false in science or more actively +poisonous in politics or in the arts than the assumption that we belong +as a race to the Teutonic family. + +Dane, Norman, Frisian, French Huguenot--they all come in. And will you +refuse a hearing when I claim that the Roman came in too? Bethink you how +deeply Rome engraved itself on this island and its features. Bethink you +that, as human nature is, no conquering race ever lived or could +live--even in garrison--among a tributary one without begetting children +on it. Bethink you yet further of Freeman's admission that in the +wholesale (and quite hypothetical) general massacre 'the women doubtless +would be largely spared'; and you advance nearer to my point. I see a +people which for four hundred years was permeated by Rome. If you insist +on its being a Teutonic people (which I flatly deny) then you have one +which _alone of Teutonic peoples_ has inherited the Roman gift of +consolidating conquest, of colonising in the wake of its armies; of +driving the road, bridging the ford, bringing the lawless under its +sense of law. I see that this nation of ours concurrently, when it seeks +back to what alone can inspire and glorify these activities, seeks back, +not to any supposed native North, but south to the Middle Sea of our +civilisation and steadily to Italy, which we understand far more easily +than France--though France has helped us times and again. Putting these +things together, I retort upon the ethnologists--for I come from the +West of England, where we suffer incredible things from them--_'Semper +ego auditor tantum?'_ I hazard that the most important thing in our +blood is that purple drop of the imperial murex we derive from Rome. + +You must, of course, take this for nothing more than it pretends to be--a +conjecture, a suggestion. I will follow it up with two statements of +fact, neither doubtful nor disputable. + +The first is, that when English poetry awoke, long after the Conquest +(or, as I should prefer to put it, after the Crusades) it awoke a new +thing; in its vocabulary as much like Anglo-Saxon poetry as ever you +will, but in metre, rhythm, lilt--and more, in style, feeling, +imaginative play--and yet more again, in knowledge of what it aimed to +be, in the essentials, in the qualities that make Poetry Poetry--as +different from Anglo-Saxon poetry as cheese is from chalk, and as much +more nutritious. Listen to this-- + + Bytuene Mershe ant Averil + When spray biginnith to spring, + The lutel foul hath hire wyl + On hire lud to synge: + Ich libbe in love-longinge + For semlokest of alle thynge, + He may me blisse bringe, + Icham in hire bandoun. + An hendy hap ichabbe y-hent, + Ichot from hevene it is me sent, + From alle wymmen my love is lent, + And lyht on Alisoun. + +Here you have alliteration in plenty; you even have what some hold to be +the pattern of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse (though in practice +disregarded, may be, as often as not), the chosen initial used twice in +the first line and once at least in the second: + + From alle wymmen my _l_ove is _l_ent, + And _l_yht on A_l_isoun. + +But if a man cannot see a difference infinitely deeper than any +similarity between this song of Alison and the old Anglo-Saxon verse--_a +difference of nature_--I must despair of his literary sense. + +What has happened? Well, in Normandy, too, and in another tongue, men are +singing much the same thing in the same way: + + A la fontenelle + Qui sort seur l'araine, + Trouvai pastorella + Qui n'iert pas vilaine... + Merci, merci, douce Marote, + N'oçiez pas vostre ami doux, + +and this Norman and the Englishman were singing to a new tune, which was +yet an old tune re-set to Europe by the Provence, the Roman Province; by +the troubadours--Pons de Capdeuil, Bernard de Ventadour, Bertrand de +Born, Pierre Vidal, and the rest, with William of Poitou, William of +Poitiers. Read and compare; you will perceive that the note then set +persists and has never perished. Take Giraud de Borneil-- + + Bel companhos, si dormetz o velhatz + Non dortmatz plus, qu'el jorn es apropchatz-- + +and set it beside a lyric of our day, written without a thought of Giraud +de Borneil-- + + Heigh! Brother mine, art a-waking or a-sleeping: + Mind'st thou the merry moon a many summers fled? + Mind'st thou the green and the dancing and the leaping? + Mind'st thou the haycocks and the moon above them creeping?... + +Or take Bernard de Ventadour's-- + + Quand erba vertz, e fuelha par + E'l flor brotonon per verjan, + E'l rossinhols autet e clar + Leva sa votz e mov son chan, + Joy ai de luy, e joy ai de la flor, + Joy ai de me, e de me dons maior. + +Why, it runs straight off into English verse-- + + When grass is green and leaves appear + With flowers in bud the meads among, + And nightingale aloft and clear + Lifts up his voice and pricks his song, + Joy, joy have I in song and flower, + Joy in myself, and in my lady more. + +And that may be doggerel; yet what is it but + + It was a lover and his lass, + With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino, + That o'er the green cornfield did pass + In the spring-time, the only pretty ring-time-- + +or + + When daffodils begin to peer, + With heigh! the doxy over the dale, + Why then comes in the sweet o' the year; + For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. + +Nay, flatter the Anglo-Saxon tradition by picking its very best--and I +suppose it hard to find better than the much-admired opening of Piers +Plowman, in which that tradition shot up like the flame of a dying +candle: + + Bote in a Mayes Morwnynge--on Malverne hulles + Me bi-fel a ferly--a Feyrie me thouhte; + I was weori of wandringe--and wente me to reste + Under a brod banke--bi a Bourne syde, + And as I lay and leonede--and lokede on the watres, + I slumberde in a slepynge--hit sownede so murie. + +This is good, solid stuff, no doubt: but tame, inert, if not actually +lifeless. As M. Jusserand says of Anglo-Saxon poetry in general, it is +like the river Saône--one doubts which way it flows. How tame in +comparison with this, for example!-- + + In somer, when the shawes be sheyne, + And leves be large and long, + Hit is full mery in feyre foreste + To here the foulys song: + + To se the dere draw to the dale + And leve the hilles hee, + And shadow hem in the leves grene + Under the grene-wode tre. + + Hit befel on Whitsontide, + Erly in a May mornyng, + The Son up feyre can shyne, + And the briddis mery can syng. + + 'This is a mery mornyng,' said litell John, + 'Be Hym that dyed on tre; + A more mery man than I am one + Lyves not in Cristianté. + + 'Pluk up thi hert, my dere mayster,' + Litull John can sey, + 'And thynk hit is a full fayre tyme + In a mornyng of May.' + +There is no doubting which way _that_ flows! And this vivacity, this new +beat of the heart of poetry, is common to Chaucer and the humblest +ballad-maker; it pulses through any book of lyrics printed yesterday, and +it came straight to us out of Provence, the Roman Province. It was the +Provençal Troubadour who, like the Prince in the fairy tale, broke +through the hedge of briers and kissed Beauty awake again. + + +You will urge that he wakened Poetry not in England alone but all over +Europe, in Dante before our Chaucer, in the trouvčres and minnesingers as +well as in our ballad-writers. To that I might easily retort, 'So much +the better for Europe, and the more of it the merrier, to win their way +into the great comity.' But here I put in my second assertion, that we +English have had above all nations lying wide of the Mediterranean, the +instinct to refresh and renew ourselves at Mediterranean wells; that +again and again our writers--our poets especially--have sought them as +the hart panteth after the water-brooks. If you accept this assertion, +and if you believe as well that our literature, surpassing Rome's, may +vie with that of Athens--if you believe that a literature which includes +Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley--the Authorised +Version of Holy Writ, with Browne, Bunyan, Swift, Addison, Johnson, +Arnold, Newman--has entered the circle to take its seat with the first-- +why then, heartily believing this with you, I leave you to find some +better explanation than mine if you can. + +But what I content myself with asserting here you can scarcely deny. +Chaucer's initial and enormous debt to Dante and Boccaccio stands in as +little dispute as Dunbar's to Chaucer. On that favourite poet of mine, +Sir Thomas Wyat, I descanted in a former lecture. He is one of your +glories here, having entered St. John's College at the age of twelve +(which must have been precocious even for those days.) Anthony Wood +asserts that after finishing his course here, he proceeded to Cardinal +Wolsey's new College at Oxford; but, as Christchurch was not founded +until 1524, and Wyat, still precocious, had married a wife two years +before that, the statement (to quote Dr Courthope) 'seems no better +founded than many others advanced by that patriotic but not very +scrupulous author.' It is more to the point that he went travelling, and +brought home from France, Italy, afterwards Spain--always from Latin +altars--the flame of lyrical poetry to England; the flame of the +Petrarchists, caught from the Troubadours, clarified (so to speak) by the +salt of humane letters. On what our Elizabethan literature owes to the +Classical revival hundreds of volumes have been written and hundreds more +will be written; I will but remind you of what Spencer talked about with +Gabriel Harvey, what Daniel disputed with Campion; that Marlowe tried to +re-incarnate Machiavelli, that Jonson was a sworn Latinist and the 'tribe +of Ben' a classical tribe; while, as for Shakespeare, go and reckon the +proportion of Italian and Roman names in his _dramatis personć_. Of +Donne's debt to France, Italy, Rome, Greece, you may read much in +Professor Grierson's great edition, and I daresay Professor Grierson +would be the first to allow that all has not yet been computed. You know +how Milton prepared himself to be a poet. Have you realised that, in +those somewhat strangely constructed sonnets of his, Milton was +deliberately modelling upon the "Horatian Ode," as his confrčre, Andrew +Marvell, was avowedly attempting the like in his famous Horation Ode on +Cromwell's Return from Ireland; so that if Cromwell had returned (like Mr +Quilp), walked in and caught his pair of Latin Secretaries scribbling +verse, one at either end of the office table, both might colourably have +pleaded that they were, after all, writing Latin. Waller's task in poetry +was to labour true classical polish where Cowley laboured sham-classical +form. Put together Dryden's various Prefaces and you will find them one +solid monument to his classical faith. Of Pope, Gray, Collins, you will +not ask me to speak. What is salt in Cowper you can taste only when you +have detected that by a stroke of madness he missed, or barely missed, +being our true English Horace, that almost more nearly than the rest he +hit what the rest had been seeking. Then, of the 'romantic revival'-- +enemy of false classicism, not of classicism--bethink you what, in his +few great years, Wordsworth owed directly to France of the early +Revolution; what Keats drew forth out of Lempričre: and again bethink you +how Tennyson wrought upon Theocritus, Virgil, Catullus; upon what Arnold +constantly shaped his verse; how Browning returned ever upon Italy to +inspire his best and correct his worse. + +Of Anglo-Saxon prose I know little indeed, but enough of the world to +feel reasonably sure that if it contained any single masterpiece--or +anything that could be paraded as a masterpiece--we should have heard +enough about it long before now. It was invented by King Alfred for +excellent political reasons; but, like other ready-made political +inventions in this country, it refused to thrive. I think it can be +demonstrated, that the true line of intellectual descent in prose lies +through Bede (who wrote in Latin, the 'universal language'), and not +through the Blickling Homilies, or, Ćlfric, or the Saxon Chronicle. And I +am sure that Freeman is perversely wrong when he laments as a 'great +mistake' that the first Christian missionaries from Rome did not teach +their converts to pray and give praise in the vernacular. The vernacular +being what it was, these men did better to teach the religion of the +civilised world--_orbis terrarum_--in the language of the civilised +world. I am not thinking of its efficiency for spreading the faith; but +neither is Freeman; and, for that, we must allow these old missionaries +to have known their own business. I am thinking only of how this 'great +mistake' affected our literature; and if you will read Professor +Saintsbury's "History of English Prose Rhythm" (pioneer work, which yet +wonderfully succeeds in illustrating what our prose-writers from time to +time were trying to do); if you will study the Psalms in the Authorised +Version; if you will consider what Milton, Clarendon, Sir Thomas Browne, +were aiming at; what Addison, Gibbon, Johnson; what Landor, Thackeray, +Newman, Arnold, Pater; I doubt not your rising from the perusal convinced +that our nation, in this storehouse of Latin to refresh and replenish its +most sacred thoughts, has enjoyed a continuous blessing: that the Latin +of the Vulgate and the Offices has been a background giving depth and, as +the painters say, 'value' to nine-tenths of our serious writing. + +And now, since this and the previous lecture run something counter to a +great deal of that teaching in English Literature which nowadays passes +most acceptably, let me avoid offence, so far as may be, by defining one +or two things I am _not_ trying to do. + +I am not persuading you to despise your linguistic descent. English is +English--our language; and all its history to be venerated by us. + +I am not persuading you to despise linguistic study. _All_ learning is +venerable. + +I am not persuading you to behave like Ascham, and turn English prose +into pedantic Latin; nor would I have you doubt that in the set quarrel +between Campion, who wished to divert English verse into strict classical +channels, and Daniel, who vindicated our free English way (derived from +Latin through the Provençal), Daniel was on the whole, right, Campion on +the whole, wrong: though I believe that both ways yet lie open, and we +may learn, if we study them intelligently, a hundred things from the old +classical metres. + +I do not ask you to forget what there is of the Northmen in your blood. +If I desired this, I could not worship William Morris as I do, among the +later poets. + +I do not ask you to doubt that the barbarian invaders from the north, +with their myths and legends, brought new and most necessary blood of +imagination into the literary material--for the time almost exhausted--of +Greece and Rome. + +Nevertheless, I do contend that when Britain (or, if you prefer it, +Sleswick) + + When Sleswick first at Heaven's command + Arose from out the azure main, + +she differed from Aphrodite, that other foam-born, in sundry important +features of ear, of lip, of eye. + +Lastly, if vehement assertions on the one side have driven me into too +vehement dissent on the other, I crave pardon; not for the dissent but +for the vehemence, as sinning against the very principle I would hold up +to your admiration--the old Greek principle of avoiding excess. + + + +But I _do_ commend the patient study of Greek and Latin authors--in the +original or in translation--to all of you who would write English; and +for three reasons. + +(1) In the first place they will correct your insularity of mind; or, +rather, will teach you to forget it. The Anglo-Saxon, it has been noted, +ever left an empty space around his houses; and that, no doubt, is good +for a house. It is not so good for the mind. + +(2) Secondly, we have a tribal habit, confirmed by Protestant meditation +upon a Hebraic religion, of confining our literary enjoyment to the +written word and frowning down the drama, the song, the dance. A fairly +attentive study of modern lyrical verse has persuaded me that this +exclusiveness may be carried too far, and threatens to be deadening. 'I +will sing and give praise,' says the Scripture, 'with the best member +that I have'--meaning the tongue. But the old Greek was an 'all-round +man' as we say. He sought to praise and give thanks with all his members, +and to tune each to perfection. I think his way worth your considering. + +(3) Lastly, and chiefly, I commend these classical authors to you because +they, in the European civilisation which we all inherit, conserve the +norm of literature; the steady grip on the essential; the clean outline +at which in verse or in prose--in epic, drama, history, or philosophical +treatise--a writer should aim. + +So sure am I of this, and of its importance to those who think of +writing, that were this University to limit me to three texts on which to +preach English Literature to you, I should choose the Bible in our +Authorised Version, Shakespeare, and Homer (though it were but in a prose +translation). Two of these lie outside my marked province. Only one of +them finds a place in your English school. But Homer, who comes neither +within my map, nor within the ambit of the Tripos, would--because he most +evidently holds the norm, the essence, the secret of all--rank first of +the three for my purpose. + + +[Footnote 1: From "A History of Oxfordshire," by Mr J. Meade Falkner, +author of Murray's excellent Handbook of Oxfordshire.] + + + + +LECTURE X. + +ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I) + +Wednesday, November 19 + + +All lectures are too long. Towards the close of my last, Gentlemen, I let +fall a sentence which, heard by you in a moment of exhausted or languid +interest, has since, like enough, escaped your memory even if it earned +passing attention. So let me repeat it, for a fresh start. + +Having quoted to you the words of our Holy Writ, 'I will sing and give +praise with the best member that I have,' I added 'But the old Greek was +an "all-round" man; he sought to praise and give thanks with all his +members, and to tune each to perfection.' Now a great many instructive +lectures might be written on that text: nevertheless you may think it a +strange one, and obscure, for the discourse on 'English Literature in our +Universities' which, according to promise, I must now attempt. + +The term 'an all-round man' may easily mislead you unless you take it +with the rest of the sentence and particularly with the words 'praise and +give thanks.' Praise whom? Give thanks to whom? To _whom_ did our Greek +train all his members to render adoration? + +Why, to the gods--his gods: to Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite; and from them +down to the lesser guardian deities of the hearth, the field, the +farmstead. We modern men suffer a double temptation to misunderstand, by +belittling, the reverence in which Hellas and Rome held their gods. To +start with, our religion has superseded theirs. We approach the Olympians +with no bent towards venerating them; with minds easy, detached, to which +a great deal of their theology--the amativeness of Zeus for example--must +needs seem broadly comic, and a great deal of it not only comic but +childish. We are encouraged in this, moreover, when we read such writers +as Aristophanes and Lucian, and observe how they poked fun at the gods. +We assume--so modern he seems--Aristophanes' attitude towards his +immortals to be ours; that when, for example, Prometheus walks on to the +stage under an umbrella, to hide himself from the gaze of all-seeing +Zeus, the Athenian audience laughed just as we laugh who have read +Voltaire. Believe me, they laughed quite differently; believe me, +Aristophanes and Voltaire had remarkably different minds and worked on +utterly different backgrounds. Believe me, you will understand +Aristophanes only less than you will understand Ćschylus himself if you +confuse Aristophanes' mockery of Olympus with modern mockery. But, if you +will not take my word for it, let me quote what Professor Gilbert Murray +said, the other day, speaking before the English Association on Greek +poetry, how constantly connected it is with religion: + + 'All thoughts, all passions, all desires' ... In our Art it is true, no + doubt, that they are 'the ministers of love'; in Greek they are as a + whole the ministers of religion, and this is what in a curious degree + makes Greek poetry matter, makes it relevant. There is a sense in each + song of a relation to the whole of things, and it was apt to be + expressed with the whole body, or, one may say, the whole being.[1] + +To a Greek, in short, his gods mattered enormously; and to a Roman. To a +Roman they continued to matter enormously, down to the end. Do you +remember that tessellated pavement with its emblems and images of the +younger gods? and how I told you that a Roman general on foreign service +would carry the little cubes in panniers on mule-back, to be laid down +for his feet at the next camping place? Will you suggest that he did this +because they were pretty? You know that practical men--conquering +generals--don't behave in that way. He did it because they were sacred; +because, like most practical men, he was religious, and his gods must go +with him. They filled his literature: for why? He believed himself to be +sprung from their loins. Where would Latin literature be, for example, if +you could cut Venus out of it? Consider Lucretius' grand invocation: + + Ćneadum genetrix, hominum divumque voluptas, + Alma Venus! + +Consider the part Virgil makes her play as moving spirit of his whole +great poem. So follow her down to the days of the later Empire and open +the "Pervigilium Veneris" and discover her, under the name of Dione, +still the eternal Aphrodite sprung from the foam amid the churning hooves +of the sea-horses--_inter et bipedes equos_:-- + + Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep, + 'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stampeding the dolphins as + sheep. + Lo! arose of that bridal Dione, rainbow'd and besprent of its dew! + _Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love + anew!_ + Her favour it was fill'd the sails of the Trojan for Latium bound, + Her favour that won her Ćneas a bride on Laurentian ground, + And anon from the cloister inveigled the Virgin, the Vestal, to Mars; + As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars + With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew + From Romulus down to our Cćsar--last, best of that blood, of that thew. + _Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love + anew!_ + +'Last, best of that blood'--her blood, _fusa Paphies de cruore_, and the +blood of Teucer, _revocato a sanguine Teucri_, 'of that thew'--the thew +of Tros and of Mars. Of these and no less than these our Roman believed +himself the son and inheritor. + +If we grasp this, that the old literature was packed with the old +religion, and not only packed with it but permeated by it, we have within +our ten fingers the secret of the 'Dark Ages,' the real reason why the +Christian Fathers fought down literature and almost prevailed to the +point of stamping it out. They hated it, not as literature; or at any +rate, not to begin with; nor, to begin with, because it happened to be +voluptuous and they austere: but they hated it because it held in its +very texture, not to be separated, a religion over which they had hardly +triumphed, a religion actively inimical to that of Christ, inimical to +truth; so that for the sake of truth and in the name of Christ they had +to fight it, accepting no compromise, yielding no quarter, foreseeing no +issue save that one of the twain--Jupiter or Christ, Deus Optimus Maximus +or the carpenter's son of Nazareth--must go under. + +It all ended in compromise, to be sure; as all struggles must between +adversaries so tremendous. To-day, in Dr Smith's "Classical Dictionary," +Origen rubs shoulders with Orpheus and Orcus; Tertullian reposes cheek by +jowl with Terpsichore. But we are not concerned, here, with what happened +in the end. We are concerned with what these forthright Christian +fighters had in their minds--to trample out the old literature _because_ +of the false religion. Milton understood this, and was thinking of it +when he wrote of the effect of Christ's Nativity-- + + The Oracles are dumb; + No voice or hideous hum + Runs through the archčd roof in words deceiving. + Apollo from his shrine + Can no more divine, + With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. + No mighty trance, or breathčd spell + Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the prophetic cell. + + The lonely mountains o'er, + And the resounding shore, + A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; + From haunted spring, and dale + Edg'd with poplar pale, + The parting Genius is with sighing sent; + With flower-inwoven tresses torn + The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. + +as Swinburne understands and expresses it in his "Hymn to Proserpine," +supposed to be chanted by a Roman of the 'old profession' on the morrow +of Constantine's proclaiming the Christian faith-- + + O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day! + From your wrath is the world released, redeem'd from your chains, + men say. + New Gods are crown'd in the city; their flowers have broken your rods; + They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods. + But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare; + Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were... + Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take, + The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in + the brake; + Thou hast conquer'd, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from + thy breath; + We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death. + +'Thou hast conquer'd, O pale Galilean!' However the struggle might sway +in this or that other part of the field, Literature had to be beaten to +her knees, and still beaten flat until the breath left her body. You will +not be surprised that the heavy hand of these Christian fathers fell +first upon the Theatre: for the actor in Rome was by legal definition an +'infamous' man, even as in England until the other day he was by legal +definition a vagabond and liable to whipping. The policy of religious +reformers has ever been to close the theatres, as our Puritans did in +1642; and a recent pronouncement by the Bishop of Kensington would seem +to show that the instinct survives to this day. Queen Elizabeth--like her +brother, King Edward VI--signalized the opening of a new reign by +inhibiting stage-plays; and I invite you to share with me the pensive +speculation, 'How much of English Literature, had she not relented, would +exist to-day for a King Edward VII Professor to talk about?' Certainly +the works of Shakespeare would not; and that seems to me a thought so +impressive as to deserve the attention of Bishops as well as of Kings. + +Apart from this instinct the Christian Fathers, it would appear, had +plenty of provocation. For the actors, who had jested with the Old +Religion on a ground of accepted understanding--much as a good husband +(if you will permit the simile) may gently tease his wife, not loving her +one whit the less, taught by affection to play without offending--had +mocked at the New Religion in a very different way: savagely, as enemies, +holding up to ridicule the Church's most sacred mysteries. Tertullian, in +an uncompromising treatise "De Spectaculis," denounces stage-plays root +and branch; tells of a demon who entered into a woman in a theatre and on +being exorcised pleaded that the mistake might well be excused, since he +had found her in his own demesne. Christians should avoid these shows and +await the greatest _spectaculum_ of all--the Last Judgment. 'Then,' he +promises genially, 'will be the time to listen to the tragedians, whose +lamentations will be more poignant, for their proper pain. Then will the +comedians turn and twist in capers rendered nimbler than ever by the +sting of the fire that is not quenched.' By 400 A.D. Augustine cries +triumphantly that the theatres are falling--the very walls of them +tumbling--throughout the Empire. _'Per omnes paene civitates cadunt +theatra ... cadunt et fora vel moenia in quibus demonia colebantur'_; the +very walls within which these devilments were practised. But the fury is +unabated and goes on stamping down the embers. In the eighth century our +own Alcuin (as the school of Freeman would affectionately call him) is no +less fierce. All plays are anathema to him, and he even disapproves of +dancing bears--though not, it would appear, of bad puns: _'nec tibi sit +ursorum saltantium cura, sed clericorum psallentium.'_[2] + +The banning of _all_ literature you will find harder to understand; nay +impossible, I believe, unless you accept the explanation I gave you. Yet +there it is, an historical fact. 'What hath it profited posterity--_quid +posteritas emolumenti tulit,_' wrote Sulpicius Severus, about 400 A.D., +'to read of Hector's fighting or Socrates' philosophising?' Pope Gregory +the Great--St Gregory, who sent us the Roman missionaries--made no bones +about it at all. '_Quoniam non cognovi literaturam,_' he quoted +approvingly from the 70th Psalm, '_introibo in potentias Domini_': +'Because I know nothing of literature I shall enter into the strength of +the Lord.' 'The praises of Christ cannot be uttered in the same tongue as +those of Jove,' writes this same Gregory to Desiderius, Archbishop of +Vienne, who had been rash enough to introduce some of his young men to +the ancient authors, with no worse purpose than to teach them a little +grammar. Yet no one was prouder than this Pope of the historical Rome +which he had inherited. Alcuin, again, forbade the reading of Virgil in +the monastery over which he presided: it would sully his disciples' +imagination. 'How is this, _Virgilian!_' he cried out upon one taken in +the damnable act,--'that without my knowledge and against my order thou +hast taken to studying Virgil?' To put a stop to this unhallowed +indulgence the clergy solemnly taught that Virgil was a wizard. + +To us, long used as we are to the innocent gaieties of the Classical +Tripos, these measures to discourage the study of Virgil may appear +drastic, as the mental attitude of Gregory and Alcuin towards the Latin +hexameter (so closely resembling that of Byron towards the waltz) not far +removed from foolishness. But there you have in its quiddity the +mediaeval mind: and the point I now put to you is, that _out of this soil +our Universities grew._ + +We, who claim Oxford and Cambridge for our nursing mothers, have of all +men least excuse to forget it. A man of Leyden, of Louvain, of Liepzig, +of Berlin, may be pardoned that he passes it by. More than a hundred +years ago Salamanca had the most of her stones torn down to make defences +against Wellington's cannon. Paris, greatest of all, has kept her renown; +but you shall search the slums of the Latin Quarter in vain for the sixty +or seventy Colleges that, before the close of the fifteenth century, had +arisen to adorn her, the intellectual Queen of Europe. In Bologna, the +ancient and stately, almost alone among the continental Universities, +survive a few relics of the old collegiate system--the College of Spain, +harbouring some five or six students, and a little house founded for +Flemings in 1650: and in Bologna the system never attained to real +importance. + +But in England where, great as London is, the national mind has always +harked to the country for the graces of life, so that we seem by instinct +to see it as only desirable in a green setting, our Universities, planted +by the same instinct on lawns watered by pastoral streams, have suffered +so little and received as much from the years that now we can hardly +conceive of Oxford or Cambridge as ruined save by 'the unimaginable touch +of Time.' Of all the secular Colleges bequeathed to Oxford, she has lost +not one; while Cambridge (I believe) has parted only with Cavendish. Some +have been subsumed into newer foundations; but always the process has +been one of merging, of blending, of justifying the new bottle by the old +wine. The vengeance of civil war--always very much of a family affair in +England--has dealt tenderly with Oxford and Cambridge; the more +calculating malignity of Royal Commissions not harshly on the whole. +University reformers may accuse both Oxford and Cambridge of + + Annihilating all that's made + To a green thought in a green shade: + +but with those sour men we have nothing here to do: like Isaak Walton's +milkmaid we will not 'load our minds with any fears of many things that +will never be.' + +But, as they stand, Oxford and Cambridge--so amazingly alike while they +play at differences, and both so amazingly unlike anything else in the +wide world--do by a hundred daily reminders connect us with the Middle +Age, or, if you prefer Arnold's phrase, whisper its lost enchantments. +The cloister, the grave grace in hall, the chapel bell, the men hurrying +into their surplices or to lectures 'with the wind in their gowns,' the +staircase, the nest of chambers within the oak--all these softly +reverberate over our life here, as from belfries, the mediaeval mind. + +And that mediaeval mind actively hated (of partial acquaintance or by +anticipation) almost everything we now study! Between it and us, except +these memorials, nothing survives to-day but the dreadful temptation to +learn, the dreadful instinct in men, as they grow older and wiser, to +trust learning after all and endow it--that, and the confidence of a +steady stream of youth. + +The Universities, then, sprang out of mediaeval life, out of the +mediaeval mind; and the mediaeval mind had for centuries been taught to +abominate literature. I would not exaggerate or darken the 'Dark Ages' +for you by throwing too much bitumen into the picture. I know that at the +beginning there had been a school of Origen which advocated the study of +Greek poetry and philosophy, as well as the school of Tertullian which +condemned it. There is evidence that the 'humanities' were cultivated +here and there and after a fashion behind Gregory's august back. I grant +that, while in Alcuin's cloister (and Alcuin, remember, became a sort of +Imperial Director of Studies in Charlemagne's court) the wretched monk +who loved Virgil had to study him with an illicit candle, to copy him +with numbed fingers in a corner of the bitter-cold cloister, on the other +hand many beautiful manuscripts preserved to us bear witness of cloisters +where literature was tolerated if not officially honoured. I would not +have you so uncritical as to blame the Church or its clergy for what +happened; as I would have you remember that if the Church killed +literature, she--and, one may say, she alone--kept it alive. + +Yet, and after all these reservations, it remains true that Literature +had gone down disastrously. Even philosophy, unless you count the pale +work of Boethius--_real_ philosophy had so nearly perished that men +possessed no more of Aristotle than a fragment of his Logic, and '_the_ +Philosopher' had to creep back into Western Europe through translations +from the Arabic! But this is the point I wish to make clear.--Philosophy +came back in the great intellectual revival of the twelfth century; +Literature did not. Literature's hour had not come. Men had to catch up +on a dreadful leeway of ignorance. The form did not matter as yet: they +wanted science--to know. I should say, rather, that as yet form _seemed_ +not to matter: for in fact form always matters: the personal always +matters: and you cannot explain the vast crowds Abelard drew to Paris +save by the fascination in the man, the fire communicated by the living +voice. Moreover (as in a previous lecture I tried to prove) you cannot +divorce accurate thought from accurate speech; but for accuracy, even for +hair-splitting accuracy, of speech the Universities had the definitions +of the Schoolmen. In literature they had yet to discover a concern. +Literature was a thing of the past, inanimate. Nowhere in Europe could it +be felt even to breathe. To borrow a beautiful phrase of Wordsworth's, +men numbered it among 'things silently gone out of mind or things +violently destroyed.' + +Nobody quite knows how these Universities began. Least of all can anybody +tell how Oxford and Cambridge began. In Bede, for instance--that is, in +England as the eighth century opens--we see scholarship already moving +towards the _thing_, treading with sure instinct towards the light. +Though a hundred historians have quoted it, I doubt if a feeling man who +loves scholarship can read the famous letter of Cuthbert describing +Bede's end and not come nigh to tears. + +And Bede's story contains no less wonder than beauty, when you consider +how the fame of this holy and humble man of heart, who never left his +cloisters at Jarrow, spread over Europe, so that, though it sound +incredible, our Northumbria narrowly missed in its day to become the +pole-star of Western culture. But he was a disinterested genius, and his +pupil, Alcuin, a pushing dull man and a born reactionary; so that, while +Alcuin scored the personal success and went off to teach in the court of +Charlemagne, the great chance was lost. + +No one knows when the great Universities were founded, or precisely out +of what schools they grew; and you may derive amusement from the +historians when they start to explain how Oxford and Cambridge in +particular came to be chosen for sites. My own conjecture, that they were +chosen for the extraordinary salubrity of their climates, has met (I +regret to say) with derision, and may be set down to the caprice of one +who ever inclines to think the weather good where he is happy. Our own +learned historian, indeed--Mr J. Bass Mullinger--devotes some closely +reasoned pages to proving that Cambridge was chosen as the unlikeliest +spot in the world, and is driven to quote the learned Poggio's opinion +that the unhealthiness of a locality recommended it as a place of +education for youth; as Plato, knowing naught of Christianity, but gifted +with a soul naturally Christian, '_had selected a noisome spot for his +Academe, in order that the mind might be strengthened by the weakness of +the body._' So difficult still it is for the modern mind to interpret the +mediaeval! + +Most likely these Universities grew as a tree grows from a seed blown by +chance of the wind. It seems easy enough to understand why Paris, that +great city, should have possessed a great University; yet I surmise the +processes at Oxford and Cambridge to have been only a little less +fortuitous. The schools of Remigius and of William of Champeaux (we will +say) have given Paris a certain prestige, when Abelard, a pupil of +William's, springs into fame and draws a horde of students from all over +Europe to sit at his feet. These 'nations' of young men have to be +organised, brought under some sort of discipline, if only to make the +citizens' lives endurable: and lo! the thing is done. In like manner +Irnerius at Bologna, Vacarius at Oxford, and at Cambridge some innominate +teacher, 'of importance,' as Browning would put it, 'in his day,' +possibly set the ball rolling; or again it is suggested that a body of +scholars dissatisfied with Oxford (such dissatisfaction has been known +even in historical times) migrated hither--a laborious journey, even +nowadays--and that so + + A brighter Hellas rears its mountains + From waves serener far! + +These young or nascent bodies had a trick of breaking away after this +fashion. For reasons no longer obvious they hankered specially towards +Stamford or Northampton. Until quite recently, within living memory, all +candidates for a Mastership of Arts at Oxford had to promise never to +lecture at Stamford. A flood here in 1520, which swept away Garret Hostel +Bridge, put Cambridge in like mind and started a prophecy (to which you +may find allusion in the fourth book of "The Faerie Queene") that both +Universities would meet in the end, and kiss, at Stamford. Each in turn +broke away for Northampton, and the worthy Fuller (a Northamptonshire +man) has recorded his wonder that so eligible a spot was not finally +chosen. + +I have mentioned a flood: but the immediate causes of the migrations or +attempted migrations were not usually respectable enough to rank with any +such act of God. They started as a rule with some Town and Gown row, or +some bloody affray between scholars of the North and of the South. +Without diminishing your sense of the real fervour for learning which +drew young men from the remotest parts of Europe to these centres, but +having for my immediate object to make clear to you that, whatever these +young men sought, it was not literature, I wish you first to have in your +minds a vivid picture of what a University town was like, and what its +students were like during the greater part of the 12th and 13th +centuries; that is to say, after the first enthusiasm had died down, when +Oxford or Cambridge had organised itself into a _Studium Generale_, or +_Universitas_ (which, of course, has nothing to do with Universality, +whether of teaching or of frequenting, but simply means a Society. +_Universitas_ = all of us). + +To begin with, the town was of wood, often on fire in places; with the +alleviation of frequent winter floods, which in return, in the words of a +modern poet, would 'leave a lot of little things behind them.' It +requires but a small effort of the imagination in Cambridge to picture +the streets as narrow, dark, almost meeting overhead in gables out of +which the house slops would be discharged after casual warning down into +a central gutter. That these narrow streets were populous with students +remains certain, however much discount we allow on contemporary bills of +reckoning. And the crowd was noisy. Men have always been ingenious in +their ways of celebrating academical success. Pythagoras, for example, +sacrificed an ox on solving the theorem numbered 47 in the first book of +Euclid; and even to-day a Professor in his solitary lodge may be +encouraged to believe now and then, from certain evidences in the sky, +that the spirit of Pythagoras is not dead but translated. + +But of the mediaeval University the lawlessness, though well attested, +can scarcely be conceived. When in the streets 'nation' drew the knife +upon 'nation,' 'town' upon 'gown'; when the city bell started to answer +the clang of St. Mary's; horrible deeds were done. I pass over massacres, +tumults such as the famous one of St Scholastica's Day at Oxford, and +choose one at a decent distance (yet entirely typical) exhumed from the +annals of the University of Toulouse, in the year 1332. In that year + + Five brothers of the noble family de la Penne lived together in a + Hospicium at Toulouse as students of the Civil and Canon Law. One of + them was Provost of a Monastery, another Archdeacon of Albi, another an + Archpriest, another Canon of Toledo. A bastard son of their father, + named Peter, lived with them as squire to the Canon. On Easter Day, + Peter, with another squire of the household named Aimery Béranger and + other students, having dined at a tavern, were dancing with women, + singing, shouting, and beating 'metallic vessels and iron culinary + instruments' in the street before their masters' house. The Provost and + the Archpriest were sympathetically watching the jovial scene from a + window, until it was disturbed by the appearance of a Capitoul and his + officers, who summoned some of the party to surrender the prohibited + arms which they were wearing. '_Ben Senhor, non fassat_' was the + impudent reply. The Capitoul attempted to arrest one of the offenders; + whereupon the ecclesiastical party made a combined attack upon the + official. Aimery Béranger struck him in the face with a poignard, + cutting off his nose and part of his chin and lips, and knocking out or + breaking no less than eleven teeth. The surgeons deposed that if he + recovered (he eventually did recover) he would never be able to speak + intelligibly. One of the watch was killed outright by Peter de la + Penne. That night the murderer slept, just as if nothing had happened, + in the house of his ecclesiastical masters. The whole household, + masters and servants alike, were, however, surprised by the other + Capitouls and a crowd of 200 citizens, and led off to prison, and the + house is alleged to have been pillaged. The Archbishop's Official + demanded their surrender. In the case of the superior ecclesiastics + this, after a short delay, was granted. But Aimery, who dressed like a + layman in 'divided and striped clothes' and wore a long beard, they + refused to treat as a clerk, though it was afterwards alleged that the + tonsure was plainly discernible upon his head until it was shaved by + order of the Capitouls. Aimery was put to the torture, admitted his + crime, and was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out by + hanging, after he had had his hand cut off on the scene of the crime, + and been dragged by horses to the place of execution. The Capitouls + were then excommunicated by the Official, and the ecclesiastical side + of the quarrel was eventually transferred to the Roman Court. Before + the Parlement of Paris the University complained of the violation of + the Royal privilege exempting scholars' servants from the ordinary + tribunals. The Capitouls were imprisoned, and after long litigation + sentenced to pay enormous damages to the ruffian's family and erect a + chapel for the good of his soul. The city was condemned for a time to + the forfeiture of all its privileges. The body was cut down from the + gibbet on which it had been hanging for three years, and accorded a + solemn funeral. Four Capitouls bore the pall, and all fathers of + families were required to walk in the procession. When they came to the + Schools, the citizens solemnly begged pardon of the University, and the + cortčge was joined by 3000 scholars. Finally, it cost the city 15,000 + livres tournois or more to regain their civic privileges.[3] + +The late Mr Cecil Rhodes once summarized all Fellows of Colleges as +children in matters of finance. Be that as it may, you will find nothing +more constant in history than the talent of the Universities for +extracting money or money's worth out of a riot. Time (I speak as a +parent) has scarcely blunted that faculty; and still--since where young +men congregate, noise there must be--our Universities like Wordsworth's +Happy Warrior + + turn their necessity to glorious gain. + +These were the excesses of young 'bloods,' and their servants: but with +them mingled scholars not less ferocious in their habits because almost +desperately poor. You all know, I dare say, that very poor scholars would +be granted licences to beg by the Chancellor. The sleeve of this gown in +which I address you represents the purse or pocket of a Master of Arts, +and may hint to you by its amplitude how many crusts he was prepared to +receive from the charitable. + +Now, choosing to ignore (because it has been challenged as overpainted) a +picture of penury endured by the scholars of St John's College in this +University, let me tell you two stories, one well attested, the other +fiction if you will, but both agreeable as testifying to the spirit of +youth which, ever blowing upon their sacred embers, has kept Oxford and +Cambridge perennially alive. + +My first is of three scholars so poor that they possessed but one 'cappa' +and gown between them. They took it in turns therefore, and when one went +to lecture the other two kept to their lodgings. I invite you even to +reflect on the joy of the lucky one, in a winter lecture room, dark, with +unglazed windows, as he listened and shuffled his feet for warmth in the +straw of the floor. [No one, by the way, can understand the incessant +harping of our early poets upon May-time and the return of summer until +he has pictured to himself the dark and cold discomfort of a +Middle-English winter.] These three poor scholars fed habitually on +bread, with soup and a little wine, tasting meat only on Sundays and +feasts of the Church. Yet one of them, Richard of Chichester, who lived +to become a saint, _saepe retulit quod nunquam in vita sua tam jucundam, +tam delectabilem duxerat vitam_--that never had he lived so jollily, so +delectably. + +That is youth, youth blessed by friendship. Now for my second story, +which is also of youth and friendship.-- + +Two poor scholars, who had with pains become Masters of Arts and saved +their pence to purchase the coveted garb, on the afternoon of their +admission took a country walk in it, together flaunting their new finery. +But, the day being gusty, on their return across the bridge, a puff of +wind caught the _biretta_ of one and blew it into the river. The loss was +irrecoverable, since neither could swim. The poor fellow looked at his +friend. His friend looked at him. 'Between us two,' he said, 'it is all +or naught,' and cast his own cap to float and sink with the other down +stream. + +You will never begin to understand literature until you understand +something of life. These young men, your forerunners, understood +something of life while as yet completely careless of literature. After +the impulse of Abelard and others had died down, the mass of students +betook themselves to the Universities, no doubt, for quite ordinary, +mercenary reasons. The University led to the Church, and the Church, in +England at any rate, was the door to professional life. + +Nearly all the civil servants of the Crown--I am here quoting freely--the +diplomatists, the secretaries or advisers of great nobles, the +physicians, the architects, at one time the secular law-givers, all +through the Middle Ages the then large tribe of ecclesiastical lawyers, +were ecclesiastics.... Clerkship did not necessarily involve even minor +orders. But as it was cheaper to a King or a Bishop or a temporal magnate +to reward his physician, his legal adviser, his secretary, or his agent +by a Canonry or a Rectory than by large salaries, the average student of +Paris or Oxford or Cambridge looked toward the Church as the 'main +chance' as we say, and small blame to him! He never at any rate looked +towards Literature: nor did the Universities, wise in their generation, +encourage him to do anything of the sort. + +You may realise, Gentlemen, how tardily, even in later and more +enlightened times, the study of Literature has crept its way into +official Cambridge, if you will take down your "University Calendar" and +study the list of Professorships there set forth in order of foundation. +It begins in 1502 with the Lady Margaret's Chair of Divinity, founded by +the mother of Henry VII. Five Regius Professorships follow: of Divinity, +Civil Law, Physic, Hebrew, Greek, all of 1540. So Greek comes in upon the +flush of the Renaissance; and the Calendar bravely, yet not committing +itself to a date, heads with Erasmus the noble roll which concludes (as +may it long conclude) with Henry Jackson. But Greek comes in last of the +five. Close on a hundred years elapse before the foundation of the next +chair--it is of Arabic; and more than a hundred before we arrive at +Mathematics. So Sir William Hamilton was not without historical excuse +when he declared the study of Mathematics to be no part of the business +of this University! Then follow Moral Philosophy (1683), Music (1684), +Chemistry (1702), Astronomy (1704), Anatomy (1707), Modern History and +more Arabic, with Botany (1724), Geology (1727), closely followed by Mr +Hulse's Christian Advocate, more Astronomy (1749), more Divinity (1777), +Experimental Philosophy (1783): then in the nineteenth century more Law, +more Medicine, Mineralogy, Archaeology, Political Economy, Pure +Mathematics, Comparative Anatomy, Sanskrit and yet again more Law, before +we arrive in 1869 at a Chair of Latin. Faint yet pursuing, we have yet to +pass chairs of Fine Art (belated), Experimental Physics, Applied +Mechanics, Anglo-Saxon, Animal Morphology, Surgery, Physiology, +Pathology, Ecclesiastical History, Chinese, more Divinity, Mental +Philosophy, Ancient History, Agriculture, Biology, Agricultural Botany, +more Biology, Astrophysics, and German, before arriving in 1910 at a +Chair of English Literature which by this time I have not breath to +defend. + +The enumeration has, I hope, been instructive. If it has also plunged you +in gloom, to that atmosphere (as the clock warns me) for a fortnight I +must leave you: with a promise, however, in another lecture to cheer you, +if it may be, with some broken gleams of hope. + + +[Footnote 1: "What English Poetry may still learn from Greek": a paper +read before the English Association on Nov. 17, 1911.] + +[Footnote 2: See Mr E. K. Chambers' "Mediaeval Stage", Dr Courthope's +"History of English Poetry," and Professor W. P. Ker's "The Dark Ages".] + +[Footnote 3: Rashdall, "The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages", +vol. ii, p. 684, from documents printed in Fournier's collection.] + + + + +LECTURE XI. + +ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES nglish Literature in Our +Universities (II) + +Wednesday, December 3 + + +We broke off, Gentlemen, upon the somewhat painful conclusion that our +Universities were not founded for the study of literature, and tardily +admitted it. The dates of our three literary chairs in Cambridge--I speak +of our Western literature only, and omit Arabic, Sanskrit, and +Chinese--clenched that conclusion for us. Greek in 1540, Latin not until +1869, English but three years ago--from the lesson of these intervals +there is no getting away. + +Now I do not propose to dwell on the Renaissance and how Greek came in: +for a number of writers in our time have been busy with the Renaissance, +and have--I was going to say 'over-written the subject,' but no--it is +better to say that they have focussed the period so as to distort the +general perspective at the cost of other periods which have earned less +attention; the twelfth century, for example. At any rate their efforts, +with the amount they claim of your reading, absolve me from doing more +than remind you that the Renaissance brought in the study of Greek, and +Greek necessarily brought in the study of literature: since no man can +read what the Greeks wrote and not have his eyes unsealed to what I have +called a norm of human expression; a guide to conduct, a standard to +correct our efforts, whether in poetry, or in philosophy, or in art. For +the rest, I need only quote to you Gibbon's magnificent saying, that the +Greek language gave a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the +abstractions of metaphysics. [May I add, in parenthesis, that, while no +believer in compulsory Greek, holding, indeed, that you can hardly +reconcile learning with compulsion, and still more hardly force them to +be compatibles, I subscribe with all my heart to Bagehot's shrewd saying, +'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.'] + +But, assuming you to know something of the Renaissance, and how it +brought Greek into Oxford and Cambridge, I find that in the course of the +argument two things fall to be said, and both to be said with some +emphasis. + +In the first place, without officially acknowledging their native tongue +or its literature, our two Universities had no sooner acquired Greek than +their members became immensely interested in English. Take, for one +witness out of many, Gabriel Harvey, Fellow of Pembroke Hall. His letters +to Edmund Spenser have been preserved, as you know. Now Gabriel Harvey +was a man whom few will praise, and very few could have loved. Few will +quarrel with Dr Courthope's description of him as 'a person of +considerable intellectual force, but intolerably arrogant and conceited, +and with a taste vitiated by all the affectations of Italian humanism,' +or deny that 'his tone in his published correspondence with Spenser is +that of an intellectual bully.'