THE STUDY OF 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE
 
 ENGLISH LITEEATUKE 
 
 A PLEA FOE 
 
 ITS RECOGNITION AND ORGANIZATION 
 AT THE UNIVERSITIES 
 
 JOHN CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 /j.eya yap rovro olo/j.f6a (pfpfiv Kal o\ov els jro\tTiav opQSis rj fj.^ opBUs 
 yiyvS/^fyov. PLATO, Rep. v. 
 
 Occurram necesse est, et, velut in vestibule protinus apprehensuris hane 
 confessionem meam, resistam iis, qui, omissa rerum diligentia, quodain 
 inani circa voces studio senescunt. Majore animo aggredienda eloquentia 
 est. Quintilian, Instit. Orator, viii. Prcem. 
 
 To abandon these studies in order to support Philology is like burning a 
 city to save the gates. JORTIN. 
 
 H o n ti o n 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1891 
 
 The Bight of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
 
 RICHARD CLAY AND Soys, LIMITED, 
 
 LONDON AND BUNG AY.
 
 PBEFACE 
 
 DURING the last five years an urgent appeal 
 has, in various forms and from various quarters, 
 been made to the Universities to provide systematic 
 instruction in Literature as distinguished from 
 Philology, and particularly in our own Literature. 
 That appeal was made officially by Mr. Goschen, 
 as President of the London Society for the Exten- 
 sion of University Teaching. In a letter addressed 
 by him to the Vice-Chancellor of the University 
 of Oxford, and printed in the University Gazette, 
 for April 26th, 1887, he pointed out that "there 
 was no subject for which there was a greater demand 
 than for courses of lectures on English literature, 
 and at the same time there was none in which 
 there is more difficulty in finding the necessary 
 number of satisfactory teachers ; " and he concluded 
 by expressing a hope " that a system might be dis-
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 covered which will combine the pursuit of English 
 literature with the existing study of the ancient 
 classics, and which, far from trenching on the 
 dominion of the latter, will give this a firmer hold 
 on the English education of the future by connect- 
 ing them with the literature of our country, of 
 which they have furnished the models, and to a 
 great extent supply the key." The same appeal 
 was made, if not so directly, yet even more emphati- 
 cally, by Mr. John Morley in his Address to the 
 students of the University Extension, delivered at 
 the Mansion House, February 26th, 1887, and since 
 printed as a pamphlet. It was no part of his duty 
 to point out, as Mr. Goschen had pointed out, the 
 difficulty of finding a sufficient number of competent 
 lecturers ; but, in defining Literature and in defining 
 the functions of its interpreters and teachers, he 
 both protested as Mr. Goschen had done against 
 confounding Literature with Philology, and he 
 showed by implication how seriously secondary 
 education must suffer, so long as this confusion 
 was allowed to exist. 
 
 But it was not the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 and Mr. Morley only who made this appeal to the 
 Universities. In the January number of the
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Quarterly Review for 18S7, many, indeed it would 
 be no exaggeration to say the majority, of those 
 whose important connection with Education, or 
 whose distinction in letters, justly entitled them 
 to speak with authority on this matter, have, in 
 joining in the same petition, expressed precisely 
 similar views on the subject of the relation of 
 Philology to Literature, on the necessity for dis- 
 tinguishing them, and on the necessity of the 
 Universities placing the study of Literature on a 
 proper footing. Among the names of those who 
 supported this movement are to be found the 
 names of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal 
 Manning, the Bishop of London, Mr. Gladstone, 
 Lord Lytton, Professor Jowett, Matthew Arnold, 
 Professor Huxley, Mr. Froude, Sir Theodore Martin, 
 and many others. 
 
 To these appeals the Universities have made no 
 response. Cambridge had already succeeded in estab- 
 lishing a Philological Tripos, and Oxford was at the 
 very time of Mr. Goschen's application preparing to 
 follow. Deaf and indifferent to the authorities to 
 which I have referred, impervious even to the peti- 
 tions of its own missionaries, and of the President of 
 its own Extension Society, the University all but sue-
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ceeded in carrying a motion for a School which would 
 have been the exact counterpart of the Medieval and 
 Modern Languages Tripos at Cambridge. Fortunately, 
 the project was defeated, but it was defeated only by 
 a casting vote. It is now about to be revived. Once 
 more the two parties who divide our Universities will 
 come into collision that small minority who would see 
 Oxford and Cambridge brought, as centres of teach- 
 ing, into direct contact with the life of our time, and 
 who contend that it is one of the chief functions of a 
 University liberally to educate those who are to edu- 
 cate the country, and that large majority who would 
 reserve the Universities as nurseries for specialists 
 and technical scholars, and who consequently oppose 
 on principle all attempts to interfere with a system 
 as esoteric in theory as it is esoteric in practice, a 
 system which has long been their monopoly, a system 
 which they hope to retain as their monopoly still. 
 
 The object of the present volume is threefold. It 
 is designed to bring within the reach of all who may 
 be interested in such questions the real points at 
 issue in the controversy at Oxford. For what is at 
 issue is of public importance, as it involves the 
 question of the real relation of the Universities to 
 the education of English citizens. Are Oxford and
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 Cambridge to be regarded only as esoteric semi- 
 naries for esoteric instruction, or are they to be 
 regarded also as the centres and nurseries of liberal 
 discipline and liberal study ? Is the present anarchy, 
 the result of the feud between these two parties, 
 the Specialists and the Liberals, to continue ? Are 
 the Universities to assume the responsibility of 
 guaranteeing the attainments and qualifications of 
 lecturers and teachers in English and other Litera- 
 tures without providing them with any systematic 
 training, or even submitting them to any test ? Are 
 Oxford and Cambridge practically to undertake 
 through their presses the direction of scholastic and 
 popular instruction in our national Literature, and to 
 be granting their imprimatur to books, one tithe of 
 the blunders and absurdities in which would damn 
 instantly a work on any other subject represented in 
 their Schools ? This is the question the real 
 question in debate are we to have disorganization 
 and chaos, or are we to have system and order, in 
 one of the most important departments of national 
 education ? 
 
 Secondly, I am anxious to show how deep-seated 
 and wide-spread is the need of the instruction of 
 which the best literature, properly interpreted, is and
 
 PREFACE 
 
 can be the only medium, and how greatly secondary 
 education is suffering in consequence of the Univer- 
 sities continuing to turn a deaf ear to such an appeal 
 as the appeals to which I have referred. 
 
 But the greater portion of the volume is an attempt 
 to meet the objections of those who urge, in defence 
 of the Universities, that Literature, as distinguished 
 from Philology, is not a subject susceptible of solid 
 and systematic treatment in teaching ; that it is " too 
 intangible," that it affords no basis for a super- 
 structure of positive instruction ; and that it would, 
 therefore, encourage, if it did not necessitate, what 
 might in practice too easily dissolve in vague gene- 
 ralities and mere dilettantism. 
 
 I may be permitted to express my regret that so 
 much in these pages should seem to be written in a 
 polemical spirit. But this has been no fault of mine. 
 The subjects discussed here are not new ; they have, 
 during the last five years, been repeatedly debated. 
 But they have never been approached except as 
 affording matter for controversy, and without clearing 
 them of controversial complications, often a very 
 irritating process, it is now impossible to deal with 
 them. That it should, in days like these, be 
 necessary to plead for the recognition of our national
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Classics as subjects of teaching at the chief centres of 
 national education is sufficiently surprising ; but that 
 it should be necessary to protest against the action 
 of Oxford and Cambridge in deciding to exclude the 
 Greek and Roman Classics from the curriculum of a 
 School of Literature for to this have the Philologists 
 brought us can only excite amazement and disgust 
 in the mind of any civilized person. 
 
 My thanks are due to Mr. John Murray for 
 allowing me to draw largely on two articles con- 
 tributed by me to the Quarterly Review; to Mr. 
 Knowles for allowing me to reprint the greater part 
 of an article which appeared in the Nineteenth 
 Century ; and to Mr. Percy Bunting for permission 
 to use a few paragraphs from recent contributions of 
 mine to the Contemporary Review.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Neglect of aesthetic discipline in the English educational 
 
 system recent agitation to supply this deficiency . . 1 
 Apathy of the Universities in this respect their irresponsible 
 
 and autocratic character 3 
 
 Demand for a more liberal treatment of Literature as a subject 
 
 of instruction, with reference to politics, morals, aesthetic, 
 
 metaphysics, culture 4 
 
 The ancient Classics to be studied as Literature, and side by side 
 
 with our own , 5 
 
 Agitation at Oxford, and foundation of a Chair of English . . 6 
 Triumph of the philologists the Chair confined to matters of 
 
 Language 7 
 
 Proposed curriculum of a School of " Literature" description 
 
 by Professor Max Miiller 7 
 
 Disastrous effects of a purely philological training 8 
 
 Importance to student of English Literature of an acquaintance 
 
 with the Greek and Roman Classics, in both verse and 
 
 prose 9 
 
 Renewal of attempt to establish a School of "Literature " at 
 
 Oxford 11 
 
 Strength of the philologist party in the University 12 
 
 Professors Freeman and Earle on the teaching of Literature . . 13
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 NEED OF SYSTEMATIZING THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Importance of English Literature as a branch of knowledge 
 
 and an instrument of culture 16 
 
 Vicious system of teaching it, and its consequent failure as 
 
 a subject of study 17 
 
 Hence strong growing prejudice against its inclusion in 
 
 educational curricula 19 
 
 The fault not in the subject itself but in the method of 
 
 teaching analogy from the case of the ancient Classics 20 
 Anarchy in system of teaching English Literature absence of 
 
 uniformity in standards and tests 22 
 
 Necessity for the Universities to take up and organize the 
 
 subject, and that on a liberal basis 24 
 
 Ridiculous .failure of the Mediaeval and Modern Languages 
 
 Tripos at Cambridge 24 
 
 Preparation at Oxford to establish a similar School 25 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 
 
 Contention of the philologists alleged impossibility of teach- 
 ing Literature as Belles Lcttrcs 26 
 
 Plea that the attempt would result either in unintelligent 
 
 cram or in vapid dilettantism 27 
 
 This dependent on tact of Examiners specimens of cram- 
 questions and the reverse 28 
 
 Alleged unfitness of Literature for examination purposes as not 
 
 being sufficiently " solid and tangible " 29 
 
 Refutation of this plea by comparison of specimen Examination- 
 papers of different kinds 30 
 
 Necessity of teaching English Literature both (a) historically . 32 
 And this (i) generally, and (ii) in detail 33
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Need of a good History of English Literature, connected, 
 
 comprehensive, systematic inadequacy of existing works 34 
 And (b) critically, especially with regard to analysis of 
 sentiment, ethic, and thought 39 
 
 Decay of the old system of the Universities 40 
 
 Prevailing misconception as to character and practicability of 
 
 aesthetic training 40 
 
 The chief end of discipline in Literce Humaniores the cultivation 
 
 of the literary and critical faculties 42 
 
 Useless and unintelligent character of Papers generally set in 
 
 Literature a typical specimen discussed 43 
 
 Suggested alternative questions, (i) dealing with literary 
 
 structure, style, ethics, metaphysics, characterization . . 48 
 (ii) for a case in which a comparative study of ancient and 
 modern Literatures was required 49 
 
 Excellent guides extant for a sound literary education .... 50 
 
 The true function of the literary teacher intelligent, discrimi- 
 nating, comprehensive interpretation 51 
 
 Grievous absence from our educational system of any provision 
 
 for "musical" culture . 54 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING. 
 DISTINCTION BETWEEN LITERATURE AND PHILOLOGY 
 
 Importance and value of our Literature 56 
 
 Radical defect of the Clarendon Press Editions an almost 
 
 exclusive devotion to points of grammar and philology . 57 
 
 Specimen notes 58 
 
 A useless and repulsive system 59 
 
 Deadening pedantry and emasculating dilettantism 60 
 
 The first desideratum the recognition of the essential distinction 
 
 between Philology and Literature 61 
 
 The second that of the importance of studying English 
 
 Literature in close connection with those of Greece, Rome, 
 
 Italy, and France 62
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Philology a valuable science, but not to be confounded with 
 
 Literature 64 
 
 Its deadening and narrowing effect on the mind 65 
 
 Its comparatively limited interest and usefulness 67 
 
 The two studies to be kept entirely separate 68 
 
 Evil effects of their confusion . 69 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 NECESSITY FOR ASSOCIATING THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 WITH THAT OF ANCIENT CLASSICAL LITERATURE 
 
 Denial by the philologists that English Literature is derived 
 
 from the ancient Classics 71 
 
 Refutation of this view 72 
 
 The debt to the Classics of Anglo-Saxon Literature 72 
 
 Of our Drama 73 
 
 Of our Epics, our Didactic Poetry, our Lyrical, our Satiric . 74 
 Of our Narrative Poetry, our Epigrams, our Epitaphs, our 
 
 Eclogues, our Pastorals 75 
 
 Of our Descriptive and Elegiac Poetry 76 
 
 Of our Prose, both periodic and analytic, both rhetorical and 
 
 colloquial 77 
 
 Of our Historical Prose 79 
 
 Of our Oratorical, our Theological 82 
 
 Of our Criticism 82 
 
 The absurdity of ignoring this in the study of English 
 
 Literature 85 
 
 An additional knowledge of the Celtic and Teutonic Litera- 
 tures neither possible nor relevant 86 
 
 Especially in its spiritual, ethical, and aesthetic aspects does our 
 Literature need to be studied in connection with the 
 
 ancient Classics 87 
 
 Shakespeare and Sophocles as brother-dramatists 87 
 
 Shakespeare and Aristotle as mutually elucidatory 88 
 
 Full significance of Milton and Tennyson only to be appreciated 
 
 by Classical scholars 89
 
 CONTENTS xvii 
 
 PAOB 
 
 The ancient Classics the archetypes of Literature 90 
 
 In spite of superior merit of much modern work 91 
 
 Testimony on this point of Burke, Scott, and Wordsworth . . 92 
 
 Of Men of Letters throughout Europe 93 
 
 Ancient and modern Literatures to be studied in association, 
 
 as are ancient and modern History and ancient and. 
 
 modern Philosophy 94 
 
 Professor Freeman on unity of History 94 
 
 Illogical attitude of those who recognize unity of History 
 
 and Philosophy, not of Literature 95 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF UNIVERSITY RECOGNITION 
 AND ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Proposal four years ago to establish at Oxford a School of 
 
 Philology 97 
 
 An appeal made to distinguished authorities on Education 
 and Literature throughout England for their views on the 
 desirability of the Universities providing systematic 
 instruction in English Literature, and that as Literature, 
 and in close association with the ancient Classics .... 97 
 Answers received from men eminent in the Church, in 
 Education, in the State, in Letters, in Science, una- 
 nimous in favour of the proposal 98 
 
 Views of Professor Huxley 99 
 
 Of the Archbishop of Canterbury 100, 106 
 
 Of Cardinal Manning 100 
 
 Of Sir Theodore Martin 101 
 
 Of Professor Jowett 101,104,105 
 
 Of Canon Farrar 101 
 
 Of the Head-Masters of Rugby and Clifton 102 
 
 Of Mr. Addington Symonds . 102 
 
 Of Dr. Craik 103 
 
 Of Dr. Merry 104 
 
 Of Mr. Pater 105 
 
 b
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAOE 
 
 Views of the Head-Master of Wellington 105 
 
 Of Mr. Gladstone 105 
 
 Of Lord Carnarvon 106 
 
 Of the Bishop of London 107 
 
 Of Matthew Arnold 107 
 
 Of Professor Bonamy Price 108 
 
 Of Mr. Froude 108 
 
 Of Mr. John Morley 109 
 
 Of Lord Lytton Ill 
 
 Difficulties in the way of reform 116 
 
 English Literature not to be introduced into Moderations or the 
 
 Final Classical School 117 
 
 The aims of these two Schools 118 
 
 A new Final School to be established, supplementary to the 
 
 present Literw Humaniores 119 
 
 Such a School would not disturb existing arrangements, but 
 
 complete them 121 
 
 Its importance 123 
 
 Its suggested constitution 123 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 
 
 Design of the School to train for the profession of Letters and 
 
 for the incumbency of Chairs of Literature 125 
 
 English Literature to be studied in close association with 
 ancient and other modern Literatures, the academic 
 training to be in the Literatures of Greece, Rome, and 
 England, those of Italy, France, and Germany to be left 
 
 to private study 126 
 
 Crying need for the remedy of this deficiency 127 
 
 The School to be an independent, optional, Honour School . 128 
 
 The nature of the Examination 129 
 
 A Thesis 129 
 
 A Paper on English History in relation to Literature .... 129
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Papers on Poetry, Classical and English 130 
 
 On Rhetoric, Classical and English 131 
 
 On the History of the three Literatures 131 
 
 On the Influence of the Classical Literatures on our own . 131 
 On Criticism. Classical and English, aesthetic, philosophic, 
 
 and technical 131 
 
 Hence a new life given to Classical study . 132 
 
 Literature emancipated from Philology 132 
 
 Opportunity given for sound training in Criticism, for analytical 
 study of the great Orations, for careful reading of the 
 great Histories, for perusal and comparison of the Dramas, 
 Epics, Narrative Poems, Lyrics, Critical Writings, Antho- 
 logies, Philosophic and Didactic Works, Pastorals, 
 Descriptive Works, and Idylls, of the three Literatures. . 132 
 Italian Literature its immense and widespread influence on 
 
 our own illustrated . , 136 
 
 Boccaccio 137 
 
 The Renaissance 137 
 
 Adoption by English writers of Italian metres 137 
 
 Italian narrative and dramatic forms 138 
 
 Italian styles in Fiction, History, and Poetry 139 
 
 French influence on our Literature 140 
 
 Comparative unimportance of German Literature in this 
 
 connection 140 
 
 Summary The Universities must recognize and organize the 
 study of English Literature as Literature, and in connection 
 with the Literatures of Greece, Rome, Italy, and France, 
 and so frame their curricula as that the study may be an 
 instrument of the highest culture and intellectual and 
 
 aesthetic discipline 142 
 
 Tables of writers and writings in the Literatures of Greece, 
 Rome, and England, to be carefully studied by candidates 
 
 for Honours 144-5 
 
 Danger to the national culture from the neglect of Classical 
 Literature this must be studied intelligently, and as 
 
 Literature 146 
 
 What is needed in Education is Culture, aesthetic, moral, and 
 political, and this it is the duty of the Universities to 
 provide 147
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Specimen Papers proposed for the Examination in a School of 
 
 Literature : 
 
 Thesis 151 
 
 In English History 151 
 
 In the History of English Literature 153 
 
 In the Comparative Study of English and Ancient Classical 
 
 Literature 154 
 
 In the Comparative Study of English and Italian Literature 155 
 
 In the Comparative Study of English and French Literature 157 
 
 Critical Questions , 159
 
 THE 
 
 STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN TRODUCTORY 
 
 ALL who have watched the educational movements 
 of the last few years, such movements, for example, 
 as the University Extension Scheme and the 
 National Home Reading Union, must feel with much 
 satisfaction that they are the earnest and antici- 
 pation of a great revolution in advanced education. 
 What they plainly indicate is that the changed con- 
 ditions under which we are now living are necessi- 
 tating corresponding changes in our systems of 
 instruction. Partly owing to vague notions that 
 culture on its moral side is supplied by religious 
 teaching, and partly owing to our national habit of 
 regarding politics in relation merely to the public 
 
 B
 
 2 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 game, neither ethics nor politics have as instruments 
 of culture, as subjects for discipline, received any 
 systematic attention. With music and the fine arts 
 associated for the most part with mere amusement, 
 and poetry resolved into little more than an idle 
 pastime without, and into pabulum for philology 
 within our Schools and Colleges, what ought to 
 represent aesthetic discipline has fared even worse. 
 Generation after generation for ages have the best 
 and wisest of our countrymen been directing atten- 
 tion to this deplorable deficiency in our systems of 
 public instruction. And now the people are 
 awakening to it. In all quarters and among all 
 classes, men and women are beginning to feel that 
 there is no reason why education should not, through 
 a proper use of the same instruments, be directed to 
 the same ends, as the ends to which the ancients 
 directed it ; why poetry, why history, why art and 
 philosophy generally should not be brought into the 
 same influential relation to the lives of English 
 citizens as they stood to the lives of the citizens in 
 Athens and Rome. But in education, regarded 
 systematically, all moves from above. If culture of 
 this kind is to be disseminated, it can be dissemi- 
 nated only by missionaries from a common centre, 
 and that not casually, by one here and one there, 
 but systematically, and as the reflective result of
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 system. It is the misfortune of this country, and it 
 is the only country in the world which labours under 
 the same misfortune, that our system of public 
 instruction is under a divided rule. Education in its 
 elementary and primary grades is to a considerable 
 extent under the control of Government, and nothing 
 could be more satisfactory than its organization. 
 Education on its scientific and technical sides, as it is 
 the common concern, so consequently it is the common 
 care of the State generally, and its security from mis- 
 management and misdirection at the hands of 
 particular bodies is therefore assured. But the 
 regulation of what are denominated liberal studies, 
 the direction of that education for which the people 
 are now pleading, has been left entirely to the 
 Universities. Absolutely irresponsible, and abso- 
 lutely autocratic, neither public opinion, nor any form 
 which authority from without can assume, has 
 ever been allowed the smallest weight in their 
 councils. During the last few years, both Oxford 
 and Cambridge have been petitioned, and petitioned 
 over and over again, to take into consideration the 
 serious deficiencies which confessedly exist in our 
 system of advanced education. It has been pointed 
 out that they are now standing face to face with new 
 duties and new responsibilities ; that the compara- 
 tively contracted sphere to which their direct 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH 
 
 influence was formerly confined is rapidly becoming 
 co-extensive with the kingdom; that in an immense 
 adult population there is no class with which they 
 are not being brought into immediate and intimate 
 contact ; that the influence therefore which they 
 have hitherto exercised on popular education, on its 
 religious side, it is perfectly competent for them to 
 extend to that education on its ethical, on its 
 political, and on its artistic sides ; that in Literature, 
 if Literature include what it ought to include, they 
 have the instrument, and in the interpretation of 
 Literature the means, of affording such instruction. 
 It has been pointed out that if Literature as a 
 subject of teaching is to effect for popular culture 
 what it is of power to effect ; if, as an instrument 
 of political education, it is to warn, to admonish, to 
 guide ; if, as an instrument of moral and aesthetic 
 education, it is to exercise that influence on taste, on 
 tone, on sentiment, on opinion, on character, on all, 
 in fine, which is susceptible of educational impression, 
 it must first hold that place in the training of its 
 modern exponents which it held in. that of the 
 training of its exponents in ancient times ; that it 
 must be rescued from its present degrading vassalage 
 to Philology, that its profession must not be re- 
 garded as the common property and makeshift of 
 any graduate in any faculty whom accident may
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 turn to it ; that all that constitutes, or ought to 
 constitute, a liberal academic education in Literce 
 Humaniores must be regarded as a foundation not 
 less indispensable to the special and particular disci- 
 pline of its teachers than a training in geometry was, 
 according to the inscription on Plato's School, a 
 preliminary indispensable to the study of his 
 Philosophy ; that its boundaries must be enlarged 
 that the interpretation of such classical works in 
 moral and political philosophy, in theology and 
 metaphysics, as are not merely technical and esoteric, 
 of such works, for example, as the Republic, the 
 Apology and Phcedo, the Memorabilia, the Politics, the 
 Ethics, the Analogy and Sermons of Butler, the chief 
 political treatises of Hobbes, of Burke, of De Tocque- 
 ville, should be as much the business of its mis- 
 sionaries as the interpretation of what is ordinarily 
 included in Belles Lettres. Nor was this all. Attention 
 was directed to the disastrous effects resulting from 
 the refusal of the Universities to distinguish between 
 a literary and a philological study of the Greek and 
 Roman Classics, between their interest as monuments 
 of language, and their value as the expression of 
 genius and art. If, it was pleaded, they were to 
 maintain their place in modern education, they could 
 maintain it only by virtue of their relation to 
 Philosophy and Literature, and that regarded from
 
 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 this point of view there would be little danger of 
 their supremacy being shaken. It was urged that 
 what was needed was provision for a liberal study of 
 the Classics of Greece and Rome side by side with 
 the liberal study of our own Classics and the Classics 
 of the Continent, as this would at once place the 
 study of the Greek and Roman Literatures on the 
 only footing on which in modern times it is possible 
 to justify it, and at the same time raise the study of 
 English Literature to its proper level in education. 
 
 The result of this appeal is an excellent illustration 
 of the fate of liberal movements in our Universities. 
 There has never been wanting either at Oxford or 
 at Cambridge a small minority which sees clearly the 
 sort of reforms which are needed, and as clearly by 
 what means and in what way they may best be 
 effected. This minority, recognizing the reasonable- 
 ness of the appeal, and anxious to introduce the study 
 of Literature into the University, so far prevailed as 
 to obtain the consent of Convocation to the founda- 
 tion of an English Chair. A Chair of English 
 Literature was accordingly founded and liberally 
 endowed. A Board of Electors was appointed. As 
 there was already a Chair of Celtic, a Chair of Anglo- 
 Saxon, a Chair of Comparative Philology, and as, 
 therefore, the philological study of English had been 
 amply provided for, it was confidently anticipated
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 that the choice of the electors would fall on the sort 
 of teacher contemplated by the originators of the 
 movement. Indeed, it was hoped and expected that 
 Matthew Arnold would be invited to fill it. But 
 Philology triumphed. The Board, discovering that 
 though the language of Caedmon and the language 
 of Oisin had received the attention they deserved, 
 the dialect of Robert of Gloucester and William of 
 Shoreham had not, determined to seize this oppor- 
 tunity to remedy the defect. Availing themselves 
 of a quibble on the word " language," for the statute 
 authorizing the foundation of the Chair happened by 
 a mere accident to couple the word " language " with 
 " literature," they succeeded in ignoring the object 
 for which the Chair was founded, and proceeded to 
 elect, at a permanent salary of 900 a year, a pro- 
 fessor for the interpretation of Middle English. But 
 the perversion of this Chair was merely a preliminary 
 step. A Professor elected on such a theory of the 
 scope and functions of a Chair of Literature was to 
 have been succeeded by a School framed in accordance 
 with the same theory of the scope and functions of a 
 School of Literature. What the constitution of the 
 curriculum of that School was to have been has been 
 explained by Professor Max Miiller. It was 
 
 " to consist of three branches Teutonic, Romanic, and 
 Celtic. The Teutonic to be subdivided into an English,
 
 8 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 German and Scandinavian section : the Romanic into a 
 Southern (Provengal and Italian) a Northern (French) and 
 possibly a third section comprising Spanish and Portuguese. 
 These are as yet pia vota only, but I have that faith in 
 young Oxford that with certain modifications and possibly 
 after some hesitation some such scheme will be carried." 
 
