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THE PRESENT FUNCTIONS OF CRITICISM

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

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

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

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

Viviamo scorti Da mediocrit?: sceso il sapiente, E salita ? la turba a un sol confine Che il mondo agguaglia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES

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

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

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

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

Old English Language and Literature down to 1150 A.D.

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

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

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

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

History of Scottish Poetry.

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

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

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

So writes Professor Jowett.

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

So writes Mr. John Morley.

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES

"Where was lone Urania When Adonais died?"

"Most musical of mourners, weep again. Lament, anew, Urania!"

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

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

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