[1] None will refuse him the title of fool +for attempting to mislead Spenser into writing hexameters. But all you +can urge against Gabriel Harvey, on this count or that or the other, but +accumulates proof that this donnish man was all the while giving +thought--giving even ferocious thought--to the business of making +an English Literature. + +Let me adduce more pleasing evidence. At or about Christmas, in the year +1597, there was enacted here in Cambridge, in the hall of St John's +College, a play called "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus," a skittish work, +having for subject the 'discontent of scholars'; the misery attending +those who, unsupported by a private purse, would follow after Apollo and +the Nine. No one knows the author's name: but he had a wit which has kept +something of its salt to this day, and in Christmas, 1597, it took +Cambridge by storm. The public demanded a sequel, and "The Return from +Parnassus" made its appearance on the following Christmas (again in St +John's College hall); to be followed by a "Second Part of the Return from +Parnassus," the author's overflow of wit, three years later. Of the +popularity of the first and second plays--"The Pilgrimage" and "The +Return, Part I"--we have good evidence in the prologue to "The Return, +Part II," where the author makes Momus say, before an audience which knew +the truth: + + "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus" and "The Returne from Parnassus" have + stood the honest Stagekeepers in many a crowne's expense for linckes + and vizards: purchased many a Sophister a knocke with a clubbe: + hindred the butler's box, and emptied the Colledge barrells; and now, + unlesse you have heard the former, you may returne home as wise as you + came: for this last is the last part of The Returne from Parnassus; + that is, the last time that the Author's wit will turne upon the toe + in this vaine. + +In other words, these plays had set everybody in Cambridge agog, had been +acted by link-light, had led to brawls--either between literary factions +or through offensive personal allusions to which we have lost all +clue--had swept into the box-office much money usually spent on Christmas +gambling, and had set up an inappeasable thirst for College ale. The +point for us is that (in 1597-1601) they abound in topical allusions to +the London theatres: that Shakespeare is obviously just as much a concern +to these young men of Cambridge as Mr Shaw (say) is to our young men +to-day, and an allusion to him is dropped in confidence that it will be +aptly taken. For instance, one of the characters, Gullio, will have some +love-verses recited to him 'in two or three diverse veins, in Chaucer's, +Gower's and Spenser's and Mr Shakespeare's.' Having listened to Chaucer, +he cries, 'Tush! Chaucer is a foole'; but coming to some lines of Mr +Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," he cries, 'Ey, marry, Sir! these have +some life in them! Let this duncified world esteeme of Spenser and +Chaucer, I'le worship sweet Mr Shakespeare, and to honoure him I will lay +his "Venus and Adonis" under my pillowe.' For another allusion--'Few of +the University pen plaies well,' says the actor Kempe in Part II of the +"Returne"; 'they smell too much of that writer _Ovid_ and that writer +_Metamorphosis_, and talke too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here's +our fellow _Shakespeare_ puts them all downe, ay and _Ben Jonson_, too.' +Here you have Cambridge assembling at Christmas-tide to laugh at +well-understood hits upon the theatrical taste of London. Here you have, +to make Cambridge laugh, three farcical quasi-Aristophanic plays all +hinging on the tribulations of scholars who depart to pursue literature +for a livelihood. For a piece of definite corroborative evidence you have +a statute of Queens' College (quoted by Mr Bass Mullinger) which directs +that 'any student refusing to take part in the acting of a comedy or +tragedy in the College and absenting himself from the performance, +contrary to the injunctions of the President, shall be expelled from the +Society'--which seems drastic. And on top of all this, you have evidence +enough and to spare of the part played in Elizabethan drama by the +'University Wits.' Why, Marlowe (of Corpus Christi) may be held to have +invented its form--blank verse; Ben Jonson (of St John's) to have carried +it on past its meridian and through its decline, into the masque. Both +Universities claim Lyly and Chapman. Marston, Peel, Massinger, hailed +from Oxford. But Greene and Nashe were of Cambridge--of St John's both, +and Day of Caius. They sought to London, and there (for tragic truth +underlay that Christmas comedy of "The Pilgrimage of Parnassus") many of +them came to bitter ends: but before reaching their sordid personal +ruin--and let the deaths of Marlowe and Greene be remembered--they built +the Elizabethan drama, as some of them lived to add its last ornaments. +We know what, meanwhile, Spenser had done. I think it scarcely needs +further proof that Cambridge, towards the end of the sixteenth century, +was fermenting with a desire to read, criticise, yes and write, English +literature, albeit officially the University recognised no such thing. + +There remains a second question--How happened it that Cambridge, after +admitting Greek, took more than three hundred years to establish a Chair +of Latin, and that a Chair of English is, so to speak, a mushroom (call +it not toadstool!) of yesterday? Why simply enough. Latin continued to be +the working language of Science. In Latin Bacon naturally composed his +"Novum Organum" and indeed almost all his scientific and philosophical +work, although a central figure of his age among English prose-writers. +In Latin, in the eighteenth century, Newton wrote his "Principia": and I +suppose that of no two books written by Englishmen before the close of +that century, or indeed before Darwin's "Origin of Species," can it be +less extravagantly said than of the "Novum Organum" and the "Principia" +that they shook the world. Now, without forgetting our Classical Tripos +(founded in 1822), as without forgetting the great names of Bentley and +Porson, we may observe it as generally true, that whenever and wherever +large numbers of scientific men use a particular language as their +working instrument, they have a disposition to look askance on its +refinements; to be jealous of its literary professors; to accuse these of +treating as an end in itself what is properly a means. Like the Denver +editor I quoted to you in a previous lecture, these scientific workers +want to 'get there' in a hurry, forgetting that (to use another +Americanism) the sharper the chisel the more ice it is likely to cut. You +may observe this disposition--this suspicion of 'literature,' this thinly +veiled contempt--in many a scientific man to-day; though because his +language has changed from Latin to English, it is English he now chooses +to cheapen. Well, we cannot help it, perhaps. Perhaps he cannot help it. +It is human nature. We must go on persuading him, not losing our tempers. + +None the less we should not shut our eyes to the fact that while a +language is the working instrument of scientific men there will always be +a number of them to decry any study of it for its beauty, and even any +study of it for the sake of accuracy--its beauty and its accuracy being +indeed scarcely distinguishable. + +I fear, Gentlemen, you may go on from this to the dreadful conclusion +that the date 1869, when Cambridge at length came to possess a Chair of +Latin, marks definitely the hour at which Latin closed its eyes and +became a dead language; that you may proceed to a yet more dreadful +application of this to the Chair of English founded in 1910: and that +henceforward (to misquote what Mr Max Beerbohm once wickedly said of +Walter Pater) you will be apt to regard Professor Housman and me as two +widowers engaged, while the undertaker waits, in composing the features +of our belovčds. + +But (to speak seriously) that is what I stand here to controvert: and I +derive no small encouragement when--as has more than once happened--A, a +scientific man, comes to me and complains that he for his part cannot +understand B, another scientific man, 'because the fellow can't express +himself.' And the need to study precision in writing has grown far more +instant since men of science have abandoned the 'universal language' and +taken to writing in their own tongues. Let us, while not on the whole +regretting the change, at least recognise some dangers, some possible +disadvantages. I will confine myself to English, considered as a +substitute for Latin. In Latin you have a language which may be thin in +its vocabulary and inelastic for modern use; but a language which at all +events compels a man to clear his thought and communicate it to other men +precisely. + + Thoughts hardly to be packed + Into the narrow act + +--may be all impossible of compression into the Latin speech. In English, +on the other hand, you have a language which by its very copiousness and +elasticity tempts you to believe that you can do without packing, without +compression, arrangement, order; that, with the Denver editor, all you +need is to 'get there'--though it be with all your intellectual +belongings in a jumble, overflowing the portmanteau. Rather I preach to +you that having proudly inherited English with its _copia fandi_, you +should keep your estate in order by constantly applying to it that _jus +et norma loquendi_ of which, if you seek to the great models, you will +likewise find yourselves inheritors. + +'But,' it is sometimes urged, 'why not leave this new study of English to +the younger Universities now being set up all over the country?' 'Ours is +an age of specialising. Let these newcomers have something--what better +than English?--to specialise upon.' + +I might respond by asking if the fame of Cambridge would stand where it +stands to-day had she followed a like counsel concerning other studies +and, resting upon Mathematics, given over this or that branch of Natural +Science to be grasped by new hands. What of Electricity, for example? Or +what of Physiology? Yes, and among the unnatural sciences, what of +Political Economy? But I will use a more philosophical argument. + +Some years ago I happened on a collection of Bulgarian proverbs of which +my memory retains but two, yet each an abiding joy. In a lecture on +English Literature in our Universities you will certainly not miss to +apply the first, which runs, 'Many an ass has entered Jerusalem.' + +The application of the second may elude you for a moment. It voices the +impatience of an honest Bulgar who has been worried overmuch to subscribe +to what, in this England of ours, we call Church Purposes; and it runs, +'All these two-penny saints will be the ruin of the Church.' + +Now far be it from me to apply the term 'two-penny saint' to any existing +University. To avoid the accusation I hereby solemnly declare my deep +conviction that every single University at this moment in England, +Scotland, Wales or Ireland has reasons--strong in all, in some +overwhelmingly strong--for its existence. That is plainly said, I hope? +Yet I do maintain that if we go on multiplying Universities we shall not +increase the joy; that the reign of two-penny saints lies not far off +and will soon lie within measurable distance; and that it will be +a pestilent reign. As we saw in out last lecture the word +'University'--_Universitas_--had, in its origin, nothing to do with +Universality: it meant no more than a Society, organised (as it +happened) to promote learning. But words, like institutions, often rise +above their beginnings, and in time acquire a proud secondary +connotation. For an instance let me give you the beautiful Wykehamist +motto _Manners Makyeth Man_, wherein 'manners' originally meant no more +than 'morals.' So there has grown around our two great Universities of +Oxford and Cambridge a connotation (secondary, if you will, but valuable +above price) of universality; of standing like great beacons of light, +to attract the young wings of all who would seek learning for their +sustenance. Thousands have singed, thousands have burned themselves, no +doubt: but what thousands of thousands have caught the sacred fire into +their souls as they passed through and passed out, to carry it, to drop +it, still as from wings, upon waste places of the world! Think of +country vicarages, of Australian or Himalayan outposts, where men have +nourished out lives of duty upon the fire of three transient, priceless +years. Think of the generations of children to whom their fathers' +lives, prosaic enough, could always be re-illumined if someone let fall +the word 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge,' so that they themselves came to +surmise an aura about the name as of a land very far off; and then say +if the ineffable spell of those two words do not lie somewhere in the +conflux of generous youth with its rivalries and clash of minds, ere it +disperses, generation after generation, to the duller business of life. +Would you have your mother University, Gentlemen, undecorated by some +true study of your mother-English? + +I think not, having been there, and known such thoughts as you will carry +away, and having been against expectation called back to report them. + + And sometimes I remember days of old + When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek, + And all the world and I seem'd far less cold, + And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold, + And hope was strong, and life itself not weak. + +My purpose here (and I cannot too often recur to it) is to wean your +minds from hankering after false Germanic standards and persuade you, or +at least point out to you, in what direction that true study lies if you +are men enough to take up your inheritance and believe in it as a glory +to be improved. + +Neither Oxford nor Cambridge nor any University on earth can study +English Literature truthfully or worthily, or even at all profitably, +unless by studying it in the category for which Heaven, or Nature (call +the ultimate cause what you will), intended it; or, to put the assertion +more concretely, in any other category than that for which the particular +author--be his name Chaucer or Chesterton, Shakespeare or Shaw--designed +it; as neither can Oxford nor Cambridge nor any University study English +Literature, to understand it, unless by bracing itself to consider a +living art. Origins, roots, all the gropings towards light--let these be +granted as accessories; let those who search in them be granted all +honour, all respect. It is only when they preach or teach these +preliminaries, these accessories, to be more important than Literature +itself--it is only when they, owing all their excuse in life to the +established daylight, din upon us that the precedent darkness claims +precedence in honour, that one is driven to utter upon them this +dialogue, in monosyllables: + + _And God said, 'Let there be light': and there was light. + 'Oh, thank you, Sir,' said the Bat and the Owl; 'then we are off!'_ + +I grant you, Gentlemen, that there must always inhere a difficulty in +correlating for the purposes of a Tripos a study of Literature itself +with a study of these accessories; the thing itself being _naturally_ so +much more difficult: being so difficult indeed that (to take literary +criticism alone and leave for a moment the actual practice of writing +out of the question) though some of the first intellects in the +world--Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, Boileau, Dryden, Lessing, Goethe, +Coleridge, Sainte-Beuve--have broken into parcels of that territory, the +mass of it remains unexplored, and nobody as yet has found courage to +reduce the reports of these great explorers to any system; so that a very +eminent person indeed found it easy to write to me the other day, 'The +principles of Criticism? What are they? Who made them?' To this I could +only answer that I did not know Who made them; but that Aristotle, +Dryden, Lessing, had, as it was credibly reported, discovered five or, it +might be, six. And this difficulty of appraising literature absolutely +inheres in your study of it from the beginning. No one can have set a +General Paper on Literature and examined on it, setting it and marking +the written answers, alongside of papers about language, inflexions and +the rest, without having borne in upon him that _here_ the student finds +his difficulty. While in a paper set about inflexions, etc., a pupil with +a moderately retentive memory will easily obtain sixty or seventy per +cent. of the total marks, in a paper on the book or play considered +critically an examiner, even after setting his paper with a view to some +certain inferiority of average, has to be lenient before he can award +fifty, forty, or even thirty per cent. of the total. + +You will find a somewhat illuminating passage--illuminating, that is, if +you choose to interpret and apply it to our subject--in Lucian's "True +History," where the veracious traveller, who tells the tale, affirms that +he visited Hades among other places, and had some conversation with +Homer, among its many inhabitants-- + + Before many days had passed, I accosted the poet Homer, when we were + both disengaged, and asked him, among other things, where he came + from; it was still a burning question with us, I explained. He said he + was aware that some derived him from Chios, others from Smyrna, and + others again from Colophon; but in fact he was a Babylonian, generally + known not as Homer but as Tigranes; but when later in life he was + given as a homer or hostage to the Greeks, that name clung to him. + Another of my questions was about the so-called spurious books; had he + written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew + what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their + lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried + him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of + Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into his + head that way. + +Even so diverse are the questions that may be asked concerning any great +work of art. But to discover its full intent is always the most difficult +task of all. That task, however, and nothing less difficult, will always +be the one worthiest of a great University. + +On that, and on that alone, Gentlemen, do I base all claims for our +School of English Literature. And yet in conclusion I will ask you, +reminding yourselves how fortunate is your lot in Cambridge, to think of +fellow-Englishmen far less fortunate. + +Years ago I took some pains to examine the examination papers set by a +renowned Examining Body and I found this--'I humbly solicit' (to use a +phrase of Lucian's) 'my hearers' incredulity'--that in a paper set upon +three Acts of "Hamlet"--three Acts of "Hamlet"!--the first question +started with 'G.tt. p..cha' 'Al..g.tor' and invited the candidate to fill +in the missing letters correctly. Now I was morally certain that the +words 'gutta-percha' and 'alligator' did not occur in the first three +Acts of "Hamlet"; but having carefully re-read them I invited this +examining body to explain itself. The answer I got was that, to +understand Shakespeare, a student must first understand the English +Language! Some of you on leaving Cambridge will go out--a company of +Christian folk dispersed throughout the world--to tell English children +of English Literature. Such are the pedagogic fetters you will have to +knock off their young minds before they can stand and walk. + +Gentlemen, on a day early in this term I sought the mound which is the +old Castle of Cambridge. Access to it, as perhaps you know, lies through +the precincts of the County Prison. An iron railing encloses the mound, +having a small gate, for the key of which a notice-board advised me to +ring the prison bell. I rang. A very courteous gaoler answered the bell +and opened the gate, which stands just against his wicket. I thanked him, +but could not forbear asking 'Why do they keep this gate closed?' 'I +don't know, sir,' he answered, 'but I suppose if they didn't the children +might get in and play.' + +So with his answer I went up the hill and from the top saw Cambridge +spread at my feet; Magdalene below me, and the bridge which--poor product +as it is of the municipal taste--has given its name to so many bridges +all over the world; the river on its long ambit to Chesterton; the tower +of St John's, and beyond it the unpretentious but more beautiful tower of +Jesus College. To my right the magnificent chine of King's College Chapel +made its own horizon above the yellowing elms. I looked down on the +streets--the narrow streets--the very streets which, a fortnight ago, I +tried to people for you with that mediaeval throng which has passed as we +shall pass. Still in my ear the gaoler's answer repeated itself--_'I +suppose, if they didn't keep it locked, the children might get in and +play'_: and a broken echo seemed to take it up, in words that for a while +had no more coherence than the scattered jangle of bells in the town +below. But as I turned to leave, they chimed into an articulate sentence +and the voice was the voice of Francis Bacon--_Regnum Scientiae ut regnum +Coeli non nisi sub persona infantis intratur.--Into the Kingdom of +Knowledge, as into the Kingdom of Heaven, whoso would enter must become +as a little child._ + + +[Footnote 1: "Cambridge History of English Literature", vol. iii, p. 213.] + + + + +LECTURE XII. + +ON STYLE + +Wednesday, January 28, 1914 + + +Should Providence, Gentlemen, destine any one of you to write books for +his living, he will find experimentally true what I here promise him, +that few pleasures sooner cloy than reading what the reviewers say. This +promise I hand on with the better confidence since it was endorsed for me +once in conversation by that eminently good man the late Henry Sidgwick; +who added, however, 'Perhaps I ought to make a single exception. There +was a critic who called one of my books "epoch-making." Being anonymous, +he would have been hard to find and thank, perhaps; but I ought to have +made the effort.' + +May I follow up this experience of his with one of my own, as a preface +or brief apology for this lecture? Short-lived as is the author's joy in +his critics, far-spent as may be his hope of fame, mournful his consent +with Sir Thomas Browne that 'there is nothing immortal but immortality,' +he cannot hide from certain sanguine men of business, who in England call +themselves 'Press-Cutting Agencies,' in America 'Press-Clipping Bureaux,' +and, as each successive child of his invention comes to birth, +unbecomingly presume in him an almost virginal trepidation. 'Your book,' +they write falsely, 'is exciting much comment. May we collect and send +you notices of it appearing in the World's Press? We submit a specimen +cutting with our terms; and are, dear Sir,' etc. + +Now, although steadily unresponsive to this wile, I am sometimes guilty +of taking the enclosed specimen review and thrusting it for preservation +among the scarcely less deciduous leaves of the book it was written to +appraise. So it happened that having this vacation, to dust--not to +read--a line of obsolete or obsolescent works on a shelf, I happened on a +review signed by no smaller a man than Mr Gilbert Chesterton and +informing the world that the author of my obsolete book was full of good +stories as a kindly uncle, but had a careless or impatient way of +stopping short and leaving his readers to guess what they most wanted to +know: that, reaching the last chapter, or what he chose to make the last +chapter, instead of winding up and telling 'how everybody lived ever +after,' he (so to speak) slid you off his avuncular knee with a blessing +and the remark that nine o'clock was striking and all good children +should be in their beds. + +That criticism has haunted me during the vacation. Looking back on a +course of lectures which I deemed to be accomplished; correcting them in +print; revising them with all the nervousness of a beginner; I have +seemed to hear you complain--'He has exhorted us to write accurately, +appropriately; to eschew Jargon; to be bold and essay Verse. He has +insisted that Literature is a living art, to be practised. But just what +we most needed he has not told. At the final doorway to the secret he +turned his back and left us. Accuracy, propriety, perspicuity--these we +may achieve. But where has he helped us to write with beauty, with charm, +with distinction? Where has he given us rules for what is called _Style_ +in short?--having attained which an author may count himself set up in +business.' + +Thus, Gentlemen, with my mind's ear I heard you reproaching me. I beg you +to accept what follows for my apology. + +To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things +which Style is _not_; which have little or nothing to do with Style, +though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is +not--can never be--extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian +lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he +sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged +with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of +jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, +you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a +practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an +impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it +--whole-heartedly--and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. +_Murder your darlings._' + +But let me plead further that you have not been left altogether without +clue to the secret of what Style is. That you must master the secret for +yourselves lay implicit in our bargain, and you were never promised that +a writer's training would be easy. Yet a clue was certainly put in your +hands when, having insisted that Literature is a living art, I added that +therefore it must be personal and of its essence personal. + +This goes very deep: it conditions all our criticism of art. Yet it +conceals no mystery. You may see its meaning most easily and clearly, +perhaps, by contrasting Science and Art at their two extremes--say Pure +Mathematics with Acting. Science as a rule deals with things, Art with +man's thought and emotion about things. In Pure Mathematics things are +rarefied into ideas, numbers, concepts, but still farther and farther +away from the individual man. Two and two make four, and fourpence is not +ninepence (or at any rate four is not nine) whether Alcibiades or Cleon +keep the tally. In Acting on the other hand almost everything depends on +personal interpretation--on the gesture, the walk, the gaze, the tone of +a Siddons, the _rusé_ smile of a Coquelin, the exquisite, vibrant +intonation of a Bernhardt. 'English Art?' exclaimed Whistler, 'there is +no such thing! Art is art and mathematics is mathematics.' Whistler +erred. Precisely because Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics and a +Science, Art being Art can be English or French; and, more than this, +must be the personal expression of an Englishman or a Frenchman, as a +'Constable' differs from a 'Corot' and a 'Whistler' from both. Surely I +need not labour this. But what is true of the extremes of Art and Science +is true also, though sometimes less recognisably true, of the mean: and +where they meet and seem to conflict (as in History) the impact is that +of the personal or individual mind upon universal truth, and the question +becomes whether what happened in the Sicilian Expedition, or at the trial +of Charles I, can be set forth naked as an alegebraical sum, serene in +its certainty, indifferent to opinion, uncoloured in the telling as in +the hearing by sympathy or dislike, by passion or by character. I doubt, +while we should strive in history as in all things to be fair, if history +can be written in that colourless way, to interest men in human doings. I +am sure that nothing which lies further towards imaginative, creative, +Art can be written in that way. + +It follows then that Literature, being by its nature personal, must be by +its nature almost infinitely various. 'Two persons cannot be the authors +of the sounds which strike our ear; and as they cannot be speaking one +and the same speech, neither can they be writing one and the same lecture +or discourse.' _Quot homines tot sententiae._ You may translate that, if +you will, 'Every man of us constructs his sentence differently'; and if +there be indeed any quarrel between Literature and Science (as I never +can see why there should be), I for one will readily grant Science all +her cold superiority, her ease in Sion with universal facts, so it be +mine to serve among the multifarious race who have to adjust, as best +they may, Science's cold conclusions (and much else) to the brotherly +give-and-take of human life. + +_Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas..._ Is it possible, +Gentlemen, that you can have read one, two, three or more of the +acknowledged masterpieces of literature without having it borne in on you +that they are great because they are alive, and traffic not with cold +celestial certainties, but with men's hopes, aspirations, doubts, loves, +hates, breakings of the heart; the glory and vanity of human endeavour, +the transience of beauty, the capricious uncertain lease on which you and +I hold life, the dark coast to which we inevitably steer; all that amuses +or vexes, all that gladdens, saddens, maddens us men and women on this +brief and mutable traject which yet must be home for a while, the +anchorage of our hearts? For an instance:-- + + Here lies a most beautiful lady, + Light of step and heart was she: + I think she was the most beautiful lady + That ever was in the West Country. + But beauty vanishes, beauty passes, + However rare, rare it be; + And when I crumble who shall remember + That lady of the West Country? + + (Walter de la Mare.) + +Or take a critic--a literary critic--such as Samuel Johnson, of whom we +are used to think as of a man artificial in phrase and pedantic in +judgment. He lives, and why? Because, if you test his criticism, he never +saw literature but as a part of life, nor would allow in literature what +was false to life, as he saw it. He could be wrong-headed, perverse; +could damn Milton because he hated Milton's politics; on any question of +passion or prejudice could make injustice his daily food. But he could +not, even in a friend's epitaph, let pass a phrase (however well turned) +which struck him as empty of life or false to it. All Boswell testifies +to this: and this is why Samuel Johnson survives. + +Now let me carry this contention--that all Literature is personal and +therefore various--into a field much exploited by the pedant, and fenced +about with many notice-boards and public warnings. _'Neologisms not +allowed here,' 'All persons using slang, or trespassing in pursuit of +originality....'_ + +Well, I answer these notice-boards by saying that, literature being +personal, and men various--and even the "Oxford English Dictionary" being +no Canonical book--man's use or defiance of the dictionary depends for +its justification on nothing but his success: adding that, since it takes +all kinds to make a world, or a literature, his success will probably +depend on the occasion. A few months ago I found myself seated at a +bump-supper next to a cheerful youth who, towards the close, suggested +thoughtfully, as I arose to make a speech, that, the bonfire (which of +course he called the 'bonner') being due at nine-thirty o'clock, there +was little more than bare time left for 'langers and godders.' It cost +me, who think slowly, some seconds to interpret that by 'langers' he +meant 'Auld Lang Syne' and by 'godders' 'God Save the King.' I thought at +the time, and still think, and will maintain against any schoolmaster, +that the neologisms of my young neighbour, though not to be recommended +for essays or sermons, did admirably suit the time, place, and occasion. + +Seeing that in human discourse, infinitely varied as it is, so much must +ever depend on _who_ speaks, and to _whom_, in what mood and upon what +occasion; and seeing that Literature must needs take account of all +manner of writers, audiences, moods, occasions; I hold it a sin against +the light to put up a warning against any word that comes to us in the +fair way of use and wont (as 'wire,' for instance, for a telegram), even +as surely as we should warn off hybrids or deliberately pedantic +impostors, such as 'antibody' and 'picture-drome'; and that, generally, +it is better to err on the side of liberty than on the side of the +censor: since by the manumitting of new words we infuse new blood into a +tongue of which (or we have learnt nothing from Shakespeare's audacity) +our first pride should be that it is flexible, alive, capable of +responding to new demands of man's untiring quest after knowledge and +experience. Not because it was an ugly thing did I denounce Jargon to +you, the other day: but because it was a dead thing, leading no-whither, +meaning naught. There is _wickedness_ in human speech, sometimes. You +will detect it all the better for having ruled out what is _naughty_. + +Let us err, then, if we err, on the side of liberty. I came, the other +day, upon this passage in Mr Frank Harris's study of 'The Man +Shakespeare':-- + + In the last hundred years the language of Moličre has grown fourfold; + the slang of the studios and the gutter and the laboratory, of the + engineering school and the dissecting table, has been ransacked for + special terms to enrich and strengthen the language in order that it + may deal easily with the new thoughts. French is now a superb + instrument, while English is positively poorer than it was in the time + of Shakespeare, thanks to the prudery of our illiterate middle + class.[1] + +Well, let us not lose our heads over this, any more than over other +prophecies of our national decadence. The "Oxford English Dictionary" has +not yet unfolded the last of its coils, which yet are ample enough to +enfold us in seven words for every three an active man can grapple with. +Yet the warning has point, and a particular point, for those who aspire +to write poetry: as Francis Thompson has noted in his Essay on Shelley:-- + + Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word. + But practically, the habit of excessive care in word-selection + frequently results in loss of spontaneity; and, still worse, the habit + of always taking the best word too easily becomes the habit of always + taking the most ornate word, the word most removed from ordinary + speech. In consequence of this, poetic diction has become latterly a + kaleidoscope, and one's chief curiosity is as to the precise + combinations into which the pieces will be shifted. There is, in fact, + a certain band of words, the Praetorian cohorts of Poetry, whose + prescriptive aid is invoked by every aspirant to the poetic purple.... + Against these it is time some banner should be raised.... It is at any + rate curious to note that the literary revolution against the despotic + diction of Pope seems issuing, like political revolutions, in a + despotism of his own making; + +and he adds a note that this is the more surprising to him because so +many Victorian poets were prose-writers as well. + + Now, according to our theory, the practice of prose should maintain + fresh and comprehensive a poet's diction, should save him from falling + into the hands of an exclusive coterie of poetic words. It should + react upon his metrical vocabulary to its beneficial expansion, by + taking him outside his aristocratic circle of language, and keeping + him in touch with the great commonalty, the proletariat of speech. For + it is with words as with men: constant intermarriage within the limits + of a patrician clan begets effete refinement; and to reinvigorate the + stock, its veins must be replenished from hardy plebeian blood. + +In diction, then, let us acquire all the store we can, rejecting no coin +for its minting but only if its metal be base. So shall we bring out of +our treasuries new things and old. + +Diction, however, is but a part of Style, and perhaps not the most +important part. So I revert to the larger question, 'What is Style? What +its [Greek: to ti en einai], its essence, the law of its being?' + +Now, as I sat down to write this lecture, memory evoked a scene and with +the scene a chance word of boyish slang, both of which may seem to you +irrelevant until, or unless, I can make you feel how they hold for me the +heart of the matter. + +I once happened to be standing in a corner of a ball-room when there +entered the most beautiful girl these eyes have ever seen or now--since +they grow dull--ever will see. It was, I believe, her first ball, and by +some freak or in some premonition she wore black: and not pearls--which, +I am told, maidens are wont to wear on these occasions--but one crescent +of diamonds in her black hair. _Et vera incessu patuit dea._ Here, I say, +was absolute beauty. It startled. + + I think she was the most beautiful lady + That ever was in the West Country. + But beauty vanishes, beauty passes.... + +She died a year or two later. She may have been too beautiful to live +long. I have a thought that she may also have been too good. + +For I saw her with the crowd about her: I saw led up and presented among +others the man who was to be, for a few months, her husband: and then, as +the men bowed, pencilling on their programmes, over their shoulders I saw +her eyes travel to an awkward young naval cadet (Do you remember Crossjay +in Meredith's "The Egoist"? It was just such a boy) who sat abashed and +glowering sulkily beside me on the far bench. Promptly with a laugh, she +advanced, claimed him, and swept him off into the first waltz. + +When it was over he came back, a trifle flushed, and I felicitated him; +my remark (which I forget) being no doubt 'just the sort of banality, you +know, one does come out with'--as maybe that the British Navy kept its +old knack of cutting out. But he looked at me almost in tears and +blurted, 'It isn't her beauty, sir. You saw? It's--it's--my God, it's the +_style_!' + +Now you may think that a somewhat cheap, or at any rate inadequate, cry +of the heart in my young seaman; as you may think it inadequate in me, +and moreover a trifle capricious, to assure you (as I do) that the first +and last secret of a good Style consists in thinking with the heart as +well as with the head. + +But let us philosophise a little. You have been told, I daresay often +enough, that the business of writing demands _two_--the author and the +reader. Add to this what is equally obvious, that the obligation of +courtesy rests first with the author, who invites the séance, and +commonly charges for it. What follows, but that in speaking or writing we +have an obligation to put ourselves into the hearer's or reader's place? +It is _his_ comfort, _his_ convenience, we have to consult. To _express_ +ourselves is a very small part of the business: very small and almost +unimportant as compared with _impressing_ ourselves: the aim of the whole +process being to persuade. + +All reading demands an effort. The energy, the good-will which a reader +brings to the book is, and must be, partly expended in the labour of +reading, marking, learning, inwardly digesting what the author means. The +more difficulties, then, we authors obtrude on him by obscure or careless +writing, the more we blunt the edge of his attention: so that if only in +our own interest--though I had rather keep it on the ground of +courtesy--we should study to anticipate his comfort. + +But let me go a little deeper. You all know that a great part of +Lessing's argument in his "Laoköon", on the essentials of Literature as +opposed to Pictorial Art or Sculpture, depends on this--that in Pictorial +Art or in Sculpture the eye sees, the mind apprehends, the whole in a +moment of time, with the correspondent disadvantage that this moment of +time is fixed and stationary; whereas in writing, whether in prose or in +verse, we can only produce our effect by a series of successive small +impressions, dripping our meaning (so to speak) into the reader's +mind--with the correspondent advantage, in point of vivacity, that our +picture keeps moving all the while. Now obviously this throws a greater +strain on his patience whom we address. Man at the best is a +narrow-mouthed bottle. Through the conduit of speech he can utter--as +you, my hearers, can receive--only one word at a time. In writing (as my +old friend Professor Minto used to say) you are as a commander filing out +his battalion through a narrow gate that allows only one man at a time to +pass; and your reader, as he receives the troops, has to re-form and +reconstruct them. No matter how large or how involved the subject, it can +be communicated only in that way. You see, then, what an obligation we +owe to him of order and arrangement; and why, apart from felicities and +curiosities of diction, the old rhetoricians laid such stress upon order +and arrangement as duties we owe to those who honour us with their +attention. '_La clarté,_' says a French writer, '_est la politesse._' +[Greek: Charisi kai sapheneia thue], recommends Lucian. Pay your +sacrifice to the Graces, and to [Greek: sapheneia]--Clarity--first among +the Graces. + +What am I urging? 'That Style in writing is much the same thing as good +manners in other human intercourse?' Well, and why not? At all events we +have reached a point where Buffon's often-quoted saying that 'Style is +the man himself' touches and coincides with William of Wykeham's old +motto that 'Manners makyth Man': and before you condemn my doctrine as +inadequate listen to this from Coventry Patmore, still bearing in mind +that a writer's main object is to _impress_ his thought or vision upon +his hearer. + +'There is nothing comparable _for moral force_ to the charm of truly +noble manners....' + +I grant you, to be sure, that the claim to possess a Style must be +conceded to many writers--Carlyle is one--who take no care to put +listeners at their ease, but rely rather on native force of genius to +shock and astound. Nor will I grudge them your admiration. But I do say +that, as more and more you grow to value truth and the modest grace of +truth, it is less and less to such writers that you will turn: and I say +even more confidently that the qualities of Style we allow them are not +the qualities we should seek as a norm, for they one and all offend +against Art's true maxim of avoiding excess. + +And this brings me to the two great _paradoxes_ of Style. For the first +(1),--although Style is so curiously personal and individual, and +although men are so variously built that no two in the world carry away +the same impressions from a show, there is always a norm somewhere; in +literature and art, as in morality. Yes, even in man's most terrific, +most potent inventions--when, for example, in "Hamlet" or in "Lear" +Shakespeare seems to be breaking up the solid earth under our feet--there +is always some point and standard of sanity--a Kent or an Horatio--to +which all enormities and passionate errors may be referred; to which the +agitated mind of the spectator settles back as upon its centre of +gravity, its pivot of repose. + +(2) The second paradox, though it is equally true, you may find a little +subtler. Yet it but applies to Art the simple truth of the Gospel, that +he who would save his soul must first lose it. Though personality +pervades Style and cannot be escaped, the first sin against Style as +against good Manners is to obtrude or exploit personality. The very +greatest work in Literature--the "Iliad," the "Odyssey," the +"Purgatorio," "The Tempest," "Paradise Lost," the "Republic," "Don +Quixote"--is all + + Seraphically free + From taint of personality. + +And Flaubert, that gladiator among artists, held that, at its highest, +literary art could be carried into pure science. 'I believe,' said he, +'that great art is scientific and impersonal. You should by an +intellectual effort transport yourself into characters, not draw _them_ +into _yourself_. That at least is the method.' On the other hand, says +Goethe, 'We should endeavour to use words that correspond as closely as +possible with what we feel, see, think, imagine, experience, and reason. +It is an endeavour we cannot evade and must daily renew.' I call +Flaubert's the better counsel, even though I have spent a part of this +lecture in attempting to prove it impossible. It at least is noble, +encouraging us to what is difficult. The shrewder Goethe encourages us to +exploit ourselves to the top of our bent. I think Flaubert would have hit +the mark if for 'impersonal' he had substituted 'disinterested.' + +For--believe me, Gentlemen--so far as Handel stands above Chopin, as +Velasquez above Greuze, even so far stand the great masculine objective +writers above all who appeal to you by parade of personality or private +sentiment. + +Mention of these great masculine 'objective' writers brings me to my last +word: which is, 'Steep yourselves in _them_: habitually bring all to the +test of _them_: for while you cannot escape the fate of all style, which +is to be personal, the more of catholic manhood you inherit from those +great loins the more you will assuredly beget.' + +This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is the +power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of +human thought or emotion. + +But essentially it resembles good manners. It comes of endeavouring to +understand others, of thinking for them rather than for yourself--of +thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head. It gives rather +than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or applause, not being fed +by these but rather sustained and continually refreshed by an inward +loyalty to the best. Yet, like 'character' it has its altar within; to +that retires for counsel, from that fetches its illumination, to ray +outwards. Cultivate, Gentlemen, that habit of withdrawing to be advised +by the best. So, says Fénelon, 'you will find yourself infinitely +quieter, your words will be fewer and more effectual; and while you make +less ado, what you do will be more profitable.' + + +[Footnote 1: 'An oration,' says Quintilian, 'may find room for almost any +word saving a few indecent ones (_quae sunt parum verecunda_).' He adds +that writers of the Old Comedy were often commended even for these: 'but +it is enough for us to mind our present business--_sed nobis nostrum opus +intueri sat est._'] + + + + +INDEX + + +Abelard 203, 205, 212 +Abercrombie, Lascelles 18 +Addison, Joseph 124, 172 +Alcuin 199, 200, 204, 205 +Alfred, King 186 +Aristophanes 192 +Aristotle 128, 203, 227 +Arnold, Matthew 35, 76, 139, 186, 202 +"Arte of Rhetorique," Wilson's 118 +Ascham, Roger 121, 188 +Augustine 199 + +Bacon, Lord 6, 7, 10, 220, 231 +Bagehot, Walter 216 +"Ballata" 45 +Barbour, John 112 +Barrie, Sir James Matthew 17, 135 +Bede 204 +Beerbohm, Max 222 +Belisarius 175 +Bentham, Jeremy 97 +"Beowulf" 159-165 +Béranger, Pierre-Jean de 45 +Berners, Lord 108-110,120 +Bible, The: + Authorised Version 53, 97, 110, 122 et seq., 141, 143, 190 + Revised Version 131-133 +Blair, Wilfred 80 +Blake, William 12 +Boccaccio 184 +Boethius 203 +Bologna, University of 200-1, 206 +Borneil, Giraud de 181 +Boswell, James 238 +Bridges, Robert 19 +Brooke, the Rev. Stopford A. 159 +Brougham, Ld 47, 101 +Browne, Sir Thomas 10, 51, 124, 168, 232 +Browning, Robert 39, 186 +Buffon 245 +Bunyan, John 124 +Burke, Edmund 27, 28, 46, 47-52, 101 +Burns, Robert 45 +Butler, Arthur John 20 + +Caedmon 163 +Cambridge 201 _et seqq._ +Campion, Thomas 185, 188 +Carducci, Giosué 154-5 +Carlyle, Thomas 18, 103, 245 +Cellini, Benvenuto 41 +Cervantes 7, 25 +Chadwick, Professor H. M. 163 +Chair of English Literature, University Ordinance 7 +Chambers, E. K. 199 +Champeaux, William of 205 +Chaucer, Geoffrey 10, 110-111, 163, 183, 184, 219 +Chesterton, Gilbert K. 233 +Chichester, Richard of 211 +Cicero 28, 49 +Clare, John 39 +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 41, 64, 65 +Conington, John 171-2 +Courthope, W. J. 13, 158, 184, 199 +Coverdale, Miles 124 +Cowley, Abraham 185 +Cowper, William 186 +Crewe, Ld Chief Justice 7 +Cynewulf 163 + +Daniel, Samuel 185, 188 +Dante 77, 184 +Darwin, Charles 221 +Defoe, Daniel 61, 75. +Dekker, Thomas 65 +De La Mare, Walter 237 +De Quincey, Thomas 54 +Desiderius, Archbishop 199 +Dionysius of Halicarnassus 28 +Donne, John 102, 106, 185 +Dryden, John 172, 186, 227 +"Duchess of Malfy," Webster's 99 +Dunbar 10 + +'Eliot, George' 11 +Emerson, Ralph Waldo 11 + +Falconer, William 79 +Falkner, J. Meade 168-9 +Fénelon 248 +FitzGerald, Edward 97 +Flaubert, Gustave 247 +Fletcher, John 13 +Fowler, W. H. and F. G. 90, 137 +Freeman, Professor E. A. 158, 160, 174-179, 186 +"Froissart," Berners' 108 +Froude, James Anthony 78 +Fuller, Thomas 206 + +Gibbon, Edward 124, 216 +Gildas 175 +Goethe 103, 247 +Gray, Thomas 11, 16, 136, 157-8, 162 +Green, J. R. 158 +Green, T. H. 8 +Gregory the Great, Pope 199 +Grierson, Professor H. J. C. 185 + +Hamilton, Sir William 213 +Hardy, Thomas 18 +Harris, Frank 240 +Harvey, Gabriel 185, 216-7 +Heine, Heinrich 45 +Herbert, George 133 +"Hero and Leander," Marlowe's 98 +Herodotus 44, 63 +Homer 25, 64, 69, 76-78, 80, 81, 161, 190, 228 +Horace 171-2 +Housman, Professor A. E. 222 + +Ibsen 96 +Irnerius 206 +Isaiah 130-133 + +Jackson, Dr Henry 213 +Johnson, Samuel 11, 37, 69, 121, 172, 238 +Jonson, Ben 129, 146, 185, 219, 220 +Jowett, Benjamin 29 +Jusserand, J. J. 182 +Juvenal, 172 + +Keats, John 16, 39, 186 +Kempis, Thomas ŕ 15 +Ker, Professor W. P. 160, 199 +Kipling, Rudyard 61 + +Lamb, Charles 41 +Lessing 81, 227, 244 +Lindsay, the Rev. T. M., D.D. 118 +Lloyd George, the Right Hon. David 137-8 +Lucian 6, 160, 192, 228, 245 +Lucretius 193 + +Malory, Sir Thomas 107-110, 120 +Marlowe, Christopher 98-9, 185, 220 +Marvell, Andrew 185 +Mason, William 157 +Masson, David 12 +McKenna, the Right Hon. Reginald 137-8 +Meredith, George 243, 247 +Milton, John 1, 10, 16, 43, 56-62, 74-76, 124, 152, 185, 195, 238 +Minto, Professor William 245 +Moore, Thomas 45 +Morris, William 188 +Mullinger, J. Bass 205, 219 +Murray, Professor Gilbert 193 + +Nashe, Thomas 120 +Newman, Cardinal 5, 30, 31-2, 115, 134, 144, 147, 234 +Newton, Sir Isaac 221 +Noyes, Alfred 78 +"Nut-Brown Maid, The" 111 + +Oates, Captain 42 +Origen 195, 202 +Oxford 201 _et seq._ + +Paris, University of 200, 205 +Pater, Walter 77, 222 +Patmore, Coventry 245 +Payne, E. J. 100-103 +"Pervigilium Veneris" 151, 194 +Pheidias 14 +Philosophy and Poetry 1 +Piers Plowman 163, 182 +"Pilgrimage to Parnassus, The" 217-220 +Plato 1-4, 150, 205 +Pliny 152-3 +Podsnap (_see_ Freeman) +Poggio 205 +Pope, Alexander 157, 162 +Powell, F. York 159 +Provençal Song 181-183 +Pythagoras 208 + +Quintilian 29, 140, 240 + +Raleigh, Professor Sir Walter 9 +Rashdall, Hastings 208-213 +Remigius 206 +Renan 1 +Reynolds, Sir Joshua 23-25 + +Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustus 20 +Saintsbury, Prof. George 55, 56, 187 +Salamanca, University of 200 +Scott, The Antarctic Expedition 42 +Severus, Sulpicius 199 +Shakespeare, William 15, 41, 50, 51-2, 97-100, 113, 129, 185, + 190, 197, 219, 229, 246 +Shaw, George Bernard 72 +Shelley 40 +Shirley, James 106 +Sidgwick, Henry 232 +Sidney, Sir Philip 41-2 +Skeat, Walter W. 12 +"Sonata" 45 +South, Robert 102 +Spenser, Edmund 185, 206, 217, 219 +Stevenson, Robert Louis 133 +Stubbs, Bishop W. 44 +'Student's Handbook, The' 72-3 +Swift, Jonathan 61 +Swinburne, Algernon 196 + +Taylor, Jeremy 68-9 +Tennyson, Lord 75, 186 +Tertullian 195, 198, 202 +Thackeray, William Makepeace 124 +Thompson, Francis 241 +Thomson, James 39 +Toulouse, University of 208 +Tyndale, William 122, 126, 127 + +Vacarius 206 +Ventadour, Bernard de 181 +"Venus and Adonis" 98-9 +Verrall, Dr A. W. 7 +Vigfússon, Gudbrand 159 +Virgil 25, 80, 194, 200 +Voltaire 192 + +Waller, Edmund 85 +Walpole, Horatio 173 +Walton, Isaak 70-1, 124, 201 +Warton, Thomas 158 +Watson, E. J. 155 +Watson, William 16 +Webster, John 99 +Wendell, Barrett 97 +Whistler, James McNeill 236 +Whitman, Walt 53, 56 +"Widsith" 60 +Wolfe, General 134 +Wood, Anthony 184 +Wordsworth, William 11, 12, 55, 67, 68, 129, 146, 186, 204, 210 +Wright, Aldis 12 +Wyat, Sir Thomas 115-118, 184 +Wyclif, John 124, 127 + +Yeats, William Butler 143 +Young, Arthur 171 + + + +Cambridge: +Printed by J. B. 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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: + + http://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/17470-8.zip b/17470-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..39d68db --- /dev/null +++ b/17470-8.zip diff --git a/17470.txt b/17470.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..514a178 --- /dev/null +++ b/17470.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7455 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Art of Writing, 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 Writing + Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 + +Author: Arthur Quiller-Couch + +Release Date: January 5, 2006 [EBook #17470] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE ART OF WRITING *** + + + + +Produced by James Tenison + + + + + +ON THE ART OF WRITING + + + +CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS +C.F. CLAY, Manager +London: FETTER LANE, E.C. +Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET. + + + +Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: MACMILLAN & CO. LTD. +Toronto: J.M. DENT AND SONS, LTD. +Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA. + + +Copyrighted in the United States of America by +G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, +2, 4 AND 6, WEST 45TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. + + +All rights reserved + + + + +ON THE ART OF WRITING + +LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE +UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE +1913-1914 + +BY + +SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, M.A. +Fellow of Jesus College +King Edward VII Professor of English Literature + + + + +Cambridge: at the University Press +1917 + + +First Edition 1916 +Reprinted 1916,1917 + + + +TO JOHN HAY LOBBAN + + + + + + +PREFACE + + +By recasting these lectures I might with pains have turned them into a +smooth treatise. But I prefer to leave them (bating a very few +corrections and additions) as they were delivered. If, as the reader will +all too easily detect, they abound no less in repetitions than in +arguments dropped and left at loose ends--the whole bewraying a man +called unexpectedly to a post where in the act of adapting himself, of +learning that he might teach, he had often to adjourn his main purpose +and skirmish with difficulties--they will be the truer to life; and so +may experimentally enforce their preaching, that the Art of Writing is a +living business. + +Bearing this in mind, the reader will perhaps excuse certain small +vivacities, sallies that meet fools with their folly, masking the main +attack. _That_, we will see, is serious enough; and others will carry it +on, though my effort come to naught. + +It amounts to this--Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but +an Art, to be practised. Great as is our own literature, we must consider +it as a legacy to be improved. Any nation that potters with any glory of +its past, as a thing dead and done for, is to that extent renegade. If +that be granted, not all our pride in a Shakespeare can excuse the +relaxation of an effort--however vain and hopeless--to better him, or +some part of him. If, with all our native exemplars to give us courage, +we persist in striving to write well, we can easily resign to other +nations all the secondary fame to be picked up by commentators. + +Recent history has strengthened, with passion and scorn, the faith in +which I wrote the following pages. + +ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH +November 1915 + + + + +CONTENTS + + + + +LECTURE + +I INAUGURAL + +II THE PRACTICE OF WRITING + +III ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE + +IV ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE + +V INTERLUDE: ON JARGON + +VI ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE + +VII SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED + +VIII ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I) + +IX ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II) + +X ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I) + +XI ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (II) + +XII ON STYLE + + + INDEX + + + + +LECTURE I. + +INAUGURAL + +Wednesday, January 29, 1913 + + +In all the long quarrel set between philosophy and poetry I know of +nothing finer, as of nothing more pathetically hopeless, than Plato's +return upon himself in his last dialogue 'The Laws.' There are who find +that dialogue (left unrevised) insufferably dull, as no doubt it is +without form and garrulous. But I think they will read it with a new +tolerance, may-be even with a touch of feeling, if upon second thoughts +they recognise in its twisting and turnings, its prolixities and +repetitions, the scruples of an old man who, knowing that his time in +this world is short, would not go out of it pretending to know more than +he does, and even in matters concerning which he was once very sure has +come to divine that, after all, as Renan says, 'La Verite consiste dans +les nuances.' Certainly 'the mind's dark cottage battered and decayed' +does in that last dialogue admit some wonderful flashes, + + From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house + Of Socrates, + +or rather to that noble 'banquet-hall deserted' which aforetime had +entertained Socrates. + +Suffer me, Mr Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, before reaching my text, to +remind you of the characteristically beautiful setting. The place is +Crete, and the three interlocutors--Cleinias a Cretan, Megillus a +Lacedaemonian, and an Athenian stranger--have joined company on a +pilgrimage to the cave and shrine of Zeus, from whom Minos, first +lawgiver of the island, had reputedly derived not only his parentage but +much parental instruction. Now the day being hot, even scorching, and the +road from Cnossus to the Sacred Cave a long one, our three pilgrims, who +have foregathered as elderly men, take it at their leisure, and propose +to beguile it with talk upon Minos and his laws. 'Yes, and on the way,' +promises the Cretan, 'we shall come to cypress-groves exceedingly tall +and fair, and to green meadows, where we may repose ourselves and +converse.' 'Good,' assents the Athenian. 'Ay, very good indeed, and +better still when we arrive at them. Let us push on.' + +So they proceed. I have said that all three are elderly men; that is, men +who have had their opportunities, earned their wages, and so nearly +earned their discharge that now, looking back on life, they can afford to +see Man for what he really is--at his best a noble plaything for the +gods. Yet they look forward, too, a little wistfully. They are of the +world, after all, and nowise so tired of it, albeit disillusioned, as to +have lost interest in the game or in the young who will carry it on. So +Minos and his laws soon get left behind, and the talk (as so often +befalls with Plato) is of the perfect citizen and how to train him--of +education, in short; and so, as ever with Plato, we are back at length +upon the old question which he could never get out of his way--What to do +with the poets? + +It scarcely needs to be said that the Athenian has taken hold of the +conversation, and that the others are as wax in his hands. 'O Athenian +stranger,' Cleinias addresses him--'inhabitant of Attica I will not call +you, for you seem to deserve rather the name of Athene herself, because +you go back to first principles.' Thus complimented, the stranger lets +himself go. Yet somehow he would seem to have lost speculative nerve. + +It was all very well in the 'Republic,' the ideal State, to be bold and +declare for banishing poetry altogether. But elderly men have given up +pursuing ideals; they have 'seen too many leaders of revolt.' Our +Athenian is driving now at practice (as we say), at a well-governed State +realisable on earth; and after all it is hard to chase out the poets, +especially if you yourself happen to be something of a poet at heart. +Hear, then, the terms on which, after allowing that comedies may be +performed, but only by slaves and hirelings, he proceeds to allow serious +poetry. + + And if any of the serious poets, as they are termed, who write tragedy, + come to us and say--'O strangers, may we go to your city and country, + or may we not, and shall we bring with us our poetry? What is your will + about these matters?'--how shall we answer the divine men? I think that + our answer should be as follows:-- + + 'Best of strangers,' we will say to them, 'we also, according to our + ability, are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest: for + our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life.... You are + poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and + antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law alone can perfect, + as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow + you to erect your stage in the Agora, and introduce the fair voices of + your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our + women and children and the common people in language other than our + own, and very often the opposite of our own. For a State would be mad + which gave you this license, until the magistrates had determined + whether your poetry might be recited and was fit for publication or + not. Wherefore, O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses! first of all + show your songs to the Magistrates and let them compare them with our + own, and if they are the same or better, we will give you a chorus; but + if not, then, my friends, we cannot.' + +Lame conclusion! Impotent compromise! How little applicable, at all +events, to our Commonwealth! though, to be sure (you may say) we possess +a relic of it in His Majesty's Licenser of Plays. As you know, there has +been so much heated talk of late over the composition of the County +Magistracy; yet I give you a countryman's word, Sir, that I have heard +many names proposed for the Commission of the Peace, and on many grounds, +but never one on the ground that its owner had a conservative taste in +verse! + +Nevertheless, as Plato saw, we must deal with these poets somehow. It is +possible (though not, I think, likely) that in the ideal State there +would be no Literature, as it is certain there would be no Professors of +it; but since its invention men have never been able to rid themselves of +it for any length of time. _Tamen usque recurrit._ They may forbid +Apollo, but still he comes leading his choir, the Nine:-- + + [Greek: Akletos men egoge menoimi ken es de kaleunton + Tharsesas Moisaisi snu amepeaisin ikoiman.] + +And he may challenge us English boldly! For since Chaucer, at any rate, +he and his train have never been [Greek: akletoi] to us--least of all +here in Cambridge. + +Nay, we know that he should be welcome. Cardinal Newman, proposing the +idea of a University to the Roman Catholics of Dublin, lamented that the +English language had not, like the Greek, 'some definite words to +express, simply and generally, intellectual proficiency or perfection, +such as "health," as used with reference to the animal frame, and +"virtue," with reference to our moral nature.' Well, it is a reproach to +us that we do not possess the term: and perhaps again a reproach to us +that our attempts at it--the word 'culture' for instance--have been apt +to take on some soil of controversy, some connotative damage from +over-preaching on the one hand and impatience on the other. But we do +earnestly desire the thing. We do prize that grace of intellect which +sets So-and-so in our view as 'a scholar and a gentleman.' We do wish as +many sons of this University as may be to carry forth that lifelong stamp +from her precincts; and--this is my point--from our notion of such a man +the touch of literary grace cannot be excluded. I put to you for a test +Lucian's description of his friend Demonax-- + + His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just + a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his + discourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither + disgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on + the contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to + more orderly, contented, hopeful lives. + +I put it to you, Sir, that Lucian needs not to say another word, but we +know that Demonax had loved letters, and partly by aid of them had +arrived at being such a man. No; by consent of all, Literature is a nurse +of noble natures, and right reading makes a full man in a sense even +better than Bacon's; not replete, but complete rather, to the pattern for +which Heaven designed him. In this conviction, in this hope, public +spirited men endow Chairs in our Universities, sure that Literature is a +good thing if only we can bring it to operate on young minds. + +That he has in him some power to guide such operation a man must believe +before accepting such a Chair as this. And now, Sir, the terrible moment +is come when your [Greek: xenos] must render some account--I will not say +of himself, for that cannot be attempted--but of his business here. Well, +first let me plead that while you have been infinitely kind to the +stranger, feasting him and casting a gown over him, one thing not all +your kindness has been able to do. With precedents, with traditions such +as other Professors enjoy, you could not furnish him. The Chair is a new +one, or almost new, and for the present would seem to float in the void, +like Mahomet's coffin. Wherefore, being one who (in my Lord Chief Justice +Crewe's phrase) would 'take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it'; +being also prone (with Bacon) to believe that 'the counsels to which Time +hath not been called, Time will not ratify'; I do assure you that, had +any legacy of guidance been discovered among the papers left by my +predecessor, it would have been eagerly welcomed and as piously honoured. +O, trust me, Sir!