 This scheme, it may be added, is simply the counter- 
 part of the scheme which has unhappily found em- 
 bodiment in the Mediaeval and Modern Languages 
 Tripos at Cambridge. Let us consider for a moment 
 what the effect of such a curriculum on the prospects 
 of education and culture would be likely to be. In 
 the first place, it would confer on a successful can- 
 didate the academic diploma of an Honour degree in 
 " Literature," His " literary " qualifications would 
 certainly be remarkable. In the leading and parent 
 Literatures of the world he would have received no 
 instruction. In the principles of criticism he would 
 have received no instruction. Taught to approach 
 literature purely in relation to philology, of literature 
 in its relation to history, to ethics, to politics, to 
 aesthetics, he would have been required to pay no 
 attention at all. Of works which are the glory of 
 the human race in poetry, in oratory, in philosophy, 
 in criticism, he need never have read one line. With 
 the barbarous and semi-barbarous experiments of the 
 infancy of civilization and with the niceties of the 
 various Romance and Teutonic dialects he would have
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 been expected to be minutely acquainted ; he would, 
 indeed, have spent the three best years of his life in 
 mastering them. What effect such discipline as this 
 would be likely to have on taste, on tone, on temper, on 
 all these faculties and powers, in fine, which take their 
 ply and derive their quality from education, it is not 
 difficult to see. Nor again is it difficult to foresee what 
 would be likely to be the notions of a teacher, who 
 emerged from such a training to represent and in- 
 terpret Literature, on the scope and functions of 
 Literature as an instrument of culture. And this is 
 not all. What the Literature of Greece is to that of 
 Rome, the Literatures of Greece and Rome are to that 
 of England. A scholar would at once see the 
 absurdity of separating the study of the Roman 
 Classics from that of the Greek, for the simple reason 
 that without a knowledge of the latter the former 
 are historically and critically unintelligible. Imagine 
 a lecturer professing to interpret the dZneid without 
 an adequate acquaintance with the Homeric Poems, 
 with the Attic Drama, with the Argonautica of Apollo- 
 nius, or a man setting up to expound the Odes of 
 Horace who was ignorant of Greek Lyric Poetry. 
 And yet the absurdity of separating the study of our 
 own Classics from the study of the Greek and Roman 
 Classics is equally great. Not only have most of our 
 poets and all our best prose-writers, as well in the
 
 10 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 present age as in former ages, been nourished on the 
 Literatures of Greece and Rome ; not only has the 
 form of at least two-thirds of our best poetry and our 
 best prose derived its distinctive features from those 
 Literatures ; not only has the influence of those 
 Literatures, alternately modifying and moulding our 
 own, determined its course and its characteristics, 
 but a very large portion of what is most valuable in 
 our poetry is as .historically unintelligible apart from 
 the Greek and Roman Classics as the epic, lyric, and 
 elegiac poetry of Rome is, apart from the epic, lyric, 
 and elegiac poetry of Greece. Take, for example, 
 the poetry of Milton. Could anything be more pre- 
 posterous than for a man to undertake to comment 
 on Paradise Lost,, on Paradise Regained, on Coinus, 
 on Samson Agonistes,who was unacquainted with the 
 Literatures which were to Milton's genius what the 
 soil is to a plant, and which determined not merely 
 his character as an artist, but exercised an influence 
 on his intellect and temper scarcely less powerful 
 than hereditary instincts and contemporary history ? 
 On those Classics his taste was formed, on their style 
 his style was modelled. From their diction and 
 method his diction and method derived nearly all 
 their peculiarities. Their influence transformed what 
 would in all probability have been the mere counter- 
 part of Csedmon's Paraphrase or Langland's Vision
 
 INTRODUCTORY 11 
 
 into Paradise Lost ; and what might have been the 
 mere counterparts of Corydon's Doleful Knell and 
 the Satyre of the Three Estaitis into Lycidas and 
 Comus. And what applies to Milton applies in 
 various degrees to innumerable others. The key to 
 the peculiarities of Gray is to be found in Pindar 
 and Horace. The key to the peculiarities of Dryden 
 and Pope is to be found and to be found only 
 in the Roman poets. There is much in the very 
 essence of Spenser's poetry, there is much in the 
 very essence of Wordsworth's poetry, which must be 
 absolutely without meaning to readers ignorant of 
 the Platonic Dialogues. Apart from the Greek and 
 Roman classics, the greater portion of Lord Tennyson's 
 best work is, from a critical point of view, unintelli- 
 gible. The best commentary on Shakespeare is 
 Sophocles, as the best commentary on Burke is Cicero. 
 
 That a great University should think itself justi- 
 fied in granting an Honour Diploma in English 
 Literature without securing in those on whom it is 
 conferred an adequate knowledge of the ancient 
 Classics is nothing less than scandalous. 
 
 The former attempt in the University of Oxford 
 to establish a School of the kind which has been 
 described having been happily defeated, the attempt 
 is now being renewed. It remains to be seen 
 whether those who would provide for the study of
 
 12 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 Literature in the proper, sense of the term will be 
 strong enough to thwart the efforts of the philo- 
 logical party in other words, whether a School in 
 which the interests of Philology will be subordinated 
 to those of Literature, or a School in which the in- 
 terests of Literature will be subordinated to those of 
 Philology, shall be established in the University. 
 As the former attempt was defeated only by a 
 casting vote, and as the University is almost com- 
 pletely under the dominion of those who would 
 dissociate it from national education and national 
 life by preserving it as a nursery for specialists and 
 a centre of technical learning, there is too much 
 reason to fear that the philologists will carry the 
 day. How indeed the interests of literary culture 
 are likely to fare in a University in which there are 
 no less than eighteen Chairs and Readerships in 
 languages maintained, and that at a cost of nearly 
 7000 a year, 1 while Literature as Belles Lcttrcs and 
 
 1 Greek, ,500 ; Hebrew, .300 ; Arabic, 300 ; Lord Al- 
 moner's Chair of Arabic, 50 ; Anglo-Saxon, 300 ; Modern 
 European languages recently resolved into Four Teacher- 
 ships, 800 ; Latin, 900 ; Comparative Philology, 900 ; 
 Chinese, 300 ; Celtic, 600 ; The Mertou Chair (Anglo- 
 Saxon and Middle English), 900 ; Hindustani, 200 ; 
 Persian, 200 ; Telugu, 200 ; Sanscrit, 1,000. Efforts are 
 now being made to provide Chairs and Readerships " in Polish 
 and other Slavonic languages." Most of these Chairs are, it
 
 INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 Rhetoric is, if we except a few casual lectures 
 delivered by the Professor of Poetry, absolutely 
 unrepresented, it is not difficult to conjecture. 
 
 Indeed no further proof of the determination of 
 the University to ignore national interests of culture 
 and education in the local interests of specialism 
 and Philology need be given than the Times report 
 of what took place in Congregation, when the 
 proposal that a School of Literature should be 
 established. I will transcribe it at length. For 
 what took place then will certainly take place again, 
 and it is well that it should be generally known. 
 
 " The question of literature versus philology was at the 
 bottom of the whole discussion, which consisted largely of 
 philological disquisitions on languages and their relations. 
 On the proposal of Mr. Snow and Mr. York Powell, 
 Swedish, Danish, and Icelandic, and on the proposal of Mr. 
 Evans and Mr. York Powell, " Letto-Slavic," were added 
 to the subjects of the school. It was carried by a 
 large majority (60 to 11) that the examination in English 
 should include Anglo-Saxon, and by a smaller majority (58 
 to 26) that English as well as German should necessitate 
 Gothic. The proposal of Mr. Butler that literature, including 
 such knowledge of history as may be needed for the under- 
 standing of the subject, shall have the greater (instead of 
 equal) weight in the distribution of honours was strongly 
 
 may be added, little more than sinecures. See for details 
 about this almost incredible state of things Edinburgh 
 Review, for October, 1889.
 
 14 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 opposed by Professor Freeman. It went, he said, to the 
 root of the matter. There were two senses of the word 
 literature. The statute read it in the higher sense -of the 
 "real solid study of books." But besides there were 
 subjects not fit for examination : such were, for example, 
 questions of taste. The school was to be primarily a school 
 of language, and literature in the lower sense was a subject 
 to be excluded. Professor Earle, defending the introduction 
 of the early periods of a language, maintained that it was 
 the embryology of literature that had to be learnt. The 
 higher criticism was a thing ov8e 8i8a.Krbv ov8e egeraa-Tov. 
 The President of Magdalen appealed to Professor Freeman, as 
 the author of a well-known magazine article, whether Eng- 
 lish literature ought not to be subjected to a classical 
 handling, something different from that of a school of phi- 
 lology. Professor Rhys (the Professor of Celtic) trusted the 
 university would not be bullied or misled by articles in 
 periodicals into a wrong course. Mr. Butler's amendment 
 was rejected by 60 votes to 15." Times for May 18th, 1887. 
 
 It may be added that the result of this movement 
 was a suggestion that the salary of the Professor of 
 Anglo-Saxon should be increased, and a proposal 
 that the Chair of Poetry, the only Chair in which 
 Literature is represented in the University, should 
 be abolished. 
 
 I have now sufficiently explained how wide and 
 general is the requirement for the sort of instruction 
 which it is competent for Literature, if properly 
 interpreted, to provide, and how great are the diffi- 
 culties with which those who would advocate pro-
 
 INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 vision for that instruction at the centres of education 
 have to contend. 
 
 Let us next consider what have been the effects 
 of the Universities' sacrificing so completely the in- 
 terests of Literature to the interests of Philology.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 NEED OF SYSTEMATIZING THE STUDY OF ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE 
 
 AMONG all the anomalies in which the history of 
 education abounds it would be difficult to find one 
 more extraordinary than our present system of 
 teaching, and legislating for the teaching of, English 
 Literature. The importance of that subject, both 
 from a positive point of view as a branch of know- 
 ledge, and from an educational point of view as an 
 instrument of culture, is so fully recognized that its 
 study is everywhere encouraged. It forms a portion 
 of the curriculum at Cambridge. It is about to form 
 a portion of the curriculum at Oxford. It holds a 
 foremost place in our leading Civil Service Examina- 
 tions, and it is among the subjects prescribed for the 
 Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations. In the 
 Extension Lectures it fills a wider space than either 
 Science or History. There is probably no School in
 
 CH. ii NEED OF SYSTEMATIZING THE STUDY 17 
 
 England, whether public or private, in which it is 
 not taught. The number of books and booklets, 
 
 O 
 
 manuals, primers, sketches, charts, annotated 
 editions, and the like designed to facilitate its 
 study exceeds calculation. To all appearance, in- 
 deed, there is no branch of education in a more 
 flourishing condition or more full of promise for the 
 future. But, unhappily, this is very far from being 
 the case. In spite of its great vogue, and in spite 
 of the time and energy lavished in teaching it, no 
 fact is more certain than that from an educational 
 point of view it is, and from the very first has been, 
 an utter failure. Teachers perceive with perplexity 
 that it attains none of the ends which a subject in 
 itself so full of attraction and interest might be 
 expected to attain. It fails, they complain, to 
 fertilise ; it fails to inform ; it fails even to awaken 
 curiosity. For a dozen youths who derive real 
 benefit from the instruction they get in preparing 
 for an examination in History there are not two who 
 derive the smallest benefit from the instruction 
 they get in preparing for an examination in Litera- 
 ture. In the first case the chances are that a lad 
 of ordinary intelligence will not only have learned 
 what he has learned with relish and pleasure, will 
 not only therefore retain and assimilate much of 
 what he has been taught, but will have had im- 
 
 C
 
 18 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 planted in him a genuine and perhaps permanent 
 interest in history generally. In the second case 
 he will be a singular exception to the rule if, six 
 months after he has poured out in "Shakespeare 
 Papers," in " Bacon Papers," in " General Literature 
 Papers " the substance of his lectures, he either 
 retains or cares to retain a tithe of what he has 
 been at so much pains to acquire. No one who has 
 had experience in examining can have failed to be 
 struck by the difference between the answers sent 
 in to questions on English Literature and the answers 
 ^sent in to questions on other subjects. In a paper 
 on Literature the questions designed to test intelli- 
 gence and judgment will as a rule be carefully 
 avoided, or if attempted prove only too conclusively 
 the absence of both ; but questions involving no 
 more than can be attained by the unreflective 
 exercise of memory will be answered with a fluency 
 and fulness which is often perfectly miraculous. 
 
 The consequence of all this is that those whose 
 estimate of the educational value of a subject is not 
 determined by the facility it affords for making 
 marks in competitive examinations are beginning 
 to regard " English Literature " with increasing dis- 
 favour. In the Examination for the Civil Service of 
 India it has until quite recently been degraded to a 
 secondary place. From the Army Examinations, by
 
 n NEED OF SYSTEMATIZING THE STUDY 19 
 
 a recent order, it has been entirely eliminated. The 
 Council of the Holloway College have decided to 
 recognize it only in connection with Philology. 
 More than one eminent authority has pronounced 
 that it cannot be taught, that its introduction into 
 our scholastic curricula was an experiment, and an 
 experiment that has failed. 
 
 It is no doubt natural to judge of the educational 
 value of any given subject of teaching by the results 
 of that teaching. And yet we may often be very 
 grievously mistaken. A striking illustration of this 
 is to be found in the case of the Classics. A wretched 
 system of word-mongering and pedantry bears its 
 natural fruits. Two noble Literatures, eminently 
 calculated to attain all the ends of a liberal educa- 
 tion, and such as would in the hands of competent 
 teachers be certain to attract and interest the young, 
 are rendered repulsive and unintelligible. A cry 
 arises that the Classics are a failure. " Demos- 
 thenes," says a plain man, "may be the prince of 
 orators, and Homer the prince of poets ; but when I 
 find that my boy, after hammering at them for 
 twelve years, knows nothing and cares nothing 
 about either the prince of orators or the prince of 
 poets, I have not much faith in the Classics." Again 
 a lad leaves school, becomes a writer or public 
 speaker, finds himself reading the literature of 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATUEE CH. 
 
 modern Europe with ease and pleasure, re-opens 
 Homer or Catullus, discovers that -he is unable to 
 make out five lines, closes the volume with a sigh, 
 and goes forth to swell the cry against " the 
 Classics." A ludicrous coalition composed partly 
 of malcontents like these, partly of noisy Philistines 
 who never read a line of a Greek or Roman author 
 in their lives, but who " argue the question on a 
 priori grounds ; " partly of perplexed schoolmasters, 
 and partly of recalcitrant drudges conscious of the 
 futility of their labours and ready to support any- 
 one who confirms them in their impression is 
 formed. Each in his own way passes judgment on 
 " the Classics." Each in his own way is furnished 
 with unanswerable arguments against their employ- 
 ment as a means of education. 
 
 It never seems to occur to these persons to inquire 
 whether the fault lies in the Classics or in those who 
 teach them; whether it is the tools which are in fault 
 or the workmen. The absurdity of concluding that 
 because a particular watch cannot be made to keep 
 time accurately it is neither possible nor desirable 
 for time to be kept accurately, is not greater than 
 the absurdity of concluding that because the present 
 method of teaching the Classics has failed we should 
 do well to cease to teach them at all. The truth is 
 that there is all the difference in the world between
 
 ii NEED OF SYSTEMATIZING THE STUDY 21 
 
 what is implied by " Classics " and what is implied 
 by the Classics, and the mistake of the anti-classicists 
 lies in their failing to perceive the distinction. By 
 the first is implied partly a system and partly the 
 machinery of that system. Virgil as one of the 
 classics and Virgil in his relation to " Classics " 
 in other words, Virgil as he affords material for 
 teaching and Virgil as he is actually taught 
 bears indeed the same name and is therefore very 
 naturally confounded. But no greater mistake 
 could be made. If by urging the uselessness of 
 the Georgics and dEneid as text-books for teaching 
 we mean the Georgics and ^Eneid of Heyne and 
 Forbiger, we readily admit that popular education 
 would gain by the ostracism of Virgil ; but Heyne 
 and Forbiger are not Virgil. If a radical reform 
 in our methods of classical teaching were instituted, 
 and experiment recorded failure, it would be time 
 to show cause why Sophocles should not be super- 
 seded by Goethe and Horace by Beranger ; but the 
 experiment has not been tried. 
 
 Now all this is exactly repeating itself in the 
 condition and prospects of our own Literature. 
 Since its recognition as a subject of teaching it has 
 been taught wherever it has been seriously taught 
 on the same principle as the Classics. It has been 
 regarded not as the expression of art and genius,
 
 22 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 but as mere material for the study of words, as 
 mere pabulum for philology. All that constitutes 
 its intrinsic value has been ignored. All that con- 
 stitutes its value as a liberal study has been ignored. 
 Its masterpieces have been resolved into exercises 
 in grammar, syntax, and etymology. Its history 
 has been resolved into a barren catalogue of names, 
 works, and dates. No faculty but the faculty of 
 memory has been called into play in studying it. 
 That it should therefore have failed as an instru- 
 ment of education is no more than might have been 
 expected. But it has failed for the same reason 
 that "Classics" have failed. It has failed not 
 because it affords no material for profitable teach- 
 ing, but because we pervert it into material for un- 
 profitable teaching. Nor is this all. Thucydides 
 has remarked that a state fares better under in- 
 different laws efficiently administered than under 
 excellent laws administered inefficiently. Whatever 
 exception may be taken to our classical system, it 
 has the advantage of being organised. The utmost 
 that its legislation can accomplish is attained. It 
 has its standards and its tests, and both are uniform. 
 It never oscillates between conflicting theories. 
 What is taught in one place is not contradicted in 
 another. 
 
 But in our English system all is anarchy. A
 
 ii NEED OF SYSTEMATIZING THE STUDY 23 
 
 teacher who should entertain the soundest and most 
 enlightened views of the ends at which literary 
 teachers should aim would have no security that his 
 work would not be tested and his pupils plucked by 
 a man against whose views his whole work had been 
 a tacit protest. If in a School or Institute instruction 
 in English Literature be required, an application for 
 such instruction is made and the rest is fortune. 
 It may come in the form of excellent lectures the 
 theory and method of which proceed on the principle 
 that English Literature began in the valleys of the 
 Punjab and ended at the birth of Chaucer, or it may 
 come in the form of excellent lectures in which all 
 that preceded Spenser and Shakespeare is contemp- 
 tuously ignored. It may consist of bald compilations 
 from current handbooks, or it may consist of vague 
 and florid declamations in the esthetic style. It 
 may confine itself and this perhaps is most likely 
 to philological comments on particular works. That 
 there are living and working among us and that in 
 large numbers intelligent and efficient teachers 
 who err neither on the side of pedantry nor on the 
 side of dilettantism is undoubtedly true. But they 
 are scattered and isolated. They are hampered and 
 thwarted in their work by its disconnection with any 
 recognized system, and still oftener by the regulations 
 of Examining Boards. Without any common centre,
 
 24 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 they are without any common plan of action. Such 
 is the present condition of what ought to be our most 
 efficient instrument of popular education. 
 
 Whether all this can be remedied is surely worth 
 serious consideration. Two things are certain : 
 English Literature in the proper and obvious sense of 
 the term is and will continue to be a subject of 
 teaching in all parts of the kingdom ; and if that 
 teaching is not organized, and those who undertake 
 it not educated, nothing but anarchy can be the 
 result. It is useless for the Universities to attempt 
 to solve the problem by attaching to Literature a 
 meaning which it does not bear. If Philology be 
 confounded with Literature at Oxford and Cambridge, 
 the world without will distinguish them. The pupils 
 will be wiser than the masters. Of the uselessness 
 of such institutions as the Mediaeval and Modern 
 Languages Tripos at Cambridge no further proof is 
 needed than the records of the Class-lists of that 
 Tripos. 
 
 In 1888. 
 
 First Class .... none 
 Second Class .... none 
 Third Class .... two 
 
 In 1889. 
 
 First Class .... three 
 Second Class .... three 
 Third Class . four 
 
 In 1886. 
 
 
 First Class . . . 
 
 . none 
 
 Second Class . . . 
 
 . one 
 
 Third Class . . . 
 
 . two 
 
 In 1887. 
 
 
 First Class . . . 
 
 . none 
 
 Second Class . . . 
 
 . one 
 
 Third Class . . 
 
 . none
 
 NEED OF SYSTEMATIZING THE STUDY 25 
 
 In 1890. 
 
 First Class .... one 
 Second Class .... two 
 Third Class . one 
 
 In 1891. 
 
 First Class .... one 
 Second Class .... two 
 Third Ciass . . three 
 
 And so this wretched institution blunders on, serv- 
 ing no end, satisfying no need, with six Examiners, 
 each receiving a fee of twenty pounds from the 
 University Chest, to an average of four examinees. 
 Incredible as it may seem, Oxford is now preparing 
 at a vast expense to establish a precisely similar in- 
 stitution founded on precisely the same theory of 
 the meaning of Literature. Thus, while English 
 Literature is in every part of the country a subject 
 of teaching in one sense of the term, it is not even 
 recognized at the centres of education, except in 
 another sense of the term.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 
 
 THE contention of the Universities is that, if English 
 Literature is to be regarded as a subject susceptible of 
 systematic and accurate study, a study the results of 
 which are to be submitted to the same tests as the 
 results of other studies recognized in educational 
 curricula, no other signification can be attached to it 
 than the signification attached to it by philologists. 
 " It is only the embryology of literature that has to 
 be learnt," is, as we have seen, the dictum of 
 Professor Earle " the higher criticism is a thing ov&e 
 StSafcrbv ovSe e^eraarov." " There are many things fit 
 for a man's personal study,'' writes Professor Freeman, 
 in answer to a correspondent in the Times, 1 " which 
 are not fit for University examinations. One of these 
 is ' literature ' in the ' Lecturer's ' sense. He (the corre 
 spondent) tells us that it 'cultivates the taste, educates 
 
 1 Times for June 8, 1887.
 
 CH. in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 27 
 
 the sympathies, enlarges the mind.' Excellent re- 
 sults, against which no one has a word to say. Only 
 we cannot examine in tastes and sympathies. The 
 examiner, in any branch of knowledge, must stick to 
 the duller range of that ' technical and positive in- 
 formation.' . . ." Such are the objections of one 
 class of the opponents of Literature it is a subject 
 too intangible for the kind of instruction which has 
 to be submitted to the test of examination. And 
 other opponents have other objections. If, they urge, 
 we attempted to study it as Belles Lettres, what would 
 be the result? On the historical side its study 
 would be stereotyped into one species of cram, on 
 the critical side into another. An elaborate apparatus 
 of mnemonic aids would be devised. Such works as 
 Mr. Morley's would be summarized into tables for 
 facts, and such works as M. Taine's would be reduced 
 to epitomes for generalizations. Criticism as applied 
 to particular authors would be got by heart from 
 essays and monographs, and criticism on its theo- 
 retical side would be got by heart from the analyses 
 of crammers. If this were not the result, all would 
 evaporate in dilettantism. It would be impossible 
 for examiners to frame such questions as would baffle 
 abuse. Now all this will apply equally to History 
 and Philosophy, and yet the problem of organizing 
 the academic study of both has been solved, and with
 
 28 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 what success we all know. To say that Literature 
 is a subject peculiarly susceptible of being crammed 
 is absurd. By cram we simply mean knowledge 
 acquired by the unreflecting exercise of memory ; and 
 whether such knowledge is to be obtained depends 
 on whether it is to have opportunities for displaying 
 itself. It is open to an examiner in History to frame 
 his questions on the model of 
 
 Enumerate, with their dates, the Archbishops of Canter- 
 bury as far as the accession of Henry VII., and the Popes 
 from the death of Gregory the Great to the accession of 
 Alexander III. 
 
 It is open to an examiner in Literature to frame his 
 questions on the model of 
 
 Give the Christian names of Langland, Lydgate, Hawes, 
 Coleridge, Denh am, Pope, Akenside, and Gray, and give the 
 authors of Holbinol, The History of John Bull, Hydrio- 
 taphia, The Bristowe Tragedy, &c. 
 
 But it is equally open to the first to propose such 
 questions as 
 
 The Church has .been called "the democracy of the Middle 
 Ages." Discuss that statement. 
 
 And to the second to propose such questions as 
 
 Define the essential characteristics of Romanticism and 
 Classicism, and account for the predominance, at particular 
 periods, of each.
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 29 
 
 The first questions are obviously cram questions ; 
 the second as obviously are not. Again, with re- 
 ference to criticism : whether it could be crammed or 
 not would depend entirely on the tact of examiners. 
 If questions on the " essential characteristics " of the 
 genius and style of particular writers became a stock 
 part of the examination, they would in all probability 
 be crammed ; but what competent examiner would 
 dream of setting them ? The application of Hume's 
 maxim that criticism without examples is worthless 
 would alone suffice to defeat this form of imposture. 
 To say that such works as Sidney's Apology fcr 
 Poetry, Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poesy, Addison's 
 Papers on Milton, Johnson's Lives, Coleridge's 
 Lectures, and the like, would be " got up from 
 analyses" is true enough, but it is no less true of 
 every special book in the History School, and of 
 every special book in the Philosophy School. 
 
 We are told, again, that the teaching of English 
 Literature as a branch of Belles Lettres is impracticable 
 on another ground. It is not a subject sufficiently 
 " solid and tangible " for examination purposes. 
 Take Shakespeare. Make it impossible for candi- 
 dates to be admitted to an examination in Shake- 
 speare without a thorough knowledge of French and 
 German, of Old Saxon and Mceso-Gothic, and then 
 frame two-thirds of your questions after this fashion:
 
 30 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 1. Point out textual difficulties, and mention and criticise 
 any suggested emendations on these passages [then follow in 
 due order the (a), the (6), the (c), &c. &c.]. 
 
 2. Give some account of the extent and variety of Shake- 
 speare's vocabulary. 
 
 3. Mention and discuss some points in which Elizabethan 
 grammar differs from Victorian. 
 
 4. What are the relative proportions of the Teutonic and 
 Latin elements in the phraseology of Shakespeare ? 
 
 Do this, and Shakespeare becomes a solid and 
 tangible subject for examination. Admitting that 
 from this point of view Shakespeare becomes a 
 " solid and tangible subject," are we therefore to 
 assume that when his Dramas ceased to be studied 
 on the same method and under the same conditions 
 as the Ormulum and the Ayeribite of Imoyt are 
 studied, they cease to be applicable to purposes of 
 education, cease to be susceptible of serious treat- 
 ment ? Suppose that, instead of the questions to 
 which I have just drawn attention, the following 
 were substituted : 
 
 1. The epithet which best characterises Shakespeare is 
 " myriad-minded." Discuss that statement. 
 
 2. Point out Shakespeare's obligations to his dramatic 
 predecessors and contemporaries, and discuss the statement 
 that " Pure Comedy " was his creation. 
 
 3. Discuss the theology and ethics of Shakespeare, and 
 show how they bear out Jonson's assertion that he was 
 "not of an age, but for all time."
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 31 
 
 4. Discuss Goethe's analysis of the character of Hamlet. 
 
 5. Discuss and account for the political teaching of Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 Would not Shakespeare, when studied from this 
 point of view, become an equally " solid and tangible 
 subject," and lead perhaps to more " solid and tan- 
 gible " results in education ? But to turn from the 
 study of particular authors to the study of the general 
 history of English Literature. The objection here is 
 not to its intangibleness, but to the facility it would 
 afford for cramming. Now why it should lead to 
 cramming when questions set on it should assume 
 the form of 
 
 Two-thirds of what is most valuable in English Literature 
 is as historically unintelligible apart from Classical Litera- 
 ture, as the history of Latin Literature would be apart from 
 Greek. Discuss that statement ; 
 
 or 
 
 Account for the dominance of the Classical School between 
 1667 and 1744, and for the Romantic revival in and about 
 1793; 
 
 and should not lead to cramming when they assume 
 the form of 1 
 
 Give some account of the state of our language in regard 
 both of (sic) its grammatical forms and usages, and of its 
 vocabulary, at the beginning of the sixteenth century ; 
 
 1 The questions which follow are taken from the papers set 
 in the Mediaeval and Modern Languages Tripos.
 
 32 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 or 
 
 Discuss these words and phrases Areopagitica all to- 
 ruffled the dreaded name of Demogorgon his shoulders 
 fledge with wings Pharaoh's pensioners to plume the 
 regal rights angel's metal in my warm blood and canicular 
 days a serviceable dudgeon in every man's life certain 
 rubs, doublings, and wrenches ; 
 
 it would be very interesting to know. But pre- 
 cedent is to experiment what proof is to assertion. 
 And as the study of English Literature, as distin- 
 guished from English Philology, has not been reduced 
 to system in the past, it is no more than we might 
 expect from those who have always proceeded on 
 the principle of auctoritas pro veritate, non ceritas 
 pro auctoritate, that they should deny the possibility 
 of reducing it to system in the present. 
 
 In legislating for the teaching of English Litera- 
 ture and the term Literature needs no definition 
 we have obviously to bear two things in mind 
 the necessity for an adequate treatment of it 
 from an historical point of view and the necessity 
 for an adequate treatment of it from a critical 
 point of view. In treating it historically we have 
 as obviously to regard it generally as' an organic 
 whole, as the expression of national idiosyncrasies 
 revealing themselves under various conditions, to 
 consider it particularly in its relations to those
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 33 
 
 conditions, and to consider it finally in its relation 
 to individuals. Thus in dealing historically with 
 any given work say, Paradise Lost what a teacher 
 has to explain is how and why the poem could have 
 been produced only by an Englishman ; how and why 
 it could have been produced only under the conditions 
 under which it was produced ; how and why it could 
 have been produced only by Milton. Literary 
 teachers are therefore as much concerned with the 
 study of " origins " as the philologists are, but in 
 " origins " not as they throw light on language, but 
 on character. They are not at all concerned with 
 the O. S, O. H. G., M. H. G., and N.H.G. equivalents 
 of , ei, 6, $,, ai, au, iu ; but they are very much 
 concerned with the fact that if Wordsworth had not 
 been of the Teutonic stock, he could not have 
 written the Ode to Duty or the Lines on Tintern 
 Alibcy. Whether Professor Rhys is right or wrong 
 in supposing that in the case of Vedomaui and 
 Mauoli the mau-i and mau-o are of the same origin 
 as mai in Gwalchmai is of no consequence to them, 
 but whether Matthew Arnold was right or wrong in 
 what he preached to us about the Celtic element in 
 our literature is of the greatest consequence. 
 
