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The Study of English Literature.

II

Scott, in the "Heart of Midlothian" (to give only one example out of many), preaches a very effective homily on the evil consequences of giving up inward peace of mind for the sake of outward grandeur; and such writers as Thackeray and Miss Austen have done much to make people ashamed of angularities and affectations of manner. So that De Quincey's distinction, though true in a wide sense, and very suggestive in many ways, is not to be accepted as absolutely correct. All literature worthy of the name is "literature of power," but it may be, and very often is, "literature of knowledge" also.

Having defined what literature is, we now proceed to consider the way in which its study may be most profitably pursued. In order fully to comprehend any author's work, and to place him in his true position among his fellows, not only must his writings be studied with due care, but we must pay regard to his outward "environment" and to the circumstances of the times in which he lived. Sainte Beuve, the prince of French critics, in all his inquiries made it a rule before studying the author to study the man, thinking that "as the tree is so will be the fruit." He was of opinion "that so long as you have not asked yourself a certain number of questions and answered them satisfactorily-if only for your own private benefit and sotto voce-you cannot be sure of thoroughly understanding your model, and that even though these questions may seem to be quite foreign to the nature of his writings. For instance, what were his religious views? how did the sight of nature affect him? what was he in his dealings with women and in his feelings respecting money? was he rich, was he poor? what was his regimen ? what his daily manner of life? &c. Finally, to what vice was he addicted or to what weakness subject? for no man is entirely free from such. There is not one of the answers to these questions that is without its value in judging the author of al book, or even the book itself, if it be not a treatise on pure mathematics, but a literary work into the composition of which some of the writer's whole nature has perforce entered." The practice which now prevails of publishing full and authen

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tic memoirs of celebrities, if perhaps not unobjectionable in some respects, is certainly an incalculable gain to the fruitful and intelligent study of literature. If we were so fortunate as to find a Life of Shakespeare similar to that which Boswell wrote of Dr. Johnson, can any one doubt that it would throw an immense light upon the many literary puzzles which are to be found in his writings, and which have perplexed generations of commentators and evoked hundreds of volumes? How many ingenious and elaborate studies on Hamlet" would be shown to be as the baseless fabric of a vision? how many passages which verbal critics have (as they thought) proved to demonstration not to have come from Shakespeare's pen would be claimed as his ? how, perchance, every one of the theories about the Sonnets would crumble into dust, never again to be mentioned but with laughter after their mystery had been unveiled by unimpeachable evidence? Again, to take a case from our own time, how would we explain the gloomy pessimism of the latter writings of Carlyle as contrasted with the sanguine optimism of Macaulay if no records of his life were to be found, and we were compelled to judge of him by his works alone? Carlyle's temperament, no doubt, was naturally gloomy, but that fact alone would not be a sufficient solution of the enigma. But when we study the story of his life, and learn how he was constantly tormented by ill-health; how, eagerly ambitious of literary fame, he had to toil on for inany a long year unnoticed and unknown, with bitter experience of that deferred hope which makes the heart sick; how, when the day of triumph came, it came so late that the flower of success had well-nigh lost its fragrance-then we have no difficulty in understanding the cause of his frequently dark and harsh views of human character and destiny. We need hardly dwell on the additional interest given to a book by a knowledge of the circumstances under which it was composed. Byron's poetry owes half its attractiveness to the fascination exercised by his singular and strongly marked personality. Johnson's works, excellent though some of them are, would now, we imagine, be very little read if Boswell's Life of

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him had not made him one of the best known, and (with all his eccentricities) one of the best-loved characters in our literary history. One's interest even in such a book as Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" is perceptibly quickened by the full and curious portrait of himself which he has drawn in his Autobiography.