--if any design for this Chair of English Literature had +been left by Dr Verrall, it is not I who would be setting up any new +stage in your agora! But in his papers--most kindly searched for me by +Mrs Verrall--no such design can be found. He was, in truth, a stricken +man when he came to the Chair, and of what he would have built we can +only be sure that, had it been this or had it been that, it would +infallibly have borne the impress of one of the most beautiful minds of +our generation. The gods saw otherwise; and for me, following him, I came +to a trench and stretched my hands to a shade. + +For me, then, if you put questions concerning the work of this Chair, I +must take example from the artist in Don Quixote, who being asked what he +was painting, answered modestly, 'That is as it may turn out.' The course +is uncharted, and for sailing directions I have but these words of your +Ordinance: + + It shall be the duty of the Professor 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. + +And I never even knew that English Literature had a 'subject'; or, +rather, supposed it to have several! To resume: + + The Professor shall treat this subject on literary and critical + rather than on philological and linguistic lines: + +--a proviso which at any rate cuts off a cantle, large in itself, if not +comparatively, of the new Professor's ignorance. But I ask you to note +the phrase 'to promote, so far as may be in his power, the study'--not, +you will observe, 'to teach'; for this absolves me from raising at the +start a question of some delicacy for me, as Green launched his +"Prolegomena to Ethics" upon the remark that 'an author who seeks to gain +general confidence scarcely goes the right way to work when he begins +with asking whether there really is such a subject as that of which he +proposes to treat.' In spite of--mark, pray, that I say _in spite +of_--the activity of many learned Professors, some doubt does lurk in +the public mind if, after all, English Literature can, in any ordinary +sense, be taught, and if the attempts to teach it do not, after all, +justify (as Wisdom is so often justified of her grandparents) the +silence sapience of those old benefactors who abstained from endowing +any such Chairs. + +But that the study of English Literature can be promoted in young minds +by an elder one, that their zeal may be encouraged, their tastes +directed, their vision cleared, quickened, enlarged--this, I take it, no +man of experience will deny. Nay, since our two oldest Universities have +a habit of marking one another with interest--an interest, indeed, +sometimes heightened by nervousness--I may point out that all this has +been done of late years, and eminently done, by a Cambridge man you gave +to Oxford. This, then, Mr Vice-Chancellor--this or something like this, +Gentlemen--is to be my task if I have the good fortune to win your +confidence. + +Let me, then, lay down two or three principles by which I propose to be +guided. (1) For the first principle of all I put to you that in studying +any work of genius we should begin by taking it _absolutely_; that is to +say, with minds intent on discovering just what the author's mind +intended; this being at once the obvious approach to its meaning (its +[Greek: to ti en einai], the 'thing it was to be'), and the merest duty +of politeness we owe to the great man addressing us. We should lay our +minds open to what he wishes to tell, and if what he has to tell be noble +and high and beautiful, we should surrender and let soak our minds in it. + +Pray understand that in claiming, even insisting upon, the first place +for this _absolute_ study of a great work I use no disrespect towards +those learned scholars whose labours will help you, Gentlemen, to enjoy +it afterwards in other ways and from other aspects; since I hold there is +no surer sign of intellectual ill-breeding than to speak, even to feel, +slightingly of any knowledge oneself does not happen to possess. Still +less do I aim to persuade you that anyone should be able to earn a +Cambridge degree by the process (to borrow Macaulay's phrase) of reading +our great authors 'with his feet on the hob,' a posture I have not even +tried, to recommend it for a contemplative man's recreation. These +editors not only set us the priceless example of learning for learning's +sake: but even in practice they clear our texts for us, and +afterwards--when we go more minutely into our author's acquaintance, +wishing to learn all we can about him--by increasing our knowledge of +detail they enchance our delight. Nay, with certain early writers--say +Chaucer or Dunbar, as with certain highly allusive ones--Bacon, or +Milton, or Sir Thomas Browne--some apparatus must be supplied from the +start. But on the whole I think it a fair contention that such helps to +studying an author are secondary and subsidiary; that, for example, with +any author who by consent is less of his age than for all time, to study +the relation he bore to his age may be important indeed, and even highly +important, yet must in the nature of things be of secondary importance, +not of the first. + +But let us examine this principle a little more attentively--for it is +the palmary one. As I conceive it, that understanding of literature which +we desire in our Euphues, our gracefully-minded youth, will include +knowledge in varying degree, yet is itself something distinct from +knowledge. Let us illustrate this upon Poetry, which the most of us will +allow to be the highest form of literary expression, if not of all +artistic expression. Of all the testimony paid to Poetry, none commands +better witness than this--that, as Johnson said of Gray's Elegy 'it +abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with +sentiments to which every heart returns an echo.' When George Eliot said, +'I never before met with so many of my own feelings expressed just as I +should like them,' she but repeated of Wordsworth (in homelier, more +familiar fashion) what Johnson said of Gray; and the same testimony lies +implicit in Emerson's fine remark that 'Universal history, the poets, the +romancers'--all good writers, in short--'do not anywhere make us feel +that we intrude, that this is for our betters. Rather it is true that, in +their greatest strokes, there we feel most at home.' The mass of +evidence, of which these are samples, may be summarised thus:--As we +dwell here between two mysteries, of a soul within and an ordered +Universe without, so among us are granted to dwell certain men of more +delicate intellectual fibre than their fellows--men whose minds have, as +it were, filaments to intercept, apprehend, conduct, translate home to us +stray messages between these two mysteries, as modern telegraphy has +learnt to search out, snatch, gather home human messages astray over +waste waters of the Ocean. + +If, then, the ordinary man be done this service by the poet, that (as Dr +Johnson defines it) 'he feels what he remembers to have felt before, but +he feels it _with a great increase of sensibility_'; or even if, though +the message be unfamiliar, it suggests to us, in Wordsworth's phrase, to +'feel that we are greater than we know,' I submit that we respond to it +less by anything that usually passes for knowledge, than by an +improvement of sensibility, a tuning up of the mind to the poet's pitch; +so that 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,' a man of +unmistakable intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust +to choose the better and reject the worse. + +But since this refining of the critical judgment happens to be less easy +of practice than the memorising of much that passes for knowledge--of +what happened to Harriet or what Blake said to the soldier--and far less +easy to examine on, the pedagogic mind (which I implore you not to +suppose me confusing with the scholarly) for avoidance of trouble tends +all the while to dodge or obfuscate what is essential, piling up +accidents and irrelevancies before it until its very face is hidden. And +we should be the more watchful not to confuse the pedagogic mind with the +scholarly since it is from the scholar that the pedagogue pretends to +derive his sanction; ransacking the great genuine commentators--be it a +Skeat or a Masson or (may I add for old reverence' sake?) an Aldis +Wright--fetching home bits of erudition, _non sua poma_, and announcing +'This _must_ be the true Sion, for we found it in a wood.' + +Hence a swarm of little school books pullulates annually, all upside down +and wrong from beginning to end; and hence a worse evil afflicts us, that +the English schoolboy starts with a false perspective of any given +masterpiece, his pedagogue urging, obtruding lesser things upon his +vision until what is really important, the poem or the play itself, is +seen in distorted glimpses, if not quite blocked out of view. + +This same temptation--to remove a work of art from the category for which +the author designed it into another where it can be more conveniently +studied--reaches even above the schoolmaster to assail some very eminent +critics. I cite an example from a book of which I shall hereafter have to +speak with gratitude as I shall always name it with respect--"The History +of English Poetry," by Dr Courthope, sometime Professor of Poetry at +Oxford. In his fourth volume, and in his estimate of Fletcher as a +dramatist, I find this passage:-- + + But the crucial test of a play's quality is only applied when it is + read. So long as the illusion of the stage gives credit to the + action, and the words and gestures of the actor impose themselves on + the imagination of the spectator, the latter will pass over a + thousand imperfections, which reveal themselves to the reader, who, + as he has to satisfy himself with the drama of silent images, will + nor be content if this or that in any way fall short of his + conception of truth and nature, + +--which seems equivalent to saying that the crucial test of the frieze of +the Parthenon is its adaptability to an apartment in Bloomsbury. So long +as the illusion of the Acropolis gave credit to Pheidias' design, and the +sunlight of Attica imposed its delicate intended shadows edging the +reliefs, the countrymen of Pericles might be tricked; but the visitor to +the British Museum, as he has to satisfy himself with what happens +indoors in the atmosphere of the West Central Postal Division of London, +will not be content if Pheidias in any way fall short of _his_ conception +of truth and nature. Yet Fletcher (I take it) constructed his plays as +plays; the illusion of the stage, the persuasiveness of the actor's +voice, were conditions for which he wrought, and on which he had a right +to rely; and, in short, any critic behaves uncritically who, distrusting +his imagination to recreate the play as a play, elects to consider it in +the category of something else. + +In sum, if the great authors never oppress us with airs of condescension, +but, like the great lords they are, put the meanest of us at our ease in +their presence, I see no reason why we should pay to any commentator a +servility not demanded by his master. + +My next two principles may be more briefly stated. + +(2) I propose next, then, that since our investigations will deal largely +with style, that curiously personal thing; and since (as I have said) +they cannot in their nature be readily brought to rule-of-thumb tests, +and may therefore so easily be suspected of evading all tests, of being +mere dilettantism; I propose (I say) that my pupils and I rebuke this +suspicion by constantly aiming at the concrete, at the study of such +definite beauties as we can see presented in print under our eyes; always +seeking the author's intention, but eschewing, for the present at any +rate, all general definitions and theories, through the sieve of which +the particular achievement of genius is so apt to slip. And having +excluded them at first in prudence, I make little doubt we shall go on to +exclude them in pride. Definitions, formulae (some would add, creeds) have +their use in any society in that they restrain the ordinary +unintellectual man from making himself a public nuisance with his private +opinions. But they go a very little way in helping the man who has a real +sense of prose or verse. In other words, they are good discipline for +some thyrsus-bearers, but the initiated have little use for them. As +Thomas a Kempis 'would rather feel compunction than understand the +definition thereof,' so the initiated man will say of the 'Grand Style,' +for example--'Why define it for me?' When Viola says simply: + + I am all the daughters of my father's house, + And all the brothers too, + +or Macbeth demands of the Doctor + + Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, + Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow..? + +or Hamlet greets Ophelia, reading her Book of Hours, with + + Nymph, in thy orisons + Be all my sins remembered! + +or when Milton tells of his dead friend how + + Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd + Under the opening eyelids of the morn, + We drove afield, + +or describes the battalions of Heaven + + On they move + Indissolubly firm: nor obvious hill, + Nor strait'ning vale, nor wood, nor stream divide + Their perfect ranks, + +or when Gray exalts the great commonplace + + The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, + And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, + Awaits alike th' inevitable hour; + The paths of glory lead but to the grave, + +or when Keats casually drops us such a line as + + The journey homeward to habitual self, + +or, to come down to our own times and to a living poet, when I open on a +page of William Watson and read + + O ancient streams, O far descended woods, + Full of the fluttering of melodious souls!... + +'why then (will say the initiated one), why worry me with any definition +of the Grand Style in English, when here, and here, and again here--in +all these lines, simple or intense or exquisite or solemn--I recognise +and feel the _thing_?' + +Indeed, Sir, the long and the short of the argument lie just here. +Literature is not an abstract Science, to which exact definitions can be +applied. It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal +persuasiveness, on the author's skill to give as on ours to receive. + +(3) For our third principle I will ask you to go back with me to Plato's +wayfarers, whom we have left so long under the cypresses; and loth as we +must be to lay hands on our father Parmenides, I feel we must treat the +gifted Athenian stranger to a little manhandling. For did you not +observe--though Greek was a living language and to his metropolitan mind +the only language--how envious he showed himself to seal up the well, or +allow it to trickle only under permit of a public analyst: to treat all +innovation as suspect, even as, a hundred odd years ago, the Lyrical +Ballads were suspect? + +But the very hope of this Chair, Sir (as I conceive it), relies on the +courage of the young. As Literature is an Art and therefore not to be +pondered only, but practised, so ours is a living language and therefore +to be kept alive, supple, active in all honourable use. The orator can +yet sway men, the poet ravish them, the dramatist fill their lungs with +salutary laughter or purge their emotions by pity or terror. +The historian 'superinduces upon events the charm of order.' +The novelist--well, even the novelist has his uses; and I would warn you +against despising any form of art which is alive and pliant in the hands +of men. For my part, I believe, bearing in mind Mr. Barrie's "Peter Pan" +and the old bottles he renovated to hold that joyous wine, that even +Musical Comedy, in the hands of a master, might become a thing of +beauty. Of the Novel, at any rate--whether we like it or not--we have to +admit that it does hold a commanding position in the literature of our +times, and to consider how far Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie was right the +other day when he claimed, on the first page of his brilliant study of +Thomas Hardy, that 'the right to such a position is not to be disputed; +for here, as elsewhere, the right to a position is no more than the +power to maintain it.' You may agree with that or you may not; you may +or may not deplore the forms that literature is choosing now-a-days; but +there is no gainsaying that it is still very much alive. And I would say +to you, Gentlemen, 'Believe, and be glad that Literature and the English +tongue are both alive.' Carlyle, in his explosive way, once demanded of +his countrymen, 'Shakespeare or India? If you had to surrender one to +retain the other, which would you choose?' Well, our Indian Empire is +yet in the making, while the works of Shakespeare are complete and +purchasable in whole calf; so the alternatives are scarcely _in pari +materia_; and moreover let us not be in a hurry to meet trouble half +way. But in English Literature, which, like India, is still in the +making, you have at once an Empire and an Emprise. In that alone you +have inherited something greater than Sparta. Let us strive, each in his +little way, to adorn it. + +But here at the close of my hour, the double argument, that Literature is +an Art and English a living tongue, has led me right up to a fourth +principle, the plunge into which (though I foresaw it from the first) all +the coward in me rejoices at having to defer to another lecture. I +conclude then, Gentlemen, by answering two suspicions, which very likely +have been shaping themselves in your minds. In the first place, you will +say, 'It is all very well for this man to talk about "cultivating an +increased sensibility," and the like; but we know what that leads to--to +quackery, to aesthetic chatter: "Isn't this pretty? Don't you admire +that?"' Well, I am not greatly frightened. To begin with, when we come to +particular criticism I shall endeavour to exchange it with you in plain +terms; a manner which (to quote Mr Robert Bridges' "Essay on Keats") 'I +prefer, because by obliging the lecturer to say definitely what he means, +it makes his mistakes easy to point out, and in this way the true +business of criticism is advanced.' But I have a second safeguard, more +to be trusted: that here in Cambridge, with all her traditions of austere +scholarship, anyone who indulges in loose distinct talk will be quickly +recalled to his tether. Though at the time Athene be not kind enough to +descend from heaven and pluck him backward by the hair, yet the very +_genius loci_ will walk home with him from the lecture room, whispering +monitions, cruel to be kind. + +'But,' you will say alternatively, 'if we avoid loose talk on these +matters we are embarking on a mighty difficult business.' Why, to be sure +we are; and that, I hope, will be half the enjoyment. After all, we have +a number of critics among whose methods we may search for help--from the +Persian monarch who, having to adjudicate upon two poems, caused the one +to be read to him, and at once, without ado, awarded the prize to the +other, up to the great Frenchman whom I shall finally invoke to sustain +my hope of building something; that is if you, Gentlemen, will be content +to accept me less as a Professor than as an Elder Brother. + +The Frenchman is Sainte-Beuve, and I pay a debt, perhaps appropriately +here, by quoting him as translated by the friend of mine, now dead, who +first invited me to Cambridge and taught me to admire her--one Arthur +John Butler, sometime a Fellow of Trinity, and later a great pioneer +among Englishmen in the study of Dante. Thus while you listen to the +appeal of Sainte-Beuve, I can hear beneath it a more intimate voice, not +for the first time, encouraging me. + +Sainte-Beuve then--_si magna licet componere parvis_--is delivering an +Inaugural Lecture in the Ecole Normale, the date being April 12th, 1858. +'Gentlemen,' he begins, 'I have written a good deal in the last thirty +years; that is, I have scattered myself a good deal; so that I need to +gather myself together, in order that my words may come before you with +all the more freedom and confidence.' That is his opening; and he ends:-- + + As time goes on, you will make me believe that I can for my part be + of some good to you: and with the generosity of your age you will + repay me, in this feeling alone, far more than I shall be able to + give you in intellectual freedom, in literary thought. If in one + sense I bestow on you some of my experience, you will requite me, + and in a more profitable manner, by the sight of your ardour for + what is noble: you will accustom me to turn oftener and more + willingly towards the future in your company. You will teach me + again to hope. + + + + +LECTURE II. + +THE PRACTICE OF WRITING. + +Wednesday, February 12 + + +We found, Gentlemen, towards the close of our first lecture, that the +argument had drawn us, as by a double chain, up to the edge of a bold +leap, over which I deferred asking you to take the plunge with me. Yet +the plunge must be taken, and to-day I see nothing for it but to harden +our hearts. + +Well, then, I propose to you that, English Literature being (as we +agreed) an Art, with a living and therefore improvable language for its +medium or vehicle, a part--and no small part--of our business is _to +practise it._ Yes, I seriously propose to you that here in Cambridge we +_practise writing_: that we practise it not only for our own improvement, +but to make, or at least try to make, appropriate, perspicuous, accurate, +persuasive writing a recognisable hall-mark of anything turned out by our +English School. By all means let us study the great writers of the past +for their own sakes; but let us study them for our guidance; that we, in +our turn, having (it is to be hoped) something to say in our span of +time, say it worthily, not dwindling out the large utterance of +Shakespeare or of Burke. Portraits of other great ones look down on you +in your college halls: but while you are young and sit at the brief +feast, what avails their serene gaze if it do not lift up your hearts and +movingly persuade you to match your manhood to its inheritance? + +I protest, Gentlemen, that if our eyes had not been sealed, as with wax, +by the pedagogues of whom I spoke a fortnight ago, this one habit of +regarding our own literature as a _hortus siccus_, this our neglect to +practise good writing as the constant auxiliary of an Englishman's +liberal education, would be amazing to you seated here to-day as it will +be starkly incredible to the future historian of our times. Tell me, +pray; if it concerned _Painting_--an art in which Englishmen boast a +record far briefer, far less distinguished--what would you think of a +similar acquiescence in the past, a like haste to presume the dissolution +of aptitude and to close accounts, a like precipitancy to divorce us from +the past, to rob the future of hope and even the present of lively +interest? Consider, for reproof of these null men, the Discourses +addressed (in a pedantic age, too) by Sir Joshua Reynolds to the Members +and Students of the Royal Academy. He has (as you might expect) enough to +say of Tintoretto, of Titian, of Caracci, and of the duty of studying +their work with patience, with humility. But why does he exhort his +hearers to con them?--Why, because he is all the time _driving at +practice_. Hear how he opens his second Discourse (his first to the +Students). After congratulating the prize-winners of 1769, he desires 'to +lead them into such a course of study as may render their future progress +answerable to their past improvement'; and the great man goes on:-- + + I flatter myself that from the long experience I have had, and the + necessary assiduity with which I have pursued these studies in which + like you I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in + offering some hints to your consideration. They are indeed in a + great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit.... + +Mark the noble modesty of that! To resume-- + + In speaking to you of the Theory of the Art, I shall only consider + it as it has relation to the method of your studies. + +And then he proceeds to preach the Old Masters.--But how?--why?--to what +end? Does he recite lists of names, dates, with formulae concerning +styles? He does nothing of the sort. Does he recommend his old masters +for copying, then?--for mere imitation? Not a bit of it!--he comes down +like a hammer on copying. Then for what, in fine, will he have them +studied? Listen:-- + + The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who + have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention. + +Yes, of _invention_, your power to make something new: + + --and what may appear still more like a paradox, _the more original + will be your conceptions_. + +There spake Sir Joshua Reynolds: and I call that the voice of a true +Elder Brother. He, standing face to face with the young, thought of the +old masters mainly as spiritual begetters of practice. And will anyone in +this room tell me that what Reynolds said of painting is not to-day, for +us, applicable to writing? + +We accept it of Greek and Latin. An old Sixth Form master once said to +me, 'You may give up Latin Verse for this term, if you will: but I warn +you, no one can be a real scholar who does not constantly practise +verse.' He was mistaken, belike. I hold, for my part, that in our Public +Schools, we give up a quite disproportionate amount of time to +'composition' (of Latin Prose especially) and starve the boys' reading +thereby. But at any rate we do give up a large share of the time to it. +Then if we insist on this way with the tongues of Homer and Virgil, why +do we avoid it with the tongue of Shakespeare, our own living tongue? I +answer by quoting one of the simplest wisest sayings of Don Quixote +(Gentlemen, you will easily, as time goes on, and we better our +acquaintance, discover my favourite authors):-- + + The great Homer wrote not in Latin, for he was a Greek; and Virgil + wrote not in Greek, because he was a Latin. In brief, all the + ancient poets wrote in the tongue which they sucked in with their + mother's milk, nor did they go forth to seek for strange ones to + express the greatness of their conceptions: and, this being so, it + should be a reason for the fashion to extend to all nations. + +Does the difference, then, perchance lie in ourselves? Will you tell me, +'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably +well'? Can he, indeed?... Can _you,_ sir? Nay, believe me, you are either +an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having +spoken English prose all your life without knowing it. + +Indeed, when we try to speak prose without having practised it the result +is apt to be worse than our own vernacular. How often have I heard some +worthy fellow addressing a public audience!--say a Parliamentary +candidate who believes himself a Liberal Home Ruler, and for the moment +is addressing himself to meet some criticism of the financial proposals +of a Home Rule Bill. His own vernacular would be somewhat as follows:-- + + Oh, rot! Give the Irish their heads and they'll run straight enough. + Look at the Boers, don't you know. Not half such a decent sort as + the Irish. Look at Irish horses, too. Eh? What? + +But this, he is conscious, would hardly suit the occasion. He therefore +amends it thus:-- + + Mr Chairman--er--as regards the financial proposals of His Majesty's + Government, I am of the deliberate--er--opinion that our national + security--I may say, our Imperial security--our security as--er--a + governing people--lies in trusting the Irish as we did in the--er + --case of the Boers--H'm Mr Gladstone, Mr Chairman--Mr Chairman, Mr + Gladstone---- + +and so on. You perceive that the style is actually worse than in the +sample quoted before; it has become flabby whereas that other was at any +rate nervous? But now suppose that, having practised it, our candidate +was able to speak like this:-- + + 'But what (says the Financier) is peace to us without money? Your plan + gives us no revenue.' No? But it does--for it secures to the subject + the power of Refusal, the first of all Revenues. Experience is a cheat, + and fact is a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his + grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine + of Revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man. It + does not indeed vote you 152,750 pounds 11 shillings 2 3/4 pence, nor + any other paltry limited sum--but it gives you the strong box itself, + the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise among a people + sensible of freedom: _Posita luditur arca_.... Is this principle to be + true in England, and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? + Has it not hitherto been true in the Colonies? Why should you presume + that in any country a body duly constituted for any function will + neglect to perform its duty and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption + would go against all Governments in all nations. But in truth this + dread of penury of supply, from a free assembly, has no foundation in + nature. For first, observe that, besides the desire which all men have + naturally of supporting the honour of their own Government, that sense + of dignity, and that security to property, which ever attend freedom, + have a tendency to increase the stock of a free community. Most may be + taken where most is accumulated. And what is the soil or climate where + experience has not uniformly proved that the voluntary flow of + heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight of its own luxuriance, has + ever run with a more copious stream of revenue than could be squeezed + from the dry husks of oppressed indigence by the straining of all the + politic machinery in the world? + +That, whether you agree or disagree with its doctrine, is great prose. +That is Burke. 'O Athenian stranger,' said the Cretan I quoted in my +first lecture,--'inhabitant of Attica I will not call you, since you +deserve the name of Athene herself, because you go back to first +principles!' + +But, you may object, 'Burke is talking like a book, and I have no wish to +talk like a book.' Well, as a fact, Burke is here at the culmen of a long +sustained argument, and his language has soared with it, as his way +was--logic and emotion lifting him together as upon two balanced majestic +wings. But you are shy of such heights? Very well again, and all credit +to your modesty! Yet at least (I appeal to that same modesty) when you +talk or write, you would wish to _observe the occasion_; to say what you +have to say without impertinence or ill-timed excess. You would not +harangue a drawing-room or a subcommittee, or be facetious at a funeral, +or play the skeleton at a banquet: for in all such conduct you would be +mixing up things that differ. Be cheerful, then: for this desire of yours +to be appropriate is really the root of the matter. Nor do I ask you to +accept this on my sole word, but will cite you the most respectable +witnesses. Take, for instance, a critic who should be old enough to +impress you--Dionysius of Halicarnassus. After enumerating the qualities +which lend charm and nobility to style, he closes the list with +'appropriateness, which all these need':-- + + As there is a charming diction, so there is another that is noble; + as there is a polished rhythm, so there is another that is + dignified; as variety adds grace in one passage, so in another it + adds fulness; _and as for appropriation, it will prove the chief + source of beauty, or else of nothing at all_. + +Or listen to Cicero, how he sets appropriateness in the very heart of his +teaching, as the master secret:-- + + Is erit eloquens qui poterit parva summisse, modica temperate, magna + graviter dicere.... Qui ad id quodcunque decebit poterit accommodare + orationem. Quod quum statuerit, tum, ut quidque erit dicendum, ita + dicet, nec satura jejune, nec grandia minute, nec item contra, sed + erit rebus ipsis par et aequalis oratio. + + 'Whatever his theme he will speak as becomes it; neither meagrely + where it is copious, nor meanly where it is ample, nor in _this_ way + where it demands _that_; but keeping his speech level with the + actual subject and adequate to it.' + +I might quote another great man, Quintilian, to you on the first +importance of this appropriateness, or 'propriety'; of speaking not only +to the purpose but _becomingly_--though the two as (he rightly says) are +often enough one and the same thing. But I will pass on to what has ever +seemed, since I found it in one of Jowett's 'Introductions' to Plato, the +best definition known to me of good style in literature:-- + + The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease, + clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in + the scale of human feelings, without impropriety. + +You see, O my modest friend! that your gamut needs not to be very wide, +to begin with. The point is that within it you learn to play becomingly. + +Now I started by proposing that we try together to make appropriate, +perspicuous, accurate, persuasive writing a hall-mark of anything turned +out by our English School here, and I would add (growing somewhat +hardier) a hall-mark of all Cambridge style so far as our English School +can influence it. I chose these four epithets _accurate, perspicuous, +persuasive, appropriate_, with some care, of course as my duty was; and +will assume that by this time we are agreed to desire _appropriateness_. +Now for the other three:-- + +_Perspicuity._--I shall waste no words on the need of this: since the +first aim of speech is to be understood. The more clearly you write the +more easily and surely you will be understood. I propose to demonstrate +to you further, in a minute or so, that the more clearly you write the +more clearly you will understand yourself. But a sufficient reason has +been given in ten words why you should desire perspicuity. + +_Accuracy._--Did I not remind myself in my first lecture, that Cambridge +is the home of accurate scholarship? Surely no Cambridge man would +willingly be a sloven in speech, oral or written? Surely here, if +anywhere, should be acknowledged of all what Newman says of the classics, +that 'a certain unaffected neatness and propriety and grace of diction +may be required of any author, for the same reason that a certain +attention to dress is expected of every gentleman.' After all, what are +the chief differentiae between man and the brute creation but that he +clothes himself, that he cooks his food, that he uses articulate speech? +Let us cherish and improve all these distinctions. + +But shall we now look more carefully into these twin questions of +perspicuity and accuracy: for I think pursuing them, we may almost reach +the philosophic kernel of good writing. I quoted Newman playfully a +moment ago. I am going to quote him in strong earnest. And here let me +say that of all the books written in these hundred years there is perhaps +none you can more profitably thumb and ponder than that volume of his in +which, under the title of "The Idea of a University," he collected nine +discourses addressed to the Roman Catholics of Dublin with some lectures +delivered to the Catholic University there. It is fragmentary, because +its themes were occasional. It has missed to be appraised at its true +worth, partly no doubt by reason of the colour it derives from a religion +still unpopular in England. But in fact it may be read without offence by +the strictest Protestant; and the book is so wise--so eminently wise--as +to deserve being bound by the young student of literature for a frontlet +on his brow and a talisman on his writing wrist. + +Now you will find much pretty swordsmanship in its pages, but nothing +more trenchant than the passage in which Newman assails and puts to rout +the Persian host of infidels--I regret to say, for the most part Men of +Science--who would persuade us that good writing, that style, is +something extrinsic to the subject, a kind of ornamentation laid on to +tickle the taste, a study for the _dilettante_, but beneath the notice of +_their_ stern and masculine minds. + +Such a view, as he justly points out, belongs rather to the Oriental mind +than to our civilisation: it reminds him of the way young gentlemen go to +work in the East when they would engage in correspondence with the object +of their affection. The enamoured one cannot write a sentence himself: +_he_ is the specialist in passion (for the moment); but thought and words +are two things to him, and for words he must go to another specialist, +the professional letter-writer. Thus there is a division of labour. + + The man of words, duly instructed, dips the pen of desire in the ink of + devotedness and proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then + the nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of + loveliness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the brow of + expectation. That is what the Easterns are said to consider fine + writing; and it seems pretty much the idea of the school of critics to + which I have been referring. + +Now hear this fine passage:-- + + Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and + expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language. + That is what I have been laying down, and this is literature; not + _things_, but the verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere + _words_; but thoughts expressed in language. Call to mind, gentlemen, + the meaning of the Greek word which expresses this special prerogative + of man over the feeble intelligence of the lower animals. It is called + Logos; what does Logos mean? it stands both for _reason_ and for + _speech_, and it is difficult to say which it means more properly. It + means both at once: why? because really they cannot be divided.... When + we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and + the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread + speech under foot and to hope to do without it--then will it be + conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its + own double, its instrument of expression and the channel of its + speculations and emotions. + +'As if,' he exclaims finely, 'language were the hired servant, the mere +mistress of reason, and not the lawful wife in her own house!' + +If you need further argument (but what serves it to slay the slain?) let +me remind you that you cannot use the briefest, the humblest process of +thought, cannot so much as resolve to take your bath hot or cold, or +decide what to order for breakfast, without forecasting it to yourself in +some form of words. Words are, in fine, the only currency in which we can +exchange thought even with ourselves. Does it not follow, then, that the +more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall give to our +thoughts? Does it not follow that by drilling ourselves to write +perspicuously we train our minds to clarify their thought? Does it not +follow that some practice in the deft use of words, with its +correspondent defining of thought, may well be ancillary even to the +study of Natural Science in a University? + +But I have another word for our men of science. It was inevitable, +perhaps, that Latin--so long the Universal Language--should cease in time +to be that in which scientific works were written. It was impossible, +perhaps, to substitute, by consent, some equally neat and austere modern +language, such as French. But when it became an accepted custom for each +nation to use its own language in scientific treatises, it certainly was +not foreseen that men of science would soon be making discoveries at a +rate which left their skill in words outstripped; that having to invent +their terms as they went along, yet being careless and contemptuous of a +science in which they have no training, they would bombast out our +dictionaries with monstrously invented words that not only would have +made Quintilian stare and gasp, but would affront the decently literate +of any age. + +After all, and though we must sigh and acquiesce in the building of +Babel, we have some right to examine the bricks. I was waiting, the other +day, in a doctor's anteroom, and picked up one of those books--it was a +work on pathology--so thoughtfully left lying in such places; to persuade +us, no doubt, to bear the ills we have rather than fly to others capable +of being illustrated. I found myself engaged in following the manoeuvres +of certain well-meaning bacilli generically described as 'Antibodies.' I +do not accuse the author (who seemed to be a learned man) of having +invented this abominable term: apparently it passed current among +physiologists and he had accepted it for honest coin. I found it, later +on, in Webster's invaluable dictionary: Etymology, 'anti' up against +'body', some noxious 'foreign body' inside your body or mine. + +Now gin a body meet a body for our protection and in this gallant spirit, +need a body reward him with this hybrid label? Gratitude apart, I say +that for our own self-respect, whilst we retain any sense of intellectual +pedigree, 'antibody' is no word to throw at a friendly bacillus. Is it +consonant with the high dignity of science to make her talk like a cheap +showman advertising a 'picture-drome'? The man who eats peas with his +knife can at least claim a historical throwback to the days when forks +had but two prongs and the spoons had been removed with the soup. But +'antibody' has no such respectable derivation. It is, in fact, a +barbarism, and a mongrel at that. The man who uses it debases the +currency of learning: and I suggest to you that it is one of the many +functions of a great University to maintain the standard of that +currency, to guard the _jus et norma loquendi_, to protect us from such +hasty fellows or, rather, to suppeditate them in their haste. + +Let me revert to our list of the qualities necessary to good writing, and +come to the last--_Persuasiveness_; of which you may say, indeed, that it +embraces the whole--not only the qualities of propriety, perspicuity, +accuracy, we have been considering, but many another, such as harmony, +order, sublimity, beauty of diction; all in short that--writing being an +art, not a science, and therefore so personal a thing--may be summed up +under the word _Charm_. Who, at any rate, does not seek after Persuasion? +It is the aim of all the arts and, I suppose, of all exposition of the +sciences; nay, of all useful exchange of converse in our daily life. It +is what Velasquez attempts in a picture, Euclid in a proposition, the +Prime Minister at the Treasury box, the journalist in a leading article, +our Vicar in his sermon. Persuasion, as Matthew Arnold once said, is the +only true intellectual process. The mere cult of it occupied many of the +best intellects of the ancients, such as Longinus and Quintilian, whose +writings have been preserved to us just because they were prized. Nor can +I imagine an earthly gift more covetable by you, Gentlemen, than that of +persuading your fellows to listen to your views and attend to what you +have at heart. + +Suppose, sir, that you wish to become a journalist? Well, and why not? Is +it a small thing to desire the power of influencing day by day to better +citizenship an unguessed number of men, using the best thought and +applying it in the best language at your command?... Or are you, perhaps, +overawed by the printed book? On that, too, I might have a good deal to +say; but for the moment would keep the question as practical as I can. + +Well, it is sometimes said that Oxford men make better journalists than +Cambridge men, and some attribute this to the discipline of their great +School of _Literae Humaniores_, which obliges them to bring up a weekly +essay to their tutor, who discusses it. Cambridge men retort that all +Oxford men are journalists, and throw, of course, some accent of scorn on +the word. But may I urge--and remember please that my credit is pledged +to _you_ now--may I urge that this is not a wholly convincing answer? +For, to begin with, Oxford men have not changed their natures since +leaving school, but are, by process upon lines not widely divergent from +your own, much the same pleasant sensible fellows you remember. And, +next, if you truly despise journalism, why then despise it, have done +with it and leave it alone. But I pray you, do not despise it if you mean +to practise it, though it be but as a step to something better. For while +the ways of art are hard at the best, they will break you if you go +unsustained by belief in what you are trying to do. + +In asking you to practise the written word, I began with such +low but necessary things as propriety, perspicuity, accuracy. +But _persuasion_--the highest form of persuasion at any rate--cannot be +achieved without a sense of beauty. And now I shoot a second rapid--_I +want you to practise verse, and to practise it assiduously_.... I am +quite serious. Let me remind you that, if there ever was an ancient +state of which we of Great Britain have great right and should have +greater ambition to claim ourselves the spiritual heirs, that state was +Imperial Rome. And of the Romans (whom you will allow to have been a +practical people) nothing is more certain than the value they set upon +acquiring verse. To them it was not only (as Dr Johnson said of Greek) +'like old lace--you can never have too much of it.' They cultivated it +with a straight eye to national improvement. Among them, as a scholar +reminded us the other day, you find 'an educational system deliberately +and steadily directed towards the development of poetical talent. They +were not a people of whom we can say, as we can of the Greeks, that they +were born to art and literature.... The characteristic Roman triumphs +are the triumphs of a material civilisation.' Rome's role in the world +was 'the absorption of outlying genius.' Themselves an unimaginative +race with a language not too tractable to poetry, they made great +poetry, and they made it of patient set purpose, of hard practice. I +shall revert to this and maybe amplify reasons in another lecture. For +the moment I content myself with stating the fact that no nation ever +believed in poetry so deeply as the Romans. + +Perpend this then, and do not too hastily deride my plea that you should +practise verse-writing. I know most of the objections, though I may not +remember all. _Mediocribus esse poetis_, etc.--that summarises most of +them: yet of an infliction of much bad verse from you, if I am prepared +to endure it, why should anyone else complain? I say that the youth of a +University ought to practise verse-writing; and will try to bring this +home to you by an argument convincing to me, though I have never seen it +in print. + +What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? +Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, +Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne--we may stop there. Of these all but +Keats, Browning, Rossetti were University men; and of these three Keats, +who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly +well-to-do. It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to +say: but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius +bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little +truth. As a matter of hard fact, nine out of those twelve were +University men: which means that somehow or other they procured the +means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard +fact, of the remaining three you know that Browning was well-to-do, and +I challenge you that, if he had not been well-to-do, he would no more +have attained to writing "Saul" or "The Ring and the Book" than Ruskin +would have attained to writing "Modern Painters" if his father had not +dealt prosperously in business. Rossetti had a small private income; +and, moreover, he painted. There remains but Keats; whom Atropos slew +young, as she slew John Clare in a madhouse, and James Thomson by the +laudanum he took to drug disappointment. These are dreadful facts, but +let us face them. It is--however dishonouring to us as a nation--certain +that, by some fault in our commonwealth, the poor poet has not in these +days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog's chance. Believe me--and +I have spent a great part of the last ten years in watching some 320 +Elementary Schools--we may prate of democracy, but actually a poor child +in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to +be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings +are born. + +What do I argue from this? I argue that until we can bring more +intellectual freedom into our State, more 'joy in widest commonalty +spread,' upon you, a few favoured ones, rests an obligation to see that +the springs of English poetry do not fail. I put it to you that of this +glory of our birth and state _you_ are the temporary stewards. I put it +to the University, considered as a dispenser of intellectual light, that +to treat English poetry as though it had died with Tennyson and your +lecturers had but to compose the features of a corpse, is to abnegate +high hope for the sake of a barren convenience. I put it to the Colleges, +considered as disciplinary bodies, that the old way of letting Coleridge +slip, chasing forth Shelley, is, after all, not the wisest way. Recollect +that in Poesy as in every other human business, the more there are who +practise it the greater will be the chance of _someone's_ reaching +perfection. It is the impetus of the undistinguished host that flings +forward a Diomed or a Hector. And when you point with pride to Milton's +and those other mulberry trees in your Academe, bethink you 'What poets +are they shading to-day? Or are their leaves but feeding worms to spin +gowns to drape Doctors of Letters?' + +In the life of Benvenuto Cellini you will find this passage worth your +pondering.--He is telling how, while giving the last touches to his +Perseus in the great square of Florence, he and his workmen inhabited a +shed built around the statue. He goes on:-- + + The folk kept on attaching sonnets to the posts of the door....I believe + that, on the day when I opened it for a few hours to the public, more + than twenty were nailed up, all of them overflowing with the highest + panegyrics. Afterwards, when I once more shut it off from view, + everyone brought sonnets, with Latin and Greek verses: for the + University of Pisa was then in vacation, and all the doctors and + scholars kept vying with each other who could produce the best. + +I may not live to see the doctors and scholars of this University thus +employing the Long Vacation; as perhaps we shall wait some time for +another Perseus to excite them to it. But I do ask you to consider that +the Perseus was not entirely cause nor the sonnets entirely effect; that +the age when men are eager about great work is the age when great work +gets itself done; nor need it disturb us that most of the sonnets were, +likely enough, very bad ones--in Charles Lamb's phrase, very like what +Petrarch might have written if Petrarch had been born a fool. It is the +impetus that I ask of you: the will to try. + +Lastly, Gentlemen, do not set me down as one who girds at your +preoccupation, up here, with bodily games; for, indeed, I hold +'gymnastic' to be necessary as 'music' (using both words in the Greek +sense) for the training of such youths as we desire to send forth from +Cambridge. But I plead that they should be balanced, as they were in the +perfect young knight with whose words I will conclude to-day:-- + + Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance + Guided so well that I obtained the prize, + Both by the judgment of the English eyes + And of some sent by that sweet enemy France; + Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance, + Town-folk my strength, a daintier judge applies + His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; + Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; + Others, because of both sides I do take + My blood from them who did excel in this, + Think Nature me a man-at-arms did make. + How far they shot awry! the true cause is, + Stella looked on; and from her heavenly face + Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. + +'Untrue,' you say? Well, there is truth of emotion as well as of fact; +and who is there among you but would fain be able not only to win such a +guerdon but to lay it in such wise at your lady's feet? + +That then was Philip Sidney, called the peerless one of his age; and +perhaps no Englishman ever lived more graciously or, having used life, +made a better end. But you have seen this morning's newspaper: you have +read of Captain Scott and his comrades, and in particular of the death of +Captain Oates; and you know that the breed of Sidney is not extinct. +Gentlemen, let us keep our language noble: for we still have heroes to +commemorate![1] + + +[Footnote 1: The date of the above lecture was Wednesday, February 12th, +1913, the date on which our morning newspapers printed the first +telegrams giving particulars of the fate of Captain Scott's heroic +conquest of the South Pole, and still more glorious, though defeated, +return. The first brief message concerning Captain Oates, ran as +follows:-- + +'From the records found in the tent where the bodies were discovered it +appeared that Captain Oates's feet and hands were badly frost-bitten, +and, although he struggled on heroically, his comrades knew on March 16 +that his end was approaching. He had borne intense suffering for weeks +without complaint, and he did not give up hope to the very end. + +"He was a brave soul. He slept through the night hoping not to wake; but +he awoke in the morning. + +"It was blowing a blizzard. Oates said: 'I am just going outside, and I +may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard, and we have not seen +him since. + +"We knew that Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to +dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English +gentleman."'] + + + + +LECTURE III. + +ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE + +Wednesday, February 26 + + +You will forgive me, Gentlemen, that having in my second lecture +encouraged you to the practice of verse as well as of prose, I seize the +very next opportunity to warn you against confusing the two, which differ +on some points essentially, and always so as to demand separate rules--or +rather (since I am shy of the word 'rules') a different concept of what +the writer should aim at and what avoid. But you must, pray, understand +that what follows will be more useful to the tiro in prose than to the +tiro in verse; for while even a lecturer may help you to avoid writing +prose in the manner of Milton, only the gods--and they hardly--can cure a +versifier of being prosaic. + +We started upon a promise to do without scientific definitions; and in +drawing some distinctions to-day between verse and prose I shall use only +a few rough ones; good, as I hope, so far as they go; not to be found +contrary to your scientific ones, if ever, under another teacher you +attain to them; yet for the moment used only as guides to practice, and +pretending to be no more. + +Thus I go some way--though by no means all the way--towards defining +literature when I remind you that its very name (_litterae_--letters) +implies the written rather than the spoken word; that, for example, +however closely they approximate one to the other as we trace them back, +and even though we trace them back to identical beginnings, the +Writer--the Man of Letters--does to-day differ from the Orator. There was +a time, as you know, when the poet and the historian had no less than the +orator, and in the most literal sense, to 'get a hearing.' Nay, he got it +with more pains: for the orator had his senate-house or his law-court +provided, whereas Thespis jogged to fairs in a cart, and the Muse of +History, like any street acrobat, had to collect her own crowd. Herodotus +in search of a public packed his history in a portmanteau, carted it to +Olympia, found a favourable 'pitch,' as we should say, and wooed an +audience to him much as on a racecourse nowadays do those philanthropic +gentlemen who ply a dubious trade with three half-crowns and a gold +chain. It would cost us an effort to imagine the late Bishop Stubbs thus +trying his fortune with a bag full of select Charters at Queen's Club or +at Kempton Park, and exerting his lungs to retrieve a crowd that showed +some disposition to edge off towards the ring or the rails. + +The historian's conditions have improved; and like any other sensible man +he has advanced his claim with them, and revised his method. He writes +nowadays with his eye on the printed book. He may or may not be a dull +fellow: being a dull fellow, he may or may not be aware of it; but at +least he knows that, if you lay him upside down on your knee, you can on +awaking pick him up, resume your absorption, and even turn back some +pages to discover just where or why your interest flagged: whereas a +Hellene who deserted Herodotus, having a bet on the Pentathlon, not only +missed what he missed but missed it for life. + +The invention of print, of course, has made all, or almost all, the +difference. + +I do not forget that the printed book--the written word--presupposes a +speaking voice, and must ever have at its back some sense in us of the +speaking voice. But in writing prose nowadays, while always recollecting +that prose has its origin in speech--even as it behoves us to recollect +that Homer intoned the Iliad to the harp and Sappho plucked her passion +from the lyre--we have to take things as they are. Except Burns, Heine, +Beranger (with Moore, if you will), and you will find it hard to compile +in all the lyrical poetry of the last 150 years a list of half a dozen +first-class or even second-class bards who wrote primarily to be sung. It +may help you to estimate how far lyrical verse has travelled from its +origins if you will but remind yourselves that a _sonnet_ and a _sonata_ +were once the same thing, and that a _ballad_ meant a song accompanied by +dancing--the word _ballata_ having been specialised down, on the one line +to the _ballet_, in which Mademoiselle Genee or the Russian performers +will dance for our delight, using no words at all; on the other to "Sir +Patrick Spens" or "Clerk Saunders," 'ballads' to which no one in his +senses would dream of pointing a toe. + +Thus with Verse the written (or printed) word has pretty thoroughly +ousted the speaking voice and its auxiliaries--the pipe, the lute, the +tabor, the chorus with its dance movements and swaying of the body; and +in a quieter way much the same thing is happening to prose. In the Drama, +to be sure, we still write (or we should) for the actors, reckon upon +their intonations, their gestures, lay account with the tears in the +heroine's eyes and her visible beauty: though even in the Drama to-day +you may detect a tendency to substitute dialectic for action and +paragraphs for the [Greek: Stichomuthia], the sharp outcries of passion +in its give-and-take. Again we still--some of us--deliver sermons from +pulpits and orations in Parliament or upon public platforms. Yet I am +told that the vogue of the sermon is passing; and (by journalists) that +the leading article has largely superseded it. On that point I can offer +you no personal evidence; but of civil oratory I am very sure that the +whole pitch has been sensibly lowered since the day of Chatham, Burke, +Sheridan; since the day of Brougham and Canning; nay, ever since the day +of Bright, Gladstone, Disraeli. Burke, as everyone knows, once brought +down a Brummagem dagger and cast it on the floor of the House. Lord +Chancellor Brougham in a peroration once knelt to the assembled peers, +'_Here the noble lord inclined his knee to the Woolsack_' is, if I +remember, the stage direction in Hansard. Gentlemen, though in the course +of destiny one or another of you may be called upon to speak daggers to +the Treasury Bench, I feel sure you will use none; while, as for Lord +Brougham's genuflexions, we may agree that to emulate them would cost +Lord Haldane an effort. These and even far less flagrant or flamboyant +tricks of virtuosity have gone quite out of fashion. You could hardly +revive them to-day and keep that propriety to which I exhorted you a +fortnight ago. They would be out of tune; they would grate upon the +nerves; they would offend against the whole style of modern oratory, +which steadily tends to lower its key, to use the note of quiet +business-like exposition, to adopt more and more the style of written +prose. + +Let me help your sense of this change, by a further illustration. Burke, +as we know, was never shy of declaiming--even of declaiming in a +torrent--when he stood up to speak: but almost as little was he shy of +it when he sat down to write. If you turn to his "Letters on the +Regicide Peace" --no raw compositions, but penned in his latter days and +closing, or almost closing, upon that tenderest of farewells to his +country-- + + In this good old House, where everything at least is well aired, I + shall be content to put up my fatigued horses and here take a bed + for the long night that begins to darken upon me-- + +if, I say, you turn to these "Letters on the Regicide Peace" and consult +the title-page, you will find them ostensibly addressed to 'a Member of +the present Parliament'; and the opening paragraphs assume that Burke and +his correspondent are in general agreement. But skim the pages and your +eyes will be arrested again and again by sentences like these:-- + + The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing + the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are + purchased at ten thousand times their price--the blood of man should + never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for + our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our + kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. + +Magnificent, truly! But your ear has doubtless detected the blank +verse--three iambic lines:-- + + Are purchased at ten thousand times their price... + Be shed but to redeem the blood of man... + The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. + +Again Burke catches your eye by rhetorical inversions:-- + + But too often different is rational conjecture from melancholy fact, + + Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar, + +by repetitions:-- + + Never, no never, did Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another ... + Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our + neighbour; Algiers is not infectious. Algiers, whatever it may be, + is an old creation; and we have good data to calculate all the + mischief to be apprehended from it. When I find Algiers transferred + to Calais, I will tell you what I think of that point-- + +by quick staccato utterances, such as:-- + + And is this example nothing? It is everything. Example is the school + of mankind, and they will learn at no other-- + +or + + Our dignity? That is gone. I shall say no more about it. Light lie + the earth on the ashes of English pride! + +I say that the eye or ear, caught by such tropes, must (if it be +critical) recognise them at once as _rhetoric_, as the spoken word +masquerading under guise of the written. Burke may pretend to be seated, +penning a letter to a worthy man who will read it in his slippers: but +actually Burke is up and pacing his library at Beaconsfield, now striding +from fire-place to window with hands clasped under his coat tails, anon +pausing to fling out an arm with some familiar accustomed gesture in a +House of Commons that knows him no more, towards a Front Bench peopled by +shades. In fine the pretence is Cicero writing to Atticus, but the style +is Cicero denouncing Catiline. + +As such it is not for your imitation. Burke happened to be a genius, with +a swoop and range of mind, as of language to interpret it, with a gift to +enchant, a power to strike and astound, which together make him, to my +thinking, the man in our literature most nearly comparable with +Shakespeare. Others may be more to your taste; you may love others +better: but no other two leave you so hopeless of discovering _how it is +done_. Yet not for this reason only would I warn you against imitating +either. For like all great artists they accepted their conditions and +wrought for them, and those conditions have changed. When Jacques wished +to recite to an Elizabethan audience that + + All the world's a stage, + And all the men and women merely players-- + +or Hamlet to soliloquise + + To be, or not to be: that is the question-- + +the one did not stretch himself under a property oak, nor did the other +cast himself back in a chair and dangle his legs. They both advanced +boldly from the stage, down a narrow platform provided for such +recitations and for that purpose built boldly forward into the +auditorium, struck an attitude, declaimed the purple passage, and +returned, covered with applause, to continue the action of the play. This +was the theatrical convention; this the audience expected and understood; +for this Shakespeare wrote. Similarly, though the device must have been +wearing thin even in 1795-6, Burke cast a familiar epistle into language +proper to be addressed to Mr Speaker of the House of Commons. Shakespeare +wrote, as Burke wrote, for his audience; and their glory is that they +have outlasted the conditions they observed. Yet it was by observing them +that they gained the world's ear. Let us, who are less than they, beware +of scorning to belong to our own time. + +For my part I have a great hankering to see English Literature feeling +back through these old modes to its origins. I think, for example, that +if we studied to write verse that could really be sung, or if we were +more studious to write prose that could be read aloud with pleasure to +the ear, we should be opening the pores to the ancient sap; since the +roots are always the roots, and we can only reinvigorate our growth +through them. + +Unhappily, however, I cannot preach this just yet; for we are aiming at +practice, and at Cambridge (they tell me) while you speak well, you write +less expertly. A contributor to "The Cambridge Review," a fortnight ago, +lamented this at length: so you will not set the aspersion down to me, +nor blame me if these early lectures too officiously offer a kind of +'First Aid': that, while all the time eager to descant on the +_affinities_ of speech and writing, I dwell first on their _differences_; +or that, in speaking of Burke, an author I adore only 'on this side +idolatry,' I first present him in some aspects for your avoidance. +Similarly I adore the prose of Sir Thomas Browne, yet should no more +commend it to you for instant imitation than I could encourage you to +walk with a feather in your cap and a sword under your gown. Let us +observe proprieties. + +To return to Burke.