 To trace back to their sources the elements 
 sensuous, spiritual, moral, intellectual which mingle 
 in the composition of English masterpieces is all 
 
 D
 
 34 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE OH. 
 
 that appertains to the student of Literature. That 
 it would for this purpose be an advantage to him to 
 be able to peruse the Tain Bo and the Beowulf, 
 the Kraku-Mal, and the Giratz de Rossilho in the 
 original is indisputable ; that it would not be neces- 
 sary for him to do so is obvious ; for what concerns 
 him in them is not the form, is not the intrinsic 
 value, but the light thrown collaterally on temper 
 and character. The many excellent histories and 
 monographs, Ten Brink's Early English Literature, 
 for example, or even such a work as Professor 
 Earle's Anglo-Saxon Literature, the many excellent 
 English versions of all that is most valuable and 
 most characteristic in Celtic and Saxon Litera- 
 ture would in truth give him all the information 
 which for his purposes he would require. Thus 
 a student who understood clearly the character and 
 temper of the forefathers of our Literature, and who 
 had at the same time mastered some competent and 
 succinct survey of its history, would have no diffi- 
 culty in conceiving of it as an organic whole, and 
 the foundation of a systematic study would have 
 been laid. 
 
 In proceeding to the next step in tracing, that is 
 to say, the evolution of our Literature in detail we 
 are confronted with the difficulty of there being no 
 good general history in existence a deficiency which
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 35 
 
 the Universities ought long ago to have supplied. 
 M. Taine's work, though a work of great genius and 
 great eloquence, is rather a series of brilliant sketches 
 than a continuous and ordered narrative, and is 
 moreover too full of paradox and exaggeration for 
 the purposes of sober students. Professor Morley's 
 epitome is at once too full and too meagre ; its 
 pages are crowded with names and titles in bewil- 
 dering multitudes; but of the causes which have 
 conspired to form epochs in literary activity, and of 
 the characteristics of such epochs, very inadequate 
 accounts are given. Chambers's Cyclopaedia of 
 English Literature, a work which so far as it goes 
 it is impossible to praise too highly, has no preten- 
 sion to being more than a mere manual with illus- 
 trative extracts. The works of Craik and Shaw 
 are simply handbooks. The consequence of this is, 
 that if a student wishes to obtain a general know- 
 ledge of the history of our Literature, he is driven to 
 seek information about one period in one book and 
 about another period in another book, having at the 
 same time to supply the connecting links for him- 
 self. To illustrate what is meant. Taken in its 
 whole extent, the history of English Literature proper 
 may be divided into nine epochs. The first will 
 extend from about the middle of the fourteenth 
 century to the death of Chaucer in 1400; the second 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 from the death of Chaucer to the accession of Henry 
 the Eighth ; the third from that date to the accession 
 of Elizabeth ; the fourth from the accession of Eliza- 
 beth to the accession of Charles the First ; the fifth 
 from the accession of Charles the First to the death 
 of Dryden in 1700; the sixth to the death of 
 Swift in 1745 ; the seventh from the death of Swift 
 to the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798 ; 
 the eighth to the death of Wordsworth in 1850 ; 
 and the ninth from that date to the present time. 
 Now of none of these periods, if we except the first 
 and second, which, so far as poetry is concerned, have 
 been methodically though not adequately treated by 
 Warton, have we any connected history at all. For 
 the Elizabethan Age we must consult, for the drama, 
 Collier's and Ward's histories of Dramatic Poetry, 
 and the notices and critiques which have appeared 
 separately of each of the dramatists; for narrative, 
 lyric, and other branches of poetry we have nothing 
 to fall back upon except such information as may be 
 gathered piecemeal from editors and essayists. With 
 regard to prose literature we are in a still more un- 
 fortunate condition ; for not only has no attempt been 
 made to trace its history from the pseudo-Maundeville 
 to Milton, but we have few or none of those " studies " 
 of particular writers which have in the case of poetry 
 served to illustrate, at all events occasionally and
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 37 
 
 fragmentarily, the process of its development. And 
 what applies to the history of our Literature in its 
 earlier stages applies equally to its history during 
 later epochs. There is, it is true, no lack of excellent 
 monographs and essays, such as Macaulay's Essays on 
 Addison and the Comic Dramatists of the Restora- 
 tion, or Forster's Essays on Steele and Churchill, and 
 such as some of the volumes in the English Men of 
 Letters series ; but these neither supply nor were 
 designed to supply the sort of work which the serious 
 student of the history of English Literature requires. 
 Nothing is so necessary in treating Literature histori- 
 cally as the recognition of its continuity on the one 
 hand and a clear exposition of what marks and con- 
 stitutes epochs in its development on the other, and 
 nothing is in teaching so universally disregarded. 
 What is needed is a series of volumes corresponding 
 to each of the periods into which the history of our 
 Literature naturally divides itself, each period being 
 treated separately in detail, but each being linked by 
 historical disquisitions both with the period imme- 
 diately preceding and with the period immediately 
 following. And each volume might consist of four 
 parts. Its prologue, which should be virtually the 
 epilogue of its predecessor, should, after assigning 
 the determining dates of the particular period under 
 treatment, show how, in obedience to the causes
 
 38 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 which regulate the course and phases of literary 
 activity, the literature characteristic of the preceding 
 epoch developed or degenerated into the literature 
 characteristic of the new. Next should come a care- 
 ful account of the environment, social, political, 
 moral, intellectual, of that literature, not given in 
 general or in the abstract, but accompanied through- 
 out with illustrations drawn from the constituent 
 elements of typical works. But nothing is more 
 important than what constitutes the third function 
 of historical interpretation. The influence exercised 
 by other Literatures on our own has been so consider- 
 able that it is impossible to study it without con- 
 tinual reference to them. It has been at various 
 times affected by that of Italy, by that of France, 
 by that of Germany, but to those of Greece and 
 Rome it is bound by indissoluble ties. An adequate 
 account of the influence of these Literatures on the 
 formal development of our own has long been a 
 desideratum, and it is a desideratum which it should 
 be one of the first objects of such a series of text-books 
 as we have here advocated to supply. To these dis- 
 quisitions and this should form the fourth and last 
 part of each volume should be attached tables in 
 which, arranged according to their schools and under 
 their various categories, the writers of the particular 
 epoch under treatment should, together with their
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 39 
 
 works, be enumerated, and enumerated descriptively. 
 With such guides as these in his hands the student 
 would proceed to the biography of particular writers 
 and to the study of particular works the next and 
 not less important part of his task furnished with 
 the knowledge which would alone suffice to render 
 both historically intelligible. 
 
 But to pass from the historical to the critical 
 treatment of Literature in other words, to the inter- 
 pretation of particular works. In that interpretation 
 is necessarily involved much which has been included 
 under the former heading ; but we have now to con- 
 sider what is not included under that heading 
 verbal analysis, analysis of form and style, analysis of 
 sentiment, ethic, and thought. To secure that each 
 should be adequate, that each should have its place, 
 and that each should receive equal attention, is 
 obviously the business of the teacher. The mistake 
 commonly made is to attach too much importance to 
 the first, to deal with the second very inefficiently, 
 and to neglect the third altogether. This is the 
 result of one of the most serious deficiencies in our 
 higher education. We have absolutely no provision 
 for systematic critical training. Rhetorical criticism 
 as a subject of teaching is confined to what is known 
 in elementary schools as " analysis." ^Esthetic and phi- 
 losophical criticism is as a branch of teaching without
 
 40 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 recognition at all. It has been killed by philology. 
 Fifty years ago such works as the Institutes of 
 Quintilian, the De Sublimitate, and the Rhetoric were 
 studied as thoroughly and methodically as the Ethics 
 and the RepuUic are studied now. And till that 
 study is revived and extended till, in addition to 
 the treatises of the ancients, such treatises as the 
 I Laocoon and Schiller's Letters and Essays on ^Esthetic 
 Education have a place in our Universities there is 
 small hope of sound principles of exegesis. For in 
 education all moves from above. Systematize a study 
 at the universities, and it is systematized throughout 
 the country ; neglect it at those centres, and anarchy 
 elsewhere is the result. This grave defect in our 
 educational system has furnished the opponents of 
 Literature with an excellent weapon, and has led to 
 serious misconceptions on the part of those who 
 would fain be its advocates. ^Esthetic criticism, it 
 is said, will lead only to vague and useless 
 generalities. If one man has not the wit and taste 
 to relish the beauties of poetry, it is very certain that 
 another man will not enable him to do so. You may 
 expound Locke's Essay concerning Human Under- 
 standing and Bacon's treatise on the Advancement of 
 Learning profitably enough, but you cannot expound 
 the Ode to a Skylark or the Eve of St. Agnes. 
 Criticism, if it is to be a real service in practical
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 41 
 
 education, can deal only with what is positive and 
 tangible. It is only the embryology of literature 
 that can be learned. Tastes and sympathies, as 
 Professor Freeman remarks, are beyond the reach of 
 examination. Our Universities cannot manufacture 
 Arnolds and Sainte-Beuves. 
 
 All this and much more of the same kind has been 
 gravely brought forward as an argument against the 
 Universities providing for the study of Belles Lettres. 
 It is no doubt true, both with regard to criticism and 
 with regard to Literature generally, that if a man is 
 an Arnold or a Sainte-Beuve he will educate himself; 
 it is true also that no amount of teaching will make 
 him an Arnold or a Sainte-Beuve ; but it is no less true 
 that hundreds of men are engaged in interpreting 
 poetry and literature who are neither one nor the 
 other, and that if instruction does not do for them 
 what nature and self-culture have not done, they will 
 perform their work inefficiently. When Professor 
 Earle informs us that the higher criticism is a thing 
 ou8e SiBatcTov ovSe e^eracrrov, and that it is therefore 
 no function of academic education to train men to 
 become critics, in other words to teach them to 
 approach and appreciate Literature critically, he 
 asserts what it is difficult from its mere absurdity to 
 refute. But he asserts what lets us into the secret 
 of the failure of our academic system on the side of
 
 42 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATUEE CH. 
 
 culture. He enables us to understand the full 
 measure of the mischief which the complete subordi- 
 nation of the literary to the philological side of 
 classical study is calculated to effect. What in the 
 eyes of any intelligent person is the chief end of 
 discipline in Literce Humaniorcs ? Why, the very end 
 at which, according to Professor Earle, it is impos- 
 sible for academic instruction to aim the cultivation 
 and discipline of those powers and faculties which 
 constitute a critic. " We cannot examine," says 
 Professor Freeman, " in tastes and sympathies." No, 
 examine in the Poetics, in the Rhetoric, in Quintilian's 
 Institutes, in the De Sublimitate, in the Laocoon, and 
 examine with the object of testing the results of such 
 discipline. 
 
 A student indeed who should have mastered the 
 Poetics, the second book of the Rhetoric, the tenth 
 book of the Institutes, the De Oratorc, the De Subli- 
 initate, and Lessing's Laocoon would have laid the 
 foundations of a sound critical education. It may be 
 objected to what has been said that such a standard 
 of teaching is neither generally possible nor at all 
 necessary, that it is mere pedantry to suppose that 
 an adequate interpretation of an English Classic 
 depends on a knowledge of Aristotle and Lessing, 
 and that the only door to the teaching of Milton lies 
 through Quintilian and Longinus. The reply to this
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 43 
 
 is that we have not been considering what is gen- 
 erally possible or generally necessary, but how a 
 finished literary critic ought to be educated and how 
 the teaching of English Literature may be raised to 
 the level of the teaching required in the Honour 
 curricula of our Universities. There is surely no 
 reason why a Diploma in Honours should not be 
 as open to students of Literature as it is to students 
 of History and Philosophy, and it is very certain that 
 no man would be entitled to such a Diploma whore 
 education had not taught him to approach Shake- 
 speare through Aristotle. 
 
 But to return. I have said that in the study of 
 particular books which is often as far as " English 
 Literature " is permitted to extend attention was 
 too often directed merely to language. The fault 
 unhappily does not end here : attention is frequently 
 directed to wholly unprofitable topics. I will illus- 
 trate what I mean by giving in extenso a typical 
 Paper on Macbeth. 
 
 1. What reasons are there for believing that this play has 
 been interpolated ? Point out the parts probably interpolated. 
 
 2. What emendations have been proposed in the following 
 passages 1 
 
 (a) My way of life 
 Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf. 
 
 (b) As thick as tale 
 Came post with post.
 
 44 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH 
 
 (c) Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself 
 
 And falls on the other. 
 (cl) My title is appeased. 
 (And three others.) 
 
 3. By whom were the following spoken, and with what 
 reference 1 
 
 (a) To alter favour ever is to fear. 
 
 (b) Thou shalt not live, 
 That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies. 
 (And four other passages.) 
 
 4. Explain and comment on the following passages : 
 (Then follows a series of well-selected cruces.) 
 
 5. Give the meanings and derivations of the following 
 words. In what context do they appear ? 
 
 (Then come the words.) 
 
 6. Whence did Shakespeare derive the plot of Macbeth I 
 Point out any deviations from recorded history in the 
 play. 
 
 7. Illustrate from the play important points of difference 
 between Elizabethan and modern grammar. 
 
 The first thing that strikes us in this paper is that 
 the only faculty appealed to is memory. There is 
 nothing which encourages reflection, nothing which 
 can have the smallest effect on the education of taste, 
 nothing which even indicates the existence of what 
 constitutes the life and power of the work. Nor is 
 this all. The first two questions are a direct encour- 
 agement to the acquisition of the sort of knowledge 
 which is of all knowledge the most useless. When 
 in the case of Shakespeare or any "other poet there is
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 45 
 
 certain evidence of interpolation, it is not too much 
 to expect of students that they should be able to 
 point out where such interpolations occur ; but when 
 no such evidence exists, and all rests only on the 
 assumptions of speculative criticism, the practice of 
 requiring them to load their memories with such 
 inanities cannot be too strongly condemned. In the 
 case of Macbeth there is no evidence, there is not 
 even suspicion of interpolation. The play appeared 
 in the first folio edited by Shakespeare's literary 
 executors, and was printed in all probability from 
 the poet's own manuscript. There begins and there 
 ends our knowledge of its text. To argue interpo- 
 lations from supposed inequalities in the composition 
 would be to argue interpolations in almost every 
 drama and certainly in every epic in the world ; and 
 so it comes to pass that "interpl., sec. scene, first 
 act ; third scene, one to thirty-seven ; third scene, 
 sec. act, comm. ; fifth scene, third act, hundred and 
 thirty-five to hundred and thirty-three, dub. ; eighth 
 scene, fourth act, thirty-two and thirty-three ; last 
 scene, last act, traces other hand " is a mnemonic 
 formula only too familiar to English youth. 1 
 
 1 Of the immense stupidity of which these interpolation 
 theorists are capable it may be well to give one or tM 7 o 
 instances. They tell ITS that the Porter's speech, act ii. sc. 3, 
 is interpolated. Now it requires very little critical sagacity 
 to see that that scene is not merely exquisitely appropriate
 
 46 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATUEE CH. 
 
 Equally futile and equally misleading is the practice 
 of encouraging the getting by heart of conjectural 
 
 but absolutely necessary. First, it bridges over tlie interval 
 between the intense excitement attendant on the committal of 
 the murder and the intense excitement which will be atten- 
 dant on its discovery, an interval which could not with 
 propriety have been bridged over in any other way ; it thus 
 serves partly to calm the passions after the appalling climax 
 in the preceding scene and partly to prepare them by a lull 
 of repose for another climactic appeal the succeeding horror 
 of Macduffs announcement. Secondly, its harsh and grotesque 
 realism suddenly striking on us has, like " the knocking," an 
 effect so weird that comedy, if it relaxes, never for a moment 
 breaks the spell of tragedy, never for a moment unharmonises 
 the emotions. Thirdly, it is exactly in Shakespeare's manner 
 just such a scene interposes between climax and climax in 
 Antony an/1 Cleopatra, act v. sc. 2 ; in Hamlet, act v. sc. 1, &c. 
 &c. Fourthly, it has all the characteristics of Shakespearian 
 low comedy. Even more ridiculous is the theory .which 
 suspects interpolation in the opening scene and asserts inter- 
 polation in the witch-scene (act i. sc. 3). The problem in 
 Macbeth is, as everyone knows, how far he is to be regarded as 
 a responsible agent, and how far as the thrall of supernatural 
 powers. But Shakespeare, in accordance with his usual 
 custom, furnishes us with the key to the position, and that key 
 is found in the appearance of the witches in the opening 
 scene and in their subsequent appearance at each crisis in 
 Macbeth's decline. Remove any of the witch-scenes and the 
 key is lost. Again, the second scene of the first act, another 
 " interpolation," is, as a child might see, obviously introduced 
 to emphasise Macbeth's bravery, and carries Shakespeare's 
 stamp in every line and in every cadence. See Clarendon 
 Press Macbeth.
 
 m AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 47 
 
 emendations which are mere impertinences. What 
 is required, for example, in the (a) section of question 
 two is Johnson's wholly unnecessary conjecture 
 " May " ; what is required in (V) is Rowe's flat and 
 contemptible correction " hail " ; and what is required 
 in (c) is the reproduction of the nonsense of Mason, 
 Bailey, and Singleton. If teachers and those who 
 write books for the instruction of teachers could only 
 be brought to feel that the text of a great poet 
 should be as sacred as his memory, education would 
 greatly gain. But to continue. The third question, 
 intended no doubt to secure original acquaintance 
 with the play, is either wholly superfluous for much 
 more effective tests could easily have been applied 
 or places a premium on the exercise of the least 
 intelligent faculty of the mind local memory. To 
 questions four and five if we except at least the 
 condition with which the fifth is saddled no 
 objections could of course be made. The attainment 
 of such information as they are designed to secure is 
 obviously as essential as it is important. With regard 
 to the sixth, it is chiefly to be regretted that it is 
 the only question of its kind, and with regard to the 
 seventh that it did not supply the deficiency. 
 
 It is clear, then, that the study of a play of Shake- 
 speare and what applies to a play of Shakespeare 
 applies obviously to any other work in poetry which
 
 48 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 runs on the lines indicated in these questions would 
 serve only to attain one of the ends at which the 
 interpretation of literature should aim. It would 
 secure an exact knowledge of the history and mean- 
 ing of words ; it would secure a clear understanding 
 of all that pertains in mechanism of expression to 
 grammar and syntax, and of all that pertains in the 
 accidents of expression to local and particular allusions. 
 But it would go no further. The questions which 
 ought to form an essential part of every examination 
 not merely elementary in which a play of Shakespeare 
 is offered are questions requiring an intelligent study 
 of its general structure, of the evolution of its plot, of 
 its style and diction (not simply in their relation to 
 grammar but in their relation to rhetoric), of its ethics, 
 of its metaphysics, of its characters, of the influences, 
 precedent and contemporary, which importantly 
 affected it. It would be quite as easy to substitute 
 for such questions as I have transcribed some such 
 questions as these : 
 
 1. Through what phases did the style of Shakespeare pass ? 
 Analyse the characteristics of each phase in its development. 
 Discuss his general claim to bo called "a consummate 
 master of expression," and compare his style generally with 
 the style of Milton. 
 
 2. Is Macbeth to be regarded as a responsible agent ? If so, 
 how does the drama illustrate Shakespeare's ethics ? If not, 
 what light doee it throw on Shakespeare's theology ?
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 49 
 
 3. Analyse and contrast the characters of Macbeth and Lady 
 Macbeth. 
 
 4. Show the propriety from a dramatic point of view of 
 (a) the Porter's speech, and (b) Macbeth's soliloquy in the 
 dagger scene, and point out in the play what strike you as 
 being particularly subtle dramatic touches. Explain your 
 reasons for thinking them so. 
 
 Or suppose we make the questions assume the 
 form which they should assume in a comparative 
 study of Classical and Modern Literature. 
 
 1. Show in what way and through what media Attic Tragedy 
 determined the form of our Eomantic Tragedy, and show by a 
 comparative review of the Per see and Henry V., and of the 
 Agamemnon and Macbeth, how much Attic and Shakesperian 
 drama have in common. 
 
 2. Compare Shakespeare and Sophocles (a) as dramatic 
 artists, (b) as critics of life. Discuss particularly their use of 
 irony. 
 
 3. Point out how far the typical tragedies of Shakespeare 
 illustrate Aristotle's analysis of the structure, characterization, 
 and functions of Tragedy. In what respects has Shakespeare 
 violated Aristotle's canons 1 
 
 4. Matthew Arnold has described Milton as our greatest 
 master in the " grand style. ' ; What according to Longinusare 
 the five characteristics of that style 1 Illustrate all of them 
 from Milton. 
 
 5. What according to Longinus are the characteristic vices of 
 style in decadent epochs of literature. Account for them and 
 illustrate them from Greek, Roman, Italian, and English 
 literature. 
 
 6. How far and in what way do the dramas of ^Eschylus, 
 
 E
 
 50 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 Sophocles and Shakespeare directly reflect contemporary 
 history ? What traces do we find in them of political bias ? 
 
 7. Compare the world of the Canterbury Tales with the 
 world of the Odyssey. 
 
 8. In what respects are Milton's Samson Agonistes, 
 Browning's Balaustion's Adventure, and Swinburne's Atalanta 
 in Cali/don un-Greek ? 
 
 I am not proposing these questions as models ; I 
 am merely showing the necessity of directing atten- 
 tion to such points as they indicate, if the study of 
 Shakespeare, of any other master-poet, or of Litera- 
 ture generally is to be of profit in public or in 
 academic education. There is, moreover, no lack of 
 excellent guides. We have, with the exception of a 
 general history of our own Literature, the complete 
 apparatus for a course of Literce Humaniores on lines 
 like these. For purposes of less advanced and more 
 popular teaching we are equally well provided. We 
 have the Lectures of Coleridge, the Commentaries of 
 Gervinus and Ulrici, Kreyssig's Vorlesungen uber 
 Shakespeare, Professor Dowden's suggestive little 
 volume, and innumerable other works. And it would, 
 I submit, be well if, in every examination where the 
 Clarendon Press edition of a play of Shakespeare is 
 prescribed as a text-book, it should be prescribed only 
 under the condition that its introductions and notes 
 were supplemented by reference to these and similar 
 works. It is, indeed, only one of the many proofs of
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 51 
 
 the anarchy which exists in the English department 
 of education, that the same Press a Press which 
 virtually directs the study of our national literature 
 in almost every School in the kingdom should be 
 simultaneously issuing editions of English poets 
 edited on such principles as Hamlet and Macbeth are 
 edited, and editions of English poets edited as Mark 
 Pattison has edited the Essay on Man and the Satires 
 of Pope. 
 
 But, it may be said, though criticism in its applica- 
 tion to solid subjects, like a drama of Shakespeare or 
 the Satires of Pope, is, in teaching, practicable enough, 
 it becomes in its application to less tangible subjects 
 to lyric poetry, for example eminently impractic- 
 able. What end could be served by dissecting 
 Christabel or by proceeding categorically through the 
 merits and defects of Epipsychidion and the Eve of 
 Saint Agnes ? No one would deny that the spectacle 
 of a lecturer with Tears, Idle Tears, or Mariana in 
 the Moated Grange in his hand " proceeding to show " 
 what is graceful, what is fanciful, what is pathetic, 
 would be sufficiently ludicrous and repulsive. But 
 the soundness of a principle is not affected by the 
 possibility of reducing it to an absurdity. It still 
 remains that of all the functions of the literary 
 teacher none is more important than the function 
 that lends itself thus easily to ridicule. And what is 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 that function ? It is the interpretation of power and 
 beauty as they reveal themselves in language, not 
 simply by resolving them into their constituent ele- 
 ments, but by considering them in their relation to 
 principles. While an incompetent teacher traces no 
 connection between phenomena and laws, and con- 
 founds accidents with essences, blundering among 
 " categorical enumerations " and vague generalities, he 
 who knows will show us how to discern harmony in 
 apparent discord, and discord in apparent harmony. In 
 the gigantic proportions of Paradise Lost he will reveal 
 to us a symmetry as perfect as in the most finished 
 of Horace's Odes. He will expose flaws, interstices, 
 and incongruity where, as in the Essay on Man, all is 
 to the unskilled eye consistency and unity. He will 
 teach us to hear in the choked and turbid rush of 
 Shakespeare's ruggedest utterances a truer and 
 subtler music than in the most mellifluous cadences 
 of Pope. 
 
 Nor will he confine himself to interpreting what is 
 excellent and what is vicious in form and style. 
 Rightly distinguishing between the criticism which 
 should be simply suggestive and the criticism which 
 should be directly didactic, he will abstain from imper- 
 tinent prattle about the effects produced by poetry, to 
 show how far in each case the effects produced might 
 with a larger insight and a fuller understanding have
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 53 
 
 been heightened and intensified, or how, on the other 
 hand, such effects ought not, and in the case of a 
 critic whose ethic and aesthetic education had been 
 sound, could not have been produced at all. He will 
 teach us to see in all poetry, not purely lyrical or 
 simply fanciful, a criticism of life, sound or unsound, 
 adequate or defective. And if in dealing with such 
 luminaries as Chaucer and Spenser, as Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and Wordsworth, he will be most solicitous 
 to confine himself to reverent exposition, in dealing 
 with the lesser lights, with our Drydens and our 
 Popes, with our Byrons and our Shelleys, he will 
 have another task. He will have to show how, in 
 various degrees, defects of temper, the accidents of 
 life, historical and social surroundings, arid the like 
 have obscured or distorted that vision which pene- 
 trates through the local and particular to the essential 
 and universal. He will not, for example, allow the 
 brilliant rhetoric and sound sense of Pope to blind us 
 to the worthlessness of his metaphysics or to the in- 
 sufficiency of his views on the subject of man's relation 
 to spiritual truth ; nor will he allow the marvellous 
 music and imaginative splendour of the Revolt of 
 Islam and the Prometheus Unbound to veil from us the 
 folly and insanity of much of their ethic and politic. 
 Thus systematized and extended the study of English 
 Literature would become on the one side on the side
 
 54 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 of its history as susceptible of serious, methodical, 
 and profitable treatment as History itself ; and on the 
 other side on the side of criticism it would become 
 a still more important instrument of discipline, for it 
 would correspond as nearly as possible to the Mousikd 
 of the Greeks, and supply the one great deficiency in 
 our system and theory of secondary education. In a 
 country like ours, where the current will always run 
 in a scientific and positive direction, nothing is so much 
 to be regretted as the almost entire absence of any 
 systematic provision for " musical " culture. At the 
 Universities the want is nominally, at least, supplied 
 by the study of Classical Literature, but throughout 
 the country our own Literature must necessarily be the 
 chief medium for disseminating that culture, if it is 
 to be disseminated at all. Whether English Litera- 
 ture is to fulfil this function or not depends obviously 
 on the training of its teachers, and the training of its 
 teachers depends as obviously on the willingness or the 
 unwillingness, the competency or incompetency of the 
 Universities to provide that training. How far that 
 training is likely to be provided by such institu- 
 tions as the Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos 
 at Cambridge, by the establishment of Schools in 
 which the leading and master Classics of the world 
 have no place at all, in which Literature on the side of 
 art, history, and aesthetic is wholly ignored, and in
 
 in AS A SUBJECT OF TEACHING 55 
 
 which the study of our own Classics is saddled and 
 incumbered by a lumbering and repulsive apparatus 
 of Gothic, Mceso-Gothic, Icelandic, and Old Saxon, 
 may safely be left to the judgment of common 
 
 sense.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC 
 TEACHING. DISTINCTION BETWEEN LITERATURE 
 AND PHILOLOGY 
 
 THE first fact which it may be well for the Univer- 
 sities to recognise, but which at present they do not 
 seem to understand, is, that a Literature which is re- 
 presented by such writers as Shakespeare and Milton, 
 as Pope and Wordsworth, as Bacon and Hooker, as 
 Gibbon and Burke, is a very serious thing, much too 
 serious a thing to be abandoned either to unskilled 
 teachers or to philologists, that it is a Literature not 
 inferior in intrinsic merit to the Literatures of the 
 ancient world, that it is therefore, from an historical 
 point of view, worthy of minute, of patient, of syste- 
 matic study, and that, regarded as an instrument of 
 culture, it is if studied in a liberal spirit of the 
 utmost importance and value. How greatly the 
 interests of education have suffered and will continue
 
 OH. iv AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING 57 
 
 to suffer unless the Universities consent to take this 
 matter seriously into consideration is easily illustrated. 
 Of all the evils to which the conduct of culture on the 
 side of letters is exposed, the worst and most mischie- 
 vous are pedantry on the one side and dilettantism 
 on the other. And to say that the Universities are 
 by the publications to which they allow their impri- 
 matur to be affixed encouraging and extending both 
 these evils is to say what is matter of common 
 notoriety. I am very far from wishing to speak dis- 
 respectfully of the Clarendon Press publications, for 
 they are as a rule, so far as they go, solid and thorough, 
 the work, commonly, of accurate and painstaking 
 scholars. But their radical defect lies in the fact 
 that they do not sufficiently distinguish between 
 Philology and Literature. Instead of regarding a great 
 poem or a great drama as the expression of genius and 
 art, they regard it merely as a monument of lan- 
 guage. They dwell with tedious and unnecessary 
 minuteness on points which can interest none but 
 grammarians and philologists, and out of this narrow 
 sphere they seldom or never travel unless perhaps to 
 explain some historical allusion, to discuss some 
 problem in antiquities, or to accumulate wholly super- 
 fluous parallel passages. In the Clarendon Press 
 edition of Shakespeare, for example, nothing is so 
 common as to find whole pages of notes, of which
 
 58 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 this may serve as a specimen, and as a specimen I 
 transcribe it at length : 
 
 Gasted, frightened. Steevens quotes from Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, Wit at Several Weapons, II. 3, hut the word there 
 in the original copies is " gaster'd " : " Either the sight of the 
 lady had gaster'd him, or else he's drunk ! " This is still an 
 Essex word. Gast as a participle occurs in Cursor Mundi 
 (MS. Trinity College, Cambridge, foL 31, quoted in Halli- 
 well's Dictionary, p. 291), Early English Text Soc., Ed. 
 Morris : "His will was but to make him gast." The other three 
 printed texts of the poem have "agast," "agaste," and "a-gast." 
 Shakespeare uses "gastness" in the sense of terror stricken 
 look, in Othello, V. I., 106 : " Do you perceive the gastness 
 of her eye?" and Spenser has "gastful" in the sense of 
 " awful " in Shepherd ' Calendar, August, 170 : 
 
 " Here will I dwell apart 
 In gastful grove therefore." 
 