But for the thorough and profitable study of an author, it is not enough that we know the circumstances of his private history: we must also make ourselves acquainted with the period in which his lot was cast. No writer, however great and original his genius, can escape the influence of the spirit of the age in which he lives; whether with or without his consent, his way of looking at things will be modified by the intellectual atmosphere by which he is surrounded. Literary men alike influence and are influenced by their time; and as no history of a country can be considered complete which ignores the influence exerted by its literature, so any literary history which ignores the currents of thought and opinion set afloat by political movements must necessarily be partial and inadequate. There is no greater desideratum in our literature at present than a compiete and able account of the history of English literature, in which the connection between the literary and political history of our country shall be fully dealt with; and it is very much to be desired that some one of sufficient talents and acquirements may be induced to undertake the task. He will have comparatively unbeaten ground to deal with. M. Taine, indeed, in his "History of English Literature," has done something in this direction; but his erratic brilliancy is not to be implicitly relied upon.1 In periods of great national emotion, the influence exerted on literature by the powerful currents of thought and action

1 It is not to the credit of England that the only full survey of its literature possessing any high merit from a purely literary point of view should be the work of a Frenchman. We have among us not a few writers, any one of whom, if they would abandon for a few years the practice, now unhappily too prevalent, of writing merely Review articles and brief mono graphs, could produce a work on the subject worthy of so great a theme.

sweeping on around it is so strong and so manifest that it cannot escape the notice of the most careless observer. The mighty burst of song in England during the reign of Elizabeth, a time of great men and great deeds, when new ideas and new influences were powerfully at work among all sections of society, has often been commented on. The impurity and heartlessness of the drama of the Restoration was a true type of the nation's wild outburst of revelry after its escape from the austere chains of Puritanism. Not so strikingly apparent, yet very noticeable, is the connection between the tortuous and shifty politics of the early years of the eighteenth century and the absence from the literature of that period of any high ideal or elevating principle. Coming nearer our own time, all are aware that the revolutionary movement of the close of the last century was active not only in politics but in letters; that as old laws and old principles were found inadequate to the needs of the time, so the literary forms and rules of the preceding generation were cast to the winds as quite incapable of expressing the novel ideas and imaginations of a race of writers who possessed little or nothing in common with their predecessors. But even in quieter times, when the broad river of national life is unruffled by violent storms, careful inquiry will make it apparent that its influence upon literature is very close and very real.

The most useful commentary on a great writer is to be found in the works of his contemporaries. It is mainly the service which they render in this direction that prevents one from agreeing with Emerson when he says that perhaps the human mind would be a gainer if all secondary writers were lost. From an author's contemporaries we may learn what ideas in his time were, to use Dr. Newman's phrase, “in the air," and thus be able to gauge with some degree of accuracy the extent of his originality. We have all been taught that Shakespeare far outshone any of the brilliant constellations of dramatic stars which adorned the reign of Elizabeth; but this is only a barren phrase to us till we have studied the other dramatists of his time, and are thus in a position to realise

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what it really means. The writings of contemporaries, more. over, often help us to account for the flaws and deficiencies which not unfrequently occur even in authors of the highest class, by giving us a clue to the literary fashions which prevailed in their time. Shakespeare's tendency to indulge in puns and verbal quibbles, which mars some of his finest passages, was, no doubt, due not so much to any natural inclination as because he lived in an age extravagantly fond of such ingenuities; and even he, immeasurably great man as he was, proved unable to resist the contagion which spread everywhere around him. In this connection we should not omit to notice the valuable aid which writers destitute of original power, but with a faculty for assimilating the ideas and imitating the style of others, often afford to the study of those whose voices they echo. Every great writer, while his popularity is at its height, is surrounded by a crowd of imitators, who copy in an exaggerated fashion his peculiar mannerism, and thus afford a very ready means of observing the minute traits of its style, and its little weaknesses and affectations, which might other wise escape our notice. If imitation be the sincerest form of flattery, it is often also the bitterest satire. The severest critics of Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Swinburne have not so accurately shown the imperfections in the work of these writers, nor have they, it is probable, caused them so much pain as the verses of certain minor singers of our day have done. No parody is at once so scathing and so ridiculous as an attempt made by a writer of feeble powers to emulate the production. of a man of genius.

If ten men of literary culture were asked to write down the names of the thirty English writers (exclusive of authors of our own time) who are their greatest favourites, of whom they make as it were companions and friends, the lists, we may be sure, would differ widely. But if these ten men were asked to write down the names of the thirty English writers who occupy the highest rank, who are accepted as the best repre sentatives of our literature, the lists would probably resemble each other very closely. In the former case, single lists would

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