--At his most flagrant, in these "Letters on the +Regicide Peace," he boldly raids Shakespeare. You are all, I doubt not, +conversant with the Prologue to "Henry the Fifth":-- + + O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend + The brightest heaven of invention! + A kingdom for a stage, princes to act + And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! + Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, + Assume the port of Mars: and at his heels, + Leash'd in like hounds, should Famine, Sword and Fire + Crouch for employment. + +Well, this passage Burke, assuming his correspondent to be familiar with +it, boldly claps into prose and inserts into a long diatribe against Pitt +for having tamely submitted to the rebuffs of the French Directory. Thus +it becomes:-- + + On that day it was thought he would have assumed the port of Mars: that + he would bid to be brought forth from their hideous Kennel (where his + scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those impatient dogs + of War, whose fierce regards affright even the minister of vengeance + that feeds them; that he would let them loose in Famine, Plagues and + Death, upon a guilty race to whose frame and to all whose habit, Order, + Peace, Religion and Virtue, are alien and abhorrent. + +Now Shakespeare is but apologising for the shortcomings of his' +play-house, whereas Burke is denouncing his country's shame and +prophesying disaster to Europe. Yet do you not feel with me that while +Shakespeare, using great words on the lowlier subject, contrives to make +them appropriate, with Burke, writing on the loftier subject, the same or +similar words have become tumid, turgid? + +Why? I am sure that the difference lies not in the two men: nor is it all +the secret, or even half the secret, that Burke is mixing up the spoken +with the written word, using the one while pretending to use the other. +That has carried us some way; but now let us take an important step +farther. The root of the matter lies in certain essential differences +between verse and prose. We will keep, if you please, to our rough +practical definitions. Literature--the written word--is a permanent +record of memorable speech; a record, at any rate, intended to be +permanent. We set a thing down in ink--we print it in a book--because we +feel it to be memorable, to be worth preserving. But to set this +memorable speech down we must choose one of two forms, verse or prose; +and I define verse to be a record in metre and rhythm, prose to be a +record which, dispensing with metre (abhorring it indeed), uses rhythm +laxly, preferring it to be various and unconstrained, so always that it +convey a certain pleasure to the ear. + +You observe that I avoid the term Poetry, over which the critics have +waged, and still are waging, a war that promises to be endless. Is Walt +Whitman a poet? Is the Song of Songs (which is not Solomon's)--is the +Book of Job--are the Psalms--all of these as rendered in our Authorised +Version of Holy Writ--are all of these poetry? Well 'yes,' if you want my +opinion; and again 'yes,' I am sure. But truly on this field, though +scores of great men have fought across it--Sidney, Shelley, Coleridge, +Scaliger (I pour the names on you at random), Johnson, Wordsworth, the +two Schlegels, Aristotle with Twining his translator, Corneille, Goethe, +Warton, Whately, Hazlitt, Emerson, Hegel, Gummere--but our axles grow +hot. Let us put on the brake: for in practice the dispute comes to very +little: since literature is an art and treats scientific definitions as +J. K. Stephen recommended. From them + + It finds out what it cannot do, + And then it goes and does it. + +I am journeying, say, in the West of England. I cross a bridge over a +stream dividing Devon from Cornwall. These two counties, each beautiful +in its way, are quite unlike in their beauty: yet nothing happened as I +stepped across the brook, and for a mile or two or even ten I am aware of +no change. Sooner or later that change will break upon the mind and I +shall be startled, awaking suddenly to a land of altered features. But at +what turn of the road this will happen, just how long the small +multiplied impressions will take to break into surmise, into +conviction--that nobody can tell. So it is with poetry and prose. They +are different realms, but between them lies a debatable land which a De +Quincey or a Whitman or a Paul Fort or a Marinetti may attempt. I advise +you who are beginners to keep well one side or other of the frontier, +remembering that there is plenty of room and what happened to Tupper. + +If we restrict ourselves to the terms 'verse' and 'prose,' we shall find +the line much easier to draw. Verse is memorable speech set down in metre +with strict rhythms; prose is memorable speech set down without +constraint of metre and in rhythms both lax and various--so lax, so +various, that until quite recently no real attempt has been made to +reduce them to rule. I doubt, for my part, if they can ever be reduced to +rule; and after a perusal of Professor Saintsbury's latest work, "A +History of English Prose Rhythm," I am left doubting. I commend this book +to you as one that clears up large patches of forest. No one has yet so +well explained what our prose writers, generation after generation, have +tried to do with prose: and he has, by the way, furnished us with a +capital anthology--or, as he puts it, with 'divers delectable draughts of +example.' But the road still waits to be driven. Seeking practical +guidance--help for our present purpose--I note first that many a passage +he scans in one way may as readily be scanned in another; that when he +has finished with one and can say proudly with Wordsworth:-- + + I've measured it from side to side, + 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide, + +we still have a sensation of coming out (our good master with us) by that +same door wherein we went; and I cannot as yet after arduous trial +discover much profit in his table of feet--Paeons, Dochmiacs, Antispasts, +Proceleusmatics and the rest--an Antispast being but an iamb followed by +a trochee, and Proceleusmatic but two pyrrhics, or four consecutive short +syllables--when I reflect that, your possible number of syllables being +as many as five to a foot, you may label them (as Aristotle would say) +until you come to infinity, where desire fails, without getting nearer +any rule of application. + +Let us respect a genuine effort of learning, though we may not detect its +immediate profit. In particular let us respect whatever Professor +Saintsbury writes, who has done such splendid work upon English +verse-prosody. I daresay he would retort upon my impatience grandly +enough, quoting Walt Whitman:-- + +I am the teacher of athletes; +He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own + proves the width of my own; +He most honours my style who learns under it to destroy the + teacher. + +His speculations may lead to much in time; though for the present they +yield us small instruction in the path we seek. + +It is time we harked back to our own sign-posts. Verse is written in +metre and strict rhythm; prose, without metre and with the freest +possible rhythm. That distinction seems simple enough, but it carries +consequences very far from simple. Let me give you an illustration taken +almost at hazard from Milton, from the Second Book of "Paradise +Regained":-- + + Up to a hill anon his steps he reared + From whose high top to ken the prospect round, + If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +These few lines are verse, are obviously verse with the accent of poetry; +while as obviously they are mere narrative and tell us of the simplest +possible incident--how Christ climbed a hill to learn what could be seen +from the top. Yet observe, line for line and almost word for word, how +strangely they differ from prose. Mark the inversions: 'Up to a hill anon +his steps he reared,' 'But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.' +Mark next the diction--'his steps he reared.' In prose we should not rear +our steps up the Gog-magog hills, or even more Alpine fastnesses; nor, +arrived at the top, should we 'ken' the prospect round; we might 'con,' +but should more probably 'survey' it. Even 'anon' is a tricky word in +prose, though I deliberately palmed it off on you a few minutes ago. Mark +thirdly the varied repetition, 'if cottage were in view, sheep-cote or +herd--but cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.' Lastly compare the +whole with such an account as you or I or Cluvienus would write in plain +prose:-- + + Thereupon he climbed a hill on the chance that the view from its + summit might disclose some sign of human habitation--a herd, a + sheep-cote, a cottage perhaps. But he could see nothing of the sort. + +But you will ask, '_Why_ should verse and prose employ diction so +different? _Why_ should the one invert the order of words in a fashion +not permitted to the other?' and I shall endeavour to answer these +questions together with a third which, I dare say, you have sometimes +been minded to put when you have been told--and truthfully told--by your +manuals and histories, that when a nation of men starts making literature +it invariably starts on the difficult emprise of verse, and goes on to +prose as by an afterthought. Why should men start upon the more difficult +form and proceed to the easier? It is not their usual way. In learning to +skate, for instance, they do not cut figures before practising loose and +easy propulsion. + +The answer is fairly simple. Literature (once more) is a record of +memorable speech; it preserves in words a record of such thoughts or of +such deeds as we deem worth preserving. Now if you will imagine yourself +a very primitive man, lacking paper or parchment; or a slightly less +primitive, but very poor, man to whom the price of parchment and ink is +prohibitive; you have two ways of going to work. You can carve your words +upon trees or stones (a laborious process) or you can commit them to +memory and carry them about in your head; which is cheaper and handier. +For an illustration, you find it useful, anticipating the tax-collector, +to know how many days there are in the current month. But further you +find it a nuisance and a ruinous waste of time to run off to the tribal +tree or monolith whenever the calculation comes up; so you invent a +formula, and you cast that formula into _verse_ for the simple reason +that verse, with its tags, alliterations, beat of syllables, jingle of +rhymes (however your tribe has chosen to invent it), has a knack, not +possessed by prose, of sticking in your head. You do not say, 'Quick thy +tablets, memory! Let me see--January has 31 days, February 28 days, March +31 days, April 30 days.' You invent a verse:-- + + Thirty days hath September, + April, June and November... + +Nay, it has been whispered to me, Gentlemen, that in this University some +such process of memorising in verse has been applied by bold bad +irreverently-minded men even to the "Evidences" of our cherished Paley. + +This, you will say, is mere verse, and not yet within measurable distance +of poetry. But wait! The men who said the more memorable things, or sang +them--the men who recounted deeds and genealogies of heroes, plagues and +famines, assassinations, escapes from captivity, wanderings and conquests +of the clan, all the 'old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long +ago'--the men who sang these things for their living, for a supper, a +bed in the great hall, and something in their wallet to carry them on to +the next lordship--these were gentlemen, scops, bards, minstrels (call +them how you will), a professional class who had great need of a full +repertory in a land swarming with petty chieftains, and to adapt their +strains to the particular hall of entertainment. It would never do, for +example, to flatter the prowess of the Billings in the house of the +Hoppings, their hereditary foes, or to bore the Wokings (who lived where +the crematorium now is) with the complicated genealogy of the Tootings: +for this would have been to miss that appropriateness which I preached +to you in my second lecture as a preliminary rule of good writing. Nay, +when the Billings intermarried with the Tootings--when the Billings took +to cooing, so to speak--a hasty blend of excerpts would be required for +the "Epithalamium." So it was all a highly difficult business, needing +adaptability, a quick wit, a goodly stock of songs, a retentive memory +and every artifice to assist it. Take "Widsith," for example, the +'far-travelled man.' He begins:-- + + Widsith spake: he unlocked his word-hoard. + +So he had a hoard of words, you see: and he must have needed them, for he +goes on:-- + + Forthon ic maeg singan and secgan spell, + Maenan fore mengo in meoduhealle, + Hu me cynegode cystum dohten. + Ic waes mid Hunum and mid Hreth-gotum, + Mid Sweom and mid Geatum, and mid Suth-Denum. + Mid Wenlum ic waes and mid Waernum and mid Wicingum. + Mid Gefthum ic waes and mid Winedum.... + + (Therefore I can sing and tell a tale, recount in the Mead Hall, how + men of high race gave rich gifts to me. I was with Huns and with Hreth + Goths, with the Swedes, and with the Geats, and with the South Danes; + I was with the Wenlas, and with the Waernas, and with the Vikings; I + was with the Gefthas and with the Winedae....) + +and so on for a full dozen lines. I say that the memory of such men must +have needed every artifice to help it: and the chief artifice to their +hand was one which also delighted the ears of their listeners. They sang +or intoned to the harp. + +There you get it, Gentlemen. I have purposely, skimming a wide subject, +discarded much ballast; but you may read and scan and read again, and +always you must come back to this, that the first poets sang their words +to the harp or to some such instrument: and just there lies the secret +why poetry differs from prose. The moment you introduce music you let in +emotion with all its sway upon speech. From that moment you change +everything, down to the order of the words--the _natural_ order of the +words: and (remember this) though the harp be superseded, the voice never +forgets it. You may take up a Barrack Room Ballad of Kipling's, and it is +there, though you affect to despise it for a banjo or concertina:-- + + Ford--ford--ford of Kabul river... + +'Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.' From the +moment men introduced music they made verse a thing essentially separate +from prose, from its natural key of emotion to its natural ordering of +words. Do not for one moment imagine that when Milton writes:-- + + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +or + + Of man's first disobedience and the fruit + Of that forbidden tree... + +--where you must seek down five lines before you come to the verb, and +then find it in the imperative mood--do not suppose for a moment that he +is here fantastically shifting words, inverting phrases out of their +natural order. For, as St Paul might say, there is a natural order of +prose and there is a natural order of verse. The natural order of prose +is:-- + + I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, + though not of that county; my father being a foreigner of Bremen, + who settled first in Hull.--[_Defoe._] + +or + + Further I avow to your Highness that with these eyes I have beheld + the person of William Wooton, B.D., who has written a good sizeable + volume against a friend of your Governor (from whom, alas! he must + therefore look for little favour) in a most gentlemanly style, + adorned with the utmost politeness and civility.--[_Swift._] + +The natural order of poetry is:-- + + Thus with the year + Seasons return, but not to me returns + Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn, + Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's Rose, + Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. + +or + + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +and this basal difference you must have clear in your minds before, in +dealing with prose or verse, you can practise either with profit or read +either with intelligent delight. + + + + +LECTURE IV. + +ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE + +Thursday, April 17 + + +In our last lecture, Gentlemen, we discussed the difference between +verse, or metrical writing, and prose. We traced that difference (as you +will remember) to Music--to the harp, the lyre, the dance, the chorus, +all those first necessary accompaniments which verse never quite forgets; +and we concluded that, as Music ever introduces emotion, which is indeed +her proper and only means of persuading, so the natural language of verse +will be keyed higher than the natural language of prose; will be keyed +higher throughout and even for its most ordinary purposes--as for +example, to tell us that So-and-so sailed to Troy with so many ships. + +I grant you that our steps to this conclusion were lightly and rapidly +taken: yet the stepping-stones are historically firm. Verse does precede +prose in literature; verse does start with musical accompaniment; musical +accompaniment does introduce emotion; and emotion does introduce an order +of its own into speech. I grant you that we have travelled far from the +days when a prose-writer, Herodotus, labelled the books of his history by +the names of the nine Muses. I grant you that if you go to the Vatican +and there study the statues of the Muses (noble, but of no early date) +you may note that Calliope, Muse of the Epic--unlike her sisters Euterpe, +Erato, Thalia--holds for symbol no instrument of music, but a stylus and +a tablet. Yet the earlier Calliope, the Calliope of Homer, was a Muse of +Song. + + [Greek: Menin aeide, Thea--] + +'Had I a thousand tongues, a thousand hands.'--For what purpose does the +poet wish for a thousand tongues, but to sing? for what purpose a +thousand hands, but to pluck the wires? not to dip a thousand pens in a +thousand inkpots. + +I doubt, in fine, if your most learned studies will discover much amiss +with the frontier we drew between verse and prose, cursorily though we +ran its line. Nor am I daunted on comparing it with Coleridge's more +philosophical one, which you will find in the "Biographia Literaria" +(c. XVIII)-- + + And first for the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance + in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to + hold in check the workings of passion. It might be easily explained + likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the + very state which it counteracts, and how this balance of antagonism + becomes organised into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term) + by a supervening act of the will and judgment consciously and for + the foreseen purpose of pleasure. + +I will not swear to understand precisely what Coleridge means here, +though I believe that I do. But at any rate, and on the principle that of +two hypotheses, each in itself adequate, we should choose the simpler, I +suggest in all modesty that we shall do better with our own than with +Coleridge's, which has the further disadvantage of being scarcely +amenable to positive evidence. We can say with historical warrant that +Sappho struck the lyre, and argue therefrom, still within close range of +correction, that her singing responded to the instrument: whereas to +assert that Sappho's mind 'was balanced by a spontaneous effort which +strove to hold in check the workings of passion' is to say something for +which positive evidence will be less handily found, whether to contradict +or to support. + +Yet if you choose to prefer Coleridge's explanation, no great harm will +be done: since Coleridge, who may be presumed to have understood it, +promptly goes on to deduce that, + + as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased + excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural + language of excitement. + +which is precisely where we found ourselves, save that where Coleridge +uses the word 'excitement' we used the word 'emotion.' + +Shall we employ an illustration before proceeding?--some sentence easily +handled, some commonplace of the moralist, some copybook maxim, I care +not what. 'Contentment breeds Happiness'--That is a proposition with +which you can hardly quarrel; sententious, sedate, obviously true; +provoking delirious advocacy as little as controversial heat; in short a +very fair touchstone. Now hear how the lyric treats it, in these lines of +Dekker-- + + Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? + O sweet content! + Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex'd? + O punishment! + Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex'd + To add to golden numbers golden numbers? + O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! + Work apace, apace, apace, apace; + Honest labour wears a lovely face; + Then hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny! + + Canst drink the waters of the crystal spring? + O sweet content! + Swim'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears? + O punishment! + Then he that patiently want's burden bears + No burden bears, but is a king, a king! + O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! + Work apace, apace, apace, apace; + Honest labour wears a lovely face; + Then hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny! + +There, in lines obviously written for music, you have our sedate +sentence, 'Contentment breeds Happiness,' converted to mere emotion. Note +(to use Coleridge's word) the 'excitement' of it. There are but two plain +indicative sentences in the two stanzas--(1) 'Honest labour wears a +lovely face' (used as a refrain), and (2) 'Then he that patiently want's +burden bears no burden bears, but is a king, a king!' (heightened +emotionally by inversion and double repetition). Mark throughout how +broken is the utterance; antithetical question answered by exclamations: +both doubled and made more antithetical in the second stanza: with +cunning reduplicated inversions to follow, and each stanza wound up by an +outburst of emotional nonsense--'hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny!'--as +a man might skip or whistle to himself for want of thought. + +Now (still keeping to our same subject of Contentment) let us _prosify_ +the lyrical order of language down to the lowest pitch to which genius +has been able to reduce it and still make noble verse. You have all read +Wordsworth's famous Introduction to the "Lyrical Ballads," and you know +that Wordsworth's was a genius working on a theory that the languages of +verse and of prose are identical. You know, too, I dare say, into what +banalities that theory over and over again betrayed him: banalities such +as-- + + His widowed mother, for a second mate + Espoused the teacher of the village school: + Who on her offspring zealously bestowed + Needful instruction. + +--and the rest. Nevertheless Wordsworth was a genius; and genius working +persistently on a narrow theory will now and again 'bring it off' (as +they say). So he, amid the flat waste of his later compositions, did +undoubtedly 'bring it off' in the following sonnet:-- + + These times strike monied worldlings with dismay: + Ev'n rich men, brave by nature, taint the air + With words of apprehension and despair; + While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray, + Men unto whom sufficient for the day + And minds not stinted or untill'd are given, + Sound healthy children of the God of Heaven, + Are cheerful as the rising sun in May. + What do we gather hence but firmer faith + That every gift of noble origin + Is breath'd upon by Hope's perpetual breath; + That Virtue and the faculties within + Are vital; and that riches are akin + To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death? + +Here, I grant, are no repetitions, no inversions. The sentences, though +metrical, run straightforwardly, verb following subject, object verb, as +in strict prose. In short here you have verse reduced to the order and +structure of prose as nearly as a man of genius, working on a set theory, +could reduce it while yet maintaining its proper emotional key. But first +let me say that you will find very few like instances of success even in +Wordsworth; and few indeed to set against innumerable passages wherein +either his verse defies his theory and triumphs, or succumbs to it and, +succumbing, either drops sheer to bathos or spreads itself over dead +flats of commonplace. Let me tell you next that the instances you will +find in other poets are so few and so far between as to be negligible; +and lastly that even such verse as the above has only to be compared with +a passage of prose and its emotional pitch is at once betrayed. Take +this, for example, from Jeremy Taylor:-- + + Since all the evil in the world consists in the disagreeing between the + object and the appetite, as when a man hath what he desires not, or + desires what he hath not, or desires amiss, he that compares his spirit + to the present accident hath variety of instance for his virtue, but + none to trouble him, because his desires enlarge not beyond his present + fortune: and a wise man is placed in a variety of chances, like the + nave or centre of a wheel in the midst of all the circumvolutions and + changes of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns + gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indifferent which + part is up, and which is down; for there is some virtue or other to be + exercised whatever happens--either patience or thanksgiving, love or + fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness. + +Or, take this from Samuel Johnson:-- + + The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind; and he who has + so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing + anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless + efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove. + +Now, to be frank, I do not call that first passage very good prose. Like +much of Jeremy Taylor's writing it is prose tricked out with the +trappings and odds-and-ends of verse. It starts off, for example, with a +brace of heroics--'Since all the evil in the world consists'...'between +the object and the appetite.' You may say, further, that the simile of +the wheel, though proper enough to prose, is poetical too: that Homer +might have used it ('As in a wheel the rim turns violently, while the +nave, though it turns also, yet seems to be at rest'--something of that +sort). Nevertheless you will agree with me that, in exchanging +Wordsworth for Taylor and Johnson, we have relaxed something with the +metre, something that the metre kept taut; and this something we +discover to be the emotional pitch. + +But let me give you another illustration, supplied (I dare say quite +unconsciously) by one who combined a genuine love of verse--in which, +however, he was no adept--with a sure instinct for beautiful prose. +Contentment was a favourite theme with Isaak Walton: "The Compleat +Angler" is packed with praise of it: and in "The Compleat Angler" occurs +this well-known passage:-- + + But, master, first let me tell you, that very hour which you were + absent from me, I sat down under a willow tree by the waterside, and + considered what you had told me of the owner of that pleasant meadow in + which you then had left me; that he had a plentiful estate, and not a + heart to think so; that he had at this time many law-suits depending, + and that they both damped his mirth and took up so much of his time and + thoughts that he had no leisure to take the sweet content that I, who + pretended no title to them, took in his fields: for I could there sit + quietly; and looking on the water, see some fishes sport themselves in + the silver streams, others leaping at flies of several shapes and + colours; looking on the hills, I could behold them spotted with woods + and groves; looking down the meadows, could see, here a boy gathering + lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culverlocks and + cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present month of May. + These and many other field-flowers so perfumed the air that I thought + that very meadow like that field in Sicily of which Diodorus speaks, + where the perfumes arising from the place make all dogs that hunt in it + to fall off and lose their hottest scent. I say, as I thus sat, joying + in my own happy condition, and pitying this poor rich man that owned + this and many other pleasant groves and meadows about me, I did + thankfully remember what my Saviour said, that the meek possess the + earth; or rather they enjoy what the others possess and enjoy not; for + Anglers and meek quiet-spirited men are free from those high, those + restless thoughts which corrode the sweets of life; and they, and they + only can say as the poet has happily exprest it: + + 'Hail, blest estate of lowliness! + Happy enjoyments of such minds + As, rich in self-contentedness, + Can, like the reeds in roughest winds, + By yielding make that blow but small + At which proud oaks and cedars fall.' + +There you have a passage of felicitous prose culminating in a stanza of +trite and fifth-rate verse. Yes, Walton's instinct is sound; for he is +keying up the pitch; and verse, even when mediocre in quality, has its +pitch naturally set above that of prose. So, if you will turn to your +Walton and read the page following this passage, you will see that, still +by a sure instinct, he proceeds from this scrap of reflective verse to a +mere rollicking 'catch': + + Man's life is but vain, for 'tis subject to pain + And sorrow, and short as a bubble; + 'Tis a hodge-podge of business and money and care, + And care, and money and trouble... + +--which is even worse rubbish, and yet a step upwards in emotion because +Venator actually sings it to music. 'Ay marry, sir, this is music +indeed,' approves Brother Peter; 'this cheers the heart.' + +In this and the preceding lecture, Gentlemen, I have enforced at some +length the opinion that to understand the many essential differences +between verse and prose we must constantly bear in mind that verse, being +metrical, keeps the character originally imposed on it by musical +accompaniment and must always, however far the remove, be referred back +to its origin and to the emotion which music excites. + +Mr George Bernard Shaw having to commit his novel "Cashel Byron's +Profession" to paper in a hurry, chose to cast it in blank verse as being +more easily and readily written so: a performance which brilliantly +illuminates a half-truth. Verse--or at any rate, unrhymed iambic +verse--is easier to write than prose, if you care to leave out the +emotion which makes verse characteristic and worth writing. I have +little doubt that, had he chosen to attempt it, Mr Shaw would have found +his story still more ductile in the metre of "Hiawatha." But the +experiment proves nothing: or no more than that, all fine art costing +labour, it may cost less if burlesqued in a category not its own. + +Let me take an example from a work with which you are all familiar--"The +Student's Handbook to the University and Colleges of Cambridge." On +p. 405 we read:-- + + The Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos is divided into ten sections, + A, A2, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I. A student may take either one or two + sections at the end of his second year of residence, and either one or + two more sections at the end of his third or fourth year of residence; + or he may take two sections at the end of his third year only. Thus + this Tripos can be treated either as a divided or as an undivided + Tripos at the option of the candidate. + +Now I do not hold that up to you for a model of prose. Still, lucidity +rather than emotion being its aim, I doubt not that the composer spent +pains on it; more pains than it would have cost him to convey his +information metrically, thus:-- + + There is a Tripos that aspires to blend + The Medieval and the Modern tongues + In one red burial (Sing Heavenly Muse!) + Divided into sections A, A2, + B, C, D, E, F, G and H and I. + A student may take either one or two + (With some restrictions mention'd in a footnote) + At th' expiration of his second year: + Or of his third, or of his fourth again + Take one or two; or of his third alone + Take two together. Thus this tripos is + (Like nothing in the Athanasian Creed) + Divisible or indivisible + At the option of the candidate--Gadzooks! + +This method has even some advantage over the method of prose in that it +is more easily memorised; but it has, as you will admit, the one fatal +flaw that it imports emotion into a theme which does not properly admit +of emotion, and that so it offends against our first rule of +writing--that it should be appropriate. + +Now if you accept the argument so far as we have led it--that verse is by +nature more emotional than prose--certain consequences would seem to +follow: of which the first is that while the capital difficulty of verse +consists in saying ordinary things the capital difficulty of prose +consists in saying extraordinary things; that while with verse, keyed for +high moments, the trouble is to manage the intervals, with prose the +trouble is to manage the high moments. + +Let us dwell awhile on this difference, for it is important. You remember +my quoting to you in my last lecture these lines of Milton's:-- + + Up to a hill anon his steps he reared + From whose high top to ken the prospect round, + If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; + But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. + +We agreed that these were good lines, with the accent of poetry: but we +allowed it to be a highly exalted way of telling how So-and-so climbed a +hill for a better view but found none. Now obviously this exaltation does +not arise immediately out of the action described (which is as ordinary +as it well could be), but is _derivative_. It borrows its wings, its +impetus, from a previous high moment, from the emotion proper to that +moment, from the speech proper to that emotion: and these sustain us +across to the next height as with the glide of an aeroplane. Your own +sense will tell you at once that the passage would be merely bombastic if +the poet were starting to set forth how So-and-so climbed a hill for the +view--just that, and nothing else: as your own sense tells you that the +swoop is from one height to another. For if bathos lay ahead, if Milton +had but to relate how the Duke of York, with twenty thousand men, +'marched up a hill and then marched down again,' he certainly would not +use diction such as:-- + + Up to a hill anon his steps he reared. + +Even as it is, I think we must all detect a certain artificiality in the +passage, and confess to some relief when Satan is introduced to us, ten +lines lower down, to revivify the story. For let us note that, in the +nature of things, the more adorned and involved our style (and Milton's +is both ornate and involved) the more difficulty we must find with these +flat pedestrian intervals. Milton may 'bring it off,' largely through +knowing how to dodge the interval and contrive that it shall at any rate +be brief: but, as Bagehot noted, when we come to Tennyson and find +Tennyson in "Enoch Arden" informing us of a fish-jowter, that:-- + + Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil + In ocean-smelling osier-- + +(_i.e._ in a fish-basket) + + --and his face + Rough-reddened with a thousand winter gales, + Not only to the market town were known, + But in the leafy lanes beyond the down + Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp + And peacock yewtree of the lonely Hall + Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering, + +why, then we feel that the vehicle is altogether too pompous for its +load, and those who make speech too pompous for its content commit, +albeit in varying degrees, the error of Defoe's religious lady who, +seeing a bottle of over-ripe beer explode and cork and froth fly up to +the ceiling, cried out, 'O, the wonders of Omnipotent Power!' The poet +who commends fresh fish to us as 'ocean-spoil' can cast no stone at his +brother who writes of them as 'the finny denizens of the deep,' or even +at his cousin the journalist, who exalts the oyster into a 'succulent +bivalve'-- + + The feathered tribes on pinions cleave the air; + Not so the mackerel, and, still less, the bear! + +I believe this difficulty, which verse, by nature and origin emotional, +encounters in dealing with ordinary unemotional narrative, to lie as a +technical reason at the bottom of Horace's advice to the writer of Epic +to plunge _in medias res_, thus avoiding flat preparative and catching at +once a high wind which shall carry him hereafter across dull levels and +intervals. I believe that it lay--though whether consciously or not he +scarcely tells us--at the bottom of Matthew Arnold's mind when, selecting +certain qualities for which to praise Homer, he chose, for the very +first, Homer's _rapidity_. 'First,' he says, 'Homer is eminently rapid; +and,' he adds justly, 'to this rapidity the elaborate movement of +Miltonic blank verse is alien.' + +Now until one studies writing as an art, trying to discover what this or +that form of it accomplishes with ease and what with difficulty, and why +verse can do one thing and prose another, Arnold's choice of _rapidity_ +to put in the forefront of Homer's merits may seem merely capricious. +'Homer (we say) has other great qualities. Arnold himself indicates +Homer's simplicity, directness, nobility. Surely either one of these +should be mentioned before rapidity, in itself not comparable as a virtue +with either?' + +But when we see that the difficulty of verse-narrative lies just _here_; +that the epic poet who is rapid has met, and has overcome, the capital +difficulty of his form, then we begin to do justice not only to Arnold as +a critic but (which is of far higher moment) to Homer as a craftsman. + +The genius of Homer in this matter is in fact something daemonic. He +seems to shirk nothing: and the effect of this upon critics is +bewildering. The acutest of them are left wondering how on earth an +ordinary tale--say of how some mariners beached ship, stowed sail, walked +ashore and cooked their dinner--can be made so poetical. They are +inclined to divide the credit between the poet and his fortunate age--'a +time' suggests Pater 'in which one could hardly have spoken at all +without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without +making a picture "in the great style" against a sky charged with +marvels.' + +Well, the object of these lectures is not to explain genius. Just here it +is rather to state a difficulty; to admit that, once in history, genius +overcame it; yet warn you how rare in the tale of poetical achievement is +such a success. Homer, indeed, stands first, if not unmatched, among +poets in this technical triumph over the capital disability of +annihilating flat passages. I omit Shakespeare and the dramatists; +because they have only to give a stage direction 'Enter Cassius, looking +lean,' and Cassius comes in looking leaner than nature; whereas Homer has +in his narrative to walk Hector or Thersites on to the scene, describe +him, walk him off. I grant the rapidity of Dante. It is amazing; and we +may yield him all the credit for choosing (it was his genius that chose +it) a subject which allowed of the very highest rapidity; since Hell, +Purgatory and Paradise, though they differ in other respects, have this +in common, that they are populous and the inhabitants of each so +compendiously shepherded together that the visitor can turn from one +person to another without loss of time. But Homer does not escort us +around a menagerie in which we can move expeditiously from one cage to +another. He proposes at least, both in the "Iliad" and in the "Odyssey," +to unfold a story; and he _seems_ to unfold it so artlessly that we +linger on the most pedestrian intervals while he tells us, for example, +what the heroes ate and how they cooked it. A modern writer would serve +us a far better dinner. Homer brings us to his with our appetite all the +keener for having waited and watched the spitting and roasting. + +I would point out to you what art this genius conceals; how cunning is +this apparent simplicity: and for this purpose let me take Homer at the +extreme of his difficulty--when he has to describe a long sea-voyage. + +Some years ago, in his last Oxford lectures, Mr Froude lamented that no +poet in this country had arisen to write a national epic of the great +Elizabethan seamen, to culminate (I suppose) as his History culminated, +in the defeat of the Armada: and one of our younger poets; Mr Alfred +Noyes, acting on this hint has since given us an epic poem on "Drake," in +twelve books. But Froude probably overlooked, as Mr Noyes has not +overcome, this difficulty of the flat interval which, while ever the +bugbear of Epic, is magnified tenfold when our action takes place on the +sea. For whereas the verse should be rapid and the high moments frequent, +the business of seafaring is undeniably monotonous, as the intervals +between port and port, sea-fight and sea-fight, must be long and lazy. +Matters move more briskly in an occasional gale; but even a gale lasts, +and must be ridden out; and the process of riding to a gale of wind:-- + + For ever climbing up the climbing wave + +--your ship taking one wave much as she takes another--is in its nature +monotonous. Nay, you have only to read Falconer's "Shipwreck" to discover +how much of dulness may lie enwrapped, to discharge itself, even in a +first-class tempest. Courses, reckonings, trimmings of canvas--these +occur in real life and amuse the simple mariner at the time. But to the +reader, if he be a landsman, their repetition in narrative may easily +become intolerable; and when we get down to the 'trades,' even the seaman +sets his sail for a long spell of weather and goes to sleep. In short you +cannot upon the wide Atlantic push action and reaction to and fro as upon +the plains of windy Troy: nor could any but a superhuman genius make +sustained poetry (say) out of Nelson's untiring pursuit of Villeneuve, +which none the less was one of the most heroic feats in history. + +This difficulty, inherent in navigation as a subject for the Epic Muse, +has, I think, been very shrewdly detected and hit off in a parody of Mr +Noyes' poem by a young friend of mine, Mr Wilfred Blair:-- + + Meanwhile the wind had changed, and Francis Drake + Put down the helm and drove against the seas-- + Once more the wind changed, and the simple seaman, + Full fraught with weather wisdom, once again + Put down the helm and so drove on--_et cetera_. + +Now Homer actually has performed this feat which we declare to be next to +impossible. He actually does convey Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca, by a +ten years' voyage too; he actually has narrated that voyage to us in +plain straightforward words; and, what is more, he actually has made a +superb epic of it. Yes, but when you come to dissect the Odyssey, what +amazing artifice is found under that apparently straightforward +tale!--eight years of the ten sliced out, to start with, and +magnificently presented to Circe + + Where that Aeaean isle forgets the main + +--and (one may add), so forgetting, avoids the technical difficulties +connected therewith. + +Note the space given to Telemachus and his active search for the lost +hero: note too how the mass of Odysseus' seafaring adventures is +condensed into a reported speech--a traveller's tale at the court of +Alcinoues. Virgil borrowed this trick, you remember; and I dare to swear +that had it fallen to Homer to attempt the impossible saga of Nelson's +pursuit after Villeneuve he would have achieved it triumphantly--by means +of a tale told in the first person by a survivor to Lady Hamilton. Note, +again, how boldly (being free to deal with an itinerary of which his +audience knew nothing but surmised that it comprehended a vast deal of +the marvellous, spaced at irregular distances) Homer works in a shipwreck +or a miracle wherever the action threatens to flag. Lessing, as you know, +devoted several pages of the "Laokoeon" to the shield of Achilles; to +Homer's craft in depicting it as it grew under Hephaestus' hammer: so +that we are intrigued by the process of manufacture instead of being +wearied by a description of the ready-made article; so also (if one may +presume to add anything to Lessing) that we are cunningly flattered in a +sense that the shield is being made for _us._ Well, that is one artifice +out of many: but if you would gauge at all Homer's resource and subtlety +in technique I recommend you to analyse the first twelve books of +the "Odyssey" and count for yourselves the device by which the +poet--[Greek: polutropos] as was never his hero--evades or hurries over +each flat interval as he happens upon it. + + These things, Ulysses, + The wise bards also + Behold and sing. + But O, what labour! + O Prince, what pain! + +You may be thinking, Gentlemen, that I take up a disproportionate amount +of your time on such technical matters at these. But literature being an +art (forgive the reiteration!) and therefore to be practised, I want us +to be seeking all the time _how it is done_; to hunt out the principles +on which the great artists wrought; to face, to rationalise, the +difficulties by which they were confronted, and learn how they overcame +the particular obstacle. Surely even for mere criticism, apart from +practice, we shall equip ourselves better by seeking, so far as we may, +how the thing is done than by standing at gaze before this or that +masterpiece and murmuring 'Isn't that beautiful! How in the world, now...!' + +I am told that these lectures are criticised as tending to make you +conceited: to encourage in you a belief that you can do things, when it +were better that you merely admired. Well I would not dishearten you by +telling to what a shred of conceit, even of hope, a man can be reduced +after twenty-odd years of the discipline. But I can, and do, affirm that +the farther you penetrate in these discoveries the more sacred the +ultimate mystery will become for you: that the better you understand the +great authors as exemplars of practice, the more certainly you will +realise what is the condescension of the gods. + +Next time, then, we will attempt an enquiry into the capital difficulty +of Prose. + + + + +LECTURE V. + +INTERLUDE: ON JARGON + +Thursday, May 1 + + +We parted, Gentlemen, upon a promise to discuss the capital difficulty of +Prose, as we have discussed the capital difficulty of Verse. But, +although we shall come to it, on second thoughts I ask leave to break the +order of my argument and to interpose some words upon a kind of writing +which, from a superficial likeness, commonly passes for prose in these +days, and by lazy folk is commonly written for prose, yet actually is not +prose at all; my excuse being the simple practical one that, by first +clearing this sham prose out of the way, we shall the better deal with +honest prose when we come to it. The proper difficulties of prose will +remain: but we shall be agreed in understanding what it is, or at any +rate what it is not, that we talk about. I remember to have heard +somewhere of a religious body in the United States of America which had +reason to suspect one of its churches of accepting Spiritual consolation +from a coloured preacher--an offence against the laws of the Synod--and +despatched a Disciplinary Committee with power to act; and of the +Committee's returning to report itself unable to take any action under +its terms of reference, for that while a person undoubtedly coloured had +undoubtedly occupied the pulpit and had audibly spoken from it in the +Committee's presence, the performance could be brought within no +definition of preaching known or discoverable. So it is with that +infirmity of speech--that flux, that determination of words to the mouth, +or to the pen--which, though it be familiar to you in parliamentary +debates, in newspapers, and as the staple language of Blue Books, +Committees, Official Reports, I take leave to introduce to you as prose +which is not prose and under its real name of Jargon. + +You must not confuse this Jargon with what is called Journalese. The two +overlap, indeed, and have a knack of assimilating each other's vices. But +Jargon finds, maybe, the most of its votaries among good douce people who +have never written to or for a newspaper in their life, who would never +talk of 'adverse climatic conditions' when they mean 'bad weather'; who +have never trifled with verbs such as 'obsess,' 'recrudesce,' 'envisage,' +'adumbrate,' or with phrases such as 'the psychological moment,' 'the +true inwardness,' 'it gives furiously to think.' It dallies with +Latinity--'sub silentio,' 'de die in diem,' 'cui bono?' (always in the +sense, unsuspected by Cicero, of 'What is the profit?')--but not for the +sake of style. Your journalist at the worst is an artist in his way: he +daubs paint of this kind upon the lily with a professional zeal; the more +flagrant (or, to use his own word, arresting) the pigment, the happier is +his soul. Like the Babu he is trying all the while to embellish our poor +language, to make it more floriferous, more poetical--like the Babu for +example who, reporting his mother's death, wrote, 'Regret to inform you, +the hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket.' + +_There_ is metaphor: _there_ is ornament: _there_ is a sense of poetry, +though as yet groping in a world unrealised. No such gusto marks--no such +zeal, artistic or professional, animates--the practitioners of Jargon, +who are, most of them (I repeat), douce respectable persons. Caution is +its father: the instinct to save everything and especially trouble: its +mother, Indolence. It looks precise, but it is not. It is, in these +times, _safe_: a thousand men have said it before and not one to your +knowledge had been prosecuted for it. And so, like respectability in +Chicago, Jargon stalks unchecked in our midst. It is becoming the +language of Parliament: it has become the medium through which Boards of +Government, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, Commercial Firms, +express the processes as well as the conclusions of their thought and so +voice the reason of their being. + +Has a Minister to say 'No' in the House of Commons? Some men are +constitutionally incapable of saying no: but the Minister conveys it +thus--'The answer to the question is in the negative.' That means 'no.' +Can you discover it to mean anything less, or anything more except that +the speaker is a pompous person?--which was no part of the information +demanded. + +That is Jargon, and it happens to be accurate. But as a rule Jargon is by +no means accurate, its method being to walk circumspectly around its +target; and its faith, that having done so it has either hit the +bull's-eye or at least achieved something equivalent, and safer. + +Thus the Clerk of a Board of Guardians will minute that-- + + In the case of John Jenkins deceased the coffin provided was of the + usual character. + +Now this is not accurate. 