 Both these last-mentioned words appear to have been used 
 as if they were etymologically connected with " ghost." For 
 this derivation there is no foundation. Cotgrave (Fr. Diet.) 
 gives " espoventable " : com. Dreadfull, frightfull, feareful ; 
 horrible, gastfull, horride. The term " gasted " is found in 
 Harsnet's Declaration of Popish Imposture (1603), p. 73. 
 " Did euer the God-gastring giants" whom Jupiter overwhelmed 
 with Pelion and Ossa so complaine of thyr loade ? " Mr. 
 Street has pointed out to me an excellent example of " gast 3 
 in The Vision of Piers Plowman, Text A., Passus VII. 
 1. 129: 
 
 " Bope to sowen and to setten and sauen his tilpe 
 Gaste Crowen from his Corn and kepen his Beestes."
 
 iv AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING 59 
 
 In their edition of Milton it is equally common to 
 find a quarter of a page of notes like these : 
 
 1. 619. Cp. Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi. 419 ; Faery Queen, I. 
 xi. 4. 
 
 1. 624. Cp. Ovid Metamorphoses, ix. 6. 
 
 1. 630. Cp. Horace, " Odes," III. 2, 17. 
 
 1. 633. Cp. Paradise Lost, II. 692 ; v. 710 ; vi. 156. Bev. 
 xii. 4. 
 
 1. 642. tempted our attempt. Keightley claims to have 
 been the first to point out that these plays upon words are 
 imitations of the Paronomasia in Scripture, Cp. v. 869 ; ix. 
 11, xii. 78. 
 
 1. 659. Iliad, I. 140. 
 
 1. 660. peace is despaired, a Latinism. So ' despair thy charm 
 (Macbeth, v. 7). 
 
 No one could say of the author of notes like these 
 that he displays either want of industry or want of 
 learning, but such notes are, from an educational 
 point of view, all but useless ; they are even worse 
 they render what should be an agreeable and profit- 
 able study, simply repulsive. They serve no rational 
 end; they satisfy no rational need. They err not 
 indeed on the side of superficiality and dishonesty, but 
 on the side of too narrow a conception of the scope 
 and method of interpreting literature : they err, in 
 short, as Pope taunted Kuster and Burman with 
 
 erring : 
 
 " The critic eye, that microscope of wit, 
 
 Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit ; "
 
 60 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATUBE CH. 
 
 but fails to see 
 
 " How parts relate to parts, or they to whole, 
 The body's harmony, the beaming soul." 
 
 That pedantry is, when allied with learning, a far less 
 evil than dilettantism, no one would dispute. Such 
 a study of the English Classics as the editions to 
 which I have referred prescribe and direct, is not 
 indeed calculated to enlarge a youth's mind, or to 
 refine his taste ; it is still less calculated to awaken 
 rational curiosity or to inspire a love of literature for 
 its own sake ; but regarded as a mode of discipline it 
 may possibly in some cases be of service in forming 
 and confirming habits of accuracy, and, within certain 
 limits, habits of thoroughness, and in training and 
 strengthening the memory. But this cannot be 
 pleaded in favour of dilettantism, which from an edu- 
 cational point of view is an evil without alloy. It is 
 to real learning precisely what the phantom sent by 
 Juno to deceive Turnus was to the real JEneas. It 
 assumes its form, it brandishes what seems to be its 
 weapons, it mimics its gait, it simulates its speech, 
 but it is a mockery and a fraud. It serves only 
 to delude and mislead. Nor is this all. It is not 
 simply an intellectual but a moral evil. It en- 
 courages those lazy and desultory habits into which 
 young students are especially prone to fall. It 
 renders them indifferent to the distinction between
 
 iv AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING 61 
 
 accuracy and inaccuracy, between truth and falsehood. 
 It emasculates, it corrupts, it strikes at the very root 
 of that conscientiousness and honesty, that absolute 
 sincerity, which is, or ought to be, the first article in 
 the creed of every teacher, and of every scholar. 
 
 I am saying nothing more than what is acknow- 
 ledged at the Universities themselves when I say 
 that, in the department of English Literature, the 
 directors of their Presses are authorizing works to cir- 
 culate with the imprimatur of the University, the 
 flimsiness and shallowness of which are only exceeded 
 by the incredible blunders with which they absolutely 
 swarm. 1 
 
 Nor will these evils, pedantry and dilettantism 
 cease to be epidemic till Oxford and Cambridge awake 
 to the necessity of raising the study of our national 
 Literature to its proper level in education. But before 
 that can be done they must, as a preliminary, recog- 
 nise the distinction between Philology and Literature, 
 between the significance of the Litercv Humaniores, 
 as interpreted by verbal critics, and their significance 
 as interpreted by such critics as Lessing and Coleridge. 
 
 1 When it is remembered that these works, circulating as 
 they do upon the authority of the Universities, become text- 
 books not only in our own Schools, Colleges, and Institutes, but 
 in those of the Colonies also, all over the English-speaking 
 world in fact, it is really difficult to express oneself on such 
 a subject with patience.
 
 62 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 They must in classical study attach more importance 
 to the spirit and less to the letter. They must, in 
 their exegesis, cease to dwell solely on what is 
 accidental, and see the necessity for penetrating to 
 the essence which is the life. Philological criticism 
 is to criticism, in the proper sense of the term, what 
 anatomy is to psychology. Each has its importance ; 
 each is, in a manner, related, and each should be 
 studied ; but who but a fool would dream of confound- 
 ing them ? The scalpel, which lays bare every nerve 
 and every artery in the mechanism of the body, 
 reveals nothing further. The Agamemnon and 
 Macbeth are as little likely to yield up the secret of 
 their life to the verbal scholar. 
 
 If the study of English Literature is, as a branch 
 of academic study, to be adequately provided for, 
 it must be properly organized, and it cannot be pro- 
 perly organized if it be treated independently. On 
 critical and on historical grounds alike it must be 
 studied in close connection with those Literatures 
 with which it is indissolubly linked, with the Litera- 
 tures of Greece and Rome, of Italy and France. 
 What European History is to the study of English 
 History from the accession of Henry the Eighth, the 
 four Literatures referred to are to the study of English 
 Literature from the appearance of Spenser. A curri- 
 culum of History, in which our own History should be
 
 iv AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING 63 
 
 treated without reference to its connection with 
 France and Italy, with Spain, and the Empire, would 
 not, in truth, be a greater absurdity than a curriculum 
 of Literature in which our own Literature should be 
 treated without reference to those of Greece and Rome, 
 to those of Italy and France. What is needed is i the 
 establishment of a School of Literce Humaniores in 
 the strict and proper sense of the term, the organiza- 
 tion of a curriculum, the central subject of which 
 may with propriety be our own Literature, but which 
 would, as such a course would naturally do, include 
 the ancient Classics and the Classics of Modern 
 Europe. That the Literature of Germany would 
 occupy an important place in a curriculum like 
 this is obvious ; but, considering the very slight 
 influence which, until quite recently, it has exercised 
 on the development and peculiarities of our own, it 
 need not, as the others should, be made compulsory 
 in the case of a candidate for Honours in English. 
 
 A School established on lines like these would 
 supply the one great want in our system of advanced 
 education. It would at once place the study of the 
 Greek and Roman Classics on the only footing on which 
 in these times it is possible to justify it, and it would 
 at the same time raise the study of English Literature 
 to its proper level in education. That the Universities 
 should undertake to provide lecturers and teachers in
 
 64 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 English Literature, as they are providing them in all 
 directions, not in England only, but in the Colonies, 
 and yet decline to afford them any other systematic 
 instruction than philological instruction, is surely an 
 anomaly that needs correction. But that they should 
 be undertaking the serious responsibility of providing 
 our Schools and Colleges with text-books on this 
 subject, and with such text-books as I have described, 
 is, to speak plainly, scandalous. 
 
 But no curriculum in Literce Humaniores can ever 
 be practicable till Philology be relegated to its proper 
 sphere, till it be assumed that Latin Literature com- 
 mences with Ennius, French with the latest text 
 of the Chanson de Boland, and English with Chaucer. 
 No man with any pretension to intelligence would 
 underrate the importance of Philology. In its 
 highest departments it is a branch of learning of 
 immense interest and value, and it is justly entitled 
 to a place in the front rank of sciences. In its 
 humbler departments it is an instrument without 
 which the literary student would be helpless. But 
 it must not be confounded with what in its higher 
 departments it has little or no concern, and with 
 what in its lower departments it serves only to assist. 
 It must not be confounded with Literature. Up to 
 the present time it has, in consequence of that con- 
 fusion, been allowed to fill a place in education
 
 iv AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING 65 
 
 altogether disproportionate to its insignificance as an 
 instrument of culture. As an instrument of culture 
 it ranks it surely ranks very low indeed. It cer- 
 tainly contributes nothing to the cultivation of the 
 taste. It as certainly contributes nothing to the educa- 
 tion of the emotions. The mind it neither enlarges, 
 stimulates, nor refines. On the contrary, it too often 
 induces or confirms that peculiar woodenness and 
 opacity, that singular coarseness of feeling and pur- 
 blindness of moral and intellectual vision, which has 
 in all ages been characteristic of mere philologists, 
 and of which we have appalling illustrations in such 
 a work as Bentley's Milton}- Nor is this all. Instead 
 
 1 A curious and amusing illustration of the truth of these 
 remarks will be found in a little pamphlet entitled The Study 
 of Modern European Languages and Literatures in the 
 University of Oxford. The writer of this pamphlet, who is 
 one of the protagonists of the philological party at Oxford, 
 after denouncing a proposal to associate the study of ancient 
 and modern Literature as a proposal to " legalize super- 
 ficiality," and to " establish and endow the worship of the god 
 of shoddy," proceeds to take up the cudgels for Bentley. 
 Seeing nothing ridiculous in the portentous stupidity of 
 Bentley's notes and emendations on Milton, he thinks them 
 indefensible, not because of their " woodenness and opacity," 
 but simply because a settled text made them superfluous. 
 " Bentley's Milton," he says, " was no doubt a great blunder, 
 but why ? Because Bentley made the mistake of treating a 
 modern writer, whose text was well ascertained, in the same 
 way as some ancient authors, whose texts are corrupt." See 
 
 F
 
 66 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 of encouraging communion with the nobler manifesta- 
 tions of human energy, with the great deeds of history, 
 or with the masterpieces of art and letters, it tends, 
 as Bacon remarks, to create habits of unintelligent 
 curiosity about trifles. 1 It too often resembles that 
 rustic who, after listening for several hours to Cicero's 
 most brilliant conversation, noticed nothing and 
 remembered nothing but the wart on the great 
 orator's nose. It is the privilege of Art and Letters 
 to bring us into contact with the aristocrats of our 
 race. It is the misfortune of Philology that, in its 
 lower walks at least, it necessitates familiarity with a 
 class of writers who probably rank lowest in the 
 scale of human intelligence. The proper place of 
 Philology in its higher phases, and of Philology in 
 its higher phases I have not been speaking, is with 
 the sciences. So far as it is related to Literature, it 
 is related merely as grammar, it is related as the 
 drudge is related to his master, as the key of 
 the jewel-casket is related to the treasures it 
 unlocks. 
 
 for this and more the Academy for December 17th, 1887, 
 pp. 407-408. 
 
 1 Nothing could better describe the educational effects of 
 these studies than the words of Quintilian. " Nudse illse 
 artes nimia subtilitatis affectatione frangunt atque con- 
 cidunt quidquid est in oratione generosius, et omnem succum 
 ingenii bibiint, et ossa detegunt, quae, ut esse, et astringi
 
 iv AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING 67 
 
 Nor will the absurdity of forcing Philology into 
 undue prominence in the sort of education we are 
 considering be less apparent, if we regard it from 
 another point of view. Those who can appreciate it 
 as a science, and who are likely to be interested in 
 what it teaches, are and always will be in a very 
 small minority. And to how few even of this small 
 minority, unless indeed they become philological 
 teachers or specialists, will it ever be of much 
 practical use, either directly in informing, or in- 
 directly in educating. Those, on the contrary, who 
 appreciate Literature as distinguished from Philology, 
 will in point of numbers quadruple, and more than 
 quadruple, the former class. And two things are 
 certain. Whatever may be the future calling of these 
 students, the positive knowledge they will have 
 attained will, unlike a knowledge of Philology, be of 
 immense and immediate service to them ; the liberal 
 training to which, in the course of acquiring that 
 knowledge, they have been submitted, will, unlike 
 the narrow and narrowing discipline of mere philo- 
 logical culture, send them forth with enlarged minds, 
 with awakened literary sympathies, and with culti- 
 vated tastes. Can there be any question then about the 
 relative claims of Literature and Philology to preced- 
 
 nervis suis debent, sic corpore operienda sunk" Procem. ad 
 lib. I. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 ence in the economy, I do not say of special, for 
 of that we are not now speaking, but of general 
 education ? 
 
 The truth is, that these two classes of students, 
 separated by differences of temper, by differences of 
 genius, by differences of taste, should be provided for 
 separately. The inevitable result of forcing Philology 
 into prominence in a school of Literature will be to 
 defeat the purposes of the School. It will be to 
 sacrifice the education of that large majority, who 
 are capable of benefiting from literary studies, and 
 are not capable of benefiting from scientific studies, 
 to the education of a small minority. It will be an 
 attempt to amalgamate elements which always have 
 met and always will meet in oppugnancy. The in- 
 stincts and faculties which separate the tempera- 
 ment 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 sym- 
 pathetic student of Polite Literature. And of all 
 the sciences Philology is the most repugnant to men 
 of artistic and literary tastes. It was the subject of 
 the sarcasms of Milton and Dryden in the seven- 
 teenth century. It was an inexhaustible topic for 
 the scorn and ridicule of the wits of the eighteenth 
 century ; and it has assuredly not met with much
 
 iv AS A SUBJECT OF ACADEMIC TEACHING G9 
 
 sympathy from the most distinguished men of letters 
 in the present century. Again, no one can doubt 
 that it has been the predominance of the philo- 
 logical element in our classical curricula which has 
 had the effect of inducing generation after generation 
 of men, on whose writings the impress of classical 
 culture is most unmistakably stamped, to turn with 
 contempt from the Schools, and to take their educa- 
 tion into their own hands. No one can doubt that 
 it has been the predominance of that element, which 
 has created so wide a gulf between the life that is 
 stirring in our Universities and the system to which 
 it is subject. I well remember how, when I once 
 humorously suggested to the late Rector of Lincoln 
 that the following lines from the Dunc>ad should be 
 inscribed in letters of gold over the doors of the 
 Classical Schools, he replied with a smile, ' Substitute 
 letters of lead, and you have my entire approval " : 
 
 " Since man from beasts by Words is known, 
 Words are man's province, Words we teach alone. 
 When Reason doubtful, like the Samian letter, 
 Points us two ways, the narrower is the better. 
 Plac'd at the door of Learning, youth to guide, 
 We never suffer it to stand too wide ; 
 To ask, to guess, to know, as they commence, 
 As Fancy opens the quick springs of sense, 
 We ply the memory, we load the brain ; 
 Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain ;
 
 70 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. iv 
 
 Confine the thought, to exercise the breath, 
 And keep them in the pale of Words till death. 
 Whate'er the talents, or howe'er design'd, 
 We hang one jingling padlock on the mind." 1 
 
 I contend, then, that in the interests of Literature 
 there can be no compromise with Philology, and 
 that in the interests of Philology there can be no 
 compromise with Literature. The place of the one is 
 with the Humanities, the place of the other is with 
 the Sciences. 
 
 1 It is a proof of what some writers are, at a pinch in con- 
 troversy, capable of descending to, that the author of the 
 pamphlet on the Study of Modern European Languages and 
 Literature at Oxford has the assurance to insinuate that Mark 
 Pattison's well-known articles on Scaliger, Casaubon, &c., were 
 written to support the position of the philological party. See 
 that pamphlet, p. 13, and the Academy for December 17th, 
 1887.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 NECESSITY FOR ASSOCIATING THE STUDY OF ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE WITH THAT OF ANCIENT CLASSICAL 
 LITERATURE 
 
 " THE idea that English literature rests upon a 
 classical basis has been formulated, and industriously 
 circulated as the watchword of a pedantic faction, 
 and hardly any organ of current literature has proved 
 itself strong enough or vigilant enough to secure 
 itself against the insidious entrance of the above 
 indoctrination." So writes Professor Earle in his 
 Histwy of English Prose, p. 485. 
 
 In the debate in Congregation on the question 
 of establishing a School of Literature at Oxford, 
 reported in the Times for May 26th, 1887, we find 
 this recorded : 
 
 " The proposal to add the Professors of Greek and Latin to the 
 Board of Studies was rejected by 38 votes to 24, Professor 
 Earle maintaining that the fallacious notion that English
 
 72 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 literature was derived from the classics was so strong tliat it 
 was unwise to place even the Professor of Latin on the 
 Board." 
 
 Now the whole history of our early Literature is 
 little less than the history of the modification of 
 Teutonic and Celtic elements by classical influence, 
 as the history of the later development of that 
 Literature is the history of the alternate pre- 
 dominance of Classicism and Komanticism. The 
 poetry of Chaucer sprang directly from poetry, the 
 characteristics of which, if not derived directly from 
 classical sources, are not historically intelligible 
 without reference to the later developments of 
 Classical Literature. Boccaccio, the authors of the 
 Roman de la Rose, Machault, Granson, Froissart, were 
 the fathers of Chaucer. Ovid, Claudian, Ausonius, 
 Boethius, and the poets and writers of the transition 
 contributed important elements to the work of 
 these men and to the work of their continental dis- 
 ciples. Nay, to go even further back, and to refute 
 Professor Earle by an appeal to his own statement, 
 " the Anglo-Saxon literature " itself " was nursed by, 
 and gradually rose out of, Latin culture, and this is 
 true not only of those portions which were translated 
 or otherwise borrowed from the Latin, but also in some 
 degree even of poetry and laws " (Anglo- Saxon Litera- 
 ture, p. 1). Again, "just as Latin classical literature
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 73 
 
 was stimulated by Greek, so also was Anglo-Saxon 
 literature assisted by the influence of Latin. And 
 as the classical student seeks to distinguish that 
 which is native from that which is foreign in Latin 
 authors, so also is the same distinction of essential im- 
 portance in the study of Anglo-Saxon literature " (Id., 
 p. 4). No historical treatment therefore even of Anglo- 
 Saxon Literature can, by Professor Earle's own admis- 
 sion, be adequate without treating it in connection 
 with Classical Literature ; and yet in legislating for a 
 school of English Literature he has no scruple in sup- 
 porting a motion to exclude the Professor of Latin 
 from the Board of Studies on the ground of the " fal- 
 lacious notion that English literature was derived from 
 the classics." But to continue. It was the Roman 
 Drama slightly modified by the Italian playwrights of 
 the Renaissance which determined the form of our 
 Romantic Drama. That great movement found our 
 Drama in pretty much the same condition as the 
 Roman Drama appears to have been when repre- 
 sented only by the Etruscan Ludi Scenici and the 
 Falulce Atellance. It was the influence of ^Eschylus, 
 Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, Diphilus which 
 transformed these rude experiments into the 
 tragedies of Ennius and Pacuvius, and the comedies 
 of Plautus and Terence. It was the influence of the 
 Attic Drama operating through Italian media which,
 
 74 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 so far as form is concerned, transformed our similarly 
 rude native experiments into the noblest dramatic 
 Literature in the world. On the Epics of Greece and 
 Rome are modelled our own great Epics. Almost 
 all our Didactic Poetry is modelled on the Didactic 
 Poetry of Rome, sometimes directly, as in the Essay 
 on Translated Verse, the Essay on Poetry, the 
 Essay on Criticism, Cider, The Pleasures of the 
 Imagination, The Art of Preserving Health, and the 
 innumerable poems of which these in their turn 
 became the patterns ; sometimes indirectly, as in such 
 poems as Daniel's Musophilus and Philocosmus, as 
 Davies' Nosce Teipsum, as Fulke Greville's Treatises; 
 nay, it may be questioned whether without the De 
 Eerum Naturd we should have had, in the form in 
 which it now stands, the Excursion. One important 
 branch of our Lyric Poetry springs directly from 
 Pindar; another important branch directly from 
 Horace ; another again directly from the choral odes 
 of the Attic dramatists and Seneca. Our Heroic 
 Satire from Hall to Dryden, from Dryden to Pope, 
 and from Pope to Gifford and Byron is simply the 
 counterpart, often, indeed, a mere imitation, of Roman 
 Satire. The noblest moral poem in our language 
 owes to Juvenal its suggestion, its inspiration, its 
 method, and its style. Again, the Epistles which fill 
 so large a space in the poetical literature of the
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATUKE 75 
 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries derived their 
 origin from Horace. From the Epistles of Horace 
 too directly flow the Religio Laid, the Essay on Man, 
 the Moral Essays, and the poems which are in the 
 estimation of Ste-Beuve the most charming and the 
 most precious of Cowper's contributions to our 
 poetry. To the Heroides of Ovid we owe a whole 
 series of important poems. From them Chaucer 
 borrowed much of the material for the most delight- 
 ful of his minor works ; on them Drayton modelled 
 his Heroical Epistles, and Pope his Eloisa to Abelard. 
 The tone, the style, the method of such narratives 
 as Dray ton's Barons' Wars, as Beaumont's Bosworth 
 Field, as Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, as Addison's 
 Campaign, themselves the subjects of numberless 
 imitations, are derived unmistakably from the Roman 
 Epics, and particularly from the Pharsalia. Martial 
 and the Anthology have furnished the archetypes 
 of our best Epigrams and our best Epitaphs, and 
 Theocritus and Virgil the archetypes for our 
 Eclogues and our Pastorals. Backward to the 
 sEylogues of Barclay in the early part of the sixteenth 
 century, forward to the English Idylls of Lord 
 Tennyson in the present, at whatever period in its 
 history, from whatever point of view we contemplate 
 this important branch of our poetry, we must con- 
 template it with reference to its source in Sicily and
 
 76 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 Italy. If Petrarch and Mantuan affected it at one 
 moment, if Sannazaro and Clement Marot affected 
 it at another, what are Petrarch and Mantuan, San- 
 iiazaro and Marot, but the disciples of Virgil, or the 
 disciples of his disciples Claudian, Ausonius, and 
 Calpurnius Siculus ? If the native genius of the 
 Celt or the Teuton, a Robert Henryson or an Allan 
 Ramsay, diverted it for a moment from its original 
 source, back to that source we find it returning as it 
 has returned in the English Idylls of Tennyson. On 
 the Descriptive Poetry of the Elizabethan Age and of 
 the eighteenth century, on such works, for example, 
 as Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, as Pope's Windsor 
 Forest, as Gay's Eural Sports, and even Thomson's 
 Seasons, the influence of the Latin poets is both 
 directly and indirectly immense. Of our Elegiac 
 Poetry, to employ the term in its conventional 
 sense, one portion, such poems for example as 
 The Lament for Dido, as Lycidas, as Adonais, is 
 largely indebted to Theocritus, Moschus, and Virgil, 
 and another portion, far too extensive to specify, is 
 still more largely indebted to Catullus and Ovid, to 
 Tibullus and Propertius. Indeed, it would be 
 no exaggeration to say, that if the influence in- 
 dividually exercised by each of the Greek and 
 Latin poets, I do not say of the first merely but 
 of the second order, on our own poets were fully
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 77 
 
 traced, each would afford ample matter for a bulky 
 treatise. 
 
 But if this is the case with our Poetry, how much 
 more is it the case with our Prose. No one can 
 deny the charm, the sweetness, the simplicity, the 
 grace of such prose as Maundeville's, as Malory's, as 
 Bunyan's; and that our language would, had it 
 pursued its course unmodified by Classical influence, 
 have been fully equal to the production of such 
 prose is all but certain. But Maundeville, Malory 
 and Bunyan are not the names which rise to our 
 lips when we speak of the masters of prose expres- 
 sion. The history of English eloquence commences 
 from the moment when the Roman Classics moulded 
 and coloured our style when periodic prose modelled 
 itself on Cicero and Livy, when analytic prose 
 modelled itself on Sallust and Tacitus. From Wyatt 
 to Hooker, from Hooker to Milton, from Milton to 
 Bolingbroke, and from Bolingbroke to Burke, Johnson, 
 and Gibbon, this has been the case. The structure of 
 their periods allowing, of course, for differences of 
 idiom the evolution of their periods, their rhythm, 
 their colouring, their tone are, when they rise to 
 eloquence, precisely those of rhetorical Roman prose. 
 It is commonly supposed that when, during the 
 latter half of the seventeenth century, the long 
 sentence began to be broken up, and the style
 
 78 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 which Addison and his school subsequently per- 
 fected became fashionable, the change is to be 
 attributed to the influence of French writers. This 
 is no doubt partly true, but it is true only in the 
 sense that the influence of French aided a transforma- 
 tion which is perfectly explicable without reference 
 to Fiance. The style of Hobbes, Sprat, and Cowley, 
 the style subsequently of Dryden and Temple, is in 
 truth as Latin as that of Hooker and Milton ; but with 
 a difference, and that difference is easily explained. 
 Instead of going to the diction of Livy and to the 
 rhetorical works of Cicero for their models, they 
 went to Quintilian, to the Younger Pliny, and to 
 Cicero's colloquial and epistolary writings. And 
 what is true of them is true of Addison. The 
 serious style of Addison is modelled, as close as any 
 style could be, on that of the De Senectute and the 
 De Amicitid. 1 
 
 1 This is an interesting question, and, as my assertion may 
 appear paradoxical, I will place side by side what will be 
 allowed to be a typical sample of Cicero's literary style, and 
 what will be allowed to be a typical sample of Addison's 
 style. And the truth of what I have asserted will, I think, 
 be at once apparent. 
 