'In the case of John Jenkins deceased,' for +whom a coffin was supplied, it is wholly superfluous to tell us that he +is deceased. But actually John Jenkins never had more than one case, and +that was the coffin. The Clerk says he had two,--a coffin in a case: but +I suspect the Clerk to be mistaken, and I am sure he errs in telling us +that the coffin was of the usual character: for coffins have no +character, usual or unusual. + +For another example (I shall not tell you whence derived)-- + + In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class [So you + see the lucky fellow gets a case as well as a first-class. He might be + a stuffed animal: perhaps he is] In the case of every candidate who is + placed in the first class the class-list will show by some convenient + mark (1) the Section or Sections for proficiency in which he is placed + in the first class and (2) the Section or Sections (if any) in which he + has passed with special distinction. + +'The Section or Sections (if any)'--But, how, if they are not any, could +they be indicated by a mark however convenient? + + The Examiners will have regard to the style and method of the + candidate's answers, and will give credit for excellence _in these + respects_. + +Have you begun to detect the two main vices of Jargon? The first is that +it uses circumlocution rather than short straight speech. It says 'In the +case of John Jenkins deceased, the coffin' when it means 'John Jenkins's +coffin': and its yea is not yea, neither is its nay nay: but its answer +is in the affirmative or in the negative, as the foolish and superfluous +'case' may be. The second vice is that it habitually chooses vague woolly +abstract nouns rather than concrete ones. I shall have something to say +by-and-by about the concrete noun, and how you should ever be struggling +for it whether in prose or in verse. For the moment I content myself with +advising you, if you would write masculine English, never to forget the +old tag of your Latin Grammar-- + + Masculine will only be + Things that you can touch and see. + +But since these lectures are meant to be a course in First Aid to +writing, I will content myself with one or two extremely rough rules: yet +I shall be disappointed if you do not find them serviceable. + +The first is:--Whenever in your reading you come across one of these +words, _case, instance, character, nature, condition, persuasion, +degree_--whenever in writing your pen betrays you to one or another of +them--pull yourself up and take thought. If it be 'case' (I choose it as +Jargon's dearest child--'in Heaven yclept Metonomy') turn to the +dictionary, if you will, and seek out what meaning can be derived from +_casus_, its Latin ancestor: then try how, with a little trouble, you can +extricate yourself from that case. The odds are, you will feel like a +butterfly who has discarded his chrysalis. + +Here are some specimens to try your hand on-- + + (1) All those tears which inundated Lord Hugh Cecil's head were + dry in the case of Mr Harold Cox. + +Poor Mr Cox! left gasping in his aquarium! + + (2) [From a cigar-merchant] In any case, let us send you a case + on approval. + + (3) It is contended that Consols have fallen in consequence: + but such is by no means the case. + +'Such,' by the way, is another spoilt child of Jargon, especially in +Committee's Rules--'Co-opted members may be eligible as such; such +members to continue to serve for such time as'--and so on. + + (4) Even in the purely Celtic areas, only in two or three cases + do the Bishops bear Celtic names. + +For 'cases' read 'dioceses.' + + _Instance._ In most instances the players were below their form. + +But what were they playing at? Instances? + + _Character--Nature._ There can be no doubt that the accident was + caused through the dangerous nature of the spot, the hidden + character of the by-road, and the utter absence of any warning + or danger signal. + +Mark the foggy wording of it all! And yet the man hit something and broke +his neck! Contrast that explanation with the verdict of a coroner's jury +in the West of England on a drowned postman--'We find that deceased met +his death by an act of God, caused by sudden overflowing of the river +Walkhan and helped out by the scandalous neglect of the way-wardens.' + + The Aintree course is notoriously of a trying nature. + + On account of its light character, purity and age, Usher's whiskey + is a whiskey that will agree with you. + + _Order._ The mesalliance was of a pronounced order. + + _Condition._ He was conveyed to his place of residence in an + intoxicated condition. + +'He was carried home drunk.' + + _Quality and Section._ Mr ----, exhibiting no less than five works, + all of a superior quality, figures prominently in the oil section. + +This was written of an exhibition of pictures. + + _Degree._ A singular degree of rarity prevails in the earlier + editions of this romance. + +That is Jargon. In prose it runs simply 'The earlier editions of this +romance are rare'--or 'are very rare'--or even (if you believe what I take +leave to doubt), 'are singularly rare'; which should mean that they are +rarer than the editions of any other work in the world. + +Now what I ask you to consider about these quotations is that in each the +writer was using Jargon to shirk prose, palming off periphrases upon us +when with a little trouble he could have gone straight to the point. 'A +singular degree of rarity prevails,' 'the accident was caused through the +dangerous nature of the spot,' 'but such is by no means the case.' We may +not be capable of much; but we can all write better than that, if we take +a little trouble. In place of, 'the Aintree course is of a trying nature' +we can surely say 'Aintree is a trying course' or 'the Aintree course is +a trying one'--just that and nothing more. + +Next, having trained yourself to keep a look-out for these worst +offenders (and you will be surprised to find how quickly you get into the +way of it), proceed to push your suspicions out among the whole cloudy +host of abstract terms. 'How excellent a thing is sleep,' sighed Sancho +Panza; 'it wraps a man round like a cloak'--an excellent example, by the +way, of how to say a thing concretely: a Jargoneer would have said that +'among the beneficent qualities of sleep its capacity for withdrawing the +human consciousness from the contemplation of immediate circumstances may +perhaps be accounted not the least remarkable.' How vile a thing--shall +we say?--is the abstract noun! It wraps a man's thoughts round like +cotton wool. + +Here is a pretty little nest of specimens, found in "The Times" newspaper +by Messrs. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, authors of that capital little book +"The King's English":-- + + One of the most important reforms mentioned in the rescript is the + unification of the organisation of judicial institutions and the + guarantee for all the tribunals of the independence necessary for + securing to all classes of the community equality before the law. + +I do not dwell on the cacophony; but, to convey a straightforward piece +of news, might not the Editor of "The Times" as well employ a man to +write:-- + + One of the most important reforms is that of the Courts, which need + a uniform system and to be made independent. In this way only can + men be assured that all are equal before the law. + +I think he might. + +A day or two ago the musical critic of the "Standard" wrote this:-- + + MR LAMOND IN BEETHOVEN + + Mr Frederick Lamond, the Scottish pianist, as an interpreter of + Beethoven has few rivals. At his second recital of the composer's works + at Bechstein Hall on Saturday afternoon he again displayed a complete + sympathy and understanding of his material that extracted the very + essence of aesthetic and musical value from each selection he + undertook. The delightful intimacy of his playing and his unusual force + of individual expression are invaluable assets, which, allied to his + technical brilliancy, enable him to achieve an artistic triumph. The + two lengthy Variations in E flat major (Op. 35) and in D major, the + latter on the Turkish March from 'The Ruins of Athens,' when included + in the same programme, require a master hand to provide continuity of + interest. _To say that Mr Lamond successfully avoided moments that + might at times, in these works, have inclined to comparative + disinterestedness, would be but a moderate way of expressing the + remarkable fascination with which his versatile playing endowed them_, + but _at the same time_ two of the sonatas given included a similar form + of composition, and no matter how intellectually brilliant may be the + interpretation, the extravagant use of a certain mode is bound in time + to become somewhat ineffective. In the Three Sonatas, the E major (Op. + 109), the A major (Op. 2), No. 2, and the C minor (Op. 111), Mr Lamond + signalised his perfect insight into the composer's varying moods. + +Will you not agree with me that here is no writing, here is no prose, +here is not even English, but merely a flux of words to the pen? + +Here again is a string, a concatenation--say, rather, a tiara--of gems of +purest ray serene from the dark unfathomed caves of a Scottish +newspaper:-- + + The Chinese viewpoint, as indicated in this letter, may not be without + interest to your readers, because it evidently is suggestive of more + than an academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things + which, if allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate in disaster + resembling the Chang-Sha riots. It also ventures to illustrate + incidents having their inception in recent premature endeavours to + accelerate the development of Protestant missions in China; but we + would hope for the sake of the interests involved that what my + correspondent describes as 'the irresponsible ruffian element' may be + known by their various religious designations only within very + restricted areas. + +Well, the Chinese have given it up, poor fellows! and are asking the +Christians--as to-day's newspapers inform us--to pray for them. Do you +wonder? But that is, or was, the Chinese 'viewpoint,'--and what a +willow-pattern viewpoint! Observe its delicacy. It does not venture to +interest or be interesting; merely 'to be not without interest.' But it +does 'venture to illustrate incidents'--which, for a viewpoint, is brave +enough: and this illustration 'is suggestive of something more than an +academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things which, if +allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate.' What materialises? The +unpleasant aspect? or the things? Grammar says the 'things,' 'things +which if allowed to materialise.' But things are materialised already, +and as a condition of their being things. It must be the aspect, then, +that materialises. But, if so, it is also the aspect that culminates, and +an aspect, however unpleasant, can hardly do that, or at worst cannot +culminate in anything resembling the Chang-Sha riots.... I give it up. + +Let us turn to another trick of Jargon: the trick of Elegant Variation, +so rampant in the Sporting Press that there, without needing to attend +these lectures, the Undergraduate detects it for laughter:-- + + Hayward and C. B. Fry now faced the bowling; which apparently had + no terrors for the Surrey crack. The old Oxonian, however, + took some time in settling to work.... + +Yes, you all recognise it and laugh at it. But why do you practise it in +your Essays? An undergraduate brings me an essay on Byron. In an essay on +Byron, Byron is (or ought to be) mentioned many times. I expect, nay +exact, that Bryon shall be mentioned again and again. But my +undergraduate has a blushing sense that to call Byron Byron twice on one +page is indelicate. So Byron, after starting bravely as Byron, in the +second sentence turns into 'that great but unequal poet' and +thenceforward I have as much trouble with Byron as ever Telemachus with +Proteus to hold and pin him back to his proper self. Half-way down the +page he becomes 'the gloomy master of Newstead': overleaf he is +reincarnated into 'the meteoric darling of society': and so proceeds +through successive avatars--'this arch-rebel,' 'the author of Childe +Harold,' 'the apostle of scorn,' 'the ex-Harrovian, proud, but abnormally +sensitive of his club-foot,' 'the martyr of Missolonghi,' 'the +pageant-monger of a bleeding heart.' Now this again is Jargon. It does +not, as most Jargon does, come of laziness; but it comes of timidity, +which is worse. In literature as in life he makes himself felt who not +only calls a spade a spade but has the pluck to double spades and +re-double. + +For another rule--just as rough and ready, but just as useful: Train your +suspicions to bristle up whenever you come upon 'as regards,' 'with +regard to,' 'in respect of,' 'in connection with,' 'according as to +whether,' and the like. They are all dodges of Jargon, circumlocutions +for evading this or that simple statement: and I say that it is not +enough to avoid them nine times out of ten, or nine-and-ninety times out +of a hundred. You should never use them. That is positive enough, I hope? +Though I cannot admire his style, I admire the man who wrote to me, 'Re +Tennyson--your remarks anent his "In Memoriam" make me sick': for though +re is not a preposition of the first water, and 'anent' has enjoyed its +day, the finish crowned the work. But here are a few specimens far, very +far, worse:-- + + The special difficulty in Professor Minocelsi's case [our old friend + 'case' again] arose _in connexion with_ the view he holds _relative + to_ the historical value of the opening pages of Genesis. + +That is Jargon. In prose, even taking the miserable sentence as it stands +constructed, we should write 'the difficulty arose over the views he +holds about the historical value,' etc. + +From a popular novelist:-- + + I was entirely indifferent _as to_ the results of the game, caring + nothing at all _as to_ whether _I had losses or gains_-- + +Cut out the first 'as' in 'as to,' and the second 'as to' altogether, and +the sentence begins to be prose--'I was indifferent to the results of the +game, caring nothing whether I had losses or gains.' + +But why, like Dogberry, have 'had losses'? Why not simply 'lose.' Let us +try again. 'I was entirely indifferent to the results of the game, caring +nothing at all whether I won or lost.' + +Still the sentence remains absurd: for the second clause but repeats the +first without adding one jot. For if you care not at all whether you win +or lose, you must be entirely indifferent to the results of the game. So +why not say 'I was careless if I won or lost,' and have done with it? + + A man of simple and charming character, he was fitly _associated + with_ the distinction of the Order of Merit. + +I take this gem with some others from a collection made three years ago, +by the "Oxford Magazine"; and I hope you admire it as one beyond price. +'He was associated with the distinction of the Order of Merit' means 'he +was given the Order of Merit.' If the members of that Order make a +society then he was associated with them; but you cannot associate a man +with a distinction. The inventor of such fine writing would doubtless +have answered Canning's Needy Knife-grinder with:-- + + I associate thee with sixpence! I will see thee in another + association first! + +But let us close our _florilegium_ and attempt to illustrate Jargon by +the converse method of taking a famous piece of English (say Hamlet's +soliloquy) and remoulding a few lines of it in this fashion:-- + + To be, or the contrary? Whether the former or the latter be preferable + would seem to admit of some difference of opinion; the answer in the + present case being of an affirmative or of a negative character + according as to whether one elects on the one hand to mentally suffer + the disfavour of fortune, albeit in an extreme degree, or on the other + to boldly envisage adverse conditions in the prospect of eventually + bringing them to a conclusion. The condition of sleep is similar to, if + not indistinguishable from, that of death; and with the addition of + finality the former might be considered identical with the latter: so + that in this connection it might be argued with regard to sleep that, + could the addition be effected, a termination would be put to the + endurance of a multiplicity of inconveniences, not to mention a number + of downright evils incidental to our fallen humanity, and thus a + consummation achieved of a most gratifying nature. + +That is Jargon: and to write Jargon is to be perpetually shuffling around +in the fog and cotton-wool of abstract terms; to be for ever hearkening, +like Ibsen's Peer Gynt, to the voice of the Boyg exhorting you to +circumvent the difficulty, to beat the air because it is easier than to +flesh your sword in the thing. The first virtue, the touchstone of a +masculine style, is its use of the active verb and the concrete noun. +When you write in the active voice, 'They gave him a silver teapot,' you +write as a man. When you write 'He was made the recipient of a silver +teapot,' you write jargon. But at the beginning set even higher store on +the concrete noun. Somebody--I think it was FitzGerald--once posited the +question 'What would have become of Christianity if Jeremy Bentham had +had the writing of the Parables?' Without pursuing that dreadful enquiry +I ask you to note how carefully the Parables--those exquisite short +stories--speak only of 'things which you can touch and see'--'A sower +went forth to sow,' 'The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a +woman took,'--and not the Parables only, but the Sermon on the Mount and +almost every verse of the Gospel. The Gospel does not, like my young +essayist, fear to repeat a word, if the word be good. The Gospel says +'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's'--not 'Render unto +Caesar the things that appertain to that potentate.' The Gospel does not +say 'Consider the growth of the lilies,' or even 'Consider how the lilies +grow.' It says, 'Consider the lilies, how they grow.' + +Or take Shakespeare. I wager you that no writer of English so constantly +chooses the concrete word, in phrase after phrase forcing you to touch +and see. No writer so insistently teaches the general through the +particular. He does it even in "Venus and Adonis" (as Professor Wendell, +of Harvard, pointed out in a brilliant little monograph on Shakespeare, +published some ten years ago). Read any page of "Venus and Adonis" side +by side with any page of Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and you cannot but +mark the contrast: in Shakespeare the definite, particular, visualised +image, in Marlowe the beautiful generalisation, the abstract term, the +thing seen at a literary remove. Take the two openings, both of which +start out with the sunrise. Marlowe begins:-- + + Now had the Morn espied her lover's steeds: + Whereat she starts, puts on her purple weeds, + And, red for anger that he stay'd so long, + All headlong throws herself the clouds among. + +Shakespeare wastes no words on Aurora and her feelings, but gets to his +hero and to business without ado:-- + + Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face-- +(You have the sun visualised at once), + Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face + Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, + Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase; + Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn. + +When Shakespeare has to describe a horse, mark how definite he is:-- + + Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, + Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, + High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong; + Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide. + +Or again, in a casual simile, how definite:-- + + Upon this promise did he raise his chin, + Like a dive-dipper peering through a wave, + Which, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. + +Or take, if you will, Marlowe's description of Hero's first meeting +Leander:-- + + It lies not in our power to love or hate, + For will in us is over-ruled by fate..., + +and set against it Shakespeare's description of Venus' last meeting with +Adonis, as she came on him lying in his blood:-- + + Or as a snail whose tender horns being hit + Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, + And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit, + Long after fearing to creep forth again; + So, at his bloody view-- + +I do not deny Marlowe's lines (if you will study the whole passage) to be +lovely. You may even judge Shakespeare's to be crude by comparison. But +you cannot help noting that whereas Marlowe steadily deals in abstract, +nebulous terms, Shakespeare constantly uses concrete ones, which later on +he learned to pack into verse, such as:-- + + Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care. + +Is it unfair to instance Marlowe, who died young? Then let us take +Webster for the comparison; Webster, a man of genius or of something very +like it, and commonly praised by the critics for his mastery over +definite, detailed, and what I may call _solidified sensation_. Let us +take this admired passage from his "Duchess of Malfy":-- + + _Ferdinand._ How doth our sister Duchess bear herself + In her imprisonment? + + _Basola._ Nobly: I'll describe her. + She's sad as one long used to 't, and she seems + Rather to welcome the end of misery + Than shun it: a behaviour so noble + As gives a majesty to adversity +(Note the abstract terms.) + You may discern the shape of loveliness + More perfect in her tears than in her smiles; + She will muse for hours together; and her silence +(Here we first come on the concrete: and beautiful it is.) + Methinks expresseth more than if she spake. + +Now set against this the well-known passage from "Twelfth Night" where +the Duke asks and Viola answers a question about someone unknown to him +and invented by her--a mere phantasm, in short: yet note how much more +definite is the language:-- + +_Viola._ My father had a daughter lov'd a man; + As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, + _I_ should your lordship. + +_Duke._ And what's her history? + +_Viola._ A blank, my lord. She never told her love, + But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, + Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought, + And with a green and yellow melancholy + She sat like Patience on a monument + Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? + +Observe (apart from the dramatic skill of it) how, when Shakespeare _has_ +to use the abstract noun 'concealment,' on an instant it turns into a +visible worm 'feeding' on the visible rose; how, having to use a second +abstract word 'patience,' at once he solidifies it in tangible stone. + +Turning to prose, you may easily assure yourselves that men who have +written learnedly on the art agree in treating our maxim--to prefer the +concrete term to the abstract, the particular to the general, the +definite to the vague--as a canon of rhetoric. Whately has much to say on +it. The late Mr E. J. Payne, in one of his admirable prefaces to Burke +(prefaces too little known and valued, as too often happens to +scholarship hidden away in a schoolbook), illustrated the maxim by +setting a passage from Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America" +alongside a passage of like purport from Lord Brougham's "Inquiry into +the Policy of the European Powers." Here is the deadly parallel:-- + +BURKE. + + In large bodies the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the + extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern AEgypt and + Arabia and Curdistan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion + in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism + itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience + as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and + the whole of the force and vigour of his authority in his centre is + derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. + +BROUGHAM. + + In all the despotisms of the East, it has been observed that the + further any part of the empire is removed from the capital, the more do + its inhabitants enjoy some sort of rights and privileges: the more + inefficacious is the power of the monarch; and the more feeble and + easily decayed is the organisation of the government. + +You perceive that Brougham has transferred Burke's thought to his own +page: but will you not also perceive how pitiably, by dissolving Burke's +vivid particulars into smooth generalities, he has enervated its hold on +the mind? + +'This particularising style,' comments Mr Payne, 'is the essence of +Poetry; and in Prose it is impossible not to be struck with the energy it +produces. Brougham's passage is excellent in its way: but it pales before +the flashing lights of Burke's sentences. The best instances of this +energy of style, he adds, are to be found in the classical writers of the +seventeenth century. 'When South says, "An Aristotle was but the rubbish +of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise," he communicates +more effectually the notion of the difference between the intellect of +fallen and of unfallen humanity than in all the philosophy of his sermons +put together.' + +You may agree with me, or you may not, that South in this passage is +expounding trash; but you will agree with Mr Payne and me that he uttered +it vividly. + +Let me quote to you, as a final example of this vivid style of writing, a +passage from Dr John Donne far beyond and above anything that ever lay +within South's compass:-- + + The ashes of an Oak in the Chimney are no epitaph of that Oak, to tell + me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it + sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust + of great persons' graves is speechless, too; it says nothing, it + distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest + not, as of a prince whom thou couldest not look upon will trouble thine + eyes if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirle-wind hath blown the + dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust + of the Church into the Churchyard, who will undertake to sift those + dusts again and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble + flowre [flour], this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran? So is the + death of Iesabel (Iesabel was a Queen) expressed. They shall not say + _This is Iesabel_; not only not wonder that it is, nor pity that it + should be; but they shall not say, they shall not know, _This is + Iesabel._ + +Carlyle noted of Goethe, 'his emblematic intellect, his never-failing +tendency to transform into _shape_, into _life_, the feeling that may +dwell in him. Everything has form, has visual excellence: the poet's +imagination bodies forth the forms of things unseen, and his pen turns +them into shape.' + +Perpend this, Gentlemen, and maybe you will not hereafter set it down to +my reproach that I wasted an hour of a May morning in a denunciation of +Jargon, and in exhorting you upon a technical matter at first sight so +trivial as the choice between abstract and definite words. + +A lesson about writing your language may go deeper than language; for +language (as in a former lecture I tried to preach to you) is your +reason, your [Greek: logos]. So long as you prefer abstract words, which +express other men's summarised concepts of things, to concrete ones which +as near as can be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand +material for your thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at +second-hand. If your language be Jargon, your intellect, if not your +whole character, will almost certainly correspond. Where your mind should +go straight, it will dodge: the difficulties it should approach with a +fair front and grip with a firm hand it will be seeking to evade or +circumvent. For the Style is the Man, and where a man's treasure is there +his heart, and his brain, and his writing, will be also. + + + + +LECTURE VI. + +ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE + +Thursday, May 15 + + +To-day, Gentlemen, leaving the Vanity Fair of Jargon behind us, we have +to essay a difficult country; of which, though fairly confident of his +compass-bearings, your guide confesses, that wide tracts lie outside his +knowledge--outside of anything that can properly be called his knowledge. +I feel indeed somewhat as Gideon must have felt when he divided his host +on the slopes of Mount Gilead, warning back all who were afraid. In +asking the remnant to follow as attentively as they can, I promise only +that, if Heaven carry us safely across, we shall have 'broken the back' +of the desert. + +In my last lecture but one, then,--and before our small interlude with +Jargon--the argument had carried us, more or less neatly, up to this +point: that the capital difficulty of verse consisted in saying ordinary +unemotional things, of bridging the flat intervals between high moments. +This point, I believe, we made effectively enough. + +Now, for logical neatness, we should be able to oppose a corresponding +point, that the capital difficulty of prose consists in saying +extraordinary things, in running it up from its proper level to these +high emotional, musical, moments. And mightily convenient that would be, +Gentlemen, if I were here to help you to answer scientific questions +about prose and verse instead of helping you, in what small degree I can, +to write. But in Literature (which, let me remind you yet once again, is +an art) you cannot classify as in a science. + +Pray attend while I impress on you this most necessary warning. In +studying literature, and still more in studying to write it, distrust all +classification! All classifying of literature intrudes 'science' upon an +art, and is artificially 'scientific'; a trick of pedants, that they may +make it the easier to examine you on things with which no man should have +any earthly concern, as I am sure he will never have a heavenly one. +Beetles, minerals, gases, may be classified; and to have them classified +is not only convenient but a genuine advance of knowledge. But if you had +to _make_ a beetle, as men are making poetry, how much would +classification help? To classify in a science is necessary for the +purpose of that science: to classify when you come to art is at the best +an expedient, useful to some critics and to a multitude of examiners. It +serves the art-critic to talk about Tuscan, Flemish, Pre-Raphaelite, +schools of painting. The expressions are handy, and we know more or less +what they intend. Just so handily it may serve us to talk about +'Renaissance poets,' 'the Elizabethans,' 'the Augustan age.' But such +terms at best cannot be scientific, precise, determinate, as for examples +the terms 'inorganic,' 'mammal,' 'univalve,' 'Old Red Sandstone' are +scientific, precise, determinate. An animal is either a mammal or it is +not: you cannot say as assuredly that a man is or is not an Elizabethan. +We call Shakespeare an Elizabethan and the greatest of Elizabethans, +though as a fact he wrote his most famous plays when Elizabeth was dead. +Shirley was but seven years old when Elizabeth died; yet (if +'Elizabethan' have any meaning but a chronological one) Shirley belongs +to the Elizabethan firmament, albeit but as a pale star low on the +horizon: whereas Donne--a post-Elizabethan if ever there was one--had by +1603 reached his thirtieth year and written almost every line of those +wonderful lyrics which for a good sixty years gave the dominant note to +Jacobean and Caroline poetry. + +In treating of an art we classify for handiness, not for purposes of +exact knowledge; and man (_improbus homo_) with his wicked inventions is +for ever making fools of our formulae. Be consoled--and, if you are wise, +thank Heaven--that genius uses our best-laid logic to explode it. + +Be consoled, at any rate, on finding that after deciding the capital +difficulty of prose to lie in saying extraordinary things, in running up +to the high emotional moments, the prose-writers explode and blow our +admirable conclusions to ruins. + +You see, we gave them the chance to astonish us when we defined prose as +'a record of human thought, dispensing with metre and using rhythm +laxly.' When you give genius leave to use something laxly, at its will, +genius will pretty surely get the better of you. + +Observe, now, following the story of English prose, what has happened. +Its difficulty--the inherent, the native disability of prose--is to +handle the high emotional moments which more properly belong to verse. +Well, we strike into the line of our prose-writers, say as early as +Malory. We come on this; of the Passing of Arthur:-- + + 'My time hieth fast,' said the king. Therefore said Arthur unto Sir + Bedivere, 'Take thou Excalibur my good sword, and go with it to yonder + water side; and when thou comest there I charge thee throw my sword in + that water and come again and tell me what there thou seest.' 'My + lord,' said Bedivere, 'Your commandment shall be done; and lightly + bring you word again.' So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he + beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and the haft was all of + precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich + sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.' + And then Sir Bedivere hid Excaliber under a tree. And so, as soon as he + might, he came again unto the king, and said he had been at the water + and had thrown the sword into the water, 'What saw thou there?' said + the king, 'Sir,' he said, 'I saw nothing but waves and winds.' + +Now I might say a dozen things of this and of the whole passage that +follows, down to Arthur's last words. Specially might I speak to you of +the music of its monosyllables--'"What sawest you there?" said the king... +"Do as well as thou mayest; for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I +will into the Vale of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if +thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul."' But, before making +comment at all, I shall quote you another passage; this from Lord +Berners' translation of Froissart, of the death of Robert Bruce:-- + + It fortuned that King Robert of Scotland was right sore aged and + feeble: for he was greatly charged with the great sickness, so that + there was no way for him but death. And when he felt that his end drew + near, he sent for such barons and lords of his realm as he trusted + best, and shewed them how there was no remedy with him, but he must + needs leave this transitory life.... Then he called to him the gentle + knight, Sir William Douglas, and said before all the lords, 'Sir + William, my dear friend, ye know well that I have had much ado in my + days to uphold and sustain the right of this realm; and when I had most + ado I made a solemn vow, the which as yet I have not accomplished, + whereof I am right sorry; the which was, if I might achieve and make an + end of all my wars, so that I might once have brought this realm in + rest and peace, then I promised in my mind to have gone and warred on + Christ's enemies, adversaries to our holy Christian faith. To this + purpose mine heart hath ever intended, but our Lord would not consent + thereto... And sith it is so that my body can not go, nor achieve that my + heart desireth, I will send the heart instead of the body, to + accomplish mine avow... I will, that as soon as I am trespassed out of + this world, that ye take my heart out of my body, and embalm it, and + take of my treasure as ye shall think sufficient for that enterprise, + both for yourself and such company as ye will take with you, and + present my heart to the Holy Sepulchre, whereas our Lord lay, seeing my + body can not come there. And take with you such company and purveyance + as shall be appertaining to your estate. And, wheresoever ye come, let + it be known how ye carry with you the heart of King Robert of Scotland, + at his instance and desire to be presented to the Holy Sepulchre.' Then + all the lords, that heard these words, wept for pity. + +There, in the fifteenth century and early in the sixteenth, you have +Malory and Berners writing beautiful English prose; prose the emotion of +which (I dare to say) you must recognise if you have ears to hear. So you +see that already our English prose not only achieves the 'high moment,' +but seems to obey it rather and be lifted by it, until we ask ourselves, +'Who could help writing nobly, having to tell how King Arthur died or how +the Bruce?' Yes, but I bid you observe that Malory and Berners are both +relating what, however noble, is quite simple, quite straightforward. It +is when prose attempts to _philosophise_, to _express thoughts_ as well +as to relate simple sayings and doings--it is then that the trouble +begins. When Malory has to philosophise death, to _think_ about it, this +is as far as he attains:-- + + 'Ah, Sir Lancelot,' said he, 'thou wert head of all Christian Knights! + And now I dare say,' said Sir Ector, 'that, Sir Lancelot, there thou + liest, thou were never matched of none earthly hands; and thou were the + curtiest knight that ever bare shield: and thou were the truest friend + to thy lover that ever strood horse, and thou were the truest lover of + a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou were the kindest man that + ever strooke with sword; and thou were the goodliest person that ever + came among press of knights; and thou were the meekest man and gentlest + that ever sat in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest Knight + to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.' + +Beautiful again, I grant! But note you that, eloquent as he can be on the +virtues of his dead friend, when Sir Ector comes to the thought of death +itself all he can accomplish is, 'And now I dare say that, Sir Lancelot, +there thou liest.' + +Let us make a leap in time and contrast this with Tyndale and the +translators of our Bible, how they are able to make St Paul speak of +death:-- + + So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this + mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass + the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O + death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? + +There you have something clean beyond what Malory or Berners could +compass: there you have a different kind of high moment--a high moment of +philosophising: there you have emotion impregnated with thought. It was +necessary that our English verse even after Chaucer, our English prose +after Malory and Berners, should overcome this most difficult gap (which +stands for a real intellectual difference) if it aspired to be what +to-day it is--a language of the first class, comparable with Greek and +certainly no whit inferior to Latin or French. + + * * * * * + +Let us leave prose for a moment, and see how Verse threw its bridge over +the gap. If you would hear the note of Chaucer at its deepest, you will +find it in the famous exquisite lines of the Prioress' Prologue:-- + + O moder mayde! O mayde moder fre! + O bush unbrent, brenning in Moyses' sight! + +in the complaint of Troilus, in the rapture of Griselda restored to her +children:-- + + O tendre, O dere, O yonge children myne, + Your woful moder wende stedfastly + That cruel houndes or some foul vermyne + Hadde eten you; but God of his mercy + And your benigne fader tendrely + Hath doon you kept... + +You will find a note quite as sincere in many a carol, many a ballad, of +that time:-- + + He came al so still + There his mother was, + As dew in April + That falleth on the grass. + + He came al so still + To his mother's bour, + As dew in April + That falleth on the flour. + + He came al so still + There his mother lay, + As dew in April + That falleth on the spray. + + Mother and maiden + Was never none but she; + Well may such a lady + Goddes mother be. + +You get the most emotional note of the Ballad in such a stanza +as this, from "The Nut-Brown Maid":-- + + Though it be sung of old and young + That I should be to blame, + Their's be the charge that speak so large + In hurting of my name; + For I will prove that faithful love + It is devoid of shame; + In your distress and heaviness + To part with you the same: + And sure all tho that do not so + True lovers are they none: + For, in my mind, of all mankind + I love but you alone. + +All these notes, again, you will admit to be exquisite: but they gush +straight from the unsophisticated heart: they are nowise deep save in +innocent emotion: they are not _thoughtful_. So when Barbour breaks out +in praise of Freedom, he cries + + A! Fredome is a noble thing! + +And that is really as far as he gets. He goes on + + Fredome mayse man to hafe liking. + +(Freedom makes man to choose what he likes; that is, makes him free) + + Fredome all solace to man giffis, + He livis at ese that frely livis! + A noble hart may haif nane ese, + Na ellys nocht that may him plese, + Gif fredome fail'th: for fre liking + Is yharnit ouer all othir thing... + +--and so on for many lines; all saying the same thing, that man yearns +for Freedom and is glad when he gets it, because then he is free; all +hammering out the same observed fact, but all knocking vainly on the door +of thought, which never opens to explain what Freedom _is_. + +Now let us take a leap as we did with prose, and 'taking off' from the +Nut-Brown Maid's artless confession, + + in my mind, of all mankind + I love but you alone, + +let us alight on a sonnet of Shakespeare's-- + + Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts + Which I by lacking have supposed dead: + And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, + And all those friends which I thought buried. + How many a holy and obsequious tear + Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye + As interest of the dead!--which now appear + But things removed, that hidden in thee lie. + Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, + Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, + Who all their parts of me to thee did give; + That due of many now is mine alone: + Their images I loved I view in thee, + And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. + +What a new way of talking about love! Not a happier way--there is less of +heart's-ease in these doubts, delicacies, subtleties--but how much more +thoughtful! How has our Nut-Brown Maid eaten of the tree of knowledge! + +Well, there happened a Shakespeare, to do this for English Verse: and +Shakespeare was a miracle which I cheerfully leave others to rationalise +for you, having, for my own part and so far as I have fared in life, +found more profit in a capacity for simple wonder. + +But I can tell you how the path was made straight to that miracle. The +shock of the New Learning upon Europe awoke men and unsealed men's +eyes--unsealed the eyes of Englishmen in particular--to discover a +literature, and the finest in the world, which _habitually philosophised +life_: a literature which, whether in a chorus of Sophocles or a talk +reported by Plato, or in a ribald page of Aristophanes or in a knotty +chapter of Thucydides, was in one guise or another for ever asking _Why?_ +'What is man doing here, and why is he doing it?' 'What is his purpose? +his destiny?' 'How stands he towards those unseen powers--call them the +gods, or whatever you will--that guide and thwart, provoke, madden, +control him so mysteriously?' 'What are these things we call good and +evil, life, love, death?' + +These are questions which, once raised, haunt Man until he finds an +answer--some sort of answer to satisfy him. Englishmen, hitherto content +with the Church's answers but now aware of this great literature which +answered so differently--and having other reasons to suspect what the +Church said and did--grew aware that their literature had been as a child +at play. It had never philosophised good and evil, life, love or death: +it had no literary forms for doing this; it had not even the vocabulary. +So our ancestors saw that to catch up their lee-way--to make their report +worthy of this wonderful, alluring discovery--new literary forms had to +be invented--new, that is, in English: the sonnet, the drama, the verse +in which the actors were to declaim, the essay, the invented tale. Then, +for the vocabulary, obviously our fathers had either to go to Greek, +which had invented the A.B.C. of philosophising; or to seek in the other +languages which were already ahead of English in adapting that alphabet; +or to give our English Words new contents, new connotations, new +meanings; or lastly, to do all three together. + +Well, it was done; and in verse very fortunately done; thanks of course +to many men, but thanks to two especially--to Sir Thomas Wyat, who led +our poets to Italy, to study and adopt the forms in which Italy had cast +its classical heritage; and to Marlowe, who impressed blank verse upon +the drama. Of Marlowe I shall say nothing; for with what he achieved you +are familiar enough. Of Wyat I may speak at length to you, one of these +days; but here, to prepare you for what I hope to prove--that Wyat is one +of the heroes of our literature--I will give you three brief reasons why +we should honour his memory:-- + +(1) He led the way. On the value of that service I shall content myself +with quoting a passage from Newman:-- + + When a language has been cultivated in any particular department of + thought, and so far as it has been generally perfected, an existing + want has been supplied, and there is no need for further workmen. In + its earliest times, while it is yet unformed, to write in it at all is + almost a work of genius. It is like crossing a country before roads are + made communicating between place and place. The authors of that age + deserve to be Classics both because of what they do and because they + can do it. It requires the courage and force of great talent to compose + in the language at all; and the composition, when effected, makes a + permanent impression on it. + +This Wyat did. He was a pioneer and opened up a new country to +Englishmen. But he did more. + +(2) Secondly, he had the instinct to perceive that the lyric, if it would +philosophise life, love, and the rest, must boldly introduce the personal +note: since in fact when man asks questions about his fortune or destiny +he asks them most effectively in the first person. 'What am _I_ doing? +Why are _we_ mortal? Why do _I_ love _thee_?' + +This again Wyat did: and again he did more. + +For (3) thirdly--and because of this I am surest of his genius--again and +again, using new thoughts in unfamiliar forms, he wrought out the result +in language so direct, economical, natural, easy, that I know to this day +no one who can better Wyat's best in combining straight speech with +melodious cadence. Take the lines _Is it possible?_-- + + Is it possible? + For to turn so oft; + To bring that lowest that was most aloft: + And to fall highest, yet to light soft? + Is it possible? + + All is possible! + Whoso list believe; + Trust therefore first, and after preve; + As men wed ladies by licence and leave, + All is possible! + +or again-- + + Forget not! O forget not this!-- + How long ago hath been, and is, + The mind that never meant amiss: + Forget not yet! + +or again (can personal note go straighter?)-- + + And wilt thou leave me thus? + Say nay, say nay, for shame! + To save thee from the blame + --Of all my grief and grame. + And wilt thou leave me thus? + Say nay! say nay! + +(Say 'nay,' say 'nay'; and don't say, 'the answer is in the negative.') + +No: I have yet to mention the straightest, most natural of them all, and +will read it to you in full-- + + What should I say? + Since Faith is dead + And Truth away + From you is fled? + Should I be led + With doubleness? + Nay! nay! mistress. + + I promised you + And you promised me + To be as true + As I would be: + But since I see + Your double heart, + Farewell my part! + + Thought for to take + Is not my mind; + But to forsake + One so unkind; + And as I find, + So will I trust, + Farewell, unjust! + + Can ye say nay + But that you said + That I alway + Should be obeyed? + And--thus betrayed + Or that I wist! + Farewell, unkist! + +I observe it noted on p. 169 of Volume iii of "The Cambridge History of +English Literature" that Wyat 'was a pioneer and perfection was not to be +expected of him. He has been described as a man stumbling over obstacles, +continually falling but always pressing forward.' I know not to what +wiseacre we owe that pronouncement: but what do you think of it, after +the lyric I have just quoted? I observe, further, on p. 23 of the same +volume of the same work, that the Rev. T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of +the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland, informs us of +Wilson's "Arte of Rhetorique" that + + there is little or no originality in the volume, save, perhaps, the + author's condemnation of the use of French and Italian phrases and + idioms, which he complains are 'counterfeiting the kinges Englishe.' + The warnings of Wilson will not seem untimely if to be remembered that + the earlier English poets of the period--Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, + and the Earl of Surrey--drew their inspiration from Petrarch and + Ariosto, that their earlier attempts at poetry were translations from + Italian sonnets, and that their maturer efforts were imitations of the + sweet and stately measures and style of Italian poesie. The polish + which men like Wyatt and Surrey were praised for giving to our 'rude + and homely manner of vulgar poesie' might have led to some + degeneration. + +Might it, indeed? As another Dominie would have said, 'Pro-digious.' + + (Thought for to take + Is not my mind; + But to forsake + +This Principal of the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of +Scotland-- + + Farewell unkiss'd!) + +But I have lingered too long with this favourite poet of mine and left +myself room only to hand you the thread by following which you will come +to the melodious philosophising of Shakespeare's Sonnets-- + + Let me not to the marriage of true Minds + Admit impediment. Love is not love + Which alters where it alteration finds + Or bends with the remover to remove. + +Note the Latin words 'impediment,' 'alteration,' 'remove.' We are using +the language of philosophy here or, rather, the 'universal language,' +which had taken over the legacy of Greek. You may trace the use of it +growing as, for example, you trace it through the Elizabethan song-books: +and then (as I said) comes Shakespeare, and with Shakespeare the miracle. + +The education of Prose was more difficult, and went through more violent +convulsions. I suppose that the most of us--if, after reading a quantity +of Elizabethan prose, we had the courage to tell plain truth, undaunted +by the name of a great epoch--would confess to finding the mass of it +clotted in sense as well as unmusical in sound, a disappointment almost +intolerable after the simple melodious clarity of Malory and Berners. I, +at any rate, must own that the most of Elizabethan prose pleases me +little; and I speak not of Elizabethan prose at its worst, of such stuff +as disgraced the already disgraceful Martin Marprelate Controversy, but +of such as a really ingenious and ingenuous man like Thomas Nashe could +write at his average. For a sample:-- + + English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences such as + 'Blood is a beggar' and so forth; and if you entreat him fair on a + frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls + of tragical speeches.... Sufficeth them [that is, modern followers of + Seneca] to bodge up a blank verse with if's and and's, and others, + while for recreation after their candle-stuff, having starched their + beards most curiously, to make a peripatetical path into the inner + parts of the city, and spend two or three hours in turning over the + French _Doudie_, where they attract more infection in one minute than + they can do eloquence all the days of their life by conversing with any + authors of like argument. + +This may be worth studying historically, to understand the difficulties +our prose had to encounter and overcome. But no one would seriously +propose it as a model for those who would write well, which is our +present business. I have called it 'clotted.' It is, to use a word of the +time, 'farced' with conceits; it needs straining. + +Its one merit consists in this, that it is struggling, fumbling, to say +something: that is, to _make_ something. It is not, like modern Jargon, +trying to dodge something. English prose, in short, just here is passing +through a period of puberty, of green sickness: and, looking at it +historically, we may own that its throes are commensurate with the +stature of the grown man to be. + +These throes tear it every way. On the one hand we have Ascham, +pendantically enough, apologising that he writes in the English tongue +(yet with a sure instinct he does it):-- + + If any man would blame me, either for taking such a matter in hand, or + else for writing it in the English tongue, this answer I may make him, + that what the best of the realm think it honest for them to use, I, one + of the meanest sort, ought not to suppose it vile for me to write... And + as for the Latin or Greek tongue, everything is so excellently done in + them that none can do better. In the English tongue, contrary, + everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and the handling, + that no man can do worse. + +On the other hand you have Euphuism with its antithetical tricks and +poises, taking all prose by storm for a time: Euphuism, to be revived two +hundred years later, and find a new avatar in the Johnsonian balance; +Euphuism, dead now, yet alive enough in its day. + +For all these writers were alive: and I tell you it is an inspiriting +thing to be alive and trying to write English. All these authors were +alive and trying to _do_ something. Unconsciously for the most part they +were striving to philosophise the vocabulary of English prose and find a +rhythm for its periods. + +And then, as already had happened to our Verse, to our Prose too there +befel a miracle. + +You will not ask me 'What miracle?' I mean, of course, the Authorised +Version of the Bible. + +I grant you, to be sure, that the path to the Authorised Version was made +straight by previous translators, notably by William Tyndale. I grant you +that Tyndale was a man of genius, and Wyclif before him a man of genius. +I grant you that the forty-seven men who produced the Authorised Version +worked in the main upon Tyndale's version, taking that for their basis. +Nay, if you choose to say that Tyndale was a miracle in himself, I +cheerfully grant you that as well. But, in a lecture one must not +multiply miracles _praeter necessitatem_; and when Tyndale has been +granted you have yet to face the miracle that forty-seven men--not one of +them known, outside of this performance, for any superlative talent--sat +in committee and almost consistently, over a vast extent of +work--improved upon what Genius had done. I give you the word of an old +committee-man that this is not the way of committees--that only by +miracle is it the way of any committee. Doubtless the forty-seven were +all good men and godly: but doubtless also good and godly were the Dean +and Chapter who dealt with Alfred Steven's tomb of the Duke of Wellington +in St Paul's Cathedral; and you know what _they_ did. Individual genius +such as Tyndale's or even Shakespeare's, though we cannot explain it, we +may admit as occurring somehow, and not incredibly, in the course of +nature. But that a large committee of forty-seven should have gone +steadily through the great mass of Holy Writ, seldom interfering with +genius, yet, when interfering, seldom missing to improve: that a +committee of forty-seven should have captured (or even, let us say, +should have retained and improved) a rhythm so personal, so constant, +that our Bible has the voice of one author speaking through its many +mouths: that, Gentlemen, is a wonder before which I can only stand humble +and aghast. + +Does it or does it not strike you as queer that the people who set you +'courses of study' in English Literature never include the Authorised +Version, which not only intrinsically but historically is out and away +the greatest book of English Prose. Perhaps they can pay you the silent +compliment of supposing that you are perfectly acquainted with it?... I +wonder. It seems as if they thought the Martin Marprelate Controversy, +for example, more important somehow. + + 'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this + mortal shall have put on immortality...' + + 'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: + if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it + would utterly be contemned.' + + 'The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of + wrought gold.' + + '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.' + +When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, those rhythms for its +dearest beliefs, a literature is surely established. Just there I find +the effective miracle, making the blind to see, the lame to leap. 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, thinking and speaking. 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 or Bunyan--have their lips touched and +speak to the homelier tune. Proud men, scholars,--Milton, Sir Thomas +Browne--practice 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. + +What madman, then, will say 'Thus or thus far shalt thou go' to a prose +thus invented and thus with its free rhythms, after three hundred years, +working on the imagination of Englishmen? Or who shall determine its +range, whether of thought or of music? You have received it by +inheritance, Gentlemen: it is yours, freely yours--to direct your words +through life as well as your hearts. + + + + +LECTURE VII + +SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED + +Thursday, May 29 + + +Let me begin to-day, Gentlemen, with a footnote to my last lecture. It +ended, as you may remember, upon an earnest appeal to you, if you would +write good English, to study the Authorised Version of the Scriptures; to +learn from it, moreover, how by mastering _rhythm_, our Prose overcame +the capital difficulty of Prose and attuned itself to rival its twin +instrument, Verse; compassing almost equally with Verse man's thought +however sublime, his emotion however profound. + +Now in the course of my remarks I happened--maybe a little +incautiously--to call the Authorised Version a 'miracle'; using that +word in a colloquial sense, in which no doubt you accepted it; meaning +no more than that the thing passed my understanding. I have allowed that +the famous forty-seven owed an immense deal to earlier translators--to +the Bishops, to Tyndale, to the Wyclif Version, as themselves allowed it +eagerly in their preface:-- + + Truly (good Christian reader) wee never thought from the beginning that + we should needs to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one + a good one ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones + one principall good one, not justly to be excepted against: that hath + bene our indeavour, that our marke. + +(See [Footnote 1] at the end of this lecture.) + +Nevertheless the Authorised Version astounds me, as I believe it will +astound you when you compare it with earlier translations. Aristotle (it +has been said) invented Chance to cover the astonishing fact that there +were certain phenomena for which he found himself wholly unable to +account. Just so, if one may compare very small things with very great, I +spoke of the Authorised Version as a 'miracle.' It was, it remains, +marvellous to me. + +Should these deciduous discourses ever come to be pressed within the +leaves of a book, I believe their general meaning will be as clear to +readers as I hope it is to you who give me so much pleasure by pursuing +them--almost (shall I say?) like Wordsworth's Kitten with those other +falling leaves:-- + + That almost I could repine + That your transports are not mine. + +But meanwhile certain writers in the newspapers are assuming that by this +word 'miracle' I meant to suggest to you a something like plenary +inspiration at once supernatural and so authoritative that it were +sacrilege now to alter their text by one jot or tittle. + +Believe me, I intended nothing of the sort: for that, in my plain +opinion, would be to make a fetish of the book. One of these days I hope +to discuss with you what inspiration is: with what accuracy--with what +meaning, if any--we can say of a poet that he is inspired; questions +which have puzzled many wise men from Plato downwards. + +But certainly I never dreamt of claiming plenary inspiration for the +forty-seven. Nay, if you will have it, they now and again wrote stark +nonsense. Remember that I used this very same word 'miracle' of +Shakespeare, meaning again that the total Shakespeare quite outpasses my +comprehension; yet Shakespeare, too, on occasion talks stark nonsense, or +at any rate stark bombast. He never blotted a line--'I would he had +blotted a thousand' says Ben Jonson: and Ben Jonson was right. +Shakespeare could have blotted out two or three thousand lines: he was +great enough to afford it. Somewhere Matthew Arnold supposes us as +challenging Shakespeare over this and that weak or bombastic passage, and +Shakespeare answering with his tolerant smile, that no doubt we were +right, but after all, 'Did it greatly matter?' + +So we offer no real derogation to the forty-seven in asserting that here +and there they wrote nonsense. They could afford it. But we do stultify +criticism if, adoring the grand total of wisdom and beauty, we prostrate +ourselves indiscriminately before what is good and what is bad, what is +sublime sense and what is nonsense, and forbid any reviser to put forth a +hand to the ark. + +The most of us Christians go to church on Christmas Day, and there we +listen to this from Isaiah, chapter ix, verses 1-7:-- + + Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, + when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the + land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her + by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. + + The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they + that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the + light shined. + + Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they + joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men + rejoice when they divide the spoil. + + For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his + shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. + + For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and + garments rolled in blood: but this shall be with burning and fuel + of fire. + + For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. + +The forty-seven keep their majestic rhythm. But have you ever, sitting in +church on a Christmas morning, asked yourself what it all means, or if it +mean anything more than a sing-song according somehow with the holly and +ivy around the pillars? _'Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not +increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in +harvest,'_ But why--if the joy be not increased? _'For every battle of +the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood: but +this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.'