 " Equidem non video cur quid ipse sentiam de morte non 
 audeam vobis dicere ; quod eo melius mihi cernere video? 
 quo ab ea propius absum. Ego vestros patres, P. Scipio, tuque, 
 C. Lseli, viros clarissimos mihique amicissimos vivere arbitror, 
 et earn quidem vitam, quse est sola vita nominanda. Nam
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 79 
 
 It was the influence partly of Machiavelli and 
 Guicciardiui, but it was the influence mainly of 
 Thucydides and Sallust, of Livy and Tacitus, which 
 revolutionized our historical composition, which gave 
 us Bacon for Capgrave, and Knolles and Herbert for 
 Fabyan, and which was to determine the form, tone, 
 
 dum sumus in his inclusi compagibus corporis munere 
 quodam necessitatis et gravi opere perfungimur. Est enim 
 animus coelestis ex altissimo domicilio depressus et quasi 
 demersus in terrain, locum divinse naturae seternitatique con- 
 trarium. Sed credo Deos immortales sparsisse animos in 
 corpora humana, ut essent qui terras tuerentur, quique 
 ccelestium ordinem contemplantes imitarentur eum vitse 
 modo atque constantiS,. Nee me solum ratio ac disputatio 
 impulit ut ita crederem, sed nobilitas etiam summorum 
 philosophorum et auctoritas." De Senectute, xxi. 
 
 " I know but one way of fortifying myself against these 
 gloomy presages and terrors of mind, and that is by securing 
 to myself the friendship and protection of that Being who is 
 the disposer of events and governs futurity. He sees at one 
 view the whole thread of my existence, not only that part 
 which I have already passed through, but that which runs 
 forward into all the depths of eternity. When I lay me down 
 to sleep, I recommend myself to His care ; when I awake, I 
 give myself up to His direction. Amidst all the evils which 
 surround me, I will look up to Him for help, and question not 
 that He will either avert them or turn them to my advantage. 
 Though I know neither the time nor the manner of the death 
 I am to die, I am not at all solicitous about it, because I arn 
 sure that He knows them both, and that He will not fail to 
 comfort and support me under them." Spectator, No. 7.
 
 80 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 and style of the great work of Clarendon in the 
 seventeenth century ; of the great works of Robert- 
 son, Hume, and Gibbon in the eighteenth century ; 
 o the great work of Macaulay in the nineteenth 
 century. It was on the Orations of Cicero that 
 Wyatt modelled the speech which is the earliest 
 example in our language of rhetorical eloquence ; 
 and from that day to this the speeches to which, if 
 we wished to vindicate our fame in oratory, we 
 should point, are the speeches which have followed 
 most closely the same noble models. No names 
 stand so high on the roll of our Parliamentary 
 orators as the names of Bolingbroke, Pulteney, 
 Chesterfield, the two Pitts, Burke, and Fox ; and no 
 names stand higher on the roll of forensic orators 
 than those of Somers, Mansfield, and Erskine. It is 
 notorious that they all gloried in their familiarity 
 with the ancient masterpieces the masterpieces of 
 Demosthenes and Cicero and have all left testi- 
 mony of their indebtedness to them. And what 
 has moulded our secular oratory has moulded our 
 sacred oratory. On no part of our prose literature 
 can we look with greater pride than on the Sermons 
 of our classical divines; and assuredly no part of 
 our Literature owes more to the influence of Greece 
 and Rome. The dawn of the Renaissance found our 
 pulpit oratory represented by a few rude and jejeune
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 81 
 
 homilies, scarcely rising above the level of the Sawles 
 Warde, or the Aycnlite of Inv:yt, ; its close left us 
 enriched with the sermons of Hall and Donne, of 
 Taylor and South, of Barrow and Tillotson. If this 
 marvellous transformation is to be explained partly 
 by the progress which secular literature had made, 
 and partly by the influence of the writings of the 
 Fathers, it is to be explained mainly by the in- 
 fluence the direct influence -of these writings to 
 which the Fathers themselves were so immensely 
 indebted. Hall and Donne, for example, are in style 
 and diction close imitators of Seneca ; and to Seneca, 
 as the author of the Consolatio ad Marciam and the 
 Consolatio ad Helviam, belongs, it may be added, the 
 honour of having furnished models for the Oraisons 
 Funtbres of the French and for what corresponds to the 
 Oraisons Fun&lrcs in our own literature from Fisher's 
 Funeral Sermon on Margaret, Countess of Rich- 
 mond, to Robert Hall's Sermon on the Death of 
 the Princess Charlotte. From Plato Taylor learned 
 the secret of his involved harmonies, and on Plato, 
 Cicero, and Chrysostom he fashioned his diffuse and 
 splendid eloquence. What South would have been 
 apart from the influence of the ancient masters may 
 be easily seen by comparing the passages in which 
 he gives the rein to the coarse vigour of his native 
 genius, and the passages on which his fame rests. 
 
 G
 
 82 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 The inexhaustible fertility of Barrow's intellect is to 
 be attributed as unmistakably to the assimilative 
 thoroughness with which he had studied the Greek 
 and Roman Classics, with whose ideas, sentiments, 
 and expressions his pages teem, as the pregnant 
 energy of his expression bears the impress of 
 Thucydides and Aristotle. What style is more purely 
 Ciceronian than the style of Tillotson, than the style of 
 Sherlock, than the style of Middleton and Atterbury ? 
 But no portion of our Literature is rooted more 
 deeply in the Literature of antiquity than our Criti- 
 cism. Till the end of the last century, it may be 
 said with literal truth that from the publication 
 of Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, in 1553, it would be 
 difficult to mention a single theory on the principles 
 of composition, a single important critical canon, 
 with the exception of the doctrine of the Unities of 
 Time and Place, which are not to be traced originally 
 to the ancient critics. It is a great mistake to 
 suppose, as it almost always is supposed, that we 
 derived our principles of criticism from France. Our 
 own criticism and French criticism sprang from 
 a common source. It was derived directly from 
 Aristotle and Longinus, from Cicero, from Horace, 
 from Quintilian, and from the author of the Dialogus 
 de Oratoribus, all of whom had been studied in 
 England long before they had been translated into
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 83 
 
 French. We have only to open the treatises of 
 "Wilson, Elyot, Ascham, Sydney, Webbe, Gascoigne, 
 Puttenham, and others, in the reign of the Tudors, 
 and such a work as Jonson's Discoveries, in the reign 
 of James I., to see how closely the fathers of English 
 criticism followed in the footsteps of the ancients. 
 It was so with Hobbes, it was so with Cowley, it was 
 so even with Dryden. That Dryden and his con- 
 temporaries read Aristotle in a French version, and 
 with the light of French commentaries, is undoubt- 
 edly true. And it is true also that they were ac- 
 quainted with contemporary French criticism. But 
 Aristotle in a French dress is Aristotle still, and as 
 contemporary French criticism was itself a tradition 
 from Greece and Rome, we must not confound the 
 influence of Rapin, Bossu, and Bouhours with the 
 influence of those writings on which Rapin, Bossu, 
 and Bouhours themselves drew so largely. For one 
 reference in Dryden's Prefaces to a French critic, 
 we find a dozen to an ancient. Longinus indeed 
 owed his popularity to Boileau, but the De 
 SuUimitate had been translated into our language 
 long before Boileau's version had appeared, and had 
 as early as the first quarter of the seventeenth 
 century begun to affect critical opinion in England. 
 Between the death of Dryden and the death of 
 Johnson our critical literature passed still more 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 completely under the yoke of the ancients. Every 
 precept in the Essay on Criticism is drawn or de- 
 duced from the Ars Poetica, from the Poetics of Vida, 
 itself an echo of the Ars Poetica, from the Institutes 
 of Oratory, or from the De Sullimitate. The Treatise 
 on the Bathos is a parody of the Treatise on the 
 Sublime. The literary papers of Addison and of 
 Addison's coadjutors follow implicitly the same 
 guides. The literary essays of Hume betray in 
 every page their indebtedness to the ancient critics, 
 so also do the literary essays of Goldsmith. Horace 
 and Quintilian furnish Johnson with his canons and 
 his standards. No one can read the critiques in 
 the Lives of the Pcets without being struck with 
 Johnson's immense indebtedness to the tenth book 
 of The Institutes of Oratory. The terse and epi- 
 grammatic judgments, at once narrowly discrimi- 
 nating and superficially just, which Quintilian 
 passes on the Greek and Roman authors are the 
 exact counterparts, as well in spirit and sentiment 
 as in expression, to Johnson's judgments on our 
 own poets. If we pass from Johnson to Hurd, who 
 was, of our own countrymen, incomparably the 
 subtlest literary critic of the eighteenth century, 
 and who, by his practice of habitually referring 
 phenomena to principles, and of distinguishing 
 between accidents and essence, may be regarded as
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITEEATURE 85 
 
 the forerunner of modern philosophical criticism, we 
 simply pass from a student of Horace and Quintilian 
 to a student of Aristotle and Longinus. With what 
 care, with what sympathy, to what great advantage 
 Hurd had studied the Poetics, the Rhetoric, and the 
 Treatise on the Sublime, will be apparent to any 
 one who will compare his Notes on the Ars Poetica, 
 the earliest of his works, with his Dissertations on 
 the Idea of Universal Poetry, on the Provinces of the 
 Drama, and on Poetical Imitation, discourses which 
 by no means deserve the oblivion into which they 
 appear to have fallen. To the influence exercised 
 by Greek criticism on Lessing 1 and Schlegel, and 
 of the influence exercised by Lessing and Schlegel 
 on Coleridge and on the disciples of Coleridge at 
 the beginning of the present century, it is hardly 
 necessary to advert. 
 
 Thus in tracing the development and in accounting 
 for the characteristics of our Literature, both in poetry 
 and in prose, we find ourselves at every turn, and at 
 almost every step, in the presence of the Classics. It 
 is therefore obvious it ought indeed to be super- 
 fluous to assert that the history of English Literature 
 can never be studied properly unless it be studied in 
 
 1 Lessing was not, I believe, known in England, or at all 
 events lie was not appreciated and influential, till after the 
 appearance of Coleridge.
 
 86 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 connection with the Literatures of Greece and Rome, 
 and that to study it without reference to those 
 Literatures is as absurd as it would be to study the 
 history of Ethics and Metaphysics or the history of 
 Sculpture and Architecture without reference to the 
 ancient Schools. It is a favourite plea of the 
 philologists that as Celtic and Teutonic elements 
 enter so largely into the composition of the English 
 temper and the English genius, it is from an 
 historical point of view as necessary to take the 
 Celtic and Teutonic Languages and Literatures into 
 consideration as it is to take the Classical. This 
 plausible sophistry is easily refuted. What have to 
 be considered in legislation for education are, as 
 Aristotle remarks, TO re picrov ical TO Bvvarov KOI TO 
 Trpeirov moderation, possibility, and the becoming. 
 It would be ridiculous to suppose that where a know- 
 ledge of Greek and Latin, of Italian and French and 
 perhaps of German also would be required, as in the 
 curriculum we are contemplating they would be, 
 that a scientific knowledge of Celtic, of Anglo-Saxon, 
 or of Icelandic could be added. And even if this were 
 practicable, comparatively little would be gained. 
 Nothing accomplished in these languages will throw 
 light on the masterpieces of our Literature. Neither 
 Caedmon's Paraphrase nor the Tain Bo will help to 
 explain the genesis of Paradise Lost, nor will the
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 87 
 
 Blickling Homilies or the Homilies of ^Elfric illustrate 
 the Sermons of Taylor and Barrow. " Anglo-Saxon 
 literature," says Marsh in a sentence which those 
 who attach so much preposterous importance to 
 Anglo-Saxon would do well to remember, "so far 
 from being the mother was not even the nurse of the 
 infant genius which opened its eyes to the sun of 
 England five centuries ago." 1 
 
 But if in tracing the development and explaining 
 the characteristics of our Literature it is necessary at 
 every step to refer to the ancients, in studying the 
 literature itself, in regarding it, that is to say, in its 
 spiritual, its ethical, its aesthetic aspects, in consi- 
 dering its structure and its style, how greatly do we 
 gain by comparing its masterpieces with the master- 
 pieces of Greek and Rome. To go no further than 
 the tragedies of Shakespeare, what could be more 
 interesting, what more profitable, than to compare 
 them with the tragedies of the Attic stage, to compare 
 them for example with the tragedies of Sophocles ; 
 to note how the same truths, the same passions, the 
 same sentiments, find utterance in both ; to observe 
 how similarly each deals with the great problem of 
 destiny and free will, with the doctrine of the mean, 
 with the doctrine of retribution, with the relation of 
 the state to the individual, and of the individual to 
 
 1 Origin and History of the English Language, p. 100.
 
 88 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 the state ; to mark how subtly in each the real and 
 the ideal are blended ; to compare their use of irony, to 
 watch the same art, working in obedience to the same 
 eternal and unchanging laws, directing them in the 
 mechanism of their expression, and the same inspired 
 wisdom guiding them in their interpretation of life ? 
 How much for instance would a comparative study 
 of Macbeth and the Agamemnon, of Henry V, and 
 the Persce reveal ? What better commentary is to be 
 found on those marvellous fictions, which, in the 
 phrase of their creator, hold the mirror up to nature, 
 than the writings of one of the subtlest analysts 
 of human nature who has ever lived, the author of 
 the Ethics and of the third book of the Rhetoric ? 
 If the energy which is frittered away at Oxford and 
 Cambridge in producing elaborate and exhaustive 
 editions of works about which even intelligent 
 Dryasdusts have ceased to be curious, were directed 
 to tasks like these, how greatly would education gain. 
 Illustrations for example of Shakespeare's plays by 
 pertinent references to Aristotle's treatises would 
 surely add to the interest and the value of both, for 
 they would show with what exactness each of these 
 students of human nature, though separated by nearly 
 two thousand years and all the myriad diversities of 
 moral and intellectual conditions which such separ- 
 ation implies, has arrived independently at the same
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 89 
 
 truths, and corroborates the other. I contend then 
 that Aristotle contributes as importantly to the elu- 
 cidation of Shakespeare, as Shakespeare contributes 
 to the elucidation of Aristotle. That such poems as 
 Lycidas and the Progress of Poesy have been the 
 delight of thousands, and will continue to be the 
 delight of thousands, who have never opened a Greek 
 and Latin classic is no doubt true, but it would be 
 absurd to contend that their pleasure would not be 
 increased tenfold had they been scholars. It would 
 be absurd to pretend that the full significance, the 
 race, so to speak, and flavour of either the one poem 
 or the other could be appreciated by them. A reader 
 who knows nothing of Sophocles and Virgil may feel 
 the charm of such a diction as the Laureate's such 
 a diction as the diction of In Memoriam or the 
 diction of The Princess, but how much will he miss, 
 how many of the 
 
 must fall flat on him. 
 
 And one thing is certain that any University 
 which by Diploma authorizes teachers to interpret 
 these works, without securing competent classical 
 knowledge in those teachers, is authorizing a standard 
 of instruction scandalously below the level which an 
 academic standard should attain.
 
 90 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 But apart from particular reasons for associating 
 the study of English Literature with that of the 
 Literature of Classical antiquity, apart from consi- 
 derations of historical development, and the inter- 
 pretation of this author or that author, there remains 
 the great fact that by the universal consent of 
 civilized mankind the ancients have in almost every 
 department of the Literce Humaniores approached 
 to perfection. Out of their very names have been 
 coined synonyms for the excellence which severally 
 distinguishes them. What they have wrought has 
 become archetypal. They stand indeed in precisely 
 the same relation to Polite Letters as the Old Masters 
 stand to Painting and Sculpture. It is possible, no 
 doubt, for a painter whose eyes have never rested on 
 a Dutch or an Italian masterpiece to produce work 
 of a very high order, and it is certainly possible for a 
 poet who has never read Homer or Horace to write 
 poetry which Homer and Horace would not have been 
 ashamed to own. But what applies to an artist will 
 not apply to a critic. A man who set up as a judge 
 of pictures without being familiar with the chief 
 works of the Great Age, or, if he knew them, knew 
 them only by copies, might pass for a connoisseur 
 with the crowd, but would find his opinions little 
 appreciated by the learned. It is the same, or should 
 be the same, with the critic, with the student of
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 91 
 
 Literature. The Homeric Poems, the dZneid and 
 Georgics, the Attic tragedies, the Lyrics of Pindar and 
 Horace, what is best in Catullus, Martial and the 
 Anthology, the best of the Platonic Dialogues, the 
 best Orations of Demosthenes and Cicero these are 
 his Michael Angelos, his Da Vincis, his Raphaels. 
 These are, or should be, while the foundations of his 
 critical education are being laid, his standards and 
 his touchstones. We need be no bigoted admirers of 
 the ancients to admit this. We may be quite pre- 
 pared to concede that the great tragedies of Shake- 
 speare are, considered merely as works of art, at least 
 equal to the (Edipus Eex, and that, if they be 
 estimated by the powers of mind displayed in them, 
 they would, in sheer weight of intellectual bullion, 
 make the dramas of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, 
 and Aristophanes, massed together, kick the beam. 
 No discerning judge would hesitate to say that the 
 comedies of Moliere are incomparably superior to the 
 comedies of Terence. It would be possible to prove 
 categorically that Burke's Speech on the Nabob of 
 Arcot's debts and on conciliation with America are 
 greater oratorical feats than the Verrines or the 
 Antonian Philippics. We may rank Burns above 
 Catullus, we may rank Dryden above Juvenal. We 
 may think Walpo!e and Gray wrote better letters 
 than the younger Pliny, and we may pronounce the
 
 92 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITEEATURE CH. 
 
 History of the Decline and Fall to be a more impres- 
 sive monument of human genius and of human skill 
 than the History of the Fcloponnesian War. But this 
 does not prove, as is often absurdly asserted, that 
 familiarity with the works of modern writers would, 
 in the education of a student of Literature, be an 
 equivalent for familiarity with the works of the 
 ancients. It would not, and it would not from any 
 point of view. 
 
 By none indeed has this been more emphatically 
 pointed out than by those who have themselves 
 been the most distinguished ornaments of our 
 vernacular literature. " Let persons of limited con- 
 ception," says Burke in a passage over which educa- 
 tional legislators would do well to ponder, " think 
 what they will of classical learning, it has ever been 
 and ever must be the first principle of a taste, not 
 only in the arts, but in life and morals. If we have 
 any priority over our neighbours, it is in no small 
 measure owing to the early care we take with re- 
 spect to a classical education which cannot be 
 supplied by the cultivation of any other branch of 
 learning." 1 
 
 " It is with the deepest regret," writes Scott, referring to his 
 neglect of classical studies, " that I recollect in my manhood 
 the opportunities of learning which I neglected in my youth, 
 
 1 Letter to Purr. Parr's Works, Johnstone's edit. Vol. I., p. 200.
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITEEATURE 93 
 
 and through every part of my literary career I have been 
 pinched and hampered by my ignorance : it is a loes never to 
 be repaired." * 
 
 So, too, Wordsworth, writing to his nephew at 
 Cambridge, in a passage which goes to the very root 
 of the matter : 
 
 " Do not trouble yourself with modern authors at present. 
 Confine your attention to ancient classical authors : make 
 yourself master of them, and when you have done that you 
 will come down to us, and then you will be able to judge us 
 according to our deserts." 2 
 
 See also the admirable remarks of Sir James 
 Mackintosh (Memoirs, Vol. I., pp. 116-118). 
 
 But have there ever been, among competent 
 judges in any nation of Europe, two opinions on 
 this subject, namely that the systematic study of 
 Modern Literature must, as well on critical and 
 esthetic as on historical grounds, rest on a Classical 
 basis ? Let Alfieri and Leopardi answer for Italy ; 
 Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, and Schlegel for Germany ; 
 Villemain and Ste-Beuve for France ; Coleridge, 
 
 ' O J 
 
 Macaulay, and Matthew Arnold for England. 
 
 But enough of a proposition so self-evident to 
 every one but University legislators, that its very 
 enunciation is grotesque in its superfluousness. 
 
 1 Autobiography. 
 
 2 Christopher Wordsworth's Memoirs of Wordsworth. Vol. 
 I. p. 48.
 
 94 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 Why should not our Universities institute a 
 School which should stand in the same relation 
 to pure Literature, to Poetry, Oratory, and Criticism, 
 as at Oxford the present School of History stands to 
 History, and as the present school of so-called Literce 
 Humaniores stands to Philosophy ? In both these 
 Schools, in the former as it is about to be constituted, 
 in the latter as it always has been constituted, the 
 historical and philosophical classics of the old world 
 are most properly associated with those of the new. 
 No rigid line is drawn between philosophers and 
 historians who write in Greek or Latin, and 
 philosophers and historians who write in English. 
 Both are studied not for the light which they may 
 happen to throw collaterally on the structure and 
 theory of language, but for the light they throAV 
 on the subjects which are severally treated by them. 
 Herodotus and Thucydides are accordingly included 
 in the same curriculum as Clarendon and Gibbon. 
 The Republic and the Ethics are read side by side 
 with the Essay on the Human Understanding and 
 the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. 
 Thus not only are the masterpieces of ancient and 
 modern philosophy brought home to the student, but 
 their relations to each other are rendered intelligible. 
 " The work," says Professor Freeman, " which I 
 have come to " do is to point out that the work of
 
 v ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL LITERATURE 95 
 
 Kleisthenes, of Licinius, of Simon of Montfort, are 
 parts of one living whole, a whole of which every 
 stage needs to be grasped hy the same faculties, to 
 be studied by the same methods." And Professor 
 Freeman is, both in his public writings and, if I am 
 rightly informed, in his lectures also, never weary 
 of dilating on the " continuity of History," and on 
 the erroneous views which must necessarily result 
 from studying it piece-meal. But the Professor, 
 judging from the vehemence of his resistance to the 
 establishment of a School of Literature, and parti- 
 cularly to all attempts to associate the study of 
 modern with ancient Classics, does not seem to be 
 aware that the continuity of Literature is a fact of 
 even more importance, and that the persistency with 
 which that fact has been ignored has not only led 
 to errors infinitely more serious than any which can 
 be imputed to historical teachers, but has rendered 
 our whole system of dealing with Literature, whether 
 historically in tracing its development, or critically 
 in analysing its phenomena, as inadequate as it is 
 unsound. If the work of Kleisthenes, of Licinius, of 
 Simon of Montfort are parts of one living whole, 
 why, it may be asked, is not the same view to be 
 taken of the work of Sophocles and Shakespeare, of 
 Cicero and Burke ? Are they not also " parts of one 
 living whole " ? Is not poetry poetry, oratory
 
 96 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. v 
 
 oratory, criticism criticism, in whatever language 
 they may be expressed ? And is not the study of 
 Literature the study of its development generally, 
 and of its masterpieces particularly ? What links 
 the work of Kleisthenes with the work of Licinius, 
 and the work of Licinius with the work of Simon 
 of Montfort, is precisely what links the Iliad with 
 the dEneid, the jffineid with the Divine Comedy, and 
 the Divine Comedy with Paradise Lost. But the 
 Professor's logic as a legislator is merely the logic 
 in practice of the community to which he belongs, 
 to thoughtful persons a very puzzling logic indeed, 
 a logic which appears to stand in the same relation 
 to intelligence as ritual in some communities often 
 stands to morals and conduct. Why the works of a 
 philosopher or a historian who writes in a Classical 
 language should be studied as illustrating Philosophy 
 and History, while the works of a poet or an orator 
 who writes in a Classical language should be re- 
 garded in relation chiefly to Philology, why Univer- 
 sity men should be expected to know in what way 
 modern Metaphysics have been affected by Plato and 
 modern Ethics by Aristotle, and should not be ex- 
 pected to know in what way modern Poetry has been 
 affected by Homer and Horace, and modern Oratory 
 by Demosthenes and Cicero, is merely another illus- 
 tration of the same bewildering inconsistency.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF UNI- 
 VERSITY RECOGNITION AND ORGANIZATION OF 
 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 IT may be within the memory of some of my readers 
 that about four years ago the attention of people 
 interested in Education was directed to the question 
 of Universities providing instruction in English 
 Literature. Then as now a party in the University 
 of Oxford were endeavouring to follow the example 
 of Cambridge, by setting up a School of Philology 
 in opposition to a plea for a School of Literature. 
 With the hope of inducing the University to con- 
 sider how seriously the interests of advanced 
 education would suffer by such a step, an appeal 
 was made to almost every eminent authority on 
 Education and on Literature in England for an 
 
 H
 
 98 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 expression of opinion on the subject. 1 The questions 
 submitted to each were these : 
 
 1. "Was it desirable that the Universities should provide 
 systematic instruction in English Literature ? 
 
 2. Was it desirable that a distinction should be made 
 between Philology and Literature, and that the instruction 
 provided should be instruction in Literature as distinguished 
 from instruction in Philology ? 
 
 3. "Was it desirable that the study of English Literature 
 should be indissolubly associated with the study of ancient 
 Classical Literature ? 
 
 From almost every one appealed to a reply, and a 
 full reply, was received ; from the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, from the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, 
 from the Lord Chief Justice, from the late Lord 
 Chancellor, from men who fill or have filled the first 
 places among English School-Masters or University 
 Teachers, from the Bishop of London, from Archdeacon 
 Farrar, from the Dean of Winchester, from the present 
 Head-Masters of Rugby, of the City of London 
 School, of Wellington, of Clifton ; from almost all the 
 scholars among statesmen, Mr. Gladstone, the Earl 
 of Lytton, the Earl of Carnarvon, Mr. John Morley ; 
 from the most distinguished man of science now 
 living, Professor Huxley ; from men of letters like 
 
 1 Most of these opinions were published in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette during November and December 1886, some of them 
 appeared in the Quarterly Review for January 1887. They have 
 been reprinted in full in a Pall Mall "Extra" (Jan. 1887).
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 99 
 
 Mr. Fronde, Mr. Matthew Arnold, Sir Theodore Martin, 
 Mr. Addington Symonds, Mr. Walter Pater, Mr. 
 Frederick Myers ; from men holding the highest posts 
 in the direction of Education, Mr. Courthope, and Dr. 
 Craik ; from men distinguished in other spheres of 
 intellectual activity, from Professor Dowden, Professor 
 John Hales ; from Heads of Houses in the University 
 itself, from the Master of Balliol, the Master of Uni- 
 versity, the Rector of Lincoln, the President of Trinity, 
 the Provost of Oriel, the President of Magdalen, the 
 Warden of All Souls, and from the Principal of Mans- 
 field College. On the necessity of our Universities 
 providing adequately for the study of Literature, 
 and particularly English Literature, as distinguished 
 from Philology, there was not a dissentient voice. 
 
 No one expressed himself more strongly on this 
 point than Professor Huxley : 
 
 " The relation of our universities to the study of English 
 literature is a matter of great public importance, and I have 
 more than once taken occasion to express my conviction, 
 firstly, that the works of our great English writers are pre- 
 eminently worthy of being systematically studied in our 
 schools and universities, as literature ; and secondly, that the 
 establishment of professorial chairs of philology under the 
 name of literature may be a profit to science, but is really a 
 fraud practised upon letters. That a young Englishman may 
 be turned out of our universities " epopt and perfect," so far 
 as their system takes him, and yet ignorant of the noble 
 literature which has grown up in these islands during the last 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 three centuries, is a fact in the history of the nineteenth 
 century which the twentieth will find hard tc believe." 
 
 Equally in favour of the admission of English Literature 
 into the curriculum of University studies, and equally 
 opposed to its being confounded with Philology, was 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was strongly 
 
 "in favour of the universities providing for the adequate 
 study of English literature, especially as the universities 
 undertake to provide instruction in English literature through 
 their extension lectures and through the teachers in schools, 
 and professors in the various colleges and institutes which the 
 modern side of education is every year multiplying both in 
 Great Britain and in the Colonies." 
 
 To the testimony of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 may be added the testimony of the Cardinal Arch- 
 bishop of Westminster : 
 
 " I fully agree with the Quarterly Review, that in the curri- 
 culum of university study literature, as distinguished from 
 philology, ought to be cultivated. Philology is as necessary 
 to literature as analysis to chemistry ; but it is subordinate 
 and cannot supply its place. By literature I understand the 
 intellectual product of cultivated nations . . . and in this full 
 sense it is evident that English literature ought to form a 
 part of university studies. I believe that the office of a 
 university is not so much to fill men's minds with infor- 
 mation, however valuable it may be, as to educate the man 
 himself." 
 