_ Granted the rhythmical +antithesis, where is the real antithesis, the difference, the +improvement? If a battle there must be, how is burning better than +garments rolled in blood? And, in fine, what is it all about? Now let us +turn to the Revised Version:-- + + But there shall be no gloom to her that was in anguish. In the + former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the + land of Naphtali, but in the latter time hath he made it glorious, + by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations. + + The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they + that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the + light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast + increased their joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in + harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. + + For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the + rod of his oppressor, thou hast broken as in the day of Midian. + + For all the armour of the armed man in the tumult, and the + garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, for fuel of + fire. + + For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the + government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be + called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, + Prince of Peace. + +I say (knowing no Hebrew, merely assuming our Revisers to be at least no +worse scholars than the forty-seven) that here, with the old cadences +kept so far as possible, we are given sense in place of nonsense: and I +ask you to come to the Revised Version with a fair mind. I myself came to +it with some prejudice; in complete ignorance of Hebrew, and with no more +than the usual amount of Hellenistic Greek. I grant at once that the +Revised New Testament was a literary fiasco; largely due (if gossip may +be trusted) to trouble with the Greek Aorist, and an unwise decision--in +my opinion the most gratuitously unwise a translator can take--to use one +and the same English word, always and in every connotation, as +representing one and the same Greek word: for in any two languages few +words are precisely equivalent. A fiasco at any rate the Revised New +Testament was, deserving in a dozen ways and in a thousand passages the +scorn which Professor Saintsbury has recently heaped on it. But I protest +against the injustice of treating the two Revisions--of the New Testament +and of the Old--as a single work, and saddling the whole with the sins of +a part. For two years I spent half-an-hour daily in reading the +Authorised and Revised Versions side by side, marking as I went, and in +this way worked through the whole--Old Testament, Apocrypha, New +Testament. I came to it (as I have said) with some prejudice; but I +closed the books on a conviction, which my notes sustain for me, that the +Revisers of the Old Testament performed their task delicately, +scrupulously, on the whole with great good judgment; that the critic does +a wrong who brings them under his indiscriminate censure; that on the +whole they have clarified the sense of the Authorised Version while +respecting its consecrated rhythms; and that--to name an example, that +you may test my words and judge for yourselves--the solemn splendour of +that most wonderful poem, the story of Job, [Greek: dialampei], 'shines +through' the new translation as it never shone through the old. + + * * * * * + +And now Gentlemen (as George Herbert said on a famous occasion), let us +tune our instruments. + +Before discussing with you another and highly important question of style +in writing, I will ask you to look back for a few moments on the road we +have travelled. + +We have agreed that our writing should be _appropriate_: that it should +fit the occasion; that it should rise and fall with the subject, be grave +where that is serious, where it is light not afraid of what Stevenson in +"The Wrong Box" calls 'a little judicious levity.' If your writing +observe these precepts, it will be well-mannered writing. + +To be sure, much in addition will depend on yourself--on what you are or +have made yourself, since in writing the style can never be separated +from the man. But neither can it in the practice of virtue: yet, though +men differ in character, I do not observe that moralists forbear from +laying down general rules of excellence. Now if you will recall our +further conclusion, that writing to be good must be persuasive (since +persuasion is the only true intellectual process), and will test this by +a passage of Newman's I am presently to quote to you, from his famous +'definition of a gentleman,' I think you will guess pretty accurately the +general law of excellence I would have you, as Cambridge men, tribally +and particularly obey. + +Newman says of a gentleman that among other things: + + He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair + advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, + or insinuates evil which he dare not say out.... If he engages in + controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from + the blundering discourtesy of better perhaps, but less educated minds; + who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who + mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, + misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than + they found it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion: but he is too + clear-sighted to be unjust. He is simple as he is forcible, and as + brief as he is decisive. + +Enough for the moment on this subject: but commit these words to your +hearts, and you will not only triumph in newspaper controversy. You will +do better: you will avoid it. + +To proceed.--We found further that our writing should be _accurate_: +because language expresses thought--is, indeed, the only expression of +thought--and if we lack the skill to speak precisely, our thought will +remain confused, ill-defined. The editor of a mining paper in Denver, +U.S.A., boldly the other day laid down this law, that niceties of +language were mere 'frills': all a man needed was to 'get there,' that +is, to say what he wished in his own way. But just here, we found, lies +the mischief. You will not get there by hammering away on your own +untutored impulse. You must first be your own reader, chiselling out the +thought definitely for yourself: and, after that, must carve out the +intaglio yet more sharply and neatly, if you would impress its image +accurately upon the wax of other men's minds. We found that even for Men +of Science this neat clean carving of words was a very necessary +accomplishment. As Sir James Barrie once observed, 'The Man of Science +appears to be the only man who has something to say, just now--and the +only man who does not know how to say it.' But the trouble by no means +ends with Science. Our poets--those gifted strangely prehensile men who, +as I said in my first lecture, seem to be born with filaments by which +they apprehend, and along which they conduct, the half-secrets of life to +us ordinary mortals--our poets would appear to be scamping artistic +labour, neglecting to reduce the vague impressions to the clearly cut +image which is, after all, what helps. It may be a triumph that they have +taught modern French poetry to be suggestive. I think it would be more +profitable could they learn from France--that nation of fine workmen--to +be definite. + +But about 'getting there'--I ask you to remember Wolfe, with the seal of +his fate on him, stepping into his bateau on the dark St. Lawrence River +and quoting as they tided him over:-- + + The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, + And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, + Await alike th' inevitable hour; + The paths of glory lead but to the grave. + +'I had rather have written those lines,' said Wolfe, 'than conquer +Canada.' That is how our forefathers valued noble writing. The Denver +editor holds that you may write as you please so long as you get there. +Well, Wolfe got there: and so, in Wolfe's opinion, did Gray: but perhaps +to Wolfe and Gray, and to the Denver editor, 'there' happened to mean two +different places. Wolfe got to the Heights of Abraham. + +Further, it was against this loose adaptation of words to thought and to +things that we protested in our interpolated lecture on Jargon, which is +not so much bad writing as the avoidance of writing. The man who employs +Jargon does not get 'there' at all, even in a raw rough pioneering +fashion: he just walks around 'there' in the ambient tracks of others. +Let me fly as high as I can and quote you two recent achievements by +Cabinet Ministers, as reported in the Press:--(1) 'Mr McKenna's reasons +for releasing from Holloway Prison Miss Lenton while on remand charged +_in connexion with_ (sweet phrase!) the firing of the tea pavilion in Kew +Gardens are given in a letter which he has _caused to be forwarded_ to a +correspondent who inquired _as to_ the circumstances of the release. The +letter says "I am desired by the Home Secretary to say that Lilian Lenton +was reported by the medical officer at Holloway Prison to be in a state +of collapse and in imminent danger of death _consequent upon_ her refusal +to take food. Three courses were open--(1) To leave her to die; (2) To +attempt to feed her forcibly, which the medical officer advised would +probably entail death in her existing condition: (3) To release her. The +Home Secretary adopted the last course."' + +'Would probably entail death in her existing condition'! Will anyone tell +me how Mr McKenna or anyone else could kill, or (as he prefers to put it) +entail death upon, Miss Lenton in a non-existing condition? + +(2) Next take the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As we know, the Chancellor +of the Exchequer can use incisive speech when he chooses. On May 8th as +reported in next day's "Morning Post," Mr Lloyd George, answering a +question, delivered himself of this to an attentive Senate:-- + + With regard to Mr Noel Buxton's questions, I cannot answer for an + enquiry which is _of a private and confidential character_, for + although I am associated with it I am not associated with it as a + Minister of the Crown.... Those enquiries are of a very careful + systematic and scientific character, and are being conducted by the + ablest investigators in this country, some of whom have reputations + of international character. I am glad to think that the + investigation is of a most impartial character. + +It must be a comforting thought, that an inquiry of a private and +confidential character is also of a very systematic and scientific +character, and besides being of a most impartial character, is conducted +by men of international character--whatever that may happen to mean. What +_is_ an international character, and what would you give for one? + +We found that this way of talking, while pretending to be something +pontifical, is really not prose at all, nor reputable speech at all, but +Jargon; nor is the offence to be excused by pleading, as I have heard it +pleaded, that Mr Lloyd George was not using his own phraseology but +quoting from a paper supplied him by some permanent official of the +Treasury: since we select our civil servants among men of decent +education and their salaries warrant our stipulating that they shall be +able, at least, to speak and write their mother tongue. + +We laid down certain rules to help us in the way of straight +Prose:-- + +(1) _Always always prefer the concrete word to the abstract._ + +(2) _Almost always prefer the direct word to the circumlocution._ + +(3) _Generally, use transitive verbs, that strike their object; and use +them in the active voice, eschewing the stationary passive, with its +little auxiliary its's and was's, and its participles getting into the +light of your adjectives, which should be few. For, as a rough law, by +his use of the straight verb and by his economy of adjectives you can +tell a man's style, if it be masculine or neuter, writing or +'composition.'_ + +The authors of that capital handbook "The King's English," which I have +already recommended to you, add two rules:-- + +(4) _Prefer the short word to the long._ +(5) _Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance._ + +But these two precepts you would have to modify by so long a string of +exceptions that I do not commend them to you. In fact I think them false +in theory and likely to be fatal in practice. For, as my last lecture +tried to show, you no sooner begin to philosophise things instead of +merely telling a tale of them than you must go to the Mediterranean +languages: because in these man first learnt to discuss his 'why' and +'how,' and these languages yet guard the vocabulary. + +Lastly, we saw how, by experimenting with rhythm, our prose 'broke its +birth's invidious bar' and learnt to scale the forbidden heights. + +Now by attending to the few plain rules given above you may train +yourselves to write sound, straightforward, work-a-day English. But if +you would write melodious English, I fear the gods will require of you +what they ought to have given you at birth--something of an ear. Yet the +most of us have ears, of sorts; and I believe that, though we can only +acquire it by assiduous practice, the most of us can wonderfully improve +our talent of the ear. + +If you will possess yourselves of a copy of Quintilian or borrow one from +any library (Bohn's translation will do) and turn to his 9th book, you +will find a hundred ways indicated, illustrated, classified, in which a +writer or speaker can vary his Style, modulate it, lift or depress it, +regulate its balance. + +All these rules, separately worth studying, if taken together may easily +bewilder and dishearten you. Let me choose just two, and try to hearten +you by showing that, even with these two only, you can go a long way. + +Take the use of right emphasis. What Quintilian says of right +emphasis--or the most important thing he says--is this:-- + + There is sometimes an extraordinary force in some particular word, + which, if it be placed in no very conspicuous position in the middle + part of a sentence, is likely to escape the attention of the hearer + and to be obscured by the words surrounding it; but if it be put at + the end of the sentence is urged upon the reader's sense and + imprinted on his mind. + +That seems obvious enough, for English use as well as for Latin. 'The +wages of sin is Death'--anyone can see how much more emphatic that is +than 'Death is the wages of sin.' But let your minds work on this matter +of emphasis, and discover how emphasis has always its right point +somewhere, though it be not at all necessarily at the end of the +sentence. Take a sentence in which the strong words actually repeat +themselves for emphasis:-- + + Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city. + +Our first impulse would be to place the emphasis at the end:-- + + Babylon, that great city, is fallen, is fallen. + +The Latin puts it at the beginning:-- + + Cecidit, cecidit, Babylonia illa magna. + Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city. + +The forty-seven preserved the 'falling close' so exquisite in the Latin; +the emphasis, already secured by repetition, they accentuated by +lengthening the pause. I would urge on you that in every sentence there +is just a right point of emphasis which you must train your ears to +detect. So your writing will acquire not only emphasis, but balance, and +you will instinctively avoid such an ill-emphasised sentence as this, +which, not naming the author, I will quote for your delectation:-- + + 'Are Japanese Aprils always as lovely as this?' asked the man in the + light tweed suit of two others in immaculate flannels with crimson + sashes round their waists and puggarees folded in cunning plaits + round their broad Terai hats. + +Explore, next, what (though critics have strangely neglected it) to my +mind stands the first, or almost the first, secret of beautiful writing +in English, whether in prose or in verse; I mean that inter-play of +vowel-sounds in which no language can match us. We have so many vowel +sounds indeed, and so few vowels to express them, that the foreigner, +mistaking our modesty, complains against God's plenty. We alone, for +example, sound by a natural vowel that noble _I_, which other nations can +only compass by diphthongs. Let us consider that vowel for a moment or +two and mark how it leads off the dance of the Graces, its sisters:-- + + Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the + Lord is risen upon thee. + +Mark how expressively it drops to the solemn vowel 'O,' and +anon how expressively it reasserts itself to express rearisen +delight:-- + + Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is + risen upon thee. For behold the darkness shall cover the earth, and + gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and + his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to + thy light, and Kings to the brightness of thy rising. + +Take another passage in which the first lift of this _I_ vowel yields to +its graver sisters as though the sound sank into the very heart of the +sense. + + I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, + I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more + worthy to be called thy son.' + +'And am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Mark the deep O's. 'For +this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' 'O my +son, my son Absalom'--observe the I and O how they interchime, until the O +of sorrow tolls the lighter note down:-- + + O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died + for thee, O Absolom, my son, my son! + +Or take this lyric, by admission one of the loveliest written in this +present age, and mark here too how the vowels play and ring and chime and +toll. + + I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, + And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; + Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, + And live alone in the bee-loud glade.[2] + And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping + slow, + Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket + sings; + There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, + And evening full of the linnet's wings. + I will arise and go now, for always night and day + I hear lake-water lapping, with low sounds by the shore; + While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, + I hear it in the deep heart's core. + +I think if you will but open your ears to this beautiful vowel-play which +runs through all the best of our prose and poetry, whether you ever learn +to master it or not, you will have acquired a new delight, and one +various enough to last you though you live to a very old age. + +All this of which I am speaking is Art: and Literature being an Art, do +you not see how personal a thing it is--how it cannot escape being +personal? No two men (unless they talk Jargon) say the same thing in the +same way. As is a man's imagination, as is his character, as is the +harmony in himself, as is his ear, as is his skill, so and not otherwise +he will speak, so and not otherwise than they can respond to that +imagination, that character, that order of his intellect, that harmony of +his soul, his hearers will hear him. Let me conclude with this great +passage from Newman which I beg you, having heard it, to ponder:-- + + If then the power of speech is as great as any that can be named, + --if the origin of language is by many philosophers considered + nothing short of divine--if by means of words the secrets of the + heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief + is carried off, sympathy conveyed, experience recorded, and wisdom + perpetuated,--if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, + national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the + future, the East and the West are brought into communication with + each other,--if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and the + prophets of the human family--it will not answer to make light of + Literature or to neglect its study: rather we may be sure that, in + proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its + spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers + of like benefits to others--be they many or few, be they in the + obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life--who are united to + us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal + influence. + + + + +[Footnote 1: I append the following specimen translations of the famous +passage in St Paul's "First Epistle to the Corinthians" xv. 51 sqq. I +choose this because (1) it is an important passage; (2) it touches a high +moment of philosophising; (3) the comparison seems to me to represent +with great fairness to Tyndale the extent of the forty-seven's debt to +him; (4) it shows that they meant exactly what they said in their +Preface; and (5) it illustrates, towards the close, their genius for +improvement. From the Greek, Wyclif translates:-- + + Lo, I seie to you pryvyte of holi thingis | and alle we schulen rise + agen | but not alle we schuln be chaungid | in a moment in the + twynkelynge of an ye, in the last trumpe | for the trumpe schal + sowne: and deed men schulen rise agen with out corrupcion, and we + schuln be changid | for it bihoveth this corruptible thing to clothe + uncorropcion and this deedly thing to putte aweye undeedlynesse. But + whanne this deedli thing schal clothe undeedlynesse | thanne schal + the word be don that is written | deeth is sopun up in victorie | + deeth, where is thi victorie? deeth, where is thi pricke? + +Tyndale:-- + + Beholde I shewe you a mystery. We shall not all slepe: but we shall + all be chaunged | and that in a moment | and in the twinclinge of an + eye | at the sounde of the last trompe. For the trompe shall blowe, + and the deed shall ryse incorruptible and we shalbe chaunged. For + this corruptible must put on incorruptibilite: and this mortall must + put on immortalite. When this corruptible hath put on + incorruptibilite | and this mortall hath put on immortalite: than + shalbe brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Deeth is + consumed in to victory.' Deeth, where is thy stynge? Hell, where is + thy victory? + +The Authorised Version:-- + + Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleepe, but wee shall + all be changed, in a moment, in the twinckling of an eye, at the + last trumpe, (for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be + raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed). For this corruptible + must put on incorruption, and this mortall must put on immortalitie. + So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this + mortall shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to + passe the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in + victory.' O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy + victory?] + + +[Footnote 2: I E O : I O E + I O : E OU A + 'As musing slow, I hail ('as m_u_sing sl_o_w _I_ ha_i_l) + Thy genial loved return.' (Th_y_ g_e_nial l_o_ved ret_u_rn.') + COLLINS, "Ode to Evening."] + + + + +LECTURE VIII. + +ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I) + +Wednesday, October 22 + + +You may think it strange, Gentlemen, that of a course of ten lectures +which aim to treat English Literature as an affair of practice, I should +propose to spend two in discussing our literary lineage: a man's lineage +and geniture being reckoned, as a rule, among the things he cannot be +reasonably asked to amend. But since of high breeding is begotten (as +most of us believe) a disposition to high thoughts, high deeds; since to +have it and be modestly conscious of it is to carry within us a faithful +monitor persuading us to whatsoever in conduct is gentle, honourable, of +good repute, and so silently dissuading us from base thoughts, low ends, +ignoble gains; seeing, moreover, that a man will often do more to match +his father's virtue than he would to improve himself; I shall endeavour, +in this and my next lecture, to scour that spur of ancestry and present +it to you as so bright and sharp an incentive that you, who read English +Literature and practise writing here in Cambridge, shall not pass out +from her insensible of the dignity of your studies, or without pride or +remorse according as you have interpreted in practice the motto, +_Noblesse oblige_. + + 'Tis wisdom, and that high, + For men to use their fortune reverently + Even in youth. + +Let me add that, just as a knowledge of his family failings will help one +man in economising his estate, or warn another to shun for his health the +pleasures of the table, so some knowledge of our lineage in letters may +put us, as Englishmen, on the watch for certain national defects (for +such we have), on our guard against certain sins which too easily beset +us. Nay, this watchfulness may well reach down from matters of great +moment to seeming trifles. It is good for us to recognise with Wordsworth +that + + We must be free or die, who speak the tongue + That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold + Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung + Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. + +But, though less important, it is good also to recognise that, as sons of +Cambridge, we equally offend against her breeding when in our scientific +writings we allow ourselves to talk of a microbe as an 'antibody.' + +Now, because a great deal of what I have to say this morning, if not +heretical, will yet run contrary to the vogue and practice of the Schools +for these thirty years, I will take the leap into my subject over a +greater man's back and ask you to listen with particular attention to the +following long passage from a writer whose opinion you may challenge, but +whose authority to speak as a master of English prose no one in this room +will deny. + + When (says Cardinal Newman) we survey the stream of human affairs for + the last three thousand years, we find it to run thus:--At first sight + there is so much fluctuation, agitation, ebbing and flowing, that we + may despair to discern any law in its movements, taking the earth as + its bed and mankind as its contents; but on looking more closely and + attentively we shall discern, in spite of the heterogeneous materials + and the various histories and fortunes which are found in the race of + man during the long period I have mentioned, a certain formation amid + the chaos--one and one only,--and extending, though not over the whole + earth, yet through a very considerable portion of it. Man is a social + being and can hardly exist without society, and in matter of fact + societies have ever existed all over the habitable earth. The greater + part of these associations have been political or religious, and have + been comparatively limited in extent and temporary. They have been + formed and dissolved by the force of accidents, or by inevitable + circumstances; and when we have enumerated them one by one we have made + of them all that can be made. But there is one remarkable association + which attracts the attention of the philosopher, not political nor + religious--or at least only partially and not essentially such--which + began in the earliest times and grew with each succeeding age till it + reached its complete development, and then continued on, vigorous and + unwearied, and still remains as definite and as firm as ever it was. + Its bond is a _common civilisation_: and though there are other + civilisations in the world, as there are other societies, yet _this_ + civilisation, 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 + on the face of the earth, that the association may fitly assume to + itself the title of 'Human Society,' and _its_ civilisation the + abstract term 'Civilisation.' + + There are indeed great outlying portions of mankind which are not, + perhaps never have been, included in this Human Society; still they are + outlying portions and nothing else, fragmentary, unsociable, solitary + and unmeaning, protesting and revolting against the grand central + formation of which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into + a second whole. I am not denying, of course, the civilisation of the + Chinese, for instance, though it be not our civilisation; but it is a + huge, stationary, unattractive, morose civilisation. Nor do I deny a + civilisation to the Hindoos, nor to the ancient Mexicans, nor to the + Saracens, nor (in a certain sense) to the Turks; but each of these + races has its own civilisation, as separate from one another as from + ours. + + I do not see how they can be all brought under one idea.... + + Gentlemen, let me here observe that I am not entering upon the question + of races, or upon their history. I have nothing to do with ethnology; I + take things as I find them on the surface of history and am but + classifying phenomena. 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 to + deserve to be called the Intellect and the Mind of the Human Kind. + Starting as it does, and advancing from certain centres, till their + respective influences intersect and conflict, and then at length + intermingle and combine, a common Thought has been generated, and a + common Civilisation defined and established. Egypt is one such starting + point, Syria, another, Greece a third, Italy a fourth and North Africa + a fifth--afterwards France and Spain. As time goes on, and as + colonisation and conquest work their changes, we see a great + association of nations formed, of which the Roman Empire is the + maturity and the most intelligible expression: an association, however, + not political but mental, based on the same intellectual ideas and + advancing by common intellectual methods.... In its earliest age it + included far more of the Eastern world than it has since; in these + later times it has taken into its compass a new hemisphere; in the + Middle Ages it lost Africa, Egypt and Syria, and extended itself to + Germany, Scandinavia and the British Isles. At one time its territory + was flooded by strange and barbarous races, but the existing + civilisation was vigorous enough to vivify what threatened to stifle + it, and to assimilate to the old social forms what came to expel them: + and thus the civilisation of modern times remains what it was of old; + not Chinese, or Hindoo, or Mexican, or Saracen ... but the lineal + descendant, or rather the continuation--_mutatis mutandis_--of the + civilisation which began in Palestine and Greece. + +To omit, then, all minor debts such as what of arithmetic, what of +astronomy, what of geography, we owe to the Saracen, from Palestine we +derive the faith of Europe shared (in the language of the Bidding Prayer) +by all Christian people dispersed throughout the world; as to Greece we +owe the rudiments of our Western art, philosophy, letters; and not only +the rudiments but the continuing inspiration, so that--though entirely +superseded in worship, as even in the Athens of Pericles they were +worshipped only by an easy, urbane, more than half humorous +tolerance--Apollo and the Muses, Zeus and the great ones of Olympus, +Hermes and Hephaestus, Athene in her armour, with her vanquisher the +foam-born irresistible Aphrodite, these remain the authentic gods of our +literature, beside whom the gods of northern Europe--Odin, Thor, +Freya--are strangers, unhomely, uncanny as the shadows of unfamiliar +furniture on the walls of an inn. Sprung though great numbers of us are +from the loins of Northmen, it is in these gracious deities of the South +that we find the familiar and the real, as from the heroes of the +sister-island, Cucullain and Concobar, we turn to Hercules, to Perseus, +to Bellerophon, even to actual men of history, saying 'Give us Leonidas, +give us Horatius, give us Regulus. These are the mighty ones we +understand, and from whom, in a direct line of tradition, we understand +Harry of Agincourt, Philip Sidney and our Nelson.' + +Now since, of the Mediterranean peoples, the Hebrews discovered the +Unseen God whom the body of Western civilisation has learnt to worship; +since the Greeks invented art, philosophy, letters; since Rome found and +developed the idea of imperial government, of imperial colonies as +superseding merely fissiparous ones, of settling where she conquered +(_ubi Romanus vicit ibi habitat_) and so extending with Government that +system of law which Europe still obeys; we cannot be surprised that +Israel, Greece, Rome--each in turn--set store on a pure ancestry. Though +Christ be the veritable Son of God, his ancestry must be traced back +through his supposed father Joseph to the stem of Jesse, and so to +Abraham, father of the race. Again, as jealously as the Evangelist +claimed Jesus for a Hebrew of the Hebrews, so, if you will turn to the +"Menexenus" of Plato in the Oration of Aspasia over the dead who perished +in battle, you hear her claim that 'No Pelopes nor Cadmians, nor +Egyptians, nor Dauni, nor the rest of the crowd of born foreigners dwell +with us; but ours is the land of pure Hellenes, free from admixture.' +These proud Athenians, as you know, wore brooches in the shape of golden +grasshoppers, to signify that they were [Greek: autochthones], children +of Attica, sprung direct from her soil. And so, again, the true Roman, +while enlarging Rome's citizenship over Asia, Africa, Gaul, to our remote +Britain, insisted, even in days of the later Empire, on his pure descent +from AEneas and Romulus-- + + Unde Remnes et Quirites proque prole posterum + Romuli matrem crearet et nepotem Caesarem. + + With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew + From Romulus down to our Caesar-last, best of that blood, of that threw. + +Here is a boast that we English must be content to forgo. We may wear a +rose on St George's day, if we are clever enough to grow one. The Welsh, +I dare say, have less difficulty with the leek. But April the 23rd is not +a time of roses that we can pluck them as we pass, nor can we claim St +George as a compatriot--_Cappadocius nostras_. We have, to be sure, a few +legendary heroes, of whom King Arthur and Robin Hood are (I suppose) the +greatest; but, save in some Celtic corners of the land, we have few +fairies, and these no great matter; while, as for tutelary gods, our +springs, our wells, our groves, cliffs, mountain-sides, either never +possessed them or possess them no longer. Not of our landscape did it +happen that + + The lonely mountains o'er, + And the resounding shore, + A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; + From haunted spring and dale + Edg'd with poplar pale, + The parting Genius is with sighing sent. + +--for the sufficient reason that no tutelary gods of importance were ever +here to be dispersed. + +Let me press this home upon you by an illustration which I choose with +the double purpose of enforcing my argument and sending you to make +acquaintance (if you have not already made it) with one of the loveliest +poems written in our time. + +In one of Pliny's letters you will find a very pleasant description of +the source of the Clitumnus, a small Umbrian river which, springing from +a rock in a grove of cypresses, descends into the Tinia, a tributary of +the Tiber. 'Have you ever,' writes Pliny to his friend Romanus-- + + Have you ever seen the source of the Clitumnus? I suppose not, as I + never heard you mention it. Let me advise you to go there at once. I + have just visited it and am sorry that I put off my visit so long. At + the foot of a little hill, covered with old and shady cypress trees, a + spring gushes and bursts into a number of streamlets of various size. + Breaking, so to speak, forth from its imprisonment, it expands into a + broad basin, so clear and transparent that you may count the pebbles + and little pieces of money which are thrown into it. From this point + the force and weight of the water, rather than the slope of the ground, + hurry it onward. What was a mere spring becomes a noble river, broad + enough to allow vessels to pass each other as they sail with or against + the stream. The current is so strong, though the ground is level, that + barges of beam, as they go down, require no assistance of oars; while + to go up is as much as can be done with oars and long poles.... The banks + are clothed with abundant ash and poplar, so distinctly reflected in + the transparent waters that they seem to be growing at the bottom of + the river and can be counted with ease. The water is as cold as snow + and as pure in colour. Hard by the spring stands an ancient and + venerable temple with a statue of the river-god Clitumnus, clothed in + the customary robe of state. The Oracles here delivered attest the + presence of the deity. Close in the precinct stand several little + chapels dedicated to particular gods, each of whom owns his distinctive + name and special worship, and is the tutelary deity of a runlet. For + beside the principal spring, which is, as it were, the parent of all + the rest, there are several smaller ones which have their distinct + sources but unite their waters with the Clitumnus, over which a bridge + is thrown, separating the sacred part of the river from that which is + open to general use. Above the bridge you may only go in a boat; below + it, you may swim. The people of the town of Hispallum, to whom Augustus + gave this place, furnish baths and lodgings at the public expense. + There are several small dwelling-houses on the banks, in specially + picturesque situations, and they stand quite close to the waterside. In + short, everything in the neighbourhood will give you pleasure. You may + also amuse yourself with numberless inscriptions on the pillars and + walls, celebrating the praises of the stream and of its tutelary god. + Many of these you will admire, and some will make you laugh. But no! + You are too well cultivated to laugh at such things. Farewell. + +Clitumnus still gushes from its rocks among the cypresses, as in Pliny's +day. The god has gone from his temple, on the frieze of which you may +read this later inscription--'_Deus Angelorum, qui fecit Resurrectionem._' +After many centuries and almost in our day, by the brain of Cavour and +the sword of Garibaldi, he has made a resurrection for Italy. As part of +that resurrection (for no nation can live and be great without its poet) +was born a true poet, Carducci. He visited the bountiful, everlasting +source, and of what did he sing? Possess yourselves, as for a shilling +you may, of his Ode "Alle fonte del Clitumno," and read: for few nobler +poems have adorned our time. He sang of the weeping willow, the ilex, +ivy, cypress and the presence of the god still immanent among them. He +sang of Umbria, of the ensigns of Rome, of Hannibal swooping down over +the Alps; he sang of the nuptials of Janus and Comesena, progenitors of +the Italian people; of nymphs, naiads, and the moonlight dances of +Oreads; of flocks descending to the river at dusk, of the homestead, the +bare-footed mother, the clinging child, the father, clad in goat-skins, +guiding the ox-wagon; and he ends on the very note of Virgil's famous +apostrophe + + _Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra..._ + +with an invocation of Italy--Italy, mother of bullocks for agriculture, +of wild colts for battle, mother of corn and of the vine, Roman mother of +enduring laws and mediaeval mother of illustrious arts. The mountains, +woods and waters of green Umbria applaud the song, and across their +applause is heard the whistle of the railway train bearing promise of new +industries and a new national life. + + E tu, pia madre di giovenchi invitti + a franger glebe e rintegrar maggesi + e d' annitrenti in guerra aspri polledri, + Italia madre, + + madre di biade e viti e leggi eterne + ed incliti arti a raddolcir la vita + salve! a te i canti de l' antica lode + io rinovello. + + Plaudono i monti al carme e i boschi e l' acque + de l' Umbria verde: in faccia a noi fumando + ed anelando nuove industrie in corsa + fischia il vapore. + + And thou, O pious mother of unvanquished + Bullocks to break glebe, to restore the fallow, + And of fierce colts for neighing in the battle: + Italy, mother, + + Mother of corn and vines and of eternal + Laws and illustrious arts the life to sweeten, + Hail, hail, all hail! The song of ancient praises + Renew I to thee! + + The mountains, woods and waters of green Umbria + Applaud the song: and here before us fuming + And longing for new industries, a-racing + Whistles the white steam. + +(I quote from a translation by Mr E.J. Watson, recently published by +Messrs J.W. Arrowsmith, of Bristol.) + +I put it to you, Gentlemen, that, worthy as are the glories of England to +be sung, this note of Carducci's we cannot decently or honestly strike. +Great lives have been bled away into Tweed and Avon: great spirits have +been oared down the Thames to Traitor's Gate and the Tower. Deeds done on +the Cam have found their way into history. But I once traced the Avon to +its source under Naseby battlefield, and found it issuing from the +fragments of a stucco swan. No god mounts guard over the head-water of +the Thames; and the only Englishman who boldly claims a divine descent is +(I understand) an impostor who runs an Agapemone. In short we are a mixed +race, and our literature is derivative. Let us confine our pride to those +virtues, not few, which are honestly ours. A Roman noble, even to-day, +has some excuse for reckoning a god in his ancestry, or at least a wolf +among its wet-nurses: but of us English even those who came over with +William the Norman have the son of a tanner's daughter for escort. I very +well remember that, the other day, writers who vindicated our hereditary +House of Lords against a certain Parliament Act commonly did so on the +ground that since the Reform Bill of 1832, by inclusion of all that was +eminent in politics, war and commerce, the Peerage had been so changed as +to know itself no longer for the same thing. That is our practical way. + +At all events, the men who made our literature had never a doubt, as they +were careless to dissimulate, that they were conquering our tongue to +bring it into the great European comity, the civilisation of Greece and +Rome. An Elizabethan writer, for example, would begin almost as with a +formula by begging to be forgiven that he has sought to render the divine +accent of Plato, the sugared music of Ovid, into our uncouth and +barbarous tongue. There may have been some mock-modesty in this, but it +rested on a base of belief. Much of the glory of English Literature was +achieved by men who, with the splendour of the Renaissance in their eyes, +supposed themselves to be working all the while upon pale and borrowed +shadows. + +Let us pass the enthusiasms of days when 'bliss was it in that dawn to be +alive' and come down to Alexander Pope and the Age of Reason. Pope at one +time proposed to write a History of English Poetry, and the draft scheme +of that History has been preserved. How does it begin? Why thus:-- + + ERA I. + +1. School of Provence Chaucer's Visions. _Romaunt of the Rose._ + _Piers Plowman._ Tales from Boccace. Gower. + +2. School of Chaucer Lydgate. + T. Occleve. + Walt. de Mapes (a bad error, that!). + Skelton. + +3. School of Petrarch E. of Surrey. + Sir Thomas Wyatt. + Sir Philip Sidney. + G. Gascoyn. + +4. School of Dante Lord Buckhurst's _Induction. Gorboduc._ + Original of Good Tragedy. Seneca his model. + +--and so on. The scheme after Pope's death came into the hands of Gray, +who for a time was fired with the notion of writing the History in +collaboration with his friend Mason. Knowing Gray's congenital +self-distrust, you will not be surprised that in the end he declined the +task and handed it over to Warton. But, says Mant in his Life of Warton, +'their design'--that is, Gray's design with Mason--'was to introduce +specimens of the Provecal poetry, and of the Scaldic, British and Saxon, +as preliminary to what first deserved to be called English poetry, about +the time of Chaucer, from whence their history properly so called was to +commence.' A letter of Gray's on the whole subject, addressed to Warton, +is extant, and you may read it in Dr Courthope's "History of English +Poetry." + +Few in this room are old enough to remember the shock of awed surmise +which fell upon young minds presented, in the late 'seventies or early +'eighties of the last century, with Freeman's "Norman Conquest" or +Green's "Short History of the English People"; in which as through paring +clouds of darkness, we beheld our ancestry, literary as well as +political, radiantly legitimised; though not, to be sure, in the England +that we knew--but far away in Sleswick, happy Sleswick! 'Its pleasant +pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, its prim little townships +looking down on inlets of purple water, were then but a wild waste of +heather and sand, girt along the coast with sunless woodland, broken here +and there with meadows which crept down to the marshes and to the sea.' +But what of that? There--surely there, in Sleswick--had been discovered +for us our august mother's marriage lines; and if the most of that bright +assurance came out of an old political skit, the "Germania" of Tacitus, +who recked at the time? For along followed Mr Stopford Brooke with an +admirable little Primer published at one shilling, to instruct the +meanest of us in our common father's actual name--Beowulf. + + _Beowulf_ is an old English Epic.... There is not one word about our + England in the poem.... The whole poem, pagan as it is, is English + to its very root. It is sacred to us; our Genesis, the book of + our origins. + +Now I am not only incompetent to discuss with you the more recondite +beauties of "Beowulf" but providentially forbidden the attempt by the +conditions laid down for this Chair. I gather--and my own perusal of the +poem and of much writing about it confirms the belief--that it has been +largely over-praised by some critics, who have thus naturally provoked +others to underrate it. Such things happen. I note, but without +subscribing to it, the opinion of Vigfusson and York Powell, the learned +editors of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," that in the "Beowulf" we have +'an epic completely metamorphosed in form, blown out with long-winded +empty repetitions and comments by a book poet, so that one must be +careful not to take it as a type of the old poetry,' and I seem to hear +as from the grave the very voice of my old friend the younger editor in +that unfaltering pronouncement. But on the whole I rather incline to +accept the cautious surmise of Professor W. P. Ker that 'a reasonable +view of the merit of Beowulf is not impossible, though rash enthusiasm +may have made too much of it; while a correct and sober taste may have +too contemptuously refused to attend to Grendel and the Firedrake,' and +to leave it at that. I speak very cautiously because the manner of the +late Professor Freeman, in especial, had a knack of provoking in gentle +breasts a resentment which the mind in its frailty too easily converted +to a prejudice against his matter: while to men trained to admire +Thucydides and Tacitus and acquainted with Lucian's 'Way to Write +History' ([Greek: Pos dei istorian suggraphein]) his loud insistence that +the art was not an art but a science, and moreover recently invented by +Bishop Stubbs, was a perpetual irritant. + +But to return to "Beowulf"--You have just heard the opinions of scholars +whose names you must respect. I, who construe Anglo-Saxon with +difficulty, must admit the poem to contain many fine, even noble, +passages. Take for example Hrothgar's lament for AEschere:-- + + Hrothgar mathelode, helm Scyldinga: + 'Ne frin thu aefter saelum; sorh is geniwod + Denigea leodum; dead is AEschere, + Yrmenlafes yldra brothor, + Min run-wita, ond min raed-bora; + Eaxl-gestealla, thonne we on orlege + Hafelan weredon, thonne hniton fethan, + Eoferas cnysedan: swylc scolde eorl wesan + AEtheling aer-god, swylc AEschere waes.' + + (Hrothgar spake, helm of the Scyldings: 'Ask not after good tidings. + Sorrow is renewed among the Dane-folk. Dead is AEschere, Yrmenlaf's + elder brother, who read me rune and bore me rede; comrade at shoulder + when we fended our heads in war and the boar-helms rang. Even so + should we each be an atheling passing good, as AEschere was.') + +This is simple, manly, dignified. It avoids the besetting sin of the +Anglo-Saxon gleeman--the pretentious trick of calling things 'out of +their right names' for the sake of literary effect (as if e.g. the sea +could be improved by being phrased into 'the seals' domain'). Its +Anglo-Saxon _staccato_, so tiresome in sustained narrative, here happens +to suit the broken utterance of mourning. In short, it exhibits the +Anglo-Saxon Muse at her best, not at her customary. But set beside it a +passage in which Homer tells of a fallen warrior--at haphazard, as it +were, a single corpse chosen from the press of battle-- + + [Greek: polla de chermadia megal aspidas estuphelixam + marnamenon amph auton o d en strophaliggi konies + keito megas megalosti, lelasmenos ipposunaom.] + +Can you--can anyone--compare the two passages and miss to see that they +belong to two different kingdoms of poetry? I lay no stress here on +'architectonics.' I waive that the "Iliad" is a well-knit epic and the +story of "Beowulf" a shapeless monstrosity. I ask you but to note the +difference of note, of accent, of mere music. And I have quoted you but a +passage of the habitual Homer. To assure yourselves that he can rise even +from this habitual height to express the extreme of majesty and of human +anguish in poetry which betrays no false note, no strain upon the store +of emotion man may own with self-respect and exhibit without derogation +of dignity, turn to the last book of the "Iliad" and read of Priam +raising to his lips the hand that has murdered his son. I say confidently +that no one unable to distinguish this, as poetry, from the very best of +"Beowulf" is fit to engage upon business as a literary critic. + +In "Beowulf" then, as an imported poem, let us allow much barbarian +merit. It came of dubious ancestry, and it had no progeny. The pretence +that our glorious literature derives its lineage from "Beowulf" is in +vulgar phrase 'a put up job'; a falsehood grafted upon our text-books by +Teutonic and Teutonising professors who can bring less evidence for it +than will cover a threepenny-piece. Its run for something like that +money, in small educational manuals, has been in its way a triumph of +pedagogic _reclame_. + +Our rude forefathers--the author of "The Rape of the Lock" and of the +"Elegy written in a Country Churchyard"--knew nothing of the Exeter and +Vercelli Books, nothing of the Ruthwell Cross. But they were poets, +practitioners of our literature in the true line of descent, and they +knew certain things which all such artists know by instinct. So, before +our historians of thirty-odd years ago started to make Chaucer and +Beowulf one, these rude forefathers made them two. 'Nor am I confident +they erred.' Rather I am confident, and hope in succeeding lectures to +convince you, that, venerable as Anglo-Saxon is, and worthy to be studied +as the mother of our vernacular speech (as for a dozen other reasons +which my friend Professor Chadwick will give you), its value is +historical rather than literary, since from it our Literature +is not descended. Let me repeat it in words that admit of no +misunderstanding--_From Anglo-Saxon Prose, from Anglo-Saxon Poetry our +living Prose and Poetry have, save linguistically, no derivation_. I +shall attempt to demonstrate that, whether or not Anglo-Saxon +literature, such as it was, died of inherent weakness, die it did, and +of its collapse the "Vision of Piers Plowman" may be regarded as the +last dying spasm. I shall attempt to convince you that Chaucer did not +inherit any secret from Caedmon or Cynewulf, but deserves his old title, +'Father of English Poetry,' because through Dante, through Boccaccio, +through the lays and songs of Provence, he explored back to the +Mediterranean, and opened for Englishmen a commerce in the true +intellectual mart of Europe. I shall attempt to heap proof on you that +whatever the agency--whether through Wyat or Spenser, Marlowe or +Shakespeare, or Donne, or Milton, or Dryden, or Pope, or Johnson, or +even Wordsworth--always our literature has obeyed, however +unconsciously, the precept _Antiquam exquirite matrem_, 'Seek back to +the ancient mother'; always it has recreated itself, has kept itself +pure and strong, by harking back to bathe in those native--yes, +_native_--Mediterranean springs. + +Do not presume me to be right in this. Rather, if you will, presume me to +be wrong until the evidence is laid out for your judgment. But at least +understand to-day how profoundly a man, holding that view, must deplore +the whole course of academical literary study during these thirty years +or so, and how distrust what he holds to be its basal fallacies. + +For, literature being written in language, yet being something quite +distinct, and the development of our language having been fairly +continuous, while the literature of our nation exhibits a false start--a +break, silence, repentance, then a renewal on right glorious lines--our +students of literature have been drilled to follow the specious +continuance while ignoring the actual break, and so to commit the one +most fatal error in any study; that of mistaking the inessential for the +essential. + +As I tried to persuade you in my Inaugural Lecture, our first duty to +Literature is to study it absolutely, to understand, in Aristotelian +phrase, its [Greek: to ti en einae]; what it _is_ and what it _means_. If +that be our quest, and the height of it be realised, it is nothing to +us--or almost nothing--to know of a certain alleged poet of the fifteenth +century, that he helped us over a local or temporary disturbance in our +vowel-endings. It is everything to have acquired and to possess such a +norm of Poetry within us that we know whether or not what he wrote was +POETRY. + +Do not think this easy. The study of right literary criticism is much +more difficult than the false path usually trodden; so difficult, indeed, +that you may easily count the men who have attempted to grasp the great +rules and apply them to writing as an art to be practised. But the names +include some very great ones--Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian, Corneille, +Boileau, Dryden, Johnson, Lessing, Coleridge, Goethe, Sainte-Beuve, +Arnold: and the study, though it may not find its pattern in our time, is +not unworthy to be proposed for another attempt before a great +University. + + + + +LECTURE IX. + +ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II) + +Wednesday, November 5 + + +Some of you whose avocations call them, from time to time, to Newmarket +may have noted, at a little distance out from Cambridge, a by-road +advertised as leading to Quy and Swaffham. It also leads to the site of +an old Roman villa; but you need not interrupt your business to visit +this, since the best thing discovered there--a piece of tessellated +pavement--has been removed and deposited in the Geological Museum here in +Downing Street, where you may study it very conveniently. It is not at +all a first-class specimen of its kind: not to be compared, for example, +with the wonderful pavement at Dorchester, or with that (measuring 35 +feet by 20) of the great villa unearthed, a hundred years ago, at +Stonesfield in Oxfordshire: but I take it as the handiest, and am going +to build a small conjecture upon it, or rather a small suggestion of a +guess. Remember there is no harm in guessing so long as we do not pretend +our guess-work to be something else. + +I will ask you to consider first that in these pavements, laid bare for +us as 'the whistling rustic tends his plough,' we have work dating +somewhere between the first and fifth centuries, work of unchallengeable +beauty, work of a beauty certainly not rivalled until we come to the +Norman builders of five or six hundred years later. I want you to let +your minds dwell on these long stretches of time--four hundred years or +so of Roman occupation (counting, not from Caesar's raids, but from the +serious invasion of 43 A.D. under Aulus Plautius, say to some while after +the famous letter of Honorius, calling home the legions). You may safely +put it at four hundred years, and then count six hundred as the space +before the Normans arrive--a thousand years altogether, or but a +fraction--one short generation--less than the interval of time that +separates us from King Alfred. In the great Cathedral of Winchester +(where sleep, by the way, two gentle writers specially beloved, Isaak +Walton and Jane Austen) above the choir-screen to the south, you may see +a line of painted chests, of which the inscription on one tells you that +it holds what was mortal of King Canute. + + Here are sands, ignoble things, + Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of Kings. + +But if you walk around to the north of the altar you will find yourself +treading on tiles not so very far short of twice that antiquity. +Gentlemen, do not think that I would ever speak lightly of our lineage: +only let us make as certain as we may what that lineage is. + +I want you to-day to understand just what such a pavement as that +preserved for your inspection in Downing Street meant to the man who saw +it laid and owned it these fifteen hundred years--more or less--ago. _Ubi +Romanus vicit, ibi habitat_--'where the Roman has conquered, there he +settles': but whether he conquered or settled he carried these small +tiles, these _tessellae_, as religiously as ever Rachel stole her +teraphin. 'Wherever his feet went there went the tessellated pavement for +them to stand on. Even generals on foreign service carried in panniers on +muleback the little coloured cubes or _tessellae_ for laying down a +pavement in each camping-place, to be taken up again when they moved +forward. In England the same sweet emblems of the younger gods of poetic +legend, of love, youth, plenty, and all their happy naturalism, are found +constantly repeated.'