 His Eminence then goes on to point how greatly an 
 intelligent comparative study of the Greek, Roman,
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 101 
 
 and English Literatures would contribute to this 
 result. Next comes Sir Theodore Martin. 
 
 " It is," he writes, " incomprehensible how the effective 
 study of English literature should not have been provided 
 at the universities long since as an essential part of a gentle- 
 man's education, irrespective of the case of the many who 
 may, either by writing or teaching, have to deal directly 
 with English literature in future life. It is in the years spent 
 at the university that the time for such a study is most avail- 
 able, and the powers for acquiring a competent knowledge of 
 
 what it should teach are most active It is in these early 
 
 years that a true taste for literature is best formed, and that 
 an acquaintance may with least difficulty be gained with all 
 that is best in our native literature." 
 
 No one will suspect Professor Jowett of sympathiz- 
 ing with any unnecessary innovation in University 
 economy, but he is 
 
 " strongly of opinion that a place should be found for 
 English literature in the university curriculum." 
 
 To the same effect are the opinions of Canon 
 Farrar, and of the Head-Masters of Rugby and Clifton. 
 Canon Farrar, after observing that the teaching of 
 English Literature has long tended to become too 
 exclusively philological, agrees with the Quarterly 
 Beview in thinking that, if such a study of Literature 
 as that Review advocated were encouraged at the 
 Universities, it would be of inestimable service " in
 
 102 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 spreading a just, genial, and catholic appreciation for 
 every form of literary excellence." The Head-Master 
 of Rugby has, he says, no doubt that the admission of 
 English Literature into the curriculum of University 
 study would not only be of real advantage to the 
 University, but could be introduced " without in any 
 way involving dislocation of present arrangements." 
 The Head-Master of Clifton College bases the desir- 
 ableness of the Universities encouraging a liberal 
 study of our Literature on another ground. He ob- 
 serves that in Schools " the teaching of literature will 
 in general be either the getting up of little annotated 
 text-books, with their scraps of philology and ready- 
 made criticism and antiquarianism, for purposes of 
 examination, very often at the expense of neglecting 
 the text," and that it should therefore be the province 
 of the Universities to provide that intelligent instruc- 
 tion in this branch of study the importance of which 
 he fully recognizes which the Schools do not provide. 
 To these opinions it is pleasing to add that of one 
 of the most accomplished of modern men of letters. 
 Mr. Addington Symonds remarks that what is 
 wanted 
 
 "is some plan whereby the study of English should be 
 combined with the study of classical literature, and become a 
 necessary element in the education of every undergraduate 
 who aspires to honours or reads for a degree. English, in my
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 103 
 
 opinion, ought to enter as a subject into the examination of 
 each student on whom the mark of the university ia 
 stamped." 
 
 Not less definite and emphatic are the opinions 
 which have been expressed as to the necessity of 
 associating, in any School or Course of Literature 
 which may be provided or prescribed, the study of our 
 own Literature with the study of ancient Classical 
 Literature. As this is the point on which I have laid 
 most stress, and to which I attach so much import- 
 ance that I have no hesitation in saying that the 
 introduction of English Literature into the curriculum 
 of University studies would, under any other condi- 
 tions, be as undesirable as under these conditions it 
 would be desirable, I would draw particular attention 
 to the following corroborations of that opinion. 1 The 
 Heads of Houses in the University may perhaps be 
 suspected of being unduly prejudiced in favour of 
 Classical studies. I shall therefore content myself 
 
 1 No one has expressed this more emphatically than Dr. 
 Henry Craik : " I have no hesitation whatever in agreeing 
 with the opinion, which is confirmed in my own case by very 
 considerable opportunities of testing in different ways the 
 educational value of the subject that if this study is to be 
 carried on with that thoroughness which is alone worthy of 
 the university, it must be connected inseparably with that 
 classical training which can alone open up the foundations 
 upon which all that is most valuable in our literature rests."
 
 104 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 with quoting the testimony of the Master of Balliol 
 and the Rector of Lincoln : 
 
 " I am," says Professor Jowett, " 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." 
 
 " Should a School of English Literature," writes the Rector of 
 Lincoln, " be established in the University of Oxford, I should 
 take it for granted that the subject would be taught in connec- 
 tion with the Greek and Latin classics. It seems to me the only 
 scholarly method of such a study. A knowledge of the 
 classics may not indeed be necessary to the ordinary reader for 
 the appreciation and enjoyment of English literature, but it is 
 quite indispensable to the student of English literary history. 
 Without such a knowledge much of the matter and form of 
 our literature can have no intelligible meaning. Its develop- 
 ment must seem to be merely accidental without constant 
 reference to the models on which it has been shaped. And 
 the study of English literature in this place, in connection 
 with that of the classics, would have the further effect of 
 giving more life and reality to the method of studying Greek 
 and Latin authors." 
 
 In this last remark we have a view of the question 
 which deserves, I venture to think, particular atten- 
 tion. I am not, like Lord Coleridge, 1 disposed to 
 believe that the Classics are a " lost cause," but there 
 can be no doubt that they would greatly gain in 
 
 1 See Pall Mall Gazette, for Dec. 1886.
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 105 
 
 interest and educational value if their relations to 
 Modern Literature were made more generally intelli- 
 gible. " Much," says Mr. Pater, " might be done for 
 the expansion and enlivening of classical study itself 
 by a larger infusion into it of those literary interests 
 which modern literature in particular has developed, 
 and a closer connection of it, if this be practicable, 
 with great modern works." And the Master of 
 Balliol in a private letter makes a similar remark : 
 " classical study is getting in some respects worn out, 
 and the plan proposed would breathe new life into it." 
 " It would act favourably on classical study," observes 
 the Head Master of Wellington, "saving it from 
 pedantry, and also lessening the prevailing disposition 
 to subordinate too completely its literary to its 
 philosophical and historical interest." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, Lord Carnarvon, and many others 
 protest against English Literature being recognized by 
 the Universities as a subject of study, unless it be 
 associated w r ith the Greek and Roman Classics, on the 
 ground that, if divorced from the study of Ancient 
 Literature, its introduction will tend to disturb and 
 weaken the present Classical system. " Your subject," 
 Mr. Gladstone writes, " is one worthy of any effort 
 and I sympathize with what I understand to be your 
 views, utterly deploring whatever tends to displace a 
 classical education for those in any way capable of
 
 106 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 receiving it, and strongly disapproving all efforts in that 
 direction." Mr. Gladstone then goes on to say that 
 he agrees with those who think that, " unless English 
 literature be studied in connection with the Greek 
 and Roman classics, its introduction into the Oxford 
 examination system would be injurious to the interests 
 of education." The testimony of Lord Carnarvon, 
 though many would probably not agree with his re- 
 mark, that the study of English Literature "comes far 
 better at a later period of life when the foundations 
 of knowledge have been laid and taste is more 
 formed," 1 is equally emphatic. 
 
 "If," he says, "it is certain that without prejudice to the 
 classics English literature can be introduced into the uni- 
 versity curriculum, no reasonable objection can be offered, 
 but if its introduction tends to disturb or weaken the exist- 
 ing classical system, then I would unhesitatingly refuse the 
 specious but perilous gift." 
 
 Nor has the necessity of associating the study of 
 English Literature with that of Classical Literature 
 on other and more important grounds, been urged 
 less strongly. 
 
 " The study of English literature should," writes the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, " be closely associated with 
 the study of the Greek and Roman literatures, not 
 simply on account of their intimate historical connec- 
 
 1 See Lord Lytton's remarks on pp. 112-113.
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 107 
 
 tion, but because sound and adequate literary culture 
 must be based on the study of its sources." He would 
 " deplore any attempt to establish a school either for 
 the independent study of our national literature, or for 
 a study of it in connection only with modern litera- 
 ture." He "agrees with those who think that its 
 proper place as an instrument of education and as a 
 branch of study is with the literatures of Greece and 
 Rome." 
 
 Equally definite and equally emphatic was the 
 opinion of the Bishop of London : 
 
 " I have no doubt," he writes, " that the universities 
 ought to take up the study of English literature, and I 
 have equally no doubt that English Literature ought to be 
 studied as one of the fruits of the classical literature which 
 preceded it, and from which it derives most of its inspira- 
 tion and very nearly all its ideals. If it were possible for 
 one human intelligence to embrace all literature, ancient and 
 modern, within one course of study, this, and this alone, 
 would be the right method. But since this is impossible, 
 and a division must be made, I am sure that to divide 
 English literature from ancient is to destroy the study 
 as a study of literature. A division which separates the 
 stream is inevitable ; a division which crosses the stream 
 is an absurdity." 
 
 The opinion of Matthew Arnold was to the same 
 effect. He should, he said, " be glad to see at the 
 universities not a new school established for modern 
 literature or modern languages, but the great works
 
 108 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 of English literature taken in conjunction with those 
 of Greek and Latin literature in the final examination 
 for honours in Literce Humaniores." "And I would," 
 he says in another place, " add no literature except 
 that of our own country to the classical literature 
 taken up for the degree, whether with or without 
 honours, in arts." And what Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 said was repeated and supplemented by Professor 
 Bonamy Price, who was " very strongly in favour of 
 the great works of English literature being carefully 
 and thoroughly studied in combination with those of 
 the great Greek and Latin writers." " For," he added, 
 " the rigorous attention which the classical writings 
 demand and exact from those that study them will 
 bear most valuable fruit when applied to the brilliant 
 and powerful utterances of modem thought." 
 
 To pass, however, from the testimony of those who 
 are or who have been officially connected with educa- 
 tion, to the testimony of those whose eminent services 
 to Modern Literature give, as the testimonies of 
 Burke, Scott and Wordsworth gave, particular weight 
 and significance to their remarks on the relation of 
 Classical to Modern Literature. " No one," wrote Mr. 
 Froude, " can be a finished scholar and critic who is 
 ignorant of classical literature, and both the national 
 taste, and the tone of the national intellect, will suffer 
 a serious decline if it ceases to be studied among us."
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 109 
 
 But it is with particular satisfaction that I am able 
 to quote the testimony of Mr. John Morley, for there 
 are indeed few men whose judgment on this subject 
 is less likely to be biased by Idols of the Den. His 
 sympathies would appear to be almost entirely with 
 modern life. The greater portion of his writings has 
 been devoted to modern subjects. His connection with 
 contemporary politics would seem to estrange him 
 even more completely from the world of Pericles and 
 Alexander, and to link him even more closely with 
 the world of Mr. Bright and Mr. Chamberlain. 
 
 " I am strongly of opinion," writes Mr. Morley, " that 
 the systematic study of English literature in its widest 
 sense would be a valuable addition to the course of uni- 
 versity education. By literature I assume you to mean not 
 merely words and form, philology and style, but the contents 
 of important writings in their relation to human thought 
 and feeling, and the leading facts of human life and society. 
 I am not so foolish as to deny that education ought to 
 include both a knowledge of the structure of our mother- 
 tongue, and a manly care for its purity, its wholesome direct- 
 ness, its pithy vocabulary, in face of the affectations, bar- 
 barisms, and hideous importations that nowadays threaten 
 to degrade and deface it. But the serious study of English 
 books, as an instrument of systematic education, is not merely 
 etymology, nor grammar, nor rhetoric. Literature viewed as 
 an instrument of systematic education, and not as a source 
 of pleasant refreshment and delight, would mean a connected 
 survey of idea, sentiment, imagination, taste, invention, 
 and all the other material of literature, as affecting, and
 
 110 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 affected by, the great experiences of the human mind and 
 social changes brought by time. 
 
 "There is no reason why English literature, in this con- 
 struction of it, should be simply vague or elegant trifling, 
 nor why it should not be as severe, as fortifying, and as 
 permanently nourishing, as other studies that are capable 
 of more precise definition. Villemain, Taine, and Ste. Beuve 
 have, among others, shown by example how literature can 
 l^e made a powerful and invigorating element in teaching, 
 and the noble literature of our country contains material 
 and traditions of no inferior force and value for these purposes 
 of the highest education. 
 
 " 2. As the object of a School of Literature should be not 
 merely the supply of technical information, mostly de 
 m'mimis, but the building up of the mind in habits of know- 
 ledge and thinking, it would be a great misfortune to leave 
 out that classical basis upon which our literature mainly 
 rests. 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 and the 
 bearings of mediaeval or modern institutions without refer- 
 ence 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. They are 
 incomparable masters of form, and they abound in civil and 
 moral wisdom which is as fresh and as useful to-day as it 
 was in the days of Thucydides or Aristotle. It is not any less 
 important to realise the unity of literature, than that unity 
 of history on which Mr. Freeman has said so many just and 
 important things ; and it would be an absurd and unscientific 
 division of the subject to divide knowledge of the modern 
 superstructure from study of the ancient foundations." 1 
 
 1 Letter to the present writer, printed in the Quarterly 
 Review for January, 1887.
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 111 
 
 Such views as these are not likely to find much 
 favour with the " Teutonic, Romanic, Celtic, and 
 Slavonic" party, or with those who pronounce an 
 attempt to unite the study of Ancient and Modern 
 Literature, an attempt " to legalize superficiality," 
 though they may, perhaps, be not without effect on 
 wiser men. 
 
 But Mr. Morley is not the only counsellor from 
 whom University legislators may, in dealing with this 
 question, learn the wisdom of the old admonition, 
 sursum ccrda. I am indebted to the kindness of 
 Lord Lytton for allowing me to publish the following 
 letter, originally printed in the Quarterly Review : 
 
 " It certainly appears to me that, unless we are to regard the 
 curriculum of our universities as a course of instruction 
 entirely confined to the xpTjo-i/xa, and in no wise concerned 
 with the e\fvd('pi.a, there are special reasons why the study of 
 English literature should in these days form an essential part 
 of it. I say in these days, because the exclusion of this 
 subject from the original curriculum of our universities was 
 perfectly natural. For a long period of time they could not 
 have better promoted the sound development of the national 
 literature than by providing for the accurate study of the 
 language and literature of Greece and Rome. But that much 
 has been accomplished, and with the best results. The 
 English literature has now produced masterpieces of its own 
 in almost every department. It has become one of the 
 greatest and noblest literatures in the world ; and what is now 
 needed in the interest of it is, I think, an authoritative and 
 efficient aid not in the collection of its materials, or the
 
 112 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 formation of its methods, but in the preservation of its noble 
 characteristics and the maintenance of its established standards. 
 That such aid is increasingly needed, who can doubt 1 If the 
 universities cannot give it, whence is it to come ? All that 
 can be properly called literature seems to be now menaced with 
 extinction by the disgorgements of the cheap popular press 
 with its superficial second-hand criticism, its flimsy summaries 
 of the results of original scholarship or research, its slovenly 
 vulgar editions of the English classics, and its irrepressible 
 floods of sloppy, foolish, illiterate fiction. I am quite unable 
 to agree in the opinion of Lord Carnarvon, that ' the study of 
 English literature comes better at a rather later period of life, 
 when the foundations of knowledge have been laid, and taste 
 is more formed.' My own observation has led me to the 
 directly opposite conclusion, that literary taste is a faculty 
 quite distinct from, and to some extent independent of, the 
 mere knowledge of books. In many men of copious reading 
 who, without being exactly English scholars, were thoroughly 
 familiar with all the masterpieces of English literature, I 
 have been surprised to find this faculty conspicuously defec- 
 tive, and occasionally I have been no less surprised by the 
 strength of it in young persons, whose range of reading was 
 comparatively small, but who, with minds unencumbered and 
 unvitiated by trash, had seriously studied the works of a few 
 great writers under conditions conducive to a subtle apprecia- 
 tion of them. I hope I do not overrate the intellectual or the 
 moral value of what I would call ' the literary sense.' I 
 know that noble character and vigorous intellect are to be 
 found without it, and that it is not indispensable to the accu- 
 mulation of knowledge. But it is a faculty which can only be 
 acquired in early youth, and whilst of all faculties it is one of 
 the most dependent on education, it is assuredly not the least 
 important of the faculties, which any course of liberal 
 education should endeavour to develop. In literature the
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 113 
 
 foundations of taste must be laid with the foundations of 
 knowledge, for literary knowledge without literary taste can 
 have no literary value. In fact, taste is, in relation to litera- 
 ture, an habitual mental attitude contracted from the disci- 
 plined exercise of certain faculties, and corresponding to what 
 in relation to science would be called ' the scientific mind.' 
 I presume that no teacher and no well-wisher of science would 
 say to the student of it, ' Lay in the foundations of knowledge 
 as soon as you please, but put off to a later period of life the 
 mental discipline necessary to enable you to understand and 
 use your knowledge scientifically.' The taste formed in later 
 life must in most cases be a taste formed at haphazard. 
 
 " On the second question raised in your letter, viz., whether 
 English literature should be studied in connection with the 
 comparatively modern literatures of other countries, or the 
 ancient literature of Greece and Rome, I can scarcely recognize 
 room for serious discussion. Whether the literatures of 
 France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, should or should not be 
 included amongst the subjects of exposition and research at 
 Oxford and Cambridge, is quite another question ; and on both 
 sides of it much might be said. But one thing is certain. To 
 a great extent all these literatures, like our own, have grown 
 out of the study of the Greek and Roman classics. In the 
 classics they have themselves produced, the influence of that 
 study is apparent. With perhaps a very doubtful, and at the 
 most a very partial exception in the case of German literature, 
 the early history of all these literatures is substantially a 
 history of the effects of Greek and Latin scholarship upon the 
 first literary expressions of the intellectual life of the countries 
 which have produced them ; and in any case throughout the 
 course of their development they have been largely indebted 
 to the methods of thought and forms of expression extracted 
 by mediaeval scholarship from Greek and Latin authors. Of 
 all alike the fountain-heads are Greek and Latin. And
 
 114 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 however copiously a lecturer upon English literature might 
 employ the comparative method, in order to examine its 
 character and trace its course in connection with the contem- 
 poraneous course and character of other modern literatures, I 
 can scarcely see how he could avoid reversion at almost every 
 step to the common well-spring of them all. Quite indepen- 
 dently of this consideration, however, not only that the new 
 Chair of English Literature would fail from the outset to 
 command the serious consideration which is essential to its 
 success, but also that the general character of the universities 
 would be lowered if the study of literature (for that is what is 
 really involved in the case) were divorced by them from the 
 study of the classics, on which every civilized literature is 
 founded, and with which their own reputation and national 
 position are so vitally connected. 
 
 " On the subsidiary question, as to the method of instruc- 
 tion, I am equally in accord with what I understand to be 
 yoiir object. In so far as the classics are to be studied in 
 direct relation to English literature, for Heaven's sake let 
 them be studied as literature, and not as pretexts for philo- 
 logical pedantry ! Some time ago the works of Shakespeare 
 were, I believe, included among those upon which instruction 
 'in pupil room' is occasionally given at some of our public 
 schools. But I have been told that on all such occasions the 
 plays of Shakespeare are subjected to the method of instruc- 
 tion habitiially applied to the plays of ^Eschylus or Euri- 
 pides, that is to say, they are treated not as literature, but 
 as exercises in grammar and philology. Such a method, if 
 it really has been adopted, must necessarily have the effect 
 of concealing from, instead of revealing to, the student the 
 literary features of the text. I have always rather wished 
 and hoped to see the study of grammar removed from the 
 first to a much later period of the established curriculum, 
 and treated in connection with the kindred studies of logic
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 115 
 
 and philology as part of the science of language. And 
 amongst other advantages incidental to such a change in the 
 order of studies, I reckon the chance it would give to ' the 
 average schoolboy ' of beginning his study of Latin and Greek 
 with a livelier interest in the ideas, and a quicker and easier 
 perception of the literary characteristics of the Latin and 
 Greek authors given him to read. 
 
 " After all, of how many excellent Greek and Latin 
 scholars are the literary style, and the literary taste, de- 
 tectable ? Is it because they have neglected the study of 
 their native literature, or because the aims and methods of 
 all their studies have been verbal rather than literary ? 
 
 "As to foreign literature, I cannot but think that we are 
 at present suffering from a too unrestricted importation of 
 their moderned forms and moderned ideas. I wish it were 
 possible to establish some sort of literary Custom House, and 
 levy import duties on foreign idioms. 
 
 " But when writers, whose rank in literature is high 
 enough to carry with it some responsibility for the trustee- 
 ship of their native language, do not scruple to adulterate 
 its vocabulary, and distort its structure by the copious em- 
 ployment of all sorts of Gallicisms, Germanisms, and Ameri- 
 canisms, it is surely high time for the universities to exert 
 with energy all the influence and authority they can com- 
 mand for the preservation of what is national and classical 
 in the genius of English literature. 
 
 " To intervene, however, with any chance of success, they 
 must, as the Quarterly has so wisely insisted, provide for the 
 study of English literature as literature, and not confine 
 themselves to verbal or historical instruction about it." 
 
 It is when we are confronted with such views as 
 these, and with such views as find expression in Mr. 
 Morley's letter, and when at the same time we 
 
 T 2
 
 116 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 remember the curriculum drawn up by Lord Macaulay 
 for the Indian Civil Service Examination, that we 
 come fully to understand how wide is the gulf which 
 separates academic theories of the scope and pur- 
 poses of Education from the theories held by men who 
 possess the qualities desiderated in educational legis- 
 lators by Matthew Arnold great experience of the 
 world, breadth of culture, breadth of view. 1 
 
 The necessity, then, of the Universities making 
 adequate provision for the systematic study of Litera- 
 ture, and especially for the systematic study of our 
 own Literature, is so generally acknowledged that the 
 advocates of the movement are no longer required to 
 prove it desirable, but to show how, without injury 
 to the existing framework of University studies, it 
 can be rendered practicable. This is the problem 
 now awaiting solution at Oxford. And it is obviously 
 a very difficult and a very complicated one. Indeed, 
 it may be admitted at once that, whatever scheme 
 may finally be adopted, the choice will have to lie, 
 not with the scheme which is open to no objections, 
 but with the scheme which is open to fewest objec- 
 
 1 The curriculum of study for the open competition, for the 
 Indian Civil Service, as recently re-organized on the old lines 
 of Macaulay's scheme, affords, on the side of Literature, with one 
 singular and unfortunate exception, the elimination of Italian, 
 precisely the scheme of study for which this volume is a plea, and 
 which finds such obstinate opposition at Oxford and Cambridge.
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 117 
 
 tions. And that which will be open to fewest 
 objections will be that which is least calculated to 
 disturb existing arrangements, and which, with the 
 minimum of innovations, will yet attain the ends at 
 which a School of Literature should aim. The scheme 
 which most readily suggests itself, and which Matthew 
 Arnold, Canon Percival, and Mr. Courthope appear 
 to propose, is the modification of the present Classical 
 curriculum by the introduction of English Literature 
 as a special subject, either in Moderations, which is 
 the First Public Examination, or in the Final Schools, 
 or in both. But there would probably be serious 
 objections to this. If introduced into Moderations, 
 it would, unless it were reduced to proportions wholly 
 incommensurate with its importance and wholly in- 
 compatible with an adequate study of it, seriously 
 interfere with the prosecution of the studies peculiar 
 to that examination. Nothing is more important 
 than the preservation of a high standard of exact 
 scholarship, and the aim of Moderations is, and should 
 continue to be, the preservation of that standard. If, 
 again, it were introduced into the Final Literce 
 Humaniores School, it would, as that School is now 
 constituted, stand as a subject isolated not only from 
 what is cognate to it in Classical Literature, but from 
 what is cognate to it in Education; it would stand with 
 Greek and Roman History, with Logic, with Com-
 
 118 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 parative Philology, with Moral and Political Philo- 
 sophy. Had the old School of Liter ce, Humaniores, 
 which included, with History and Philosophy, 
 Poetry, Oratory, and Criticism, been left standing, 
 the curriculum might no doubt have been modified, 
 and modified without difficulty, in the way which 
 Matthew Arnold suggests. But that basis no longer 
 exists. The old School has gone gone, it may be 
 added, to the regret of all who do not share the 
 modern rage for experimentalizing, and who are 
 inclined to suspect that our fathers were at least as 
 wise as ourselves. 
 
 It may be questioned, therefore, whether the 
 difficulty could be met by the modification of the 
 curriculum of any existing School. Such a course 
 would, in all likelihood, lead to nothing but confusion 
 and perplexity. As things now are, each School has 
 a distinctive character and a definite aim. The aim 
 of Moderations is, on the one hand, to secure and 
 guarantee exact Classical scholarship, and on the other 
 hand to teach students to apply that scholarship to 
 its proper use the elucidation of the Poetry, Criti- 
 cism, and Oratory of Greece and Rome. The aim of the 
 Final School of Literce, Humaniores is to supplement 
 the literary course thus admirably initiated in Modera- 
 tions with the austerer discipline of Philosophy and 
 Science. Now the introduction of English Literature
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 119 
 
 into the curriculum of either of these Schools would 
 obviously be most injudicious. It would seriously 
 interfere with the Classical element in Moderations. 
 It would be entirely out of harmony with the subjects 
 studied in the Final School. 
 
 The true solution of the problem would, I venture 
 to think, be the foundation of a new Final School, 
 of a School which should not supersede, which should 
 in no way interfere with, the present Final School of 
 LitcrcB Humaniores, but which should supplement 
 it, and which should stand in the same relation to it 
 as the old Law and History School used to stand to 
 the old Literce Humaniores School. In the former 
 times a student would takes his Honours in Literal 
 Humaniores, and would then proceed to prepare him- 
 self for his second School, the School of Law and 
 History, and it was within the reach of any man of 
 intelligence and energy to take Honours in botn 
 courses. If he had not the energy or inclination to 
 compete for Honours in both Schools, it was open to 
 him to take his choice between them, and to graduate 
 in Honours in Law and Modern History, instead of in 
 Honours in Litcrcc Humaniores. This second School 
 was abolished on the ground, no doubt, that, as the 
 subjects represented in it had no direct connection 
 with the subjects prescribed in the curriculum of the 
 preceding School, it was impossible for students to
 
 120 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 attain with a year's reading, even though that read- 
 ing had been aided by reading pursued collaterally 
 with their Literce Humaniores studies, a sufficiently 
 high standard. But these objections would not apply 
 to a School of Literature, for an important part of 
 the work required for it would already have been 
 accomplished in Moderations, and another portion of 
 that work, the perusal, namely, of the lighter part of 
 our own Literature, would, so far from interfering with 
 the preparation for Literce Humaniores, form, as in- 
 deed it now does, a pleasant relaxation for leisure 
 hours. 1 Thus the student could take his Honours in 
 Literce Humaniores, and would still have a year before 
 him for the severe and systematic study which the 
 School we are advocating would necessarily exact. 
 On the other hand, men who were less energetic, or 
 whose tastes and aims were purely literary, would be 
 
 1 In addition to this, a youth would bring tip from 
 school a certain amount of literary knowledge. Indeed we 
 see no reason why he should not when he matriculates have 
 made considerable progress in his English studies. The 
 Universities, through their Scholarships, are virtually the 
 dictators of the Public Schools, and we have little doubt 
 that, if a Paper on English Literature formed a recognised 
 portion of the Examination for Classical Scholarships, pro- 
 gress would be secured. The character of the questions set 
 would determine the character of the instruction given, and 
 would thus go far to remedy the defective teaching of which 
 the Head-Master of Clifton College complains.
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 121 
 
 enabled to graduate in Honours \nBellesLettres instead 
 of graduating in Honours in Philosophy, Philology, 
 and Ancient History, just as in former times it was 
 open to men to graduate in Law and History, 
 instead of graduating in Litcrce Humaniores. The 
 University would however do well to require of 
 every candidate for the Honour School of Literature 
 that he should have obtained at least a Third Class in 
 the School of. Literal Humaniores. For a purely literary 
 curriculum would undoubtedly be too thin. Poetry, 
 Rhetoric, and Criticism can never, from an educational 
 point of view, be equivalents for Logic and Moral and 
 Political Philosophy, and the elimination of those solid 
 elements from the curriculum of culture would con- 
 stitute a serious deficiency even in the education 
 of a literary critic. No student should be entitled 
 to a degree in Arts who had not an adequate 
 acquaintance with the Ethics and the Republic. 
 
 If, again, we regard the constitution of the proposed 
 School in its relation to the constitution of existing 
 Schools, we shall see how little it would disturb 
 existing arrangements, and how easily and naturally 
 it would supply an obvious defect in the Classical 
 Course. The aim of Moderations is, as we have seen, 
 to enable students to read the chief Greek and Roman 
 Classics with facility and accuracy, to give them a 
 minute acquaintance with particular works, or with
 
 122 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 portions of particular works, and to initiate them in 
 the rudiments of literary criticism and of literary 
 history, so far, at least, as they relate to the Greek 
 and Roman Classics. But all this is supposed to be 
 accomplished in about two years, for Moderations is 
 merely an intermediate School, and with Moderations 
 the course of pure literature, thus admirably in- 
 augurated, abruptly terminates. The Classical student 
 is then hurried on without option to the Final School 
 of LitercK Humaniores, a School in the preparation 
 for which he passes at once from poetry to history, 
 from oratory to ethics, and from literary criticism to 
 logic and philology. If he chooses to abandon 
 Classics, it is of course open to him to select 
 any Final School he pleases. He can, if he is so 
 minded, betake himself to Mathematics, or to Natural 
 Science, or to Jurisprudence, or to Modern History, or 
 to Theology. But what he cannot do is to complete 
 his literary education, is to consolidate and extend 
 those studies of which he had in Moderations been 
 able to do little more than lay the foundations. No 
 one would wish to underrate the educational value 
 either of natural science or of modern history, either 
 of mathematics or of theology. Nor assuredly would 
 anyone be disposed to find fault with a curriculum 
 which is obviously designed to blend a certain amount 
 of literary culture with the .severer discipline of
 
 vi SYNOPSIS OF OPINIONS ON THE SUBJECT 123 
 
 philosophy and science. But no students are, I 
 repeat, entitled to greater consideration on the part 
 of the Universities, than those whose future calling 
 will be to disseminate literary culture, to deal directly 
 with literary criticism and with literary history. Now 
 it is surely most unreasonable that a class of students, 
 who are to occupy so important a place in letters and 
 culture, should have no opportunity of completing 
 their education, should have no option but to break 
 off the studies peculiarly suited to them just when 
 those studies are beginning to be of real service, and 
 might and ought to be extended. A Final School of 
 Literature on the lines proposed here is therefore as 
 desirable in the interests of Classical culture as it is 
 in the interests of the study of English. Its formal 
 constitution might surely be modelled on the con- 
 stitution of the present Liter ce Humaniores School. 
 In the curriculum of that School are included, as we 
 have seen, Greek and Roman History, Logic, Moral 
 and Political Philosophy, the History of Philosophy, 
 and a special subject. Now if for Greek and Roman 
 History were substituted the general history of the 
 Greek and Roman Literatures ; for Moral and Poli- 
 tical Philosophy, the general history of the English 
 French and Italian Literatures ; for Logic and the 
 History of Philosophy, Historical and Esthetic Criti- 
 cism ; and for the special subject, which ranges from
 
 124 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITEEATURE CH. vi 
 
 Textual Criticism to Comparative Philology, a critical 
 examination of prescribed works in English, Italian, 
 and French, 1 we should have a framework corre- 
 sponding, or nearly corresponding, in its proportions 
 to what is now a School, partly of History, partly of 
 Philosophy, and partly of Philology. 
 
 1 I am not including German, because I think, for the 
 reason alleged on p. 63, it might be an optional subject.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 
 
 LET us now consider particularly and in detail 
 how such a School might be constituted as would 
 answer all the requirements of a full and satisfactory 
 system of instruction in Literature. In the first 
 place it may be assumed that this School would be 
 designed only for those students who wished to 
 obtain a degree in Honours, who wished to leave the 
 University with their qualifications as graduates in 
 Literature as authentically guaranteed as Honours in 
 the History School guarantee competent knowledge 
 of History. Of these students there would probably, 
 in addition to others, be two large classes, those, 
 namely, whose future object it would be to follow 
 Literature as a profession, or at all events to become 
 in various ways contributors to it ; 1 and those, a far 
 
 1 As a rule this class generally have preferred, and in all 
 probability will continue to prefer, to take their education 
 into their own hands.
 
 126 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 more numerous class, who would be destined to be- 
 come its apostles and exponents in other capacities, 
 who would fill the Chairs of Literature which the 
 modern side of education is every year multiplying, 
 multiplying in the provinces, multiplying in the 
 Colonies, who would be enlisted in the same service 
 as teachers in our Public Schools, as University Ex- 
 tension lecturers, as lecturers at Girton, Newnham, 
 and similar seminaries, as lecturers in the innumer- 
 able Institutes scattered up and down the country. 
 It may be assumed then, secondly, that if this 
 School should be a School of " Literature " and 
 there is no reason why it should not represent all 
 the Literatures of Europe its central and chief sub- 
 ject should be English Literature, its principal object 
 the maintenance of an efficient system of discipline 
 and instruction for those who seek Honours in that 
 subject. But we have already seen that English 
 Literature cannot stand alone. It must be associated 
 necessarily with ancient Classical Literature, it must 
 be associated if practicable with the Literatures of 
 Italy and France, it is desirable that it should be 
 associated with the Literature of Germany. But in 
 these matters, as in others, a distinction may be 
 drawn between what constitutes the foundation and 
 what constitutes the superstruction in education, 
 between what a man must obtain in his noviciate
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 127 
 
 from his teachers, and what he may be trusted to do 
 subsequently for himself, No person interested in 
 Literature is likely to allow himself to remain in 
 ignorance of Italian, French, and German he will 
 pick them up easily, and in the way he pleases, and 
 it is not necessary for the purposes of the particular 
 curriculum we are considering that those Literatures 
 should be studied minutely and systematically. But 
 what nine men out of ten will not do is to sit down 
 to systematic reading, arid still less to systematic 
 reading in what it is far more pleasant to dawdle 
 with and acquire fragmentarily English Literature, 
 and to systematic reading in Greek and Latin. 
 Secure then, I would say, severe and methodical 
 study in English and Classics, and leave Italian, 
 German, and French, to take care of themselves, 
 insisting, however, at the same time, on such a 
 knowledge of them as shall be necessary for the 
 proper understanding, historically and critically, of 
 English Literature. 
 
 Let me bring these preliminary remarks to a 
 conclusion by recurring again to what was said 
 before. It is for no innovation in the consti- 
 tution of academic curricula that I am pleading. 
 It is merely that a deficiency which is wholly 
 anomalous, and in consequence of which the interests 
 of education in one of its most important branches
 
 128 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 are notoriously suffering, may be supplied. A Degree 
 in Honours is the sole passport to posts of credit and 
 emolument in the Universities, outside the Uni- 
 versities it is the only authentic guarantee of a young 
 man's proficiency in subjects recognized in education 
 and of his qualifications for the work of teaching. In 
 all other branches of liberal knowledge, in Classics, 
 in Philosophy, in Divinity, in Mathematics, in 
 Natural Science, in Jurisprudence, in History, and 
 even "in Literis Indicis" it is open to him to obtain 
 this passport and this guarantee. It is not open to 
 him to obtain them in Literature, in Belles Lettres 
 and Rhetoric, though the Universities are under- 
 taking, and that on a very large scale, to supply the 
 country and the colonies with teachers in those 
 subjects. Finally, before we proceed to consider the 
 framework of the curriculum under discussion, it may 
 be added 
 
 Firstly : that the proposed School need not, and 
 should not, in the smallest degree interfere with 
 any of the Schools now established in the Uni- 
 versity, or with a School of Philology, should 
 such an institution be deemed advisable. 
 
 Secondly : that it should stand in precisely the 
 same relation to the present Final Schools in all 
 the Faculties as the old Law and History School
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATUEE 129 
 
 used to stand, or as the examination for the 
 Degree of Bachelor of Civil Law now stands. 
 Thirdly : that it should be an Honour School, and 
 that entrance to its examinations should be 
 optional, no candidate being allowed to offer 
 himself for examination till he had passed all 
 such examinations as it is at present necessary 
 for him to pass before obtaining his Bachelor's 
 Degree in Arts. 
 
 Now, assuming, as we may safely assume, that 
 those who would present themselves for examination 
 would be men who had already attained Honours in 
 Classical Moderations and in the Final School of 
 Literce Humaniores, and who had passed also a year 
 or nine months in special preparation for this par- 
 ticular examination, let us consider on what lines the 
 curriculum of a School like this should run. 
 
 From every candidate a Thesis or Essay should be 
 required, and to this so much importance should, for 
 obvious reasons, be attached that a whole day might 
 be allowed for its composition. It might be well, 
 also, to consider whether a Paper of questions on 
 English History, not in relation to minutiae but in 
 relation to its general course and to social and 
 political movements which have especially affected 
 Literature, should not be proposed. But to proceed. 
 
 K
 
 130 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 The subjects in the course would naturally group 
 themselves thus. First would come Poetry, then 
 would come Rhetoric, and Rhetoric would naturally 
 subdivide itself into Oratory proper, into History, or 
 rather historical composition regarded as Rhetoric, 
 and into such miscellaneous literature as is not com- 
 prised under the headings specified. Lastly would 
 come Criticism, which might in its turn be sub- 
 divided into Historical Criticism, in other words, the 
 History of Literature, and into ^Esthetic, Philosophi- 
 cal, and Technical Criticism. In the department of 
 Poetry the Classical portion should consist of passages 
 for translation, selected from the leading poets of each 
 era of Greek and Latin Literature, from Homer to 
 Theocritus, from Plautus to Prudentius, with 
 elucidatory comments. The English portion should 
 consist of questions framed with the object of ascer- 
 taining that the chief poems of each era into which 
 our Literature may be divided had been thoughtfully 
 and intelligently perused, and that prescribed works, 
 the Prologue and four of the Canterbury Tales, for 
 example, the first, second, and fifth books of the 
 Faerie Queene, half a dozen of Shakespeare's best 
 dramas, six books of Paradise Lost, the Paradise 
 Regained, the Absalom and Achitopliel, ihe.JReligio 
 Laid, the Hind and Panther, the Essay on Criticism, 
 the Eape of the Lock, the Essay on Man, and the like,
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 131 
 
 had been critically studied. In the department of 
 Rhetoric the works offered for examination should, 
 like the works offered for examination in Philosophy 
 in the sister School, be specified from time to time 
 by the Board of Studies. In the historical portion 
 of the department of Criticism, Papers should be set 
 on the general history of the three Literatures with a 
 view to testing knowledge of their evolution and 
 idiosyncrasies. In addition to these Papers a special 
 Paper on the direct and indirect influence of the 
 Greek and Roman Literatures in moulding and 
 modifying our own, and in influencing particularly 
 the work of particular writers, ought undoubtedly to 
 form an important feature of the examination. 
 ^Esthetic and Philosophic and Technical Criticism 
 should be represented by such works as the Poetics, 
 the third book of the Rhetoric, portions of the De 
 Antiquis Rhetoribus, the De Structurd Orationis, the 
 Ion, and the De Sublimitate in Greek ; in Latin by 
 the Brutus, the De Oratore, or a portion of the De 
 Ordtore, by the Dialogus De Oratoribus, and selections 
 from Quintilian, including the whole of the tenth 
 book ; in English by such works as Sidney's Apology 
 for Poetry, Dryden's Essays on Dramatic Poesy, on 
 Epic Poetry, and on Satire, by Addison's papers on 
 Milton, by Johnson's Lives, by some of the Disserta- 
 tions of Hurd and Twining, and by selections from 
 
 K 2
 
 132 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 such critics as Lamb, Coleridge, and Matthew 
 Arnold. And to these and similar works I am 
 not, of course, proposing that all these works should 
 be prescribed ought undoubtedly to be added the 
 treatise which stands at the head of assthetic 
 criticism, Lessing's Zaccoon. 1 
 
 And now let us see what would be the gain to 
 education, and to our methods of education generally, 
 could a scheme of this kind be carried out. New life 
 would be breathed into Classical study, a study which, 
 in spite of all the efforts of scholars, like Professor 
 Jowett and Professors Jebb and Campbell, to give it 
 vitality, is yearly declining and losing vogue. The 
 study of our own Literature, freed from its present 
 degrading vassalage to Philology, would be placed on 
 its proper footing. The foundation of what, in 
 the opinion of such judges as Lessing, Villemain, 
 
 1 Should a candidate not be acquainted with German, this 
 work could of course be studied perfectly well in one of the 
 many excellent English translations. It is a proof of the 
 indifference of our Universities to Critical Literature, as dis- 
 tinguished from Philological, that neither Lessing's master- 
 piece nor the De Sublimitate has a place in the curriculum 
 of any of their Schools. The neglect into which the treatise 
 of Longinus has fallen is inexplicable. No nobler, no more 
 suggestive and inspiring work has come down to us from 
 antiquity. Mr. Havell, who has recently translated it, has 
 done good service in furnishing us with a scholarly and 
 spirited version which deserves to become popular.
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 133 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, and Matthew Arnold, constitutes the 
 very best education in criticism, would be laid. By 
 extending the period of preparation from the period 
 of school life to the age of about four-and-twenty, it 
 would encourage and enable students to peruse at 
 least a third of what is most excellent and most im- 
 portant in the pure Literature of Greece, Rome, and 
 England. It would enable them to stud} r analytically 
 the De Corona, the Philippics, the Olynthiacs, the 
 great Oration of ^Eschines, the great Oration of 
 Isocrates, an Oration or two of Lysias, half-a-dozen of 
 the best Orations of Cicero, two or more of the best 
 Orations of Burke. It would afford them ample 
 leisure for such an acquaintance with the Histories of 
 Herodotus and Thucydides, of Sallust, Livy, and 
 Tacitus, of Clarendon, Hume, and Gibbon, as would be 
 sufficient for the purposes of rhetorical culture. 1 It 
 
 1 If it be asked how the work of historians like these can 
 be approached only from the rhetorical side, the answer is 
 obvious. Classical historical composition (now almost ex- 
 tinct) is as purely a work of art and as worthy of being 
 studied as a work of art, as a great poem, or a great oration 
 is. If the matter concerns the student and the political 
 philosopher, the expression and the style concern the literary 
 critic. The study of their great histories from this point 
 of view was held by the ancients to be one of the most 
 important departments of rhetoric and criticism. See par- 
 ticularly Quintilian, Imtit. Oral. x. 1. It is, for example, 
 one thing to seek in Gibbon's great work what the mere
 
 134 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 would enable them to peruse and compare the 
 masterpieces of the Attic and Roman Drama with 
 the masterpieces of our own Drama ; the two noblest 
 Epics of the Old World with the yet nobler Epic of 
 the New ; the Odyssey with the Canterbury Tales ; 
 the Metamorphoses 1 with the Faerie Quecne ; the 
 lyrics of Pindar and Horace with the lyrics of those 
 among our own poets who acknowledged Pindar and 
 Horace as their masters, or who have, in finding 
 other sources of inspiration, rivalled, and more than 
 rivalled, ancient artists. It would enable them to 
 make themselves as familiar with the Essay on 
 Criticism as with the Ars Poetica ; with the Satires 
 of Dryden, Pope, and Johnson, as with the Satires of 
 Horace, Persius, and Juvenal ; with such poems as 
 Alastor and the Atys on the one hand, and the 
 Rape of the Lock and the Coma Berenices on the 
 other; 2 with the gems of the Anthology and the 
 
 student of history seeks in it ; it is quite another thing to 
 consider it in relation to its architectonics and style. It is, 
 again, one thing to master the matter of Segur's narrative of 
 the tragedy of 1812, and of Thucydides' narrative of the 
 tragedy of B.C. 413 ; it is quite another thing to understand 
 in what consists the immeasurable superiority of Thucydides 
 to Segur as a dramatic artist. 
 
 1 No Classical work has exercised more influence on modern 
 poetry, especially in England and Italy, than the Metamor- 
 phoses. 
 
 - A comparative study of Shelley's Alastor and the Alys
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 135 
 
 gems of Martial, as with the gems of our own not 
 less brilliant Florilegia. It would enable them to 
 pursue consecutively the course of Philosophic and 
 Didactic Poetry, from the Works and Days to the 
 De Rerum Naturd, from the De JRerum Naturd to 
 the G-eorgics, from the Georgics to the Essay on Man, 
 and from the Essay on Man to the Excursion : of 
 Pastoral and Descriptive Poetry, from the Sicilian 
 Idylls to the Bucolics of Virgil, from the Bucolics to 
 the Mosella, and from the Mosclla to such pieces as 
 have in successive epochs of our own Literature, from 
 the appearance of the Shepherd's Calendar to the 
 appearance of the English Idylls, been typical of the 
 same class. It would enable them to understand the 
 relations and to estimate the debt of our Narrative 
 and Idyllic Poetry to the Argonautica of Apollonius, 
 to the Peleus and Thetis, to the Heroical Epistles, to 
 the Pharsalia, to the Thebaid, to that brilliant 
 Idyllic Epic, and that not less brilliant Allegoric Epic, 
 which, with other poems, 1 once too much overrated, 
 
 or William Morris's Life and Death of Jason and the Argo- 
 nautica of Apollonius would do more to make a student 
 realize the fundamental and essential differences between 
 Ancient and Modern Poetry than volumes of commentary ; 
 j ust as a comparative study of the Coma Berenices and Pope's 
 Mock-Heroic would show him how much they have some- 
 times, and in particular branches, in common. 
 
 1 Notably such poems as the Mosella, and the Idylls
 
 136 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 now too generally neglected, constitute Ausonius, 
 Claudian, and Prudentius the link between ancient 
 and modern poetry. 
 
 And now it remains to consider what share those 
 modern Literatures, which have chiefly affected our 
 own, should have in the curriculum. Of the im- 
 portance of Italian there can be no question. It is a 
 proof of the ignorance which exists on matters of this 
 kind, that when, not long ago, a gentleman of great 
 authority in University councils was asked to sign a 
 protest against the elimination of Italian from the 
 Indian Civil Service Examination on the ground, 
 among other things, of its close connection with 
 English Literature, he replied that he should cer- 
 tainly be prepared to protest against any measure 
 which should affect deleteriously the English part of 
 the curriculum, but he failed to see in what way a 
 student of English Literature would be benefited by 
 a knowledge of Italian. He might have been easily 
 answered. A mere glance at the nature and extent 
 of the influence which the Literature of Italy has 
 exercised on the development and peculiarities of our 
 own would suffice to show that a knowledge of the 
 Literature of Greece is not more indispensable to the 
 critical and historical student of the Classics of 
 
 entitled Cupido cruci aff.xus and Rosce, so singularly modern 
 in imagery, colour, and sentiment.
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 137 
 
 ancient Rome, than a knowledge of that of Italy is to 
 the critical and historical student of the Literature of 
 England. When English poetry awoke, if its earliest 
 inspiration came from France, its most potent inspi- 
 ration came from Italy. But for the Dccamerone we 
 should never have had the Canter miry Tales. The 
 sweetest and most pathetic of those tales came from 
 Boccaccio. The only poems of Chaucer which rise 
 to the dignity of the epic are simply adaptations 
 from Boccaccio. The frequency of his allusions, 
 parodies, and reminiscences proves his indebtedness 
 to Dante. From Boccaccio was derived most of the 
 material of Lydgate's finest poem, and it is the spirit 
 of Boccaccio's great predecessor whom he invokes 
 to instruct him how to tell the most impressive of his 
 tragedies. When Surrey and Wyatt initiated the 
 greatest revolution which our Literature has ever 
 undergone, it is to Italy that we have to trace most 
 of the elements in that revolution. What Alca3us 
 and Sappho were to Horace, and Philetas and Calli- 
 machus to Propertius, that were the poets of Italy 
 to the leaders of the Company of Courtly Makers.. 
 They found in Petrarch the model for their Sonnets. 
 They transferred from Dante and Alamanni the 
 terza rima, from Boccaccio and the Pulci the ottava 
 rima, from Trissino and Rucellai but this was 
 the glory of Surrey heroic blank-verse that metre
 
 138 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 which was to become the omnipotent instrument of 
 Shakespeare and Milton. Wyatt borrowed epigrams 
 from Serafino D'Aquila, and derived from Dante 
 and Alamanni suggestion and inspiration for his 
 version of the Penitential Psalms. On the Inferno 
 was nourished the stern genius of Sackville, and the 
 Inferno divides with the sixth book of the ^neid 
 the honour of having inspired the most powerful of 
 English poetic narratives preceding the Faerie Queene. 
 As we advance in the Elizabethan age, the influence 
 of Italy is ubiquitous. The canzone, the ballata, the 
 sestina, the madrigale, variously modified, become, 
 with other measures, directly traceable to Italian ori- 
 ginals, the forms predominating in the lyric. Without 
 reference, and at every turn, to the Literature of Italy, 
 the Literature of Elizabethan England is without its 
 key. Ariosto and Tasso are to the Faerie Queene pre- 
 cisely what the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Argonautica 
 are to the dtlneid, while Petrarch, Sannazaro, Bembo, 
 and many others stand in exactly the same relation to 
 that vast mass of poetry of which Spenser's Amoretti 
 and Drummond's Song on Damon are the types. 
 With regard to the Drama it would be no exag- 
 geration to say that almost every form it assumed is 
 to be traced to the Italian Drama of the Renaissance, 
 which was indeed the medium through which the 
 Drama of Classical Antiquity affected us. From the
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATUKE 139 
 
 Farce sprang what culminated in the Romantic 
 Comedies of Shakespeare. From the Favole Bos- 
 chercccie sprang what culminated in Comus. A stout 
 octavo volume would not suffice to illustrate in detail 
 the indebtedness of Milton to Dante, Petrarch, and 
 Tasso alone. Scarcely less important was the 
 influence exercised on our prose literature by Italian 
 writers. Without the Arcadia of Sannazaro we 
 should not have had the Arcadia of Sidney, or the 
 Pastoral Romance. To the novels of Boccaccio, 
 Cinthio, and others we owe our earliest novels; to 
 the Discourses of Giraldi and Guazzo, our earliest 
 treatise on moral philosophy. Castiglione shares 
 with Plutarch and Guevara the honour of having 
 suggested and inspired Lyly's ethical romance. To 
 the Italian historians, to the writings of Machiavelli 
 and Guicciardini particularly, we must turn for the 
 secret of the ethical and political temper of Bacon, 
 for the sources of much of the philosophy embodied 
 in the Essays, in the Life of Henry the Seventh, 
 and in so many other portions of his writings. It 
 is notorious that Davila was the favourite historian 
 of Hampden, and his influence is distinctly to be 
 traced in the historical and political writings of 
 Hobbes, Clarendon, and Temple. If between the 
 close of the seventeenth century and the beginning 
 of the present, the influence of Italy ceased to affect us
 
 140 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 very perceptibly, still at various times, and in various 
 degrees it may still be traced, notably in Collins, 
 notably in Gray and Hayley. But with Byron and 
 Shelley, with Keats and Leigh Hunt and Landor, it be- 
 came once more in the ascendant, and during the last 
 thirty years it has come to be almost as influential as 
 it was in fiction and poetry three centuries ago. Indis- 
 solubly then as the Literatures of ancient Greece and 
 Rome is the Literature of Italy linked with our own, 
 and to say that no curriculum, the central object of 
 which should be the systematic study of English 
 poetry and prose of their evolution and character- 
 istics, could be satisfactory which should not include 
 provision for. a competent knowledge of the Italian 
 Classics, and of their relation to the English, is to say 
 what may seem paradox at the Universities, but what 
 must sound platitude everywhere else. 
 
 The importance of the Literature of France, both 
 particularly with reference to the influence exercised 
 by it, directly and indirectly, during every era of our 
 literary history, and generally with reference to its 
 forming an indispensable element in a critical 
 education, is too obvious to need any explanation or 
 commentary. 
 
 If it be objected, as many would no doubt object, 
 that German has equal claims to recognition, and 
 that its omission from such a course as is here
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 141 
 
 proposed would be monstrous, I would reply : by all 
 means admit it, not however as a compulsory but as 
 an optional subject. And for these reasons. We 
 are here considering not a curriculum of Modern 
 Literature generally, but a curriculum the chief 
 object of which is provision for the critical and 
 historical study of English Literature. For that 
 study a considerable acquaintance with the Greek, 
 Latin, Italian, and French Literatures is, as we have 
 seen, simply indispensable. But an acquaintance 
 with German Literature, however desirable it may 
 be, and desirable for many reasons it undoubtedly 
 is, is not indispensable ; not indispensable, that is to 
 say, as an essential and fundamental element in the 
 particular course of study we are considering. From 
 Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare to Dryden, 
 and from Dryden to the period of the literary activity 
 of Coleridge, our Literature pursued a course in no 
 way affected, save accidentally and occasionally, and 
 that with reference to mere trifles, by the influence 
 of Germany. 1 It was not till the second decade of 
 the present century that it began to affect us power- 
 
 1 During the greater part of the last century, says Carlyle, 
 the Germans in our intellectual survey of the world were 
 quietly omitted. And what was true of the last century 
 was as true of the centuries preceding it. For the trifles 
 to which I have alluded see Professsor Herford's interesting 
 little book.
 
 142 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 fully and extensively. The question is a practical 
 one. If either Greek or Latin, either Italian or 
 French, is to be sacrificed for German, then German 
 ought to go, but if neither Greek nor Latin, neither 
 Italian nor French, is to be sacrificed, then German 
 ought to be required. 
 
 And now it is time to conclude. 1 have pleaded, 
 it may be said, for a counsel of perfection. It may 
 be so. But, as ridicule is alleged to be the test of 
 truth, so counsels of perfection are after all the 
 touchstones of practical legislation. If it be ad- 
 mitted that I have made out a case for the recogni- 
 tion and organization of English Literature, con- 
 sidered as Literature, at the Universities, that I have 
 demonstrated that the place of Paradise, Lost and 
 the Speech on Conciliation with America as subjects 
 of academic study is not beside Csedmon's Para- 
 phrase and the Blickling Homilies, but beside the 
 Iliad and JEneid and the Orations of Demosthenes 
 and the Orations of Cicero ; that the Literatures of 
 Greece, Rome, Italy, and France are indissolubly 
 linked with our own, and ought therefore to be studied 
 side by side with our own ; that, as the education 
 of a critic of Literature should extend to all that 
 is in youth intellectually and aesthetically susceptible 
 of culture and discipline, it ought to be based on 
 the study of what is best and most excellent, of
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 143 
 
 what is in the true sense of the term classical in 
 Poetry, in Oratory, in Criticism, in Philosophy; that 
 to substitute for subjects like these and for discipline 
 of this kind the barbarous and semi-barbarous ex- 
 periments of the infancy of civilization and the 
 illiberal and narrowing discipline of philological 
 instruction, is a great and deplorable misconception 
 of the ends at which education should aim if this 
 be admitted, it matters little what modifications may 
 be made in the scheme I have here proposed. The 
 omission of all authors of secondary importance, even 
 the elimination of modern Literature completely, 
 would, for the reasons I have stated when dis- 
 tinguishing between foundation and superstructure 
 in education, be of little consequence compared with 
 the disassociation of Ancient or Classical Literature 
 from the study of our own. But on this I would 
 insist, that in no School of Literature worthy of our 
 Universities ought there to be any question about 
 the imperative requirement from every candidate 
 for Honours of a careful study of the whole, or of 
 such portions as it may be deemed advisable to 
 prescribe, of the following writers or writings in 
 the Literatures of Greece, Rome, and England :
 
 144 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
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 146 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 But the point of importance lies neither in this 
 scheme nor in that scheme, it lies in the prevention 
 of a precedent which cannot fail to be of disastrous 
 import. That the higher culture of our country, 
 whether expressing itself practically in teaching or 
 reflectively in art and letters, must suffer serious 
 detriment if, in the very centres and nurseries of 
 education, the study of Literature is severed deliber- 
 ately and on principle from the study of the ancient 
 masterpieces, is surely certain. Classical Literature 
 can never, it is true, become extinct, but it can lose 
 its vogue, it can become the almost exclusive 
 possession of mere scholars, it can cease to be 
 influential. Every step in the progress of its aliena- 
 tion from life is a step in the progress of its decline. 
 Philology cannot save it, technical scholarship cannot 
 save it. It must be linked with life to live, with the 
 incarnation of that of which it too is the incarnation, 
 to prevail. Associate it as poetry with poetry, as 
 oratory with oratory, as criticism with criticism, 
 and it will be vital and mighty. The University 
 of 'Oxford has now to decide whether this is to be 
 done, or whether, so far from this being done, the 
 Classics are to be ostracized from that dominion 
 over which for so many centuries they have reigned 
 supreme, and the Dii Minores of later and lesser 
 dynasties set up in their place, whether the Beowulf
 
 vii A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 147 
 
 is to supersede the Iliad, and the Blickling Homilies 
 Attic Oratory ; whether in a School of " Literature," 
 in a School in which poetry is represented, we are 
 to look in vain for the names of Homer and 
 Sophocles, of Virgil and Horace ; whether the study 
 of Criticism is to be divorced from the study of the 
 Poetics and the Rhetoric, and the study of Oratory 
 from the study of Demosthenes and Cicero. This 
 is the question this and nothing less than this 
 now awaiting decision at the chief seat of English 
 national culture. In pleading for the recognition 
 and organization of the study of English Literature 
 on the lines indicated in this book, I have indeed 
 adduced the one unanswerable argument in justifica- 
 tion of the Classics maintaining in modern times 
 their old leading and dominant position in secondary 
 education. 
 