[1] I am quoting these sentences from a local +historian, but you see how these relics have a knack of inspiring prose +at once scholarly and imaginative, as (for a more famous instance) the +urns disinterred at Walsingham once inspired Sir Thomas Browne's. To +continue and adapt the quotation-- + + Bacchus with his wild rout, Orpheus playing to a spell-bound audience, + Apollo singing to the lyre, Venus in Mars' embrace, Neptune with a host + of seamen, scollops, and trumpets, Narcissus by the fountain, Jove and + Ganymede, Leda and the swan, wood-nymphs and naiads, satyrs and fauns, + masks, hautboys, cornucopiae, flowers and baskets of golden fruit--what + touches of home they must have seemed to these old dwellers in the + Cambridgeshire wilds! + +Yes, touches of home! For the owner of this villa (you may conceive) is +the grandson or even great-great-grandson of the colonist who first built +it, following in the wake of the legionaries. The family has prospered +and our man is now a considerable landowner. He was born in Britain: his +children have been born here: and here he lives a comfortable, +well-to-do, out-of-door life, in its essentials I daresay not so very +unlike the life of an English country squire to-day. Instead of chasing +foxes or hares he hunts the wolf and the wild boar; but the sport is +good and he returns with an appetite. He has added a summer parlour to +the house, with a northern aspect and no heating-flues: for the old +parlour he has enlarged the praefurnium, and through the long winter +evenings sits far better warmed than many a master of a modern +country-house. A belt of trees on the brow of the rise protects him from +the worst winds, and to the south his daughters have planted violet-beds +which will breathe odorously in the spring. He has rebuilt and enlarged +the slave-quarters and outhouses, replaced the stucco pillars around the +atrium with a colonnade of polished stone, and, where stucco remains, +has repainted it in fresh colours. He knows that there are no gaps or +weak spots in his stockade fence--wood is always cheap. In a word he has +improved the estate; is modestly proud of it; and will be content, like +the old Athenian, to leave his patrimony not worse but something better +than he found it. + +Sensible men--and the Romans were eminently that--as a rule contrive to +live decently, or, at least, tolerably. What struck Arthur Young more +than anything else in his travels through France on the very eve of the +Revolution seems to have been the general good-tempered happiness of the +French gentry on their estates. We may moralise of the Roman colonists as +of the French proprietors that 'unconscious of their doom the little +victims played'; but we have no right to throw back on them the shadow of +what was to come or to cloud the picture of a useful, peaceable, maybe +more than moderately happy life, with our later knowledge of disaster +mercifully hidden from it. + +Although our colonist and his family have all been born in Britain, are +happy enough here on the whole, and talk without more than half meaning +it, and to amuse themselves with speculations half-wistful, of daring the +tremendous journey and setting eyes on Rome some day, their pride is to +belong to her, to Rome, the imperial City, the city afar: their windows +open back towards her as Daniel's did towards Jerusalem--_Urbs quam +dicunt Roman--the_ City. Along the great road, hard by, her imperial writ +runs. They have never subscribed to the vow of Ruth, 'Thy people shall be +my people and thy God my God.' They dwell under the Pax Romana, not +merely protected by it but as _citizens_. Theirs are the ancestral +deities portrayed on that unfading pavement in the very centre of the +villa--Apollo and Daphne, Bacchus and Ariadne-- + + For ever warm and still to be enjoyed, + For ever panting, and for ever young. + +Parcels come to them, forwarded from the near military station; come by +those trade-routes, mysterious to us, concerning which a most +illuminating book waits to be written by somebody. There are parcels of +seeds--useful vegetables and potherbs, helichryse (marigold as we call +them now) for the flower garden, for the colonnade even roses with real +Italian earth damp about their roots. There are parcels of books, +too--rolls rather, or tablets--wherein the family reads about Rome; of +its wealth, the uproar of its traffic, the innumerable chimneys smoking, +_fumum et opes strepitumque_. For they are always reading of Rome; +feeling themselves, as they read, to belong to it, to be neither savage +nor even rustic, but by birthright _of the city_, urbane; and what these +exiles read is of how Horace met a bore on the Sacred Road (which would +correspond, more or less, with our Piccadilly)-- + + Along the Sacred Road I strolled one day + Deep in some bagatelle (you know my way) + When up comes one whose face I scarcely knew-- + 'The dearest of dear fellows! how d'ye do?' + --He grasped my hand. 'Well, thanks! The same to you?' + +--or of how Horace apologises for protracting a summer jaunt to his +country seat:-- + + Five days I told you at my farm I'd stay, + And lo! the whole of August I'm away. + Well but, Maecenas, you would have me live, + And, were I sick, my absence you'd forgive. + So let me crave indulgence for the fear + Of falling ill at this bad time of year. + When, thanks to early figs and sultry heat, + The undertaker figures with his suite; + When fathers all and fond mammas grow pale + At what may happen to their young heirs male, + And courts and levees, town-bred mortals' ills, + Bring fevers on, and break the seals of wills. + + (Conington's translation.) + +Consider those lines; then consider how long it took the inhabitants +of this island--the cultured ones who count as readers or +writers--to recapture just that note of urbanity. Other things +our forefathers --Britons, Saxons, Normans, Dutch or French +refugees--discovered by the way; worthier things if you will; but not +until the eighteenth century do you find just that note recaptured; the +note of easy confidence that our London had become what Rome had been, +the Capital city. You begin to meet it in Dryden; with Addison it is +fairly established. Pass a few years, and with Samuel Johnson it is +taken for granted. His _London_ is Juvenal's Rome, and the same satire +applies to one as applied to the other. But against the urbane lines +written by one Horace some while before Juvenal let us set a passage +from another Horace--Horace Walpole, seventeen hundred years later and +some little while ahead of Johnson. He, like our Roman colonist, is a +settler in a new country, Twickenham; and like Flaccus he loves to +escape from town life. + + TWICKENHAM, June 8th, 1747. + + To the Hon. H. S. CONWAY. + + You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left + my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of + Mrs Chevenix's shop, and the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set + in enamelled meadows with filagree hedges: + + A small Euphrates through the place is roll'd, + And little finches wave their wings of gold. + + Two delightful roads; that you would call dusty, supply me continually + with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer + move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect; + but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of + Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and + Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by the most poetical + moonlight.... The Chevenixes had tricked it out for themselves; up two + pairs of stairs is what they call Mr Chevenix's library, furnished + with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton and a lame + telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville _predeceased_ me + here and instituted certain games called _cricketalia_, which has been + celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring + meadow. + + You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my + tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all tranquility while a + Parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be + dissolved.... They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand + pounds, to carry elections which he won't carry--he had much better + have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen. + +There you have Horatio Walpole, the man-about-town, almost precisely +echoing Horatius Flaccus, the man-about-town; and this (if you will bring +your minds to it) is just the sort of passage a Roman colonist in Britain +would open upon, out of his parcel of new books, and read, _and +understand_, some eighteen hundred years ago. + +What became of it all?--of that easy colonial life, of the men and women +who trod those tessellated pavements? 'Wiped out,' say the historians, +knowing nothing, merely guessing: for you may with small trouble assure +yourselves that the fifth and sixth centuries in the story of this island +are a blind spot, concerning which one man's guess may be as good as +another's. 'Wiped out,' they will commonly agree; for while, as I warned +you in another lecture, the pedantic mind, faced with a difficulty, tends +to remove it conveniently into a category to which it does not belong, +still more prone is the pedantic mind to remove it out of existence +altogether. So 'wiped out' is the theory; and upon it a sympathetic +imagination can invent what sorrowful pictures it will of departing +legions, the last little cloud of dust down the highway, the lovers by +the gate watching it, not comprehending; the peaceful homestead in the +background, ripe for doom--and what-not. + +Or, stay! There is another theory to which the late Professor Freeman +inclined (if so sturdy a figure could be said to incline), laying stress +on a passage in Gildas, that the Romans in Britain, faced by the Saxon +invader, got together their money, and bolted away into Gaul. 'The Romans +that were in Britain gathered together their gold-hoard, hid part in the +ground and carried the rest over to Gaul,' writes Gildas. 'The hiding in +the ground,' says Freeman, 'is of course a guess to explain the frequent +finding of Roman coins'--which indeed it _does_ explain better than the +guess that they were carried away, and perhaps better than the +schoolboy's suggestion that during their occupation of Britain the Romans +spent most of their time in dropping money about. Likely enough, large +numbers of the colonists did gather up what they could and flee before +the approaching storm; but by no means all, I think. For (since, where +all is uncertain, we must reason from what is probable of human nature) +in the first place men with large estates do not behave in that way +before a danger which creeps upon them little by little, as this Saxon +danger did. These colonists could not dig up their fields and carry them +over to Gaul. They did not keep banking accounts; and in the course of +four hundred years their main wealth had certainly been sunk in the land. +They could not carry away their villas. We know that many of them did not +carry away the _tessellae_ for which (as we have seen) they had so +peculiar a veneration; for these remain. Secondly, if the colonists left +Britain in a mass, when in the middle of the sixth century we find +Belisarius offering the Goths to trade Britain for Sicily, as being 'much +larger and this long time subservient to Roman rule,'[2] we must suppose +either (as Freeman appears to suppose) that Belisarius did not know what +he was offering, or that he was attempting a gigantic 'bluff,' or lastly +that he really was offering an exchange not flatly derisory; of which +three possible suppositions I prefer the last as the likeliest. Nor am I +the less inclined to choose it, because these very English historians go +on to clear the ground in a like convenient way of the Celtic +inhabitants, exterminating them as they exterminated the Romans, +with a wave of the hand, quite in the fashion of Mr Podsnap. 'This is +un-English: therefore for me it merely ceases to exist.' + +'_Probable extirpation of the Celtic inhabitants_' jots down Freeman in +his margin, and proceeds to write: + + In short, though the literal extirpation of a nation is an + impossibility, there is every reason to believe that the Celtic + inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the + end of the sixth century had been as nearly extinguished as a nation + could be. The women doubtless would be largely spared, but as far as + the male sex is concerned we may feel sure that death, emigration, or + personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found + at the hands of our fathers. + +Upon this passage, if brought to me in an undergraduate essay, I should +have much to say. The style, with its abstract nouns ('the literal +extirpation of a nation is an impossibility'), its padding and +periphrasis ('there is every reason to believe' ... 'as far as the male +sex is concerned we may feel sure') betrays the loose thought. It begins +with 'in short' and proceeds to be long-winded. It commits what even +schoolboys know to be a solecism by inviting us to consider three +'alternatives'; and what can I say of 'the women doubtless would be +largely spared,' save that besides scanning in iambics it says what +Freeman never meant and what no-one outside of an Aristophanic comedy +could ever suggest? 'The women doubtless would be largely spared'! It +reminds me of the young lady in Cornwall who, asked by her vicar if she +had been confirmed, admitted blushingly that 'she had reason to believe, +partially so.' + +'The women doubtless would be largely spared'!--But I thank the Professor +for teaching me that phrase, because it tries to convey just what I am +driving at. The Jutes, Angles, Saxons, did not extirpate the Britons, +whatever you may hold concerning the Romans. For, once again, men do not +behave in that way, and certainly will not when a live slave is worth +money. Secondly, the very horror with which men spoke, centuries after, +of Anderida quite plainly indicates that such a wholesale massacre was +exceptional, monstrous. If not exceptional, monstrous, why should this +particular slaughter have lingered so ineffaceably in their memories? +Finally,--and to be as curt as the question deserves--the Celtic Briton +in the island was not exterminated and never came near to being +exterminated: but on the contrary, remains equipollent with the Saxon in +our blood, and perhaps equipollent with that mysterious race we call +Iberian, which came before either and endures in this island to-day, as +anyone travelling it with eyes in his head can see. Pict, Dane, Norman, +Frisian, Huguenot French--these and others come in. If mixture of blood +be a shame, we have purchased at the price of that shame the glory of +catholicism; and I know of nothing more false in science or more actively +poisonous in politics or in the arts than the assumption that we belong +as a race to the Teutonic family. + +Dane, Norman, Frisian, French Huguenot--they all come in. And will you +refuse a hearing when I claim that the Roman came in too? Bethink you how +deeply Rome engraved itself on this island and its features. Bethink you +that, as human nature is, no conquering race ever lived or could +live--even in garrison--among a tributary one without begetting children +on it. Bethink you yet further of Freeman's admission that in the +wholesale (and quite hypothetical) general massacre 'the women doubtless +would be largely spared'; and you advance nearer to my point. I see a +people which for four hundred years was permeated by Rome. If you insist +on its being a Teutonic people (which I flatly deny) then you have one +which _alone of Teutonic peoples_ has inherited the Roman gift of +consolidating conquest, of colonising in the wake of its armies; of +driving the road, bridging the ford, bringing the lawless under its +sense of law. I see that this nation of ours concurrently, when it seeks +back to what alone can inspire and glorify these activities, seeks back, +not to any supposed native North, but south to the Middle Sea of our +civilisation and steadily to Italy, which we understand far more easily +than France--though France has helped us times and again. Putting these +things together, I retort upon the ethnologists--for I come from the +West of England, where we suffer incredible things from them--_'Semper +ego auditor tantum?'_ I hazard that the most important thing in our +blood is that purple drop of the imperial murex we derive from Rome. + +You must, of course, take this for nothing more than it pretends to be--a +conjecture, a suggestion. I will follow it up with two statements of +fact, neither doubtful nor disputable. + +The first is, that when English poetry awoke, long after the Conquest +(or, as I should prefer to put it, after the Crusades) it awoke a new +thing; in its vocabulary as much like Anglo-Saxon poetry as ever you +will, but in metre, rhythm, lilt--and more, in style, feeling, +imaginative play--and yet more again, in knowledge of what it aimed to +be, in the essentials, in the qualities that make Poetry Poetry--as +different from Anglo-Saxon poetry as cheese is from chalk, and as much +more nutritious. Listen to this-- + + Bytuene Mershe ant Averil + When spray biginnith to spring, + The lutel foul hath hire wyl + On hire lud to synge: + Ich libbe in love-longinge + For semlokest of alle thynge, + He may me blisse bringe, + Icham in hire bandoun. + An hendy hap ichabbe y-hent, + Ichot from hevene it is me sent, + From alle wymmen my love is lent, + And lyht on Alisoun. + +Here you have alliteration in plenty; you even have what some hold to be +the pattern of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse (though in practice +disregarded, may be, as often as not), the chosen initial used twice in +the first line and once at least in the second: + + From alle wymmen my _l_ove is _l_ent, + And _l_yht on A_l_isoun. + +But if a man cannot see a difference infinitely deeper than any +similarity between this song of Alison and the old Anglo-Saxon verse--_a +difference of nature_--I must despair of his literary sense. + +What has happened? Well, in Normandy, too, and in another tongue, men are +singing much the same thing in the same way: + + A la fontenelle + Qui sort seur l'araine, + Trouvai pastorella + Qui n'iert pas vilaine... + Merci, merci, douce Marote, + N'ociez pas vostre ami doux, + +and this Norman and the Englishman were singing to a new tune, which was +yet an old tune re-set to Europe by the Provence, the Roman Province; by +the troubadours--Pons de Capdeuil, Bernard de Ventadour, Bertrand de +Born, Pierre Vidal, and the rest, with William of Poitou, William of +Poitiers. Read and compare; you will perceive that the note then set +persists and has never perished. Take Giraud de Borneil-- + + Bel companhos, si dormetz o velhatz + Non dortmatz plus, qu'el jorn es apropchatz-- + +and set it beside a lyric of our day, written without a thought of Giraud +de Borneil-- + + Heigh! Brother mine, art a-waking or a-sleeping: + Mind'st thou the merry moon a many summers fled? + Mind'st thou the green and the dancing and the leaping? + Mind'st thou the haycocks and the moon above them creeping?... + +Or take Bernard de Ventadour's-- + + Quand erba vertz, e fuelha par + E'l flor brotonon per verjan, + E'l rossinhols autet e clar + Leva sa votz e mov son chan, + Joy ai de luy, e joy ai de la flor, + Joy ai de me, e de me dons maior. + +Why, it runs straight off into English verse-- + + When grass is green and leaves appear + With flowers in bud the meads among, + And nightingale aloft and clear + Lifts up his voice and pricks his song, + Joy, joy have I in song and flower, + Joy in myself, and in my lady more. + +And that may be doggerel; yet what is it but + + It was a lover and his lass, + With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino, + That o'er the green cornfield did pass + In the spring-time, the only pretty ring-time-- + +or + + When daffodils begin to peer, + With heigh! the doxy over the dale, + Why then comes in the sweet o' the year; + For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. + +Nay, flatter the Anglo-Saxon tradition by picking its very best--and I +suppose it hard to find better than the much-admired opening of Piers +Plowman, in which that tradition shot up like the flame of a dying +candle: + + Bote in a Mayes Morwnynge--on Malverne hulles + Me bi-fel a ferly--a Feyrie me thouhte; + I was weori of wandringe--and wente me to reste + Under a brod banke--bi a Bourne syde, + And as I lay and leonede--and lokede on the watres, + I slumberde in a slepynge--hit sownede so murie. + +This is good, solid stuff, no doubt: but tame, inert, if not actually +lifeless. As M. Jusserand says of Anglo-Saxon poetry in general, it is +like the river Saone--one doubts which way it flows. How tame in +comparison with this, for example!-- + + In somer, when the shawes be sheyne, + And leves be large and long, + Hit is full mery in feyre foreste + To here the foulys song: + + To se the dere draw to the dale + And leve the hilles hee, + And shadow hem in the leves grene + Under the grene-wode tre. + + Hit befel on Whitsontide, + Erly in a May mornyng, + The Son up feyre can shyne, + And the briddis mery can syng. + + 'This is a mery mornyng,' said litell John, + 'Be Hym that dyed on tre; + A more mery man than I am one + Lyves not in Cristiante. + + 'Pluk up thi hert, my dere mayster,' + Litull John can sey, + 'And thynk hit is a full fayre tyme + In a mornyng of May.' + +There is no doubting which way _that_ flows! And this vivacity, this new +beat of the heart of poetry, is common to Chaucer and the humblest +ballad-maker; it pulses through any book of lyrics printed yesterday, and +it came straight to us out of Provence, the Roman Province. It was the +Provencal Troubadour who, like the Prince in the fairy tale, broke +through the hedge of briers and kissed Beauty awake again. + + +You will urge that he wakened Poetry not in England alone but all over +Europe, in Dante before our Chaucer, in the trouveres and minnesingers as +well as in our ballad-writers. To that I might easily retort, 'So much +the better for Europe, and the more of it the merrier, to win their way +into the great comity.' But here I put in my second assertion, that we +English have had above all nations lying wide of the Mediterranean, the +instinct to refresh and renew ourselves at Mediterranean wells; that +again and again our writers--our poets especially--have sought them as +the hart panteth after the water-brooks. If you accept this assertion, +and if you believe as well that our literature, surpassing Rome's, may +vie with that of Athens--if you believe that a literature which includes +Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley--the Authorised +Version of Holy Writ, with Browne, Bunyan, Swift, Addison, Johnson, +Arnold, Newman--has entered the circle to take its seat with the first-- +why then, heartily believing this with you, I leave you to find some +better explanation than mine if you can. + +But what I content myself with asserting here you can scarcely deny. +Chaucer's initial and enormous debt to Dante and Boccaccio stands in as +little dispute as Dunbar's to Chaucer. On that favourite poet of mine, +Sir Thomas Wyat, I descanted in a former lecture. He is one of your +glories here, having entered St. John's College at the age of twelve +(which must have been precocious even for those days.) Anthony Wood +asserts that after finishing his course here, he proceeded to Cardinal +Wolsey's new College at Oxford; but, as Christchurch was not founded +until 1524, and Wyat, still precocious, had married a wife two years +before that, the statement (to quote Dr Courthope) 'seems no better +founded than many others advanced by that patriotic but not very +scrupulous author.' It is more to the point that he went travelling, and +brought home from France, Italy, afterwards Spain--always from Latin +altars--the flame of lyrical poetry to England; the flame of the +Petrarchists, caught from the Troubadours, clarified (so to speak) by the +salt of humane letters. On what our Elizabethan literature owes to the +Classical revival hundreds of volumes have been written and hundreds more +will be written; I will but remind you of what Spencer talked about with +Gabriel Harvey, what Daniel disputed with Campion; that Marlowe tried to +re-incarnate Machiavelli, that Jonson was a sworn Latinist and the 'tribe +of Ben' a classical tribe; while, as for Shakespeare, go and reckon the +proportion of Italian and Roman names in his _dramatis personae_. Of +Donne's debt to France, Italy, Rome, Greece, you may read much in +Professor Grierson's great edition, and I daresay Professor Grierson +would be the first to allow that all has not yet been computed. You know +how Milton prepared himself to be a poet. Have you realised that, in +those somewhat strangely constructed sonnets of his, Milton was +deliberately modelling upon the "Horatian Ode," as his confrere, Andrew +Marvell, was avowedly attempting the like in his famous Horation Ode on +Cromwell's Return from Ireland; so that if Cromwell had returned (like Mr +Quilp), walked in and caught his pair of Latin Secretaries scribbling +verse, one at either end of the office table, both might colourably have +pleaded that they were, after all, writing Latin. Waller's task in poetry +was to labour true classical polish where Cowley laboured sham-classical +form. Put together Dryden's various Prefaces and you will find them one +solid monument to his classical faith. Of Pope, Gray, Collins, you will +not ask me to speak. What is salt in Cowper you can taste only when you +have detected that by a stroke of madness he missed, or barely missed, +being our true English Horace, that almost more nearly than the rest he +hit what the rest had been seeking. Then, of the 'romantic revival'-- +enemy of false classicism, not of classicism--bethink you what, in his +few great years, Wordsworth owed directly to France of the early +Revolution; what Keats drew forth out of Lempriere: and again bethink you +how Tennyson wrought upon Theocritus, Virgil, Catullus; upon what Arnold +constantly shaped his verse; how Browning returned ever upon Italy to +inspire his best and correct his worse. + +Of Anglo-Saxon prose I know little indeed, but enough of the world to +feel reasonably sure that if it contained any single masterpiece--or +anything that could be paraded as a masterpiece--we should have heard +enough about it long before now. It was invented by King Alfred for +excellent political reasons; but, like other ready-made political +inventions in this country, it refused to thrive. I think it can be +demonstrated, that the true line of intellectual descent in prose lies +through Bede (who wrote in Latin, the 'universal language'), and not +through the Blickling Homilies, or, AElfric, or the Saxon Chronicle. And I +am sure that Freeman is perversely wrong when he laments as a 'great +mistake' that the first Christian missionaries from Rome did not teach +their converts to pray and give praise in the vernacular. The vernacular +being what it was, these men did better to teach the religion of the +civilised world--_orbis terrarum_--in the language of the civilised +world. I am not thinking of its efficiency for spreading the faith; but +neither is Freeman; and, for that, we must allow these old missionaries +to have known their own business. I am thinking only of how this 'great +mistake' affected our literature; and if you will read Professor +Saintsbury's "History of English Prose Rhythm" (pioneer work, which yet +wonderfully succeeds in illustrating what our prose-writers from time to +time were trying to do); if you will study the Psalms in the Authorised +Version; if you will consider what Milton, Clarendon, Sir Thomas Browne, +were aiming at; what Addison, Gibbon, Johnson; what Landor, Thackeray, +Newman, Arnold, Pater; I doubt not your rising from the perusal convinced +that our nation, in this storehouse of Latin to refresh and replenish its +most sacred thoughts, has enjoyed a continuous blessing: that the Latin +of the Vulgate and the Offices has been a background giving depth and, as +the painters say, 'value' to nine-tenths of our serious writing. + +And now, since this and the previous lecture run something counter to a +great deal of that teaching in English Literature which nowadays passes +most acceptably, let me avoid offence, so far as may be, by defining one +or two things I am _not_ trying to do. + +I am not persuading you to despise your linguistic descent. English is +English--our language; and all its history to be venerated by us. + +I am not persuading you to despise linguistic study. _All_ learning is +venerable. + +I am not persuading you to behave like Ascham, and turn English prose +into pedantic Latin; nor would I have you doubt that in the set quarrel +between Campion, who wished to divert English verse into strict classical +channels, and Daniel, who vindicated our free English way (derived from +Latin through the Provencal), Daniel was on the whole, right, Campion on +the whole, wrong: though I believe that both ways yet lie open, and we +may learn, if we study them intelligently, a hundred things from the old +classical metres. + +I do not ask you to forget what there is of the Northmen in your blood. +If I desired this, I could not worship William Morris as I do, among the +later poets. + +I do not ask you to doubt that the barbarian invaders from the north, +with their myths and legends, brought new and most necessary blood of +imagination into the literary material--for the time almost exhausted--of +Greece and Rome. + +Nevertheless, I do contend that when Britain (or, if you prefer it, +Sleswick) + + When Sleswick first at Heaven's command + Arose from out the azure main, + +she differed from Aphrodite, that other foam-born, in sundry important +features of ear, of lip, of eye. + +Lastly, if vehement assertions on the one side have driven me into too +vehement dissent on the other, I crave pardon; not for the dissent but +for the vehemence, as sinning against the very principle I would hold up +to your admiration--the old Greek principle of avoiding excess. + + + +But I _do_ commend the patient study of Greek and Latin authors--in the +original or in translation--to all of you who would write English; and +for three reasons. + +(1) In the first place they will correct your insularity of mind; or, +rather, will teach you to forget it. The Anglo-Saxon, it has been noted, +ever left an empty space around his houses; and that, no doubt, is good +for a house. It is not so good for the mind. + +(2) Secondly, we have a tribal habit, confirmed by Protestant meditation +upon a Hebraic religion, of confining our literary enjoyment to the +written word and frowning down the drama, the song, the dance. A fairly +attentive study of modern lyrical verse has persuaded me that this +exclusiveness may be carried too far, and threatens to be deadening. 'I +will sing and give praise,' says the Scripture, 'with the best member +that I have'--meaning the tongue. But the old Greek was an 'all-round +man' as we say. He sought to praise and give thanks with all his members, +and to tune each to perfection. I think his way worth your considering. + +(3) Lastly, and chiefly, I commend these classical authors to you because +they, in the European civilisation which we all inherit, conserve the +norm of literature; the steady grip on the essential; the clean outline +at which in verse or in prose--in epic, drama, history, or philosophical +treatise--a writer should aim. + +So sure am I of this, and of its importance to those who think of +writing, that were this University to limit me to three texts on which to +preach English Literature to you, I should choose the Bible in our +Authorised Version, Shakespeare, and Homer (though it were but in a prose +translation). Two of these lie outside my marked province. Only one of +them finds a place in your English school. But Homer, who comes neither +within my map, nor within the ambit of the Tripos, would--because he most +evidently holds the norm, the essence, the secret of all--rank first of +the three for my purpose. + + +[Footnote 1: From "A History of Oxfordshire," by Mr J. Meade Falkner, +author of Murray's excellent Handbook of Oxfordshire.] + + + + +LECTURE X. + +ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I) + +Wednesday, November 19 + + +All lectures are too long. Towards the close of my last, Gentlemen, I let +fall a sentence which, heard by you in a moment of exhausted or languid +interest, has since, like enough, escaped your memory even if it earned +passing attention. So let me repeat it, for a fresh start. + +Having quoted to you the words of our Holy Writ, 'I will sing and give +praise with the best member that I have,' I added 'But the old Greek was +an "all-round" man; he sought to praise and give thanks with all his +members, and to tune each to perfection.' Now a great many instructive +lectures might be written on that text: nevertheless you may think it a +strange one, and obscure, for the discourse on 'English Literature in our +Universities' which, according to promise, I must now attempt. + +The term 'an all-round man' may easily mislead you unless you take it +with the rest of the sentence and particularly with the words 'praise and +give thanks.' Praise whom? Give thanks to whom? To _whom_ did our Greek +train all his members to render adoration? + +Why, to the gods--his gods: to Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite; and from them +down to the lesser guardian deities of the hearth, the field, the +farmstead. We modern men suffer a double temptation to misunderstand, by +belittling, the reverence in which Hellas and Rome held their gods. To +start with, our religion has superseded theirs. We approach the Olympians +with no bent towards venerating them; with minds easy, detached, to which +a great deal of their theology--the amativeness of Zeus for example--must +needs seem broadly comic, and a great deal of it not only comic but +childish. We are encouraged in this, moreover, when we read such writers +as Aristophanes and Lucian, and observe how they poked fun at the gods. +We assume--so modern he seems--Aristophanes' attitude towards his +immortals to be ours; that when, for example, Prometheus walks on to the +stage under an umbrella, to hide himself from the gaze of all-seeing +Zeus, the Athenian audience laughed just as we laugh who have read +Voltaire. Believe me, they laughed quite differently; believe me, +Aristophanes and Voltaire had remarkably different minds and worked on +utterly different backgrounds. Believe me, you will understand +Aristophanes only less than you will understand AEschylus himself if you +confuse Aristophanes' mockery of Olympus with modern mockery. But, if you +will not take my word for it, let me quote what Professor Gilbert Murray +said, the other day, speaking before the English Association on Greek +poetry, how constantly connected it is with religion: + + 'All thoughts, all passions, all desires' ... In our Art it is true, no + doubt, that they are 'the ministers of love'; in Greek they are as a + whole the ministers of religion, and this is what in a curious degree + makes Greek poetry matter, makes it relevant. There is a sense in each + song of a relation to the whole of things, and it was apt to be + expressed with the whole body, or, one may say, the whole being.[1] + +To a Greek, in short, his gods mattered enormously; and to a Roman. To a +Roman they continued to matter enormously, down to the end. Do you +remember that tessellated pavement with its emblems and images of the +younger gods? and how I told you that a Roman general on foreign service +would carry the little cubes in panniers on mule-back, to be laid down +for his feet at the next camping place? Will you suggest that he did this +because they were pretty? You know that practical men--conquering +generals--don't behave in that way. He did it because they were sacred; +because, like most practical men, he was religious, and his gods must go +with him. They filled his literature: for why? He believed himself to be +sprung from their loins. Where would Latin literature be, for example, if +you could cut Venus out of it? Consider Lucretius' grand invocation: + + AEneadum genetrix, hominum divumque voluptas, + Alma Venus! + +Consider the part Virgil makes her play as moving spirit of his whole +great poem. So follow her down to the days of the later Empire and open +the "Pervigilium Veneris" and discover her, under the name of Dione, +still the eternal Aphrodite sprung from the foam amid the churning hooves +of the sea-horses--_inter et bipedes equos_:-- + + Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep, + 'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stampeding the dolphins as + sheep. + Lo! arose of that bridal Dione, rainbow'd and besprent of its dew! + _Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love + anew!_ + Her favour it was fill'd the sails of the Trojan for Latium bound, + Her favour that won her AEneas a bride on Laurentian ground, + And anon from the cloister inveigled the Virgin, the Vestal, to Mars; + As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars + With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew + From Romulus down to our Caesar--last, best of that blood, of that thew. + _Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love + anew!_ + +'Last, best of that blood'--her blood, _fusa Paphies de cruore_, and the +blood of Teucer, _revocato a sanguine Teucri_, 'of that thew'--the thew +of Tros and of Mars. Of these and no less than these our Roman believed +himself the son and inheritor. + +If we grasp this, that the old literature was packed with the old +religion, and not only packed with it but permeated by it, we have within +our ten fingers the secret of the 'Dark Ages,' the real reason why the +Christian Fathers fought down literature and almost prevailed to the +point of stamping it out. They hated it, not as literature; or at any +rate, not to begin with; nor, to begin with, because it happened to be +voluptuous and they austere: but they hated it because it held in its +very texture, not to be separated, a religion over which they had hardly +triumphed, a religion actively inimical to that of Christ, inimical to +truth; so that for the sake of truth and in the name of Christ they had +to fight it, accepting no compromise, yielding no quarter, foreseeing no +issue save that one of the twain--Jupiter or Christ, Deus Optimus Maximus +or the carpenter's son of Nazareth--must go under. + +It all ended in compromise, to be sure; as all struggles must between +adversaries so tremendous. To-day, in Dr Smith's "Classical Dictionary," +Origen rubs shoulders with Orpheus and Orcus; Tertullian reposes cheek by +jowl with Terpsichore. But we are not concerned, here, with what happened +in the end. We are concerned with what these forthright Christian +fighters had in their minds--to trample out the old literature _because_ +of the false religion. Milton understood this, and was thinking of it +when he wrote of the effect of Christ's Nativity-- + + The Oracles are dumb; + No voice or hideous hum + Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. + Apollo from his shrine + Can no more divine, + With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. + No mighty trance, or breathed spell + Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the prophetic cell. + + The lonely mountains o'er, + And the resounding shore, + A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; + From haunted spring, and dale + Edg'd with poplar pale, + The parting Genius is with sighing sent; + With flower-inwoven tresses torn + The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. + +as Swinburne understands and expresses it in his "Hymn to Proserpine," +supposed to be chanted by a Roman of the 'old profession' on the morrow +of Constantine's proclaiming the Christian faith-- + + O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day! + From your wrath is the world released, redeem'd from your chains, + men say. + New Gods are crown'd in the city; their flowers have broken your rods; + They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods. + But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare; + Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were... + Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take, + The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in + the brake; + Thou hast conquer'd, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from + thy breath; + We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death. + +'Thou hast conquer'd, O pale Galilean!' However the struggle might sway +in this or that other part of the field, Literature had to be beaten to +her knees, and still beaten flat until the breath left her body. You will +not be surprised that the heavy hand of these Christian fathers fell +first upon the Theatre: for the actor in Rome was by legal definition an +'infamous' man, even as in England until the other day he was by legal +definition a vagabond and liable to whipping. The policy of religious +reformers has ever been to close the theatres, as our Puritans did in +1642; and a recent pronouncement by the Bishop of Kensington would seem +to show that the instinct survives to this day. Queen Elizabeth--like her +brother, King Edward VI--signalized the opening of a new reign by +inhibiting stage-plays; and I invite you to share with me the pensive +speculation, 'How much of English Literature, had she not relented, would +exist to-day for a King Edward VII Professor to talk about?' Certainly +the works of Shakespeare would not; and that seems to me a thought so +impressive as to deserve the attention of Bishops as well as of Kings. + +Apart from this instinct the Christian Fathers, it would appear, had +plenty of provocation. For the actors, who had jested with the Old +Religion on a ground of accepted understanding--much as a good husband +(if you will permit the simile) may gently tease his wife, not loving her +one whit the less, taught by affection to play without offending--had +mocked at the New Religion in a very different way: savagely, as enemies, +holding up to ridicule the Church's most sacred mysteries. Tertullian, in +an uncompromising treatise "De Spectaculis," denounces stage-plays root +and branch; tells of a demon who entered into a woman in a theatre and on +being exorcised pleaded that the mistake might well be excused, since he +had found her in his own demesne. Christians should avoid these shows and +await the greatest _spectaculum_ of all--the Last Judgment. 'Then,' he +promises genially, 'will be the time to listen to the tragedians, whose +lamentations will be more poignant, for their proper pain. Then will the +comedians turn and twist in capers rendered nimbler than ever by the +sting of the fire that is not quenched.' By 400 A.D. Augustine cries +triumphantly that the theatres are falling--the very walls of them +tumbling--throughout the Empire. _'Per omnes paene civitates cadunt +theatra ... cadunt et fora vel moenia in quibus demonia colebantur'_; the +very walls within which these devilments were practised. But the fury is +unabated and goes on stamping down the embers. In the eighth century our +own Alcuin (as the school of Freeman would affectionately call him) is no +less fierce. All plays are anathema to him, and he even disapproves of +dancing bears--though not, it would appear, of bad puns: _'nec tibi sit +ursorum saltantium cura, sed clericorum psallentium.'_[2] + +The banning of _all_ literature you will find harder to understand; nay +impossible, I believe, unless you accept the explanation I gave you. Yet +there it is, an historical fact. 'What hath it profited posterity--_quid +posteritas emolumenti tulit,_' wrote Sulpicius Severus, about 400 A.D., +'to read of Hector's fighting or Socrates' philosophising?' Pope Gregory +the Great--St Gregory, who sent us the Roman missionaries--made no bones +about it at all. '_Quoniam non cognovi literaturam,_' he quoted +approvingly from the 70th Psalm, '_introibo in potentias Domini_': +'Because I know nothing of literature I shall enter into the strength of +the Lord.' 'The praises of Christ cannot be uttered in the same tongue as +those of Jove,' writes this same Gregory to Desiderius, Archbishop of +Vienne, who had been rash enough to introduce some of his young men to +the ancient authors, with no worse purpose than to teach them a little +grammar. Yet no one was prouder than this Pope of the historical Rome +which he had inherited. Alcuin, again, forbade the reading of Virgil in +the monastery over which he presided: it would sully his disciples' +imagination. 'How is this, _Virgilian!_' he cried out upon one taken in +the damnable act,--'that without my knowledge and against my order thou +hast taken to studying Virgil?' To put a stop to this unhallowed +indulgence the clergy solemnly taught that Virgil was a wizard. + +To us, long used as we are to the innocent gaieties of the Classical +Tripos, these measures to discourage the study of Virgil may appear +drastic, as the mental attitude of Gregory and Alcuin towards the Latin +hexameter (so closely resembling that of Byron towards the waltz) not far +removed from foolishness. But there you have in its quiddity the +mediaeval mind: and the point I now put to you is, that _out of this soil +our Universities grew._ + +We, who claim Oxford and Cambridge for our nursing mothers, have of all +men least excuse to forget it. A man of Leyden, of Louvain, of Liepzig, +of Berlin, may be pardoned that he passes it by. More than a hundred +years ago Salamanca had the most of her stones torn down to make defences +against Wellington's cannon. Paris, greatest of all, has kept her renown; +but you shall search the slums of the Latin Quarter in vain for the sixty +or seventy Colleges that, before the close of the fifteenth century, had +arisen to adorn her, the intellectual Queen of Europe. In Bologna, the +ancient and stately, almost alone among the continental Universities, +survive a few relics of the old collegiate system--the College of Spain, +harbouring some five or six students, and a little house founded for +Flemings in 1650: and in Bologna the system never attained to real +importance. + +But in England where, great as London is, the national mind has always +harked to the country for the graces of life, so that we seem by instinct +to see it as only desirable in a green setting, our Universities, planted +by the same instinct on lawns watered by pastoral streams, have suffered +so little and received as much from the years that now we can hardly +conceive of Oxford or Cambridge as ruined save by 'the unimaginable touch +of Time.' Of all the secular Colleges bequeathed to Oxford, she has lost +not one; while Cambridge (I believe) has parted only with Cavendish. Some +have been subsumed into newer foundations; but always the process has +been one of merging, of blending, of justifying the new bottle by the old +wine. The vengeance of civil war--always very much of a family affair in +England--has dealt tenderly with Oxford and Cambridge; the more +calculating malignity of Royal Commissions not harshly on the whole. +University reformers may accuse both Oxford and Cambridge of + + Annihilating all that's made + To a green thought in a green shade: + +but with those sour men we have nothing here to do: like Isaak Walton's +milkmaid we will not 'load our minds with any fears of many things that +will never be.' + +But, as they stand, Oxford and Cambridge--so amazingly alike while they +play at differences, and both so amazingly unlike anything else in the +wide world--do by a hundred daily reminders connect us with the Middle +Age, or, if you prefer Arnold's phrase, whisper its lost enchantments. +The cloister, the grave grace in hall, the chapel bell, the men hurrying +into their surplices or to lectures 'with the wind in their gowns,' the +staircase, the nest of chambers within the oak--all these softly +reverberate over our life here, as from belfries, the mediaeval mind. + +And that mediaeval mind actively hated (of partial acquaintance or by +anticipation) almost everything we now study! Between it and us, except +these memorials, nothing survives to-day but the dreadful temptation to +learn, the dreadful instinct in men, as they grow older and wiser, to +trust learning after all and endow it--that, and the confidence of a +steady stream of youth. + +The Universities, then, sprang out of mediaeval life, out of the +mediaeval mind; and the mediaeval mind had for centuries been taught to +abominate literature. I would not exaggerate or darken the 'Dark Ages' +for you by throwing too much bitumen into the picture. I know that at the +beginning there had been a school of Origen which advocated the study of +Greek poetry and philosophy, as well as the school of Tertullian which +condemned it. There is evidence that the 'humanities' were cultivated +here and there and after a fashion behind Gregory's august back. I grant +that, while in Alcuin's cloister (and Alcuin, remember, became a sort of +Imperial Director of Studies in Charlemagne's court) the wretched monk +who loved Virgil had to study him with an illicit candle, to copy him +with numbed fingers in a corner of the bitter-cold cloister, on the other +hand many beautiful manuscripts preserved to us bear witness of cloisters +where literature was tolerated if not officially honoured. I would not +have you so uncritical as to blame the Church or its clergy for what +happened; as I would have you remember that if the Church killed +literature, she--and, one may say, she alone--kept it alive. + +Yet, and after all these reservations, it remains true that Literature +had gone down disastrously. Even philosophy, unless you count the pale +work of Boethius--_real_ philosophy had so nearly perished that men +possessed no more of Aristotle than a fragment of his Logic, and '_the_ +Philosopher' had to creep back into Western Europe through translations +from the Arabic! But this is the point I wish to make clear.--Philosophy +came back in the great intellectual revival of the twelfth century; +Literature did not. Literature's hour had not come. Men had to catch up +on a dreadful leeway of ignorance. The form did not matter as yet: they +wanted science--to know. I should say, rather, that as yet form _seemed_ +not to matter: for in fact form always matters: the personal always +matters: and you cannot explain the vast crowds Abelard drew to Paris +save by the fascination in the man, the fire communicated by the living +voice. Moreover (as in a previous lecture I tried to prove) you cannot +divorce accurate thought from accurate speech; but for accuracy, even for +hair-splitting accuracy, of speech the Universities had the definitions +of the Schoolmen. In literature they had yet to discover a concern. +Literature was a thing of the past, inanimate. Nowhere in Europe could it +be felt even to breathe. To borrow a beautiful phrase of Wordsworth's, +men numbered it among 'things silently gone out of mind or things +violently destroyed.' + +Nobody quite knows how these Universities began. Least of all can anybody +tell how Oxford and Cambridge began. In Bede, for instance--that is, in +England as the eighth century opens--we see scholarship already moving +towards the _thing_, treading with sure instinct towards the light. +Though a hundred historians have quoted it, I doubt if a feeling man who +loves scholarship can read the famous letter of Cuthbert describing +Bede's end and not come nigh to tears. + +And Bede's story contains no less wonder than beauty, when you consider +how the fame of this holy and humble man of heart, who never left his +cloisters at Jarrow, spread over Europe, so that, though it sound +incredible, our Northumbria narrowly missed in its day to become the +pole-star of Western culture. But he was a disinterested genius, and his +pupil, Alcuin, a pushing dull man and a born reactionary; so that, while +Alcuin scored the personal success and went off to teach in the court of +Charlemagne, the great chance was lost. + +No one knows when the great Universities were founded, or precisely out +of what schools they grew; and you may derive amusement from the +historians when they start to explain how Oxford and Cambridge in +particular came to be chosen for sites. My own conjecture, that they were +chosen for the extraordinary salubrity of their climates, has met (I +regret to say) with derision, and may be set down to the caprice of one +who ever inclines to think the weather good where he is happy. Our own +learned historian, indeed--Mr J. Bass Mullinger--devotes some closely +reasoned pages to proving that Cambridge was chosen as the unlikeliest +spot in the world, and is driven to quote the learned Poggio's opinion +that the unhealthiness of a locality recommended it as a place of +education for youth; as Plato, knowing naught of Christianity, but gifted +with a soul naturally Christian, '_had selected a noisome spot for his +Academe, in order that the mind might be strengthened by the weakness of +the body._' So difficult still it is for the modern mind to interpret the +mediaeval! + +Most likely these Universities grew as a tree grows from a seed blown by +chance of the wind. It seems easy enough to understand why Paris, that +great city, should have possessed a great University; yet I surmise the +processes at Oxford and Cambridge to have been only a little less +fortuitous. The schools of Remigius and of William of Champeaux (we will +say) have given Paris a certain prestige, when Abelard, a pupil of +William's, springs into fame and draws a horde of students from all over +Europe to sit at his feet. These 'nations' of young men have to be +organised, brought under some sort of discipline, if only to make the +citizens' lives endurable: and lo! the thing is done. In like manner +Irnerius at Bologna, Vacarius at Oxford, and at Cambridge some innominate +teacher, 'of importance,' as Browning would put it, 'in his day,' +possibly set the ball rolling; or again it is suggested that a body of +scholars dissatisfied with Oxford (such dissatisfaction has been known +even in historical times) migrated hither--a laborious journey, even +nowadays--and that so + + A brighter Hellas rears its mountains + From waves serener far! + +These young or nascent bodies had a trick of breaking away after this +fashion. For reasons no longer obvious they hankered specially towards +Stamford or Northampton. Until quite recently, within living memory, all +candidates for a Mastership of Arts at Oxford had to promise never to +lecture at Stamford. A flood here in 1520, which swept away Garret Hostel +Bridge, put Cambridge in like mind and started a prophecy (to which you +may find allusion in the fourth book of "The Faerie Queene") that both +Universities would meet in the end, and kiss, at Stamford. Each in turn +broke away for Northampton, and the worthy Fuller (a Northamptonshire +man) has recorded his wonder that so eligible a spot was not finally +chosen. + +I have mentioned a flood: but the immediate causes of the migrations or +attempted migrations were not usually respectable enough to rank with any +such act of God. They started as a rule with some Town and Gown row, or +some bloody affray between scholars of the North and of the South. +Without diminishing your sense of the real fervour for learning which +drew young men from the remotest parts of Europe to these centres, but +having for my immediate object to make clear to you that, whatever these +young men sought, it was not literature, I wish you first to have in your +minds a vivid picture of what a University town was like, and what its +students were like during the greater part of the 12th and 13th +centuries; that is to say, after the first enthusiasm had died down, when +Oxford or Cambridge had organised itself into a _Studium Generale_, or +_Universitas_ (which, of course, has nothing to do with Universality, +whether of teaching or of frequenting, but simply means a Society. +_Universitas_ = all of us). + +To begin with, the town was of wood, often on fire in places; with the +alleviation of frequent winter floods, which in return, in the words of a +modern poet, would 'leave a lot of little things behind them.' It +requires but a small effort of the imagination in Cambridge to picture +the streets as narrow, dark, almost meeting overhead in gables out of +which the house slops would be discharged after casual warning down into +a central gutter. That these narrow streets were populous with students +remains certain, however much discount we allow on contemporary bills of +reckoning. And the crowd was noisy. Men have always been ingenious in +their ways of celebrating academical success. Pythagoras, for example, +sacrificed an ox on solving the theorem numbered 47 in the first book of +Euclid; and even to-day a Professor in his solitary lodge may be +encouraged to believe now and then, from certain evidences in the sky, +that the spirit of Pythagoras is not dead but translated. + +But of the mediaeval University the lawlessness, though well attested, +can scarcely be conceived. When in the streets 'nation' drew the knife +upon 'nation,' 'town' upon 'gown'; when the city bell started to answer +the clang of St. Mary's; horrible deeds were done. I pass over massacres, +tumults such as the famous one of St Scholastica's Day at Oxford, and +choose one at a decent distance (yet entirely typical) exhumed from the +annals of the University of Toulouse, in the year 1332. In that year + + Five brothers of the noble family de la Penne lived together in a + Hospicium at Toulouse as students of the Civil and Canon Law. One of + them was Provost of a Monastery, another Archdeacon of Albi, another an + Archpriest, another Canon of Toledo. A bastard son of their father, + named Peter, lived with them as squire to the Canon. On Easter Day, + Peter, with another squire of the household named Aimery Beranger and + other students, having dined at a tavern, were dancing with women, + singing, shouting, and beating 'metallic vessels and iron culinary + instruments' in the street before their masters' house. The Provost and + the Archpriest were sympathetically watching the jovial scene from a + window, until it was disturbed by the appearance of a Capitoul and his + officers, who summoned some of the party to surrender the prohibited + arms which they were wearing. '_Ben Senhor, non fassat_' was the + impudent reply. The Capitoul attempted to arrest one of the offenders; + whereupon the ecclesiastical party made a combined attack upon the + official. Aimery Beranger struck him in the face with a poignard, + cutting off his nose and part of his chin and lips, and knocking out or + breaking no less than eleven teeth. The surgeons deposed that if he + recovered (he eventually did recover) he would never be able to speak + intelligibly. One of the watch was killed outright by Peter de la + Penne. That night the murderer slept, just as if nothing had happened, + in the house of his ecclesiastical masters. The whole household, + masters and servants alike, were, however, surprised by the other + Capitouls and a crowd of 200 citizens, and led off to prison, and the + house is alleged to have been pillaged. The Archbishop's Official + demanded their surrender. In the case of the superior ecclesiastics + this, after a short delay, was granted. But Aimery, who dressed like a + layman in 'divided and striped clothes' and wore a long beard, they + refused to treat as a clerk, though it was afterwards alleged that the + tonsure was plainly discernible upon his head until it was shaved by + order of the Capitouls. Aimery was put to the torture, admitted his + crime, and was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out by + hanging, after he had had his hand cut off on the scene of the crime, + and been dragged by horses to the place of execution. The Capitouls + were then excommunicated by the Official, and the ecclesiastical side + of the quarrel was eventually transferred to the Roman Court. Before + the Parlement of Paris the University complained of the violation of + the Royal privilege exempting scholars' servants from the ordinary + tribunals. The Capitouls were imprisoned, and after long litigation + sentenced to pay enormous damages to the ruffian's family and erect a + chapel for the good of his soul. The city was condemned for a time to + the forfeiture of all its privileges. The body was cut down from the + gibbet on which it had been hanging for three years, and accorded a + solemn funeral. Four Capitouls bore the pall, and all fathers of + families were required to walk in the procession. When they came to the + Schools, the citizens solemnly begged pardon of the University, and the + cortege was joined by 3000 scholars. Finally, it cost the city 15,000 + livres tournois or more to regain their civic privileges.[3] + +The late Mr Cecil Rhodes once summarized all Fellows of Colleges as +children in matters of finance. Be that as it may, you will find nothing +more constant in history than the talent of the Universities for +extracting money or money's worth out of a riot. Time (I speak as a +parent) has scarcely blunted that faculty; and still--since where young +men congregate, noise there must be--our Universities like Wordsworth's +Happy Warrior + + turn their necessity to glorious gain. + +These were the excesses of young 'bloods,' and their servants: but with +them mingled scholars not less ferocious in their habits because almost +desperately poor. You all know, I dare say, that very poor scholars would +be granted licences to beg by the Chancellor. The sleeve of this gown in +which I address you represents the purse or pocket of a Master of Arts, +and may hint to you by its amplitude how many crusts he was prepared to +receive from the charitable. + +Now, choosing to ignore (because it has been challenged as overpainted) a +picture of penury endured by the scholars of St John's College in this +University, let me tell you two stories, one well attested, the other +fiction if you will, but both agreeable as testifying to the spirit of +youth which, ever blowing upon their sacred embers, has kept Oxford and +Cambridge perennially alive. + +My first is of three scholars so poor that they possessed but one 'cappa' +and gown between them. They took it in turns therefore, and when one went +to lecture the other two kept to their lodgings. I invite you even to +reflect on the joy of the lucky one, in a winter lecture room, dark, with +unglazed windows, as he listened and shuffled his feet for warmth in the +straw of the floor. [No one, by the way, can understand the incessant +harping of our early poets upon May-time and the return of summer until +he has pictured to himself the dark and cold discomfort of a +Middle-English winter.] These three poor scholars fed habitually on +bread, with soup and a little wine, tasting meat only on Sundays and +feasts of the Church. Yet one of them, Richard of Chichester, who lived +to become a saint, _saepe retulit quod nunquam in vita sua tam jucundam, +tam delectabilem duxerat vitam_--that never had he lived so jollily, so +delectably. + +That is youth, youth blessed by friendship. Now for my second story, +which is also of youth and friendship.