 In conclusion I would again direct attention to the 
 immense importance of what is involved in the 
 decision of this question. It has long been a re- 
 proach to us as a nation, that, mainly in consequence 
 of the narrow and obstinate esoterism of the Univer- 
 sities, and partly owing the unavoidably predomin- 
 ant claims of scientific and technical instruction, 
 we have never risen even to a conception of Education 
 in the sense in which it was anciently understood. 
 Making due allowance for the distinction which 
 
 L 2
 
 148 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. 
 
 must be drawn between the world for which Pericles 
 legislated, and the world in which our busy millions 
 are striving, it still remains that there exists no essen- 
 tial distinction between what men needed then and 
 what men need now. They needed then and they need 
 now to be taught how to live. They need aesthetic cul- 
 ture, that life may not only be brightened, but refined 
 and elevated by sympathetic communion with what 
 is truly beautiful and excellent in Art and Literature ; 
 they need moral culture, and that on broader lines 
 than when it ran wholly in theological and con- 
 ventional grooves ; they need political culture, 
 instruction, that is to say, in what pertains to their 
 relation to the State, to their duties as citizens ; and 
 they need also to be impressed sentimentally by 
 having the presentation in legend and history of 
 heroic and patriotic example brought vividly and 
 attractively before them. To the Greeks instruction 
 of this kind was conveyed easily and delightfully 
 through the study properly directed of the best lite- 
 rature, and particularly of the best poetry ; and of 
 instruction of this kind the best literature and the 
 best poetry may still become the means. But no 
 such system of education, no such conception of the 
 scope and functions of education, can ever obtain as 
 long as education takes its ply from the curricula 
 of the Universities, as the curricula of the Uni-
 
 A SCHOOL OF LITERATURE 149 
 
 versities are at present constituted. The prob- 
 lem before the Universities has during the last 
 fifteen years been defined clearly enough. The 
 genius of the Schools must be brought into har- 
 mony with the genius of national life. In accept- 
 ing the responsibility incurred by the organization 
 and control of a system of advanced popular educa- 
 tion, now coextensive with the kingdom, it has become 
 incumbent on them to meet the requirements of that 
 system, and of the requirements of that system the 
 first and most important is the discipline of its 
 missionaries. To relegate Mceso-Gothic, Icelandic, 
 Anglo-Saxon, and the like to their proper sphere, the 
 sphere of Philology, and to substitute for their study 
 the study of the leading and master Classics of the 
 world ; to raise Greek, now gradually fading out of ov.r 
 curricula, and degenerating into the cachet and shibbo- 
 leth of cliques of pedants, to its proper place in Educa- 
 tion ; to encourage and prescribe such a study of 
 Spenser and Shakespeare, of Milton and Wordsworth, 
 of Bacon and Burke, as would attain the ends it is cal- 
 culated to attain this ought now to be the aim of the 
 English Universities. The times are ripe, and thanks 
 to men like Professor Jowett, Professor Campbell, 
 Professor Jebb, and Mr Andrew Lang, the means are 
 at hand for making the philosophy and poetry of 
 ancient Greece influential in modern life. That the
 
 150 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CH. vn 
 
 Homeric Poems, the Lyrics of Pindar, the Attic 
 Tragedies, and the Platonic Dialogues, have not 
 proved as full of interest and as pregnant with in- 
 struction for our citizens as they were when they 
 moulded the lives of the citizens of Athens, is to 
 be attributed to the absence of such Institutions 
 at Oxford and Cambridge as the Institution for 
 which this volume pleads.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 As one of the chief objections advanced against 
 the academic recognition of the study of Literature 
 is that it could not be made sufficiently solid and 
 tangible, I subjoin a few specimens of the sort of 
 questions which might be proposed to candidates in 
 such a School as we have been discussing. 
 
 THESIS. 
 
 " The spirit of ancient art and poetry was plastic, 
 that of modern is picturesque ; the poetry of the 
 ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, ours is that 
 of desire." A. W. Schlegel. How far are these 
 remarks true ? 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 1. Describe the world of Chaucer on its social, 
 political, and ecclesiastical sides. Account histori- 
 cally for Chaucer's attitude towards religion and 
 politics.
 
 152 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 2. What were the causes which conspired to form 
 the Elizabethan age, and in what way and to what 
 extent are peculiarities in the w r ork of Spenser and 
 Shakespeare directly attributable to them, or to any 
 of them ? 
 
 3. Show how the Faerie Quecne is a mirror of 
 contemporary history. 
 
 4. Describe with special reference to Milton's 
 works the great political and religious questions 
 at issue between 1625 and 1660. Define carefully 
 Milton's attitude towards them. 
 
 5. What were the chief questions at issue both at 
 home and abroad between 1702 and 1739 ? Illustrate 
 by references to the writings of Defoe, Swift, 
 Addison, Steele, and Bolingbroke. 
 
 6. Divide Burke's public life into the two great 
 periods into which it falls, and give a brief sketch of 
 the chief questions under debate in foreign and 
 domestic politics. Account for the apparent incon- 
 sistencies in Burke's political opinions. 
 
 7. Describe the character of those historical 
 epochs which appear to be particularly propitious 
 to poetical activity. 
 
 8. Account historically for the political doctrines 
 embodied in (a) Hobbes' Leviathan; (7?) Milton's 
 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates ; (c) Godwin's 
 Political Justice. ; and illustrate, from the poetry 
 contemporary with these works, how poetry was 
 affected by the same currents of thought. 
 
 9. What important political questions were in- 
 volved in the controversies which produced re-
 
 APPENDIX 153 
 
 spectively the following works ? (a) Hooker's Ecclesi- 
 astical Polity ; (&) Dryden's Hind and Panther ; (c) 
 Arbuthnot's History of John Bull ; (d) Burke's Re- 
 flections on the French Revolution. 
 
 10. Account historically for the political doctrines 
 of Wordsworth. 
 
 11. Show how the political movements of the 
 last sixty years have affected poetry. 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 1. Divide English Literature into the chief eras 
 into which it falls ; enumerate the leading poets and 
 prose writers of each era, with their principal works, 
 briefly characterizing each writer. 
 
 2. Trace to their origin the following metres blank 
 verse, ottava rima, terza rima, the rhyme royal, the 
 Spenserian stanza, the canzone, the sestine, enumerat- 
 ing the chief poems written in each, and pointing 
 out with illustrative references any modifications 
 which these metres may have undergone in the 
 hands of eminent English poets. 
 
 3. Compare the influence of the Renaissance on 
 English Literature between about 1560 and 1625, and 
 the influence of the Revolution movement on that 
 Literature between about 1789 and 1840. 
 
 4. Define the terms " Romantic " and " Classical," 
 pointing out and accounting for the different signi- 
 fications which have at various times been attached 
 to each.
 
 154 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 5. Sketch the history of the Drama in England 
 during the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries re- 
 spectively. 
 
 6. What were the chief contributions made to 
 English Literature during the fifteenth century ? 
 Account for the sterility of poetry. 
 
 (And four other questions of a similar kind.) 
 
 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND ANCIENT 
 CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 
 
 1. "The development and peculiarities of two- 
 thirds of what is most valuable in English Poetry 
 would, from an historical point of view, be as unintelli- 
 gible without reference to Classical Literature, as the 
 best Poetry of the Romans would be without reference 
 to the Poetry of the Greeks." Discuss that statement. 
 
 2. Point out the influence which Pindar has had 
 on English Poetry. How far are our so-called Pin- 
 darique Odes, and how far are Gray's two Odes, 
 " Pindaric " ? 
 
 3. In what way, and to what extent, has "Platonism" 
 affected respectively Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, 
 Shelley ? 
 
 4. Define and illustrate the direct influence exer- 
 cised on English Prose by Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, 
 Seneca, and the younger Pliny respectively ; what 
 English writers might be regarded as most nearly the . 
 counterparts of each of those Classics ? 
 
 5. Discuss the respective merits and defects of
 
 APPENDIX 155 
 
 Chapman's Homer, Pope's Homer, Dryden's Virgil, 
 Browning's Agamemnon, regarded as translations. 
 
 6. Define and illustrate the direct influence exer- 
 cised by ^Eschylus on English Poetry. 
 
 7. Discuss the nature and extent of the influence 
 exercised (a) by Roman Satire on English Satire ; 
 (Z>) by Roman Didactic Poetry on English Didactic 
 poetry. 
 
 8. Show how English Oratory and History have in 
 point of structure and style been affected by Classical 
 models. 
 
 9. How far is Prior a disciple of Horace, Matthew 
 Arnold of Homer and Sophocles, and Tennyson of 
 Virgil and Theocritus ? 
 
 10. What are the chief points of resemblance and 
 difference between the Shakespearian Drama and 
 the Attic Drama ? 
 
 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND ITALIAN 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 1. Estimate generally the nature and extent of 
 the influence exercised directly by Italian Literature 
 on the development of our own between the time of 
 Chaucer and the death of Bacon. 
 
 2. " It would be difficult to name any important 
 branch of English Literature, either in poetry or in 
 prose, which has not been more or less affected by 
 the influence of Italian writers." Discuss that 
 statement.
 
 156 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 3. In what way is Chaucer directly indebted to 
 Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch respectively ? Ac- 
 count for his comparative indifference to Petrarch. 
 
 4. Point out how and to what extent the following 
 works have been affected by the Italian Classics : 
 Sackville's Induction, Shakespeare's Venus and 
 Adonis, Milton's Comus, Gray's Elegy, Byron's 
 Don Juan, Shelley's Epipsychidion, Tennyson's In 
 Manor i am, Hossetti's House of Life. 
 
 5. " What the Homeric poems and the Argonautica 
 of Apollonius Rhodius are to the JEneid, the epics 
 of Ariosto and Tasso are to the Faerie Queene." 
 Discuss that statement. 
 
 6. Estimate the extent of the indebtedness of 
 Surrey, Wyatt and the " Company of Courtly 
 Makers " generally to Italian Literature. 
 
 7. What metres in English Poetry have been 
 borrowed from the Italian poets, and what modifica- 
 tions have they undergone in the hands of our 
 poets ? 
 
 8. Discuss the nature and extent of the influence 
 which the Italian historians exercised on our own 
 historians and political philosophers during the 
 seventeenth century. 
 
 9. How far did the Italian Drama of the Renais- 
 sance contribute to the creation of our own Romantic 
 Drama ? Show how nearly every branch of our Eliza- 
 bethan Drama may be traced directly to Italian 
 models. 
 
 10. Indicate briefly the nature and extent of 
 Milton's indebtedness to Italian Poetry.
 
 APPENDIX 157 
 
 11. Give instances of the direct influence exercised 
 by (a) Dante, (&) Ariosto, (c) Tasso on English 
 Poetry. 
 
 12. Show how Filicaia, Alfieri, Leopardi, and 
 Manzoni have respectively affected modern English 
 Poetry. 
 
 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH 
 LITERATURE. 
 
 1. Give an account of the state of French Literature 
 during the fourteenth century, and point out in 
 what way it affected the development of our own ; 
 estimate the nature and extent of Chaucer's indebted- 
 ness to the authors of the Roman de la Rcse, to 
 Machault, Deschamps, Granson, Froissart. 
 
 2. Give an account of the Anglo-Norman Litera- 
 ture of the thirteenth century, and show how the 
 laics and fabliaux developed into the Chaucerian 
 narratives. Comment on the importance of Robert 
 Manning of Bourne in aiding this transition. 
 
 3. Point out how Gower marks with singular 
 precision the transition from characteristic French 
 Poetry to English. 
 
 4. How far is Chaucer " French " in genius, 
 temper, style, and diction ? 
 
 5. Describe the nature and extent of the direct 
 influence of French Poetry on English Poetry during 
 the Elizabethan age, noting especially Joachim du
 
 158 THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Bellay, Clement Marot, Robert Gamier, and Du 
 Bartas. 
 
 6. Discuss the influence of French models on the 
 writers of the "' critical school " of English poets. 
 Compare Waller with Malherbe. 
 
 7. Show how English Literature between about 
 1660 and 1744 was proceeding on parallel lines with 
 the Literature of France immediately preceding and 
 during the Grand Sidcle, and discuss the question 
 as to how far the points of resemblance between 
 them arose from direct imitation on the part of 
 English writers, or from the fact that both were 
 following the same Latin models. 
 
 8. Show how French Criticism affected English 
 Criticism between 1660 and 1744. Who were the 
 leading critics in France and England during these 
 years, and what were their respective contributions 
 to Criticism ? 
 
 9. Describe the direct influence exercised on Eng- 
 lish Literature by the following writers : Froissart, 
 Rabelais, Montaigne, Racine, Moliere, Pascal. 
 
 10. How far is Pope the exact English counter- 
 part of Boileau ? In what, according to Ste.-Beuve, 
 does his superiority to Boileau consist ? 
 
 11. How far was the development of the Drama in 
 England affected by that of France ? 
 
 12. How far have the structure and characteris- 
 tics of English Prose been affected by French Prose ? 
 Describe this with special relation to the prose of 
 Dryden, Chesterfield, and Horace Walpole.
 
 APPENDIX 159 
 
 CRITICAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Quintilian thus distinguishes the chief varieties 
 of style " unum subtile, quod i<r%vbv vocant ; 
 alterum grande atque robustum, quod dSpbv dicunt ; 
 tertium alii medium ex duobus, alii floridum (namque 
 id avOr^pov appellant) addiderunt." Define fully the 
 characteristics of each, and illustrate each by refer- 
 ences to Greek, Latin, and English classical prose 
 writers. 
 
 2. Matthew Arnold has described Milton as our 
 one great master in the " grand style." What, accord- 
 ing to Longinus, are the five characteristics of the 
 grand style ? Illustrate them from the style of 
 Milton. 
 
 3. " Verbi translatio instituta est inopise causa, 
 frequentata delectationis " (Cic. De Orat.}. Compare 
 this statement with Aristotle's remarks on the same 
 subject in the Rhetoric and Poetics, and discuss the 
 origin, development, and value of Metaphor. 
 
 4. Compare Aristotle's remark " erepa \6yov KOI 
 TTOir/o-e&x? Xet9 ear/" (Rhet. III. 8) with Words- 
 worth's dictum that there is no essential difference 
 between the language of prose and the language of 
 poetry. Discuss each question, and show how in some 
 respects Aristotle supports what Wordsworth meant. 
 
 5. Give Aristotle's definition of Tragedy, and show 
 how true Shakespeare is in his great tragedies to 
 Aristotle's canons. 
 
 6. Lessing has remarked that " Tragedy cannot take
 
 ICO THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 a step from the theory indicated by Aristotle without 
 going precisely so far from perfection." Discuss and 
 illustrate that statement. 
 
 7. Show the necessity for a union of the philoso- 
 phical and imaginative elements in the higher walks 
 of Poetry. Who, in your opinion, are the most 
 eminent poets in whom this union is most con- 
 spicuously absent ? 
 
 8. What is Longinus's test of the " Sublime " ? Dis- 
 cuss its adequacy. 
 
 9. Define and account for Plato's attitude towards 
 Poetry and Art. 
 
 10. What, according to Aristotle, are the points of 
 resemblance and difference between Poetry and 
 Rhetoric ? 
 
 11. Quintilian says of History "est proxima poetis 
 et quoddammodo carmen solutum." Comment with 
 illustrations on this remark. 
 
 12. Compare Aristotle and Coleridge as critics of 
 Poetry, and discuss the chief points of difference 
 between ancient and modern Criticism, (a) in relation 
 to its methods, (&) in relation to its aims and its 
 spirit. 
 
 13. " The true test of all the arts is not solely 
 whether the production is a true copy of nature, but 
 whether it answers the end of art" (Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds). Discuss this with reference to Lessing's 
 doctrines.
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 ADDISOX, his serious style mo- 
 delled on that of Cicero, 77- 
 78, note 
 
 Esthetic training, neglect of, 
 
 in England, 1 
 
 growing demand f6r, in 
 England, 2 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Literature, v. under 
 Literature 
 
 Answers from eminent men to 
 appeal for opinions on the 
 teaching of Literature in the 
 Universities, 98-115 
 
 Aristotle and Shakespeare, mutu- 
 ally elucidatory, 88-89 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 107- 
 108 
 
 I', 
 
 Balliol College, Oxford, Pro- 
 fessor Jowett, Master of, 
 quoted, 101, 104, 105 
 
 Benson, Dr. , Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, quoted, 100, 106 
 
 Burke, quoted, 92 
 
 Cambridge, ridiculous failure of 
 the Mediaeval and Modern 
 Languages Tripos, at, 24-25 
 
 Canterbuiy, Dr. Benson, Arch- 
 bishop of, quoted, 100, 106 
 Carnarvon, Lord, quoted, 106 
 Celtic Literature, v. under Litera- 
 ture 
 
 Cicero, Addison's serious style 
 modelled on that of, 78-79, 
 note 
 
 Clarendon Press Editions of Eng- 
 lish Classics, radical defect of, 
 57-60 
 
 Classics, the Greek and Roman, 
 
 in modern education, 5-6 
 
 vicious system of teaching, 
 
 19-21 
 
 the archetypes of Litera- 
 ture, 90-93 
 
 danger to the national cul- 
 ture from their neglect, 
 146 
 
 must be studied intelli- 
 gently, and as literature, 
 146-147 
 v. also under Literature, 
 
 English 
 
 Clifton, Mr. Wilson, Head-Mas- 
 ter of, quoted, 102 
 Craik, Dr., quoted, 103 
 Critical training, neglect of, in 
 the English educational 
 system, 39 
 prevailing misconception as 
 
 to character of, 40 
 how to be attained, 42 
 Criticism, English, derived from 
 Classical, 82
 
 164 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Culture, aesthetic, moral, and po- 
 litical, need of, in education, 
 147-150 
 
 D 
 
 Descriptive poetry, English, 
 derived from Classical, 76 
 
 Didactic poetry, English, de- 
 rived from Classical, 74 
 
 Dilettantism in English educa- 
 tional system, 60-61 
 
 Drama, English, moulded on 
 Classical, 73 
 
 E 
 
 Earle, Professor, quoted, 14, 26, 
 71-73 
 
 Eclogues, English, derived from 
 .Classical, 75 
 
 Elegiac poetry, English, derived 
 from Classical, 76 
 
 English Literature, v. under 
 Literature 
 
 Epic Poetry, English, modelled 
 on Classical, 74 
 
 Epigrams, English, modelled on 
 Classical, 75 
 
 Epitaphs, English, modelled on 
 Classical, 75 
 
 Examination Papers and Ques- 
 tions, specimens of, 28, 30, 
 31-32, 43-44, 48-50, 151-160 
 
 F 
 
 Farrar, Canon, quoted, 101-102 
 
 Freeman, Professor, quoted, 14, 
 26-27, 94 
 
 French Literature, v. under Liter- 
 ature 
 
 Froude, Mr., quoted, 108 
 
 German Literature, v. under 
 Literature 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., quoted, 105- 
 106 
 
 Greek Literature, v. under Clas- 
 sics 
 
 H 
 
 Historians to be studied from 
 the rhetorical side, 133-134, 
 note 
 
 Huxley, Professor, quoted, 99- 
 100 
 
 I 
 
 Indian Civil Service Examina- 
 tion, Macaulay's curriculum 
 for, 116, and note 
 
 Italian Literature, v. under 
 Literature 
 
 Jowett, Professor, quoted, 101, 
 104, 105 
 
 Lessing, his Laocoon, neglect of, 
 
 at the Universities, 132, note 
 
 Lincoln College, Oxford, Dr. 
 
 Merry, Rector of, quoted, 104 
 
 Litcrce Humaniores, the School 
 
 of, at Oxford, its aim, 118 
 Literature as an instrument of 
 
 culture, 4 
 not to be confounded with 
 
 Philology, 61-62, 64 
 ancient and modern, xinity 
 
 of, 94-96 
 
 a School of, v. under Liter- 
 ature, English 
 Anglo-Saxon, how to be 
 
 studied, 34 
 
 its debt to the Classics, 
 72-73
 
 INDEX 
 
 165 
 
 Literature, Anglo-Saxon (contd.) 
 
 an original acquaint- 
 ance with, neither 
 possible nor neces- 
 sary in this connec- 
 tion, 86-87 
 
 Celtic, how to be studied, 
 34 
 
 an original acquaint- 
 ance with, neither 
 possible nor neces- 
 sary in this connec- 
 tion, 86-87 
 
 English, to be studied in 
 connection with the 
 Literatures of Greece 
 and Rome, 6, 9-11, 
 62-63, 87-89 
 
 foundation of a Chair 
 of, at Oxford, 6- 7 
 
 its importance, both as 
 a branch of know- 
 ledge and as an in- 
 strument of culture, 
 16, 56 
 
 vicious system of teach- 
 ing, now prevalent, 
 17 
 
 regarded merely as 
 pabulum for Philo- 
 logy, 21-22 
 
 anarchy in prevalent 
 system of teaching, 
 22-24 
 
 alleged impossibility of 
 teaching, enunciated 
 and discussed, 26-32 
 
 must be taught both 
 historically, 32-39, 
 and critically, 39-43 
 
 a general History of, a 
 desideratum, 34-37 ; 
 its scheme enunci- 
 ated, 37-39 
 
 how divisible into 
 epochs, 35-36 
 
 how commonly taught, 
 43-47 
 
 how it should be 
 taught, 48-53 
 
 Literature, English (contd. ) 
 
 properly taught would 
 correspond to the 
 Mouxike of the 
 Greeks, 54 
 
 worthy of minute, 
 patient, and system- 
 atic study, 56 
 Clarendon Press Edi- 
 tions of, their radical 
 defect, 57-60 
 to be studied in close 
 connection with the 
 Literatures of Greece, 
 Rome, Italy, and 
 France, 62-63 
 derived in all its 
 branches from the 
 Classical Literatures, 
 73-85 
 
 to be studied in close 
 association with 
 them, especially in 
 its spiritual, ethical, 
 and aesthetic aspects, 
 87-89 
 
 not to be introduced 
 into the course of 
 Moderations or of 
 the Final Classical 
 School, 117 
 
 a School of, to be 
 established, supple- 
 mentary to that of 
 Literce. Humaniores, 
 119-123 
 
 its constitution 
 suggested, 123- 
 124, 125-132 
 its design, 125-126 
 to include also the 
 Literatures of 
 Greece, Rome, 
 Italy, and 
 
 France, 126-127 
 to be an independ- 
 ent, optional, 
 Honour School, 
 128-129 
 its curriculum,
 
 166 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Literature, English, a School of 
 (continued). 
 
 how composed, 
 
 129-132 
 
 its educational ad- 
 vantages, 132- 
 136 
 
 tables of writers 
 and writings in 
 the Literatures 
 of Greece, Rome, 
 and England, to 
 be studied by 
 candidates for 
 Honours, 144- 
 145 
 
 specimen Examin- 
 ation Papers, 
 151-160 
 French, its influence on our 
 
 own, 140 
 
 German, its comparative 
 unimportance in this con- 
 nection, 140-142 
 Italian, its immense and 
 widespread influence on 
 our own illustrated, 136- 
 140 
 London, Dr. Temple, Bishop of, 
 
 quoted, 107 
 
 Longinus, his De Sublimitate, 
 neglect of, at the Universities, 
 132, note 
 Lyrical Poetry, English, derived 
 
 from Classical, 74 
 Lytton, Lord, quoted, 111-115 
 
 M 
 
 Macaulay, his scheme for the 
 Indian Civil Service Examina- 
 tion, 116, and note 
 Macbeth, specimen Papers on, 
 
 43-44, 48-49 
 
 the Porter's speech in, dis- 
 cussed, 45-46, note 
 Manning, Cardinal, Archbishop 
 
 of Westminster, quoted, 100 
 Harsh, quoted, 87 
 
 Martin, Sir Theodore, quoted, 
 
 101 
 Max Miiller, Professor, quoted, 
 
 7-8 
 Merry, Dr., Rector of Lincoln 
 
 College, Oxford, quoted, 104 
 Milton, his full significance only 
 
 to be appreciated by Classical 
 
 scholars, 89 
 Moderations, Classical, the 
 
 School of, at Oxford, its aim, 
 
 118 
 Morley, Mr. John, quoted 109- 
 
 110 
 "Musical" culture, neglect of, 
 
 in English educational system, 
 
 54 
 
 N 
 
 Narrative Poetry, English, 
 derived from Classical, 75 
 
 
 
 Oxford, foundation of a Chair 
 of English Literature at, 
 6-7 
 strength of philological 
 
 Earty at, 12 
 ate at, on proposed es- 
 tablishment of School of 
 Literature (quotation from. 
 Times], 13-14 
 radical defect of Clarendon 
 Press Editions of English 
 Classics, 57-60 
 
 Pastoral Poetry, English, de- 
 rived from Classical, 75 
 
 Pater, Mr. Walter, quoted, 105 
 
 Pedantry in English educational 
 system, 57-60 
 
 Percival, Dr., Head-Master of 
 Rugby, quoted, 102
 
 INDEX 
 
 107 
 
 Philological discipline, its effect 
 
 on the mind, 8-9 
 party at Oxford, strength 
 
 of, 12 
 treatment of English 
 
 Classics by the Clarendon 
 
 Press Editors, 57-59 
 Philology not to be confounded 
 
 with Literature, 61-62 
 its true character, 64 
 its deadening and narrow- 
 ing effect on the mind, 
 
 65 
 its relation to Literature, 
 
 66 
 its comparatively limited 
 
 interest and usefulness, 
 
 67 
 repugnant to men of literary 
 
 and artistic ta.stes, 68-70 
 Pope, quoted, 69-70 
 
 B 
 
 Roman Literature, v. under 
 Classics 
 
 Rugby, Dr. Percival, Head- 
 Master of, quoted, 102 
 
 S 
 
 Satire, English, moulded on 
 
 Classical, 74 
 
 School of Literature, v. Litera- 
 ture, English, a School of 
 Scott, quoted, 92-93 
 Shakespeare, how commonly 
 
 taught, 43-47 
 how he should be studied, 
 
 48-53 
 
 Clarendon Press Editions of, 
 their radical defect, 57-60 
 and Sophocles, brother- 
 dramatists, 87-88 
 and Aristotle, mutually 
 elucidatory, 88-89 
 
 Sophocles and Shakespeare 
 brother-dramatists, 87-88 
 
 Symonds, Mr. Addington, 
 quoted, 102 
 
 Teacher, the literary, his true 
 
 function, 51-53 
 Temple, Dr. , Bishop of London, 
 
 quoted, 107 
 Tennyson, his full significance 
 
 only to be appreciated by 
 
 Classical scholars, 89 
 Times, quoted, 13-14, 26 
 
 U 
 
 Universities, the, their irre- 
 sponsible and autocratic 
 character, 3 
 
 frequently petitioned to 
 remedy the deficiencies 
 in our system of advanced 
 education, 3-5 
 
 their present duty with 
 respect to the spread of 
 culture throughout the 
 country, 149-150 
 
 v. also Cambridge and 
 Oxford 
 
 W 
 
 Wellington, Mr. Wickham, 
 Head-Master of, quoted, 105 
 
 Westminster, Cardinal Man- 
 ning, Archbishop of, quoted, 
 100 
 
 Wickham, Mr., Head-Master of 
 Wellington, quoted, 105 
 
 Wilson, Mr., Head-Master of 
 Clifton, quoted, 102 
 
 Wordoworth, quoted, 93
 
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