-- + +Two poor scholars, who had with pains become Masters of Arts and saved +their pence to purchase the coveted garb, on the afternoon of their +admission took a country walk in it, together flaunting their new finery. +But, the day being gusty, on their return across the bridge, a puff of +wind caught the _biretta_ of one and blew it into the river. The loss was +irrecoverable, since neither could swim. The poor fellow looked at his +friend. His friend looked at him. 'Between us two,' he said, 'it is all +or naught,' and cast his own cap to float and sink with the other down +stream. + +You will never begin to understand literature until you understand +something of life. These young men, your forerunners, understood +something of life while as yet completely careless of literature. After +the impulse of Abelard and others had died down, the mass of students +betook themselves to the Universities, no doubt, for quite ordinary, +mercenary reasons. The University led to the Church, and the Church, in +England at any rate, was the door to professional life. + +Nearly all the civil servants of the Crown--I am here quoting freely--the +diplomatists, the secretaries or advisers of great nobles, the +physicians, the architects, at one time the secular law-givers, all +through the Middle Ages the then large tribe of ecclesiastical lawyers, +were ecclesiastics.... Clerkship did not necessarily involve even minor +orders. But as it was cheaper to a King or a Bishop or a temporal magnate +to reward his physician, his legal adviser, his secretary, or his agent +by a Canonry or a Rectory than by large salaries, the average student of +Paris or Oxford or Cambridge looked toward the Church as the 'main +chance' as we say, and small blame to him! He never at any rate looked +towards Literature: nor did the Universities, wise in their generation, +encourage him to do anything of the sort. + +You may realise, Gentlemen, how tardily, even in later and more +enlightened times, the study of Literature has crept its way into +official Cambridge, if you will take down your "University Calendar" and +study the list of Professorships there set forth in order of foundation. +It begins in 1502 with the Lady Margaret's Chair of Divinity, founded by +the mother of Henry VII. Five Regius Professorships follow: of Divinity, +Civil Law, Physic, Hebrew, Greek, all of 1540. So Greek comes in upon the +flush of the Renaissance; and the Calendar bravely, yet not committing +itself to a date, heads with Erasmus the noble roll which concludes (as +may it long conclude) with Henry Jackson. But Greek comes in last of the +five. Close on a hundred years elapse before the foundation of the next +chair--it is of Arabic; and more than a hundred before we arrive at +Mathematics. So Sir William Hamilton was not without historical excuse +when he declared the study of Mathematics to be no part of the business +of this University! Then follow Moral Philosophy (1683), Music (1684), +Chemistry (1702), Astronomy (1704), Anatomy (1707), Modern History and +more Arabic, with Botany (1724), Geology (1727), closely followed by Mr +Hulse's Christian Advocate, more Astronomy (1749), more Divinity (1777), +Experimental Philosophy (1783): then in the nineteenth century more Law, +more Medicine, Mineralogy, Archaeology, Political Economy, Pure +Mathematics, Comparative Anatomy, Sanskrit and yet again more Law, before +we arrive in 1869 at a Chair of Latin. Faint yet pursuing, we have yet to +pass chairs of Fine Art (belated), Experimental Physics, Applied +Mechanics, Anglo-Saxon, Animal Morphology, Surgery, Physiology, +Pathology, Ecclesiastical History, Chinese, more Divinity, Mental +Philosophy, Ancient History, Agriculture, Biology, Agricultural Botany, +more Biology, Astrophysics, and German, before arriving in 1910 at a +Chair of English Literature which by this time I have not breath to +defend. + +The enumeration has, I hope, been instructive. If it has also plunged you +in gloom, to that atmosphere (as the clock warns me) for a fortnight I +must leave you: with a promise, however, in another lecture to cheer you, +if it may be, with some broken gleams of hope. + + +[Footnote 1: "What English Poetry may still learn from Greek": a paper +read before the English Association on Nov. 17, 1911.] + +[Footnote 2: See Mr E. K. Chambers' "Mediaeval Stage", Dr Courthope's +"History of English Poetry," and Professor W. P. Ker's "The Dark Ages".] + +[Footnote 3: Rashdall, "The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages", +vol. ii, p. 684, from documents printed in Fournier's collection.] + + + + +LECTURE XI. + +ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES nglish Literature in Our +Universities (II) + +Wednesday, December 3 + + +We broke off, Gentlemen, upon the somewhat painful conclusion that our +Universities were not founded for the study of literature, and tardily +admitted it. The dates of our three literary chairs in Cambridge--I speak +of our Western literature only, and omit Arabic, Sanskrit, and +Chinese--clenched that conclusion for us. Greek in 1540, Latin not until +1869, English but three years ago--from the lesson of these intervals +there is no getting away. + +Now I do not propose to dwell on the Renaissance and how Greek came in: +for a number of writers in our time have been busy with the Renaissance, +and have--I was going to say 'over-written the subject,' but no--it is +better to say that they have focussed the period so as to distort the +general perspective at the cost of other periods which have earned less +attention; the twelfth century, for example. At any rate their efforts, +with the amount they claim of your reading, absolve me from doing more +than remind you that the Renaissance brought in the study of Greek, and +Greek necessarily brought in the study of literature: since no man can +read what the Greeks wrote and not have his eyes unsealed to what I have +called a norm of human expression; a guide to conduct, a standard to +correct our efforts, whether in poetry, or in philosophy, or in art. For +the rest, I need only quote to you Gibbon's magnificent saying, that the +Greek language gave a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the +abstractions of metaphysics. [May I add, in parenthesis, that, while no +believer in compulsory Greek, holding, indeed, that you can hardly +reconcile learning with compulsion, and still more hardly force them to +be compatibles, I subscribe with all my heart to Bagehot's shrewd saying, +'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.'] + +But, assuming you to know something of the Renaissance, and how it +brought Greek into Oxford and Cambridge, I find that in the course of the +argument two things fall to be said, and both to be said with some +emphasis. + +In the first place, without officially acknowledging their native tongue +or its literature, our two Universities had no sooner acquired Greek than +their members became immensely interested in English. Take, for one +witness out of many, Gabriel Harvey, Fellow of Pembroke Hall. His letters +to Edmund Spenser have been preserved, as you know. Now Gabriel Harvey +was a man whom few will praise, and very few could have loved. Few will +quarrel with Dr Courthope's description of him as 'a person of +considerable intellectual force, but intolerably arrogant and conceited, +and with a taste vitiated by all the affectations of Italian humanism,' +or deny that 'his tone in his published correspondence with Spenser is +that of an intellectual bully.'[1] None will refuse him the title of fool +for attempting to mislead Spenser into writing hexameters. But all you +can urge against Gabriel Harvey, on this count or that or the other, but +accumulates proof that this donnish man was all the while giving +thought--giving even ferocious thought--to the business of making +an English Literature. + +Let me adduce more pleasing evidence. At or about Christmas, in the year +1597, there was enacted here in Cambridge, in the hall of St John's +College, a play called "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus," a skittish work, +having for subject the 'discontent of scholars'; the misery attending +those who, unsupported by a private purse, would follow after Apollo and +the Nine. No one knows the author's name: but he had a wit which has kept +something of its salt to this day, and in Christmas, 1597, it took +Cambridge by storm. The public demanded a sequel, and "The Return from +Parnassus" made its appearance on the following Christmas (again in St +John's College hall); to be followed by a "Second Part of the Return from +Parnassus," the author's overflow of wit, three years later. Of the +popularity of the first and second plays--"The Pilgrimage" and "The +Return, Part I"--we have good evidence in the prologue to "The Return, +Part II," where the author makes Momus say, before an audience which knew +the truth: + + "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus" and "The Returne from Parnassus" have + stood the honest Stagekeepers in many a crowne's expense for linckes + and vizards: purchased many a Sophister a knocke with a clubbe: + hindred the butler's box, and emptied the Colledge barrells; and now, + unlesse you have heard the former, you may returne home as wise as you + came: for this last is the last part of The Returne from Parnassus; + that is, the last time that the Author's wit will turne upon the toe + in this vaine. + +In other words, these plays had set everybody in Cambridge agog, had been +acted by link-light, had led to brawls--either between literary factions +or through offensive personal allusions to which we have lost all +clue--had swept into the box-office much money usually spent on Christmas +gambling, and had set up an inappeasable thirst for College ale. The +point for us is that (in 1597-1601) they abound in topical allusions to +the London theatres: that Shakespeare is obviously just as much a concern +to these young men of Cambridge as Mr Shaw (say) is to our young men +to-day, and an allusion to him is dropped in confidence that it will be +aptly taken. For instance, one of the characters, Gullio, will have some +love-verses recited to him 'in two or three diverse veins, in Chaucer's, +Gower's and Spenser's and Mr Shakespeare's.' Having listened to Chaucer, +he cries, 'Tush! Chaucer is a foole'; but coming to some lines of Mr +Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," he cries, 'Ey, marry, Sir! these have +some life in them! Let this duncified world esteeme of Spenser and +Chaucer, I'le worship sweet Mr Shakespeare, and to honoure him I will lay +his "Venus and Adonis" under my pillowe.' For another allusion--'Few of +the University pen plaies well,' says the actor Kempe in Part II of the +"Returne"; 'they smell too much of that writer _Ovid_ and that writer +_Metamorphosis_, and talke too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here's +our fellow _Shakespeare_ puts them all downe, ay and _Ben Jonson_, too.' +Here you have Cambridge assembling at Christmas-tide to laugh at +well-understood hits upon the theatrical taste of London. Here you have, +to make Cambridge laugh, three farcical quasi-Aristophanic plays all +hinging on the tribulations of scholars who depart to pursue literature +for a livelihood. For a piece of definite corroborative evidence you have +a statute of Queens' College (quoted by Mr Bass Mullinger) which directs +that 'any student refusing to take part in the acting of a comedy or +tragedy in the College and absenting himself from the performance, +contrary to the injunctions of the President, shall be expelled from the +Society'--which seems drastic. And on top of all this, you have evidence +enough and to spare of the part played in Elizabethan drama by the +'University Wits.' Why, Marlowe (of Corpus Christi) may be held to have +invented its form--blank verse; Ben Jonson (of St John's) to have carried +it on past its meridian and through its decline, into the masque. Both +Universities claim Lyly and Chapman. Marston, Peel, Massinger, hailed +from Oxford. But Greene and Nashe were of Cambridge--of St John's both, +and Day of Caius. They sought to London, and there (for tragic truth +underlay that Christmas comedy of "The Pilgrimage of Parnassus") many of +them came to bitter ends: but before reaching their sordid personal +ruin--and let the deaths of Marlowe and Greene be remembered--they built +the Elizabethan drama, as some of them lived to add its last ornaments. +We know what, meanwhile, Spenser had done. I think it scarcely needs +further proof that Cambridge, towards the end of the sixteenth century, +was fermenting with a desire to read, criticise, yes and write, English +literature, albeit officially the University recognised no such thing. + +There remains a second question--How happened it that Cambridge, after +admitting Greek, took more than three hundred years to establish a Chair +of Latin, and that a Chair of English is, so to speak, a mushroom (call +it not toadstool!) of yesterday? Why simply enough. Latin continued to be +the working language of Science. In Latin Bacon naturally composed his +"Novum Organum" and indeed almost all his scientific and philosophical +work, although a central figure of his age among English prose-writers. +In Latin, in the eighteenth century, Newton wrote his "Principia": and I +suppose that of no two books written by Englishmen before the close of +that century, or indeed before Darwin's "Origin of Species," can it be +less extravagantly said than of the "Novum Organum" and the "Principia" +that they shook the world. Now, without forgetting our Classical Tripos +(founded in 1822), as without forgetting the great names of Bentley and +Porson, we may observe it as generally true, that whenever and wherever +large numbers of scientific men use a particular language as their +working instrument, they have a disposition to look askance on its +refinements; to be jealous of its literary professors; to accuse these of +treating as an end in itself what is properly a means. Like the Denver +editor I quoted to you in a previous lecture, these scientific workers +want to 'get there' in a hurry, forgetting that (to use another +Americanism) the sharper the chisel the more ice it is likely to cut. You +may observe this disposition--this suspicion of 'literature,' this thinly +veiled contempt--in many a scientific man to-day; though because his +language has changed from Latin to English, it is English he now chooses +to cheapen. Well, we cannot help it, perhaps. Perhaps he cannot help it. +It is human nature. We must go on persuading him, not losing our tempers. + +None the less we should not shut our eyes to the fact that while a +language is the working instrument of scientific men there will always be +a number of them to decry any study of it for its beauty, and even any +study of it for the sake of accuracy--its beauty and its accuracy being +indeed scarcely distinguishable. + +I fear, Gentlemen, you may go on from this to the dreadful conclusion +that the date 1869, when Cambridge at length came to possess a Chair of +Latin, marks definitely the hour at which Latin closed its eyes and +became a dead language; that you may proceed to a yet more dreadful +application of this to the Chair of English founded in 1910: and that +henceforward (to misquote what Mr Max Beerbohm once wickedly said of +Walter Pater) you will be apt to regard Professor Housman and me as two +widowers engaged, while the undertaker waits, in composing the features +of our beloveds. + +But (to speak seriously) that is what I stand here to controvert: and I +derive no small encouragement when--as has more than once happened--A, a +scientific man, comes to me and complains that he for his part cannot +understand B, another scientific man, 'because the fellow can't express +himself.' And the need to study precision in writing has grown far more +instant since men of science have abandoned the 'universal language' and +taken to writing in their own tongues. Let us, while not on the whole +regretting the change, at least recognise some dangers, some possible +disadvantages. I will confine myself to English, considered as a +substitute for Latin. In Latin you have a language which may be thin in +its vocabulary and inelastic for modern use; but a language which at all +events compels a man to clear his thought and communicate it to other men +precisely. + + Thoughts hardly to be packed + Into the narrow act + +--may be all impossible of compression into the Latin speech. In English, +on the other hand, you have a language which by its very copiousness and +elasticity tempts you to believe that you can do without packing, without +compression, arrangement, order; that, with the Denver editor, all you +need is to 'get there'--though it be with all your intellectual +belongings in a jumble, overflowing the portmanteau. Rather I preach to +you that having proudly inherited English with its _copia fandi_, you +should keep your estate in order by constantly applying to it that _jus +et norma loquendi_ of which, if you seek to the great models, you will +likewise find yourselves inheritors. + +'But,' it is sometimes urged, 'why not leave this new study of English to +the younger Universities now being set up all over the country?' 'Ours is +an age of specialising. Let these newcomers have something--what better +than English?--to specialise upon.' + +I might respond by asking if the fame of Cambridge would stand where it +stands to-day had she followed a like counsel concerning other studies +and, resting upon Mathematics, given over this or that branch of Natural +Science to be grasped by new hands. What of Electricity, for example? Or +what of Physiology? Yes, and among the unnatural sciences, what of +Political Economy? But I will use a more philosophical argument. + +Some years ago I happened on a collection of Bulgarian proverbs of which +my memory retains but two, yet each an abiding joy. In a lecture on +English Literature in our Universities you will certainly not miss to +apply the first, which runs, 'Many an ass has entered Jerusalem.' + +The application of the second may elude you for a moment. It voices the +impatience of an honest Bulgar who has been worried overmuch to subscribe +to what, in this England of ours, we call Church Purposes; and it runs, +'All these two-penny saints will be the ruin of the Church.' + +Now far be it from me to apply the term 'two-penny saint' to any existing +University. To avoid the accusation I hereby solemnly declare my deep +conviction that every single University at this moment in England, +Scotland, Wales or Ireland has reasons--strong in all, in some +overwhelmingly strong--for its existence. That is plainly said, I hope? +Yet I do maintain that if we go on multiplying Universities we shall not +increase the joy; that the reign of two-penny saints lies not far off +and will soon lie within measurable distance; and that it will be +a pestilent reign. As we saw in out last lecture the word +'University'--_Universitas_--had, in its origin, nothing to do with +Universality: it meant no more than a Society, organised (as it +happened) to promote learning. But words, like institutions, often rise +above their beginnings, and in time acquire a proud secondary +connotation. For an instance let me give you the beautiful Wykehamist +motto _Manners Makyeth Man_, wherein 'manners' originally meant no more +than 'morals.' So there has grown around our two great Universities of +Oxford and Cambridge a connotation (secondary, if you will, but valuable +above price) of universality; of standing like great beacons of light, +to attract the young wings of all who would seek learning for their +sustenance. Thousands have singed, thousands have burned themselves, no +doubt: but what thousands of thousands have caught the sacred fire into +their souls as they passed through and passed out, to carry it, to drop +it, still as from wings, upon waste places of the world! Think of +country vicarages, of Australian or Himalayan outposts, where men have +nourished out lives of duty upon the fire of three transient, priceless +years. Think of the generations of children to whom their fathers' +lives, prosaic enough, could always be re-illumined if someone let fall +the word 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge,' so that they themselves came to +surmise an aura about the name as of a land very far off; and then say +if the ineffable spell of those two words do not lie somewhere in the +conflux of generous youth with its rivalries and clash of minds, ere it +disperses, generation after generation, to the duller business of life. +Would you have your mother University, Gentlemen, undecorated by some +true study of your mother-English? + +I think not, having been there, and known such thoughts as you will carry +away, and having been against expectation called back to report them. + + And sometimes I remember days of old + When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek, + And all the world and I seem'd far less cold, + And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold, + And hope was strong, and life itself not weak. + +My purpose here (and I cannot too often recur to it) is to wean your +minds from hankering after false Germanic standards and persuade you, or +at least point out to you, in what direction that true study lies if you +are men enough to take up your inheritance and believe in it as a glory +to be improved. + +Neither Oxford nor Cambridge nor any University on earth can study +English Literature truthfully or worthily, or even at all profitably, +unless by studying it in the category for which Heaven, or Nature (call +the ultimate cause what you will), intended it; or, to put the assertion +more concretely, in any other category than that for which the particular +author--be his name Chaucer or Chesterton, Shakespeare or Shaw--designed +it; as neither can Oxford nor Cambridge nor any University study English +Literature, to understand it, unless by bracing itself to consider a +living art. Origins, roots, all the gropings towards light--let these be +granted as accessories; let those who search in them be granted all +honour, all respect. It is only when they preach or teach these +preliminaries, these accessories, to be more important than Literature +itself--it is only when they, owing all their excuse in life to the +established daylight, din upon us that the precedent darkness claims +precedence in honour, that one is driven to utter upon them this +dialogue, in monosyllables: + + _And God said, 'Let there be light': and there was light. + 'Oh, thank you, Sir,' said the Bat and the Owl; 'then we are off!'_ + +I grant you, Gentlemen, that there must always inhere a difficulty in +correlating for the purposes of a Tripos a study of Literature itself +with a study of these accessories; the thing itself being _naturally_ so +much more difficult: being so difficult indeed that (to take literary +criticism alone and leave for a moment the actual practice of writing +out of the question) though some of the first intellects in the +world--Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, Boileau, Dryden, Lessing, Goethe, +Coleridge, Sainte-Beuve--have broken into parcels of that territory, the +mass of it remains unexplored, and nobody as yet has found courage to +reduce the reports of these great explorers to any system; so that a very +eminent person indeed found it easy to write to me the other day, 'The +principles of Criticism? What are they? Who made them?' To this I could +only answer that I did not know Who made them; but that Aristotle, +Dryden, Lessing, had, as it was credibly reported, discovered five or, it +might be, six. And this difficulty of appraising literature absolutely +inheres in your study of it from the beginning. No one can have set a +General Paper on Literature and examined on it, setting it and marking +the written answers, alongside of papers about language, inflexions and +the rest, without having borne in upon him that _here_ the student finds +his difficulty. While in a paper set about inflexions, etc., a pupil with +a moderately retentive memory will easily obtain sixty or seventy per +cent. of the total marks, in a paper on the book or play considered +critically an examiner, even after setting his paper with a view to some +certain inferiority of average, has to be lenient before he can award +fifty, forty, or even thirty per cent. of the total. + +You will find a somewhat illuminating passage--illuminating, that is, if +you choose to interpret and apply it to our subject--in Lucian's "True +History," where the veracious traveller, who tells the tale, affirms that +he visited Hades among other places, and had some conversation with +Homer, among its many inhabitants-- + + Before many days had passed, I accosted the poet Homer, when we were + both disengaged, and asked him, among other things, where he came + from; it was still a burning question with us, I explained. He said he + was aware that some derived him from Chios, others from Smyrna, and + others again from Colophon; but in fact he was a Babylonian, generally + known not as Homer but as Tigranes; but when later in life he was + given as a homer or hostage to the Greeks, that name clung to him. + Another of my questions was about the so-called spurious books; had he + written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew + what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their + lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried + him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of + Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into his + head that way. + +Even so diverse are the questions that may be asked concerning any great +work of art. But to discover its full intent is always the most difficult +task of all. That task, however, and nothing less difficult, will always +be the one worthiest of a great University. + +On that, and on that alone, Gentlemen, do I base all claims for our +School of English Literature. And yet in conclusion I will ask you, +reminding yourselves how fortunate is your lot in Cambridge, to think of +fellow-Englishmen far less fortunate. + +Years ago I took some pains to examine the examination papers set by a +renowned Examining Body and I found this--'I humbly solicit' (to use a +phrase of Lucian's) 'my hearers' incredulity'--that in a paper set upon +three Acts of "Hamlet"--three Acts of "Hamlet"!--the first question +started with 'G.tt. p..cha' 'Al..g.tor' and invited the candidate to fill +in the missing letters correctly. Now I was morally certain that the +words 'gutta-percha' and 'alligator' did not occur in the first three +Acts of "Hamlet"; but having carefully re-read them I invited this +examining body to explain itself. The answer I got was that, to +understand Shakespeare, a student must first understand the English +Language! Some of you on leaving Cambridge will go out--a company of +Christian folk dispersed throughout the world--to tell English children +of English Literature. Such are the pedagogic fetters you will have to +knock off their young minds before they can stand and walk. + +Gentlemen, on a day early in this term I sought the mound which is the +old Castle of Cambridge. Access to it, as perhaps you know, lies through +the precincts of the County Prison. An iron railing encloses the mound, +having a small gate, for the key of which a notice-board advised me to +ring the prison bell. I rang. A very courteous gaoler answered the bell +and opened the gate, which stands just against his wicket. I thanked him, +but could not forbear asking 'Why do they keep this gate closed?' 'I +don't know, sir,' he answered, 'but I suppose if they didn't the children +might get in and play.' + +So with his answer I went up the hill and from the top saw Cambridge +spread at my feet; Magdalene below me, and the bridge which--poor product +as it is of the municipal taste--has given its name to so many bridges +all over the world; the river on its long ambit to Chesterton; the tower +of St John's, and beyond it the unpretentious but more beautiful tower of +Jesus College. To my right the magnificent chine of King's College Chapel +made its own horizon above the yellowing elms. I looked down on the +streets--the narrow streets--the very streets which, a fortnight ago, I +tried to people for you with that mediaeval throng which has passed as we +shall pass. Still in my ear the gaoler's answer repeated itself--_'I +suppose, if they didn't keep it locked, the children might get in and +play'_: and a broken echo seemed to take it up, in words that for a while +had no more coherence than the scattered jangle of bells in the town +below. But as I turned to leave, they chimed into an articulate sentence +and the voice was the voice of Francis Bacon--_Regnum Scientiae ut regnum +Coeli non nisi sub persona infantis intratur.--Into the Kingdom of +Knowledge, as into the Kingdom of Heaven, whoso would enter must become +as a little child._ + + +[Footnote 1: "Cambridge History of English Literature", vol. iii, p. 213.] + + + + +LECTURE XII. + +ON STYLE + +Wednesday, January 28, 1914 + + +Should Providence, Gentlemen, destine any one of you to write books for +his living, he will find experimentally true what I here promise him, +that few pleasures sooner cloy than reading what the reviewers say. This +promise I hand on with the better confidence since it was endorsed for me +once in conversation by that eminently good man the late Henry Sidgwick; +who added, however, 'Perhaps I ought to make a single exception. There +was a critic who called one of my books "epoch-making." Being anonymous, +he would have been hard to find and thank, perhaps; but I ought to have +made the effort.' + +May I follow up this experience of his with one of my own, as a preface +or brief apology for this lecture? Short-lived as is the author's joy in +his critics, far-spent as may be his hope of fame, mournful his consent +with Sir Thomas Browne that 'there is nothing immortal but immortality,' +he cannot hide from certain sanguine men of business, who in England call +themselves 'Press-Cutting Agencies,' in America 'Press-Clipping Bureaux,' +and, as each successive child of his invention comes to birth, +unbecomingly presume in him an almost virginal trepidation. 'Your book,' +they write falsely, 'is exciting much comment. May we collect and send +you notices of it appearing in the World's Press? We submit a specimen +cutting with our terms; and are, dear Sir,' etc. + +Now, although steadily unresponsive to this wile, I am sometimes guilty +of taking the enclosed specimen review and thrusting it for preservation +among the scarcely less deciduous leaves of the book it was written to +appraise. So it happened that having this vacation, to dust--not to +read--a line of obsolete or obsolescent works on a shelf, I happened on a +review signed by no smaller a man than Mr Gilbert Chesterton and +informing the world that the author of my obsolete book was full of good +stories as a kindly uncle, but had a careless or impatient way of +stopping short and leaving his readers to guess what they most wanted to +know: that, reaching the last chapter, or what he chose to make the last +chapter, instead of winding up and telling 'how everybody lived ever +after,' he (so to speak) slid you off his avuncular knee with a blessing +and the remark that nine o'clock was striking and all good children +should be in their beds. + +That criticism has haunted me during the vacation. Looking back on a +course of lectures which I deemed to be accomplished; correcting them in +print; revising them with all the nervousness of a beginner; I have +seemed to hear you complain--'He has exhorted us to write accurately, +appropriately; to eschew Jargon; to be bold and essay Verse. He has +insisted that Literature is a living art, to be practised. But just what +we most needed he has not told. At the final doorway to the secret he +turned his back and left us. Accuracy, propriety, perspicuity--these we +may achieve. But where has he helped us to write with beauty, with charm, +with distinction? Where has he given us rules for what is called _Style_ +in short?--having attained which an author may count himself set up in +business.' + +Thus, Gentlemen, with my mind's ear I heard you reproaching me. I beg you +to accept what follows for my apology. + +To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things +which Style is _not_; which have little or nothing to do with Style, +though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is +not--can never be--extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian +lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he +sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged +with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of +jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, +you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a +practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an +impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it +--whole-heartedly--and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. +_Murder your darlings._' + +But let me plead further that you have not been left altogether without +clue to the secret of what Style is. That you must master the secret for +yourselves lay implicit in our bargain, and you were never promised that +a writer's training would be easy. Yet a clue was certainly put in your +hands when, having insisted that Literature is a living art, I added that +therefore it must be personal and of its essence personal. + +This goes very deep: it conditions all our criticism of art. Yet it +conceals no mystery. You may see its meaning most easily and clearly, +perhaps, by contrasting Science and Art at their two extremes--say Pure +Mathematics with Acting. Science as a rule deals with things, Art with +man's thought and emotion about things. In Pure Mathematics things are +rarefied into ideas, numbers, concepts, but still farther and farther +away from the individual man. Two and two make four, and fourpence is not +ninepence (or at any rate four is not nine) whether Alcibiades or Cleon +keep the tally. In Acting on the other hand almost everything depends on +personal interpretation--on the gesture, the walk, the gaze, the tone of +a Siddons, the _ruse_ smile of a Coquelin, the exquisite, vibrant +intonation of a Bernhardt. 'English Art?' exclaimed Whistler, 'there is +no such thing! Art is art and mathematics is mathematics.' Whistler +erred. Precisely because Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics and a +Science, Art being Art can be English or French; and, more than this, +must be the personal expression of an Englishman or a Frenchman, as a +'Constable' differs from a 'Corot' and a 'Whistler' from both. Surely I +need not labour this. But what is true of the extremes of Art and Science +is true also, though sometimes less recognisably true, of the mean: and +where they meet and seem to conflict (as in History) the impact is that +of the personal or individual mind upon universal truth, and the question +becomes whether what happened in the Sicilian Expedition, or at the trial +of Charles I, can be set forth naked as an alegebraical sum, serene in +its certainty, indifferent to opinion, uncoloured in the telling as in +the hearing by sympathy or dislike, by passion or by character. I doubt, +while we should strive in history as in all things to be fair, if history +can be written in that colourless way, to interest men in human doings. I +am sure that nothing which lies further towards imaginative, creative, +Art can be written in that way. + +It follows then that Literature, being by its nature personal, must be by +its nature almost infinitely various. 'Two persons cannot be the authors +of the sounds which strike our ear; and as they cannot be speaking one +and the same speech, neither can they be writing one and the same lecture +or discourse.' _Quot homines tot sententiae._ You may translate that, if +you will, 'Every man of us constructs his sentence differently'; and if +there be indeed any quarrel between Literature and Science (as I never +can see why there should be), I for one will readily grant Science all +her cold superiority, her ease in Sion with universal facts, so it be +mine to serve among the multifarious race who have to adjust, as best +they may, Science's cold conclusions (and much else) to the brotherly +give-and-take of human life. + +_Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas..._ Is it possible, +Gentlemen, that you can have read one, two, three or more of the +acknowledged masterpieces of literature without having it borne in on you +that they are great because they are alive, and traffic not with cold +celestial certainties, but with men's hopes, aspirations, doubts, loves, +hates, breakings of the heart; the glory and vanity of human endeavour, +the transience of beauty, the capricious uncertain lease on which you and +I hold life, the dark coast to which we inevitably steer; all that amuses +or vexes, all that gladdens, saddens, maddens us men and women on this +brief and mutable traject which yet must be home for a while, the +anchorage of our hearts? For an instance:-- + + Here lies a most beautiful lady, + Light of step and heart was she: + I think she was the most beautiful lady + That ever was in the West Country. + But beauty vanishes, beauty passes, + However rare, rare it be; + And when I crumble who shall remember + That lady of the West Country? + + (Walter de la Mare.) + +Or take a critic--a literary critic--such as Samuel Johnson, of whom we +are used to think as of a man artificial in phrase and pedantic in +judgment. He lives, and why? Because, if you test his criticism, he never +saw literature but as a part of life, nor would allow in literature what +was false to life, as he saw it. He could be wrong-headed, perverse; +could damn Milton because he hated Milton's politics; on any question of +passion or prejudice could make injustice his daily food. But he could +not, even in a friend's epitaph, let pass a phrase (however well turned) +which struck him as empty of life or false to it. All Boswell testifies +to this: and this is why Samuel Johnson survives. + +Now let me carry this contention--that all Literature is personal and +therefore various--into a field much exploited by the pedant, and fenced +about with many notice-boards and public warnings. _'Neologisms not +allowed here,' 'All persons using slang, or trespassing in pursuit of +originality....'_ + +Well, I answer these notice-boards by saying that, literature being +personal, and men various--and even the "Oxford English Dictionary" being +no Canonical book--man's use or defiance of the dictionary depends for +its justification on nothing but his success: adding that, since it takes +all kinds to make a world, or a literature, his success will probably +depend on the occasion. A few months ago I found myself seated at a +bump-supper next to a cheerful youth who, towards the close, suggested +thoughtfully, as I arose to make a speech, that, the bonfire (which of +course he called the 'bonner') being due at nine-thirty o'clock, there +was little more than bare time left for 'langers and godders.' It cost +me, who think slowly, some seconds to interpret that by 'langers' he +meant 'Auld Lang Syne' and by 'godders' 'God Save the King.' I thought at +the time, and still think, and will maintain against any schoolmaster, +that the neologisms of my young neighbour, though not to be recommended +for essays or sermons, did admirably suit the time, place, and occasion. + +Seeing that in human discourse, infinitely varied as it is, so much must +ever depend on _who_ speaks, and to _whom_, in what mood and upon what +occasion; and seeing that Literature must needs take account of all +manner of writers, audiences, moods, occasions; I hold it a sin against +the light to put up a warning against any word that comes to us in the +fair way of use and wont (as 'wire,' for instance, for a telegram), even +as surely as we should warn off hybrids or deliberately pedantic +impostors, such as 'antibody' and 'picture-drome'; and that, generally, +it is better to err on the side of liberty than on the side of the +censor: since by the manumitting of new words we infuse new blood into a +tongue of which (or we have learnt nothing from Shakespeare's audacity) +our first pride should be that it is flexible, alive, capable of +responding to new demands of man's untiring quest after knowledge and +experience. Not because it was an ugly thing did I denounce Jargon to +you, the other day: but because it was a dead thing, leading no-whither, +meaning naught. There is _wickedness_ in human speech, sometimes. You +will detect it all the better for having ruled out what is _naughty_. + +Let us err, then, if we err, on the side of liberty. I came, the other +day, upon this passage in Mr Frank Harris's study of 'The Man +Shakespeare':-- + + In the last hundred years the language of Moliere has grown fourfold; + the slang of the studios and the gutter and the laboratory, of the + engineering school and the dissecting table, has been ransacked for + special terms to enrich and strengthen the language in order that it + may deal easily with the new thoughts. French is now a superb + instrument, while English is positively poorer than it was in the time + of Shakespeare, thanks to the prudery of our illiterate middle + class.[1] + +Well, let us not lose our heads over this, any more than over other +prophecies of our national decadence. The "Oxford English Dictionary" has +not yet unfolded the last of its coils, which yet are ample enough to +enfold us in seven words for every three an active man can grapple with. +Yet the warning has point, and a particular point, for those who aspire +to write poetry: as Francis Thompson has noted in his Essay on Shelley:-- + + Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word. + But practically, the habit of excessive care in word-selection + frequently results in loss of spontaneity; and, still worse, the habit + of always taking the best word too easily becomes the habit of always + taking the most ornate word, the word most removed from ordinary + speech. In consequence of this, poetic diction has become latterly a + kaleidoscope, and one's chief curiosity is as to the precise + combinations into which the pieces will be shifted. There is, in fact, + a certain band of words, the Praetorian cohorts of Poetry, whose + prescriptive aid is invoked by every aspirant to the poetic purple.... + Against these it is time some banner should be raised.... It is at any + rate curious to note that the literary revolution against the despotic + diction of Pope seems issuing, like political revolutions, in a + despotism of his own making; + +and he adds a note that this is the more surprising to him because so +many Victorian poets were prose-writers as well. + + Now, according to our theory, the practice of prose should maintain + fresh and comprehensive a poet's diction, should save him from falling + into the hands of an exclusive coterie of poetic words. It should + react upon his metrical vocabulary to its beneficial expansion, by + taking him outside his aristocratic circle of language, and keeping + him in touch with the great commonalty, the proletariat of speech. For + it is with words as with men: constant intermarriage within the limits + of a patrician clan begets effete refinement; and to reinvigorate the + stock, its veins must be replenished from hardy plebeian blood. + +In diction, then, let us acquire all the store we can, rejecting no coin +for its minting but only if its metal be base. So shall we bring out of +our treasuries new things and old. + +Diction, however, is but a part of Style, and perhaps not the most +important part. So I revert to the larger question, 'What is Style? What +its [Greek: to ti en einai], its essence, the law of its being?' + +Now, as I sat down to write this lecture, memory evoked a scene and with +the scene a chance word of boyish slang, both of which may seem to you +irrelevant until, or unless, I can make you feel how they hold for me the +heart of the matter. + +I once happened to be standing in a corner of a ball-room when there +entered the most beautiful girl these eyes have ever seen or now--since +they grow dull--ever will see. It was, I believe, her first ball, and by +some freak or in some premonition she wore black: and not pearls--which, +I am told, maidens are wont to wear on these occasions--but one crescent +of diamonds in her black hair. _Et vera incessu patuit dea._ Here, I say, +was absolute beauty. It startled. + + I think she was the most beautiful lady + That ever was in the West Country. + But beauty vanishes, beauty passes.... + +She died a year or two later. She may have been too beautiful to live +long. I have a thought that she may also have been too good. + +For I saw her with the crowd about her: I saw led up and presented among +others the man who was to be, for a few months, her husband: and then, as +the men bowed, pencilling on their programmes, over their shoulders I saw +her eyes travel to an awkward young naval cadet (Do you remember Crossjay +in Meredith's "The Egoist"? It was just such a boy) who sat abashed and +glowering sulkily beside me on the far bench. Promptly with a laugh, she +advanced, claimed him, and swept him off into the first waltz. + +When it was over he came back, a trifle flushed, and I felicitated him; +my remark (which I forget) being no doubt 'just the sort of banality, you +know, one does come out with'--as maybe that the British Navy kept its +old knack of cutting out. But he looked at me almost in tears and +blurted, 'It isn't her beauty, sir. You saw? It's--it's--my God, it's the +_style_!' + +Now you may think that a somewhat cheap, or at any rate inadequate, cry +of the heart in my young seaman; as you may think it inadequate in me, +and moreover a trifle capricious, to assure you (as I do) that the first +and last secret of a good Style consists in thinking with the heart as +well as with the head. + +But let us philosophise a little. You have been told, I daresay often +enough, that the business of writing demands _two_--the author and the +reader. Add to this what is equally obvious, that the obligation of +courtesy rests first with the author, who invites the seance, and +commonly charges for it. What follows, but that in speaking or writing we +have an obligation to put ourselves into the hearer's or reader's place? +It is _his_ comfort, _his_ convenience, we have to consult. To _express_ +ourselves is a very small part of the business: very small and almost +unimportant as compared with _impressing_ ourselves: the aim of the whole +process being to persuade. + +All reading demands an effort. The energy, the good-will which a reader +brings to the book is, and must be, partly expended in the labour of +reading, marking, learning, inwardly digesting what the author means. The +more difficulties, then, we authors obtrude on him by obscure or careless +writing, the more we blunt the edge of his attention: so that if only in +our own interest--though I had rather keep it on the ground of +courtesy--we should study to anticipate his comfort. + +But let me go a little deeper. You all know that a great part of +Lessing's argument in his "Laokoeon", on the essentials of Literature as +opposed to Pictorial Art or Sculpture, depends on this--that in Pictorial +Art or in Sculpture the eye sees, the mind apprehends, the whole in a +moment of time, with the correspondent disadvantage that this moment of +time is fixed and stationary; whereas in writing, whether in prose or in +verse, we can only produce our effect by a series of successive small +impressions, dripping our meaning (so to speak) into the reader's +mind--with the correspondent advantage, in point of vivacity, that our +picture keeps moving all the while. Now obviously this throws a greater +strain on his patience whom we address. Man at the best is a +narrow-mouthed bottle. Through the conduit of speech he can utter--as +you, my hearers, can receive--only one word at a time. In writing (as my +old friend Professor Minto used to say) you are as a commander filing out +his battalion through a narrow gate that allows only one man at a time to +pass; and your reader, as he receives the troops, has to re-form and +reconstruct them. No matter how large or how involved the subject, it can +be communicated only in that way. You see, then, what an obligation we +owe to him of order and arrangement; and why, apart from felicities and +curiosities of diction, the old rhetoricians laid such stress upon order +and arrangement as duties we owe to those who honour us with their +attention. '_La clarte,_' says a French writer, '_est la politesse._' +[Greek: Charisi kai sapheneia thue], recommends Lucian. Pay your +sacrifice to the Graces, and to [Greek: sapheneia]--Clarity--first among +the Graces. + +What am I urging? 'That Style in writing is much the same thing as good +manners in other human intercourse?' Well, and why not? At all events we +have reached a point where Buffon's often-quoted saying that 'Style is +the man himself' touches and coincides with William of Wykeham's old +motto that 'Manners makyth Man': and before you condemn my doctrine as +inadequate listen to this from Coventry Patmore, still bearing in mind +that a writer's main object is to _impress_ his thought or vision upon +his hearer. + +'There is nothing comparable _for moral force_ to the charm of truly +noble manners....' + +I grant you, to be sure, that the claim to possess a Style must be +conceded to many writers--Carlyle is one--who take no care to put +listeners at their ease, but rely rather on native force of genius to +shock and astound. Nor will I grudge them your admiration. But I do say +that, as more and more you grow to value truth and the modest grace of +truth, it is less and less to such writers that you will turn: and I say +even more confidently that the qualities of Style we allow them are not +the qualities we should seek as a norm, for they one and all offend +against Art's true maxim of avoiding excess. + +And this brings me to the two great _paradoxes_ of Style. For the first +(1),--although Style is so curiously personal and individual, and +although men are so variously built that no two in the world carry away +the same impressions from a show, there is always a norm somewhere; in +literature and art, as in morality. Yes, even in man's most terrific, +most potent inventions--when, for example, in "Hamlet" or in "Lear" +Shakespeare seems to be breaking up the solid earth under our feet--there +is always some point and standard of sanity--a Kent or an Horatio--to +which all enormities and passionate errors may be referred; to which the +agitated mind of the spectator settles back as upon its centre of +gravity, its pivot of repose. + +(2) The second paradox, though it is equally true, you may find a little +subtler. Yet it but applies to Art the simple truth of the Gospel, that +he who would save his soul must first lose it. Though personality +pervades Style and cannot be escaped, the first sin against Style as +against good Manners is to obtrude or exploit personality. The very +greatest work in Literature--the "Iliad," the "Odyssey," the +"Purgatorio," "The Tempest," "Paradise Lost," the "Republic," "Don +Quixote"--is all + + Seraphically free + From taint of personality. + +And Flaubert, that gladiator among artists, held that, at its highest, +literary art could be carried into pure science. 'I believe,' said he, +'that great art is scientific and impersonal. You should by an +intellectual effort transport yourself into characters, not draw _them_ +into _yourself_. That at least is the method.' On the other hand, says +Goethe, 'We should endeavour to use words that correspond as closely as +possible with what we feel, see, think, imagine, experience, and reason. +It is an endeavour we cannot evade and must daily renew.' I call +Flaubert's the better counsel, even though I have spent a part of this +lecture in attempting to prove it impossible. It at least is noble, +encouraging us to what is difficult. The shrewder Goethe encourages us to +exploit ourselves to the top of our bent. I think Flaubert would have hit +the mark if for 'impersonal' he had substituted 'disinterested.' + +For--believe me, Gentlemen--so far as Handel stands above Chopin, as +Velasquez above Greuze, even so far stand the great masculine objective +writers above all who appeal to you by parade of personality or private +sentiment. + +Mention of these great masculine 'objective' writers brings me to my last +word: which is, 'Steep yourselves in _them_: habitually bring all to the +test of _them_: for while you cannot escape the fate of all style, which +is to be personal, the more of catholic manhood you inherit from those +great loins the more you will assuredly beget.' + +This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is the +power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of +human thought or emotion. + +But essentially it resembles good manners. It comes of endeavouring to +understand others, of thinking for them rather than for yourself--of +thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head. It gives rather +than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or applause, not being fed +by these but rather sustained and continually refreshed by an inward +loyalty to the best. Yet, like 'character' it has its altar within; to +that retires for counsel, from that fetches its illumination, to ray +outwards. Cultivate, Gentlemen, that habit of withdrawing to be advised +by the best. So, says Fenelon, 'you will find yourself infinitely +quieter, your words will be fewer and more effectual; and while you make +less ado, what you do will be more profitable.' + + +[Footnote 1: 'An oration,' says Quintilian, 'may find room for almost any +word saving a few indecent ones (_quae sunt parum verecunda_).' He adds +that writers of the Old Comedy were often commended even for these: 'but +it is enough for us to mind our present business--_sed nobis nostrum opus +intueri sat est._'] + + + + +INDEX + + +Abelard 203, 205, 212 +Abercrombie, Lascelles 18 +Addison, Joseph 124, 172 +Alcuin 199, 200, 204, 205 +Alfred, King 186 +Aristophanes 192 +Aristotle 128, 203, 227 +Arnold, Matthew 35, 76, 139, 186, 202 +"Arte of Rhetorique," Wilson's 118 +Ascham, Roger 121, 188 +Augustine 199 + +Bacon, Lord 6, 7, 10, 220, 231 +Bagehot, Walter 216 +"Ballata" 45 +Barbour, John 112 +Barrie, Sir James Matthew 17, 135 +Bede 204 +Beerbohm, Max 222 +Belisarius 175 +Bentham, Jeremy 97 +"Beowulf" 159-165 +Beranger, Pierre-Jean de 45 +Berners, Lord 108-110,120 +Bible, The: + Authorised Version 53, 97, 110, 122 et seq., 141, 143, 190 + Revised Version 131-133 +Blair, Wilfred 80 +Blake, William 12 +Boccaccio 184 +Boethius 203 +Bologna, University of 200-1, 206 +Borneil, Giraud de 181 +Boswell, James 238 +Bridges, Robert 19 +Brooke, the Rev. Stopford A. 159 +Brougham, Ld 47, 101 +Browne, Sir Thomas 10, 51, 124, 168, 232 +Browning, Robert 39, 186 +Buffon 245 +Bunyan, John 124 +Burke, Edmund 27, 28, 46, 47-52, 101 +Burns, Robert 45 +Butler, Arthur John 20 + +Caedmon 163 +Cambridge 201 _et seqq._ +Campion, Thomas 185, 188 +Carducci, Giosue 154-5 +Carlyle, Thomas 18, 103, 245 +Cellini, Benvenuto 41 +Cervantes 7, 25 +Chadwick, Professor H. M. 163 +Chair of English Literature, University Ordinance 7 +Chambers, E. K. 199 +Champeaux, William of 205 +Chaucer, Geoffrey 10, 110-111, 163, 183, 184, 219 +Chesterton, Gilbert K. 233 +Chichester, Richard of 211 +Cicero 28, 49 +Clare, John 39 +Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 41, 64, 65 +Conington, John 171-2 +Courthope, W. J. 13, 158, 184, 199 +Coverdale, Miles 124 +Cowley, Abraham 185 +Cowper, William 186 +Crewe, Ld Chief Justice 7 +Cynewulf 163 + +Daniel, Samuel 185, 188 +Dante 77, 184 +Darwin, Charles 221 +Defoe, Daniel 61, 75. +Dekker, Thomas 65 +De La Mare, Walter 237 +De Quincey, Thomas 54 +Desiderius, Archbishop 199 +Dionysius of Halicarnassus 28 +Donne, John 102, 106, 185 +Dryden, John 172, 186, 227 +"Duchess of Malfy," Webster's 99 +Dunbar 10 + +'Eliot, George' 11 +Emerson, Ralph Waldo 11 + +Falconer, William 79 +Falkner, J. Meade 168-9 +Fenelon 248 +FitzGerald, Edward 97 +Flaubert, Gustave 247 +Fletcher, John 13 +Fowler, W. H. and F. G. 90, 137 +Freeman, Professor E. A. 158, 160, 174-179, 186 +"Froissart," Berners' 108 +Froude, James Anthony 78 +Fuller, Thomas 206 + +Gibbon, Edward 124, 216 +Gildas 175 +Goethe 103, 247 +Gray, Thomas 11, 16, 136, 157-8, 162 +Green, J. R. 158 +Green, T. H. 8 +Gregory the Great, Pope 199 +Grierson, Professor H. J. C. 185 + +Hamilton, Sir William 213 +Hardy, Thomas 18 +Harris, Frank 240 +Harvey, Gabriel 185, 216-7 +Heine, Heinrich 45 +Herbert, George 133 +"Hero and Leander," Marlowe's 98 +Herodotus 44, 63 +Homer 25, 64, 69, 76-78, 80, 81, 161, 190, 228 +Horace 171-2 +Housman, Professor A. E. 222 + +Ibsen 96 +Irnerius 206 +Isaiah 130-133 + +Jackson, Dr Henry 213 +Johnson, Samuel 11, 37, 69, 121, 172, 238 +Jonson, Ben 129, 146, 185, 219, 220 +Jowett, Benjamin 29 +Jusserand, J. J. 182 +Juvenal, 172 + +Keats, John 16, 39, 186 +Kempis, Thomas a 15 +Ker, Professor W. P. 160, 199 +Kipling, Rudyard 61 + +Lamb, Charles 41 +Lessing 81, 227, 244 +Lindsay, the Rev. T. M., D.D. 118 +Lloyd George, the Right Hon. David 137-8 +Lucian 6, 160, 192, 228, 245 +Lucretius 193 + +Malory, Sir Thomas 107-110, 120 +Marlowe, Christopher 98-9, 185, 220 +Marvell, Andrew 185 +Mason, William 157 +Masson, David 12 +McKenna, the Right Hon. Reginald 137-8 +Meredith, George 243, 247 +Milton, John 1, 10, 16, 43, 56-62, 74-76, 124, 152, 185, 195, 238 +Minto, Professor William 245 +Moore, Thomas 45 +Morris, William 188 +Mullinger, J. Bass 205, 219 +Murray, Professor Gilbert 193 + +Nashe, Thomas 120 +Newman, Cardinal 5, 30, 31-2, 115, 134, 144, 147, 234 +Newton, Sir Isaac 221 +Noyes, Alfred 78 +"Nut-Brown Maid, The" 111 + +Oates, Captain 42 +Origen 195, 202 +Oxford 201 _et seq._ + +Paris, University of 200, 205 +Pater, Walter 77, 222 +Patmore, Coventry 245 +Payne, E. J. 100-103 +"Pervigilium Veneris" 151, 194 +Pheidias 14 +Philosophy and Poetry 1 +Piers Plowman 163, 182 +"Pilgrimage to Parnassus, The" 217-220 +Plato 1-4, 150, 205 +Pliny 152-3 +Podsnap (_see_ Freeman) +Poggio 205 +Pope, Alexander 157, 162 +Powell, F. York 159 +Provencal Song 181-183 +Pythagoras 208 + +Quintilian 29, 140, 240 + +Raleigh, Professor Sir Walter 9 +Rashdall, Hastings 208-213 +Remigius 206 +Renan 1 +Reynolds, Sir Joshua 23-25 + +Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustus 20 +Saintsbury, Prof. George 55, 56, 187 +Salamanca, University of 200 +Scott, The Antarctic Expedition 42 +Severus, Sulpicius 199 +Shakespeare, William 15, 41, 50, 51-2, 97-100, 113, 129, 185, + 190, 197, 219, 229, 246 +Shaw, George Bernard 72 +Shelley 40 +Shirley, James 106 +Sidgwick, Henry 232 +Sidney, Sir Philip 41-2 +Skeat, Walter W. 12 +"Sonata" 45 +South, Robert 102 +Spenser, Edmund 185, 206, 217, 219 +Stevenson, Robert Louis 133 +Stubbs, Bishop W. 44 +'Student's Handbook, The' 72-3 +Swift, Jonathan 61 +Swinburne, Algernon 196 + +Taylor, Jeremy 68-9 +Tennyson, Lord 75, 186 +Tertullian 195, 198, 202 +Thackeray, William Makepeace 124 +Thompson, Francis 241 +Thomson, James 39 +Toulouse, University of 208 +Tyndale, William 122, 126, 127 + +Vacarius 206 +Ventadour, Bernard de 181 +"Venus and Adonis" 98-9 +Verrall, Dr A. W. 7 +Vigfusson, Gudbrand 159 +Virgil 25, 80, 194, 200 +Voltaire 192 + +Waller, Edmund 85 +Walpole, Horatio 173 +Walton, Isaak 70-1, 124, 201 +Warton, Thomas 158 +Watson, E. J. 155 +Watson, William 16 +Webster, John 99 +Wendell, Barrett 97 +Whistler, James McNeill 236 +Whitman, Walt 53, 56 +"Widsith" 60 +Wolfe, General 134 +Wood, Anthony 184 +Wordsworth, William 11, 12, 55, 67, 68, 129, 146, 186, 204, 210 +Wright, Aldis 12 +Wyat, Sir Thomas 115-118, 184 +Wyclif, John 124, 127 + +Yeats, William Butler 143 +Young, Arthur 171 + + + +Cambridge: +Printed by J. B. 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