Now in considering this point it is necessary to remember that we are
not dealing with the regulations of any subordinate institution or
curriculum, with provincial Universities and seminaries, or with schemes
of study in which Literature is only one out of many subjects. We are
dealing with a Final Honour School at Oxford, with regulations which
will inevitably form a precedent and model wherever the study of English
literature shall be organized in Great Britain. We are dealing with a
school which is to educate those who are to educate the country.
Nothing, therefore, could be more disastrous than unsoundness and
deficiency in the provisions of such an institution, nothing more
deplorable than its giving countenance and authority to error and
inadequacy. It is not too much to say that, if this scheme had been
designed with the express object of degrading the standard of literary
teaching, and of perpetuating all that is worst in present systems, it
could hardly have been better adapted for its purpose. Not to dwell upon
subordinate defects, it completely severs the study of our own
literature from that of the ancient classical literatures. It
necessitates no knowledge of any of the Continental literatures. It
ignores absolutely the higher criticism. Contracting Literature within
the narrowest bounds, its selection of books for special study is worthy
of an Army Examination. In the wretched jumble in which Goldsmith’s
_Citizen of the World_ jostles Shelley’s _Adonais_ and Burke’s _Thoughts
on the Present Discontents_ Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s _Lyrical
Ballads_, no attempt is made to discriminate between compositions which
are representative, either critically of the work of particular authors,
or historically of particular epochs, and works which have no such
significance, while many of the most important departments of our prose
Literature are unrepresented. Nor is this all. It affords every facility
for cramming. It is adapted to test nothing but what may be
mechanically acquired and mechanically imparted, what may be poured out
from lectures into notebooks, and from notebooks into examination
papers. Proceeding on the assumption that a literary education is merely
the acquisition of positive knowledge, it neither requires nor
encourages, as the prescription of an essay or thesis, or even
“taste-paper,” might have done, any of the finer qualities of literary
culture, such, for example, as a sense of style, sound judgment, good
taste, the touch of the scholar. We can assure these legislators, and we
speak from knowledge, that, setting aside the philological portion of
this curriculum, which is, so far as it goes, solid enough, an
experienced crammer, would, in about three months furnish an astute
youth with all that is requisite for graduating in this school.
But to proceed to details. Conceive the qualifications of an interpreter
and critic of English Literature, a graduate in Honours in his subject,
whose education has proceeded on the hypothesis that he need have no
acquaintance with the classics of Greece and Rome. Would any competent
scholar deny that the history of English Literature, in its mature
expression, is little less than the history of the modifications of
native genius and characteristics by classical influence, that the
development and peculiarities of our epic, dramatic, elegiac, didactic,
pastoral, much of our lyric, of our satire and of other species of our
poetry is, historically speaking, unintelligible without reference to
ancient classical literature? That what is true of our poetry is true of
our criticism, of our oratory, sacred and secular, of our dialectic and
epistolary Literature, of our historical composition, of the greater
part, in short, of our national masterpieces in prose? What, indeed, the
Literature of Greece was to that of Rome, the Literatures of Greece and
Rome have been to ours.[4]
It was the influence of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Menander,
Diphilus, which transformed the _Ludi Scenici_ and the Atellan farces
into the tragedies of Ennius and Pacuvius and the comedies of Plautus
and Terence. It was the influence of the Roman drama and of a drama
modelled on the Roman which transformed, so far at least as structure
and style are concerned, our similarly rude native experiments into the
tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare. On the epics of Greece were
modelled the epics of Rome, and on the epics of Greece and Rome are
modelled our own great epics. Of our elegiac poetry, to employ the term
in its conventional sense, one portion is largely indebted to
Theocritus, Moschus, and Virgil, and another to Catullus and Ovid.
Almost all our didactic poetry is modelled on the didactic poetry of
Rome. Theocritus and Virgil have furnished the archetypes for our
eclogues and pastorals. One important branch of our lyric poetry springs
directly from Pindar, another important branch directly from Horace,
another directly from the choral odes of the Attic dramatists and of
Seneca. Our heroic satire, from Hall to Lord Lytton, is simply the
counterpart--often, indeed, a mere imitation--of Roman satire. And if
this is true of our satire, it is equally true of our best ethical
poetry. The Epistles, which fill so large a space in the poetical
literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, derive their
origin from those of Horace. To the _Heroides_ of Ovid we owe a whole
series of important poems from Drayton to Cawthorn. The Greek anthology
and Martial have furnished the archetypes of our epigrams and of our
epitaphs. It is the same with our prose. The history of English
eloquence begins from the moment when the Roman classics moulded and
coloured our style, when periodic prose was modelled on Cicero and Livy,
when analytic prose was modelled on Sallust, Seneca, and Tacitus. With
the exception of fiction, there is no important branch of our prose
composition, the development and characteristics of which are
historically intelligible without reference to the ancients. How
radically inadequate must any study of the principles of criticism be,
which has no reference to the critical works of the Greek and Roman
writers, is obvious. But it is not merely in tracing the development and
explaining the peculiarities generally of our prose and of our poetry
that competent classical scholarship is indispensable. Is it not
notorious that in each generation, from Spenser to Tennyson, from More
to Froude, our leading poets and prose writers have been, with very few
exceptions, men nourished on classical literature and saturated with its
influence? Many entire masterpieces, much, and in some cases the greater
portion, of other masterpieces, particularly in our poetry, are simply
unintelligible--we are speaking, of course, of serious critical
students--except to classical scholars. Take, for example, the _Faerie
Queen_, and the _Hymns_ of Spenser, Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, _Comus_,
_Lycidas_, and _Samson Agonistes_, Pope’s satires, the two great odes
of Gray, Collins’s odes to _Fear_ and the _Passions_, Wordsworth’s great
_Ode_ and his _Laodamia_, Shelley’s _Adonais_ and _Prometheus Unbound_,
Landor’s _Hellenics_, much of the poetry of Tennyson, Browning, and
Matthew Arnold. Indeed it would be as preposterous to attempt any
critical study of our Literature, without reference to the ancients, as
it would be for a man to set up as an interpreter in Roman Literature
without reference to the Greek.
And the effect of this severance of the study of the ancient classics
from the study of our own is written large throughout the whole domain
of education, in the instruction given in schools and institutes, in the
monographs, manuals, and “editions” which pour from scholastic presses.
In one of the most popular manuals now in circulation, the writer
gravely tells us that “the pastoral name of _Lycidas_ was chosen by
Milton to signify purity of character,” adding “in Theocritus a goat was
so called λευκιτας for its whiteness,” that Comus “the drinker
of human blood” revelled in the palace of Agamemnon.[5] Another writer
confounds the “choruses” in Shakespeare with the choruses of the Greek
plays. Another, commenting on the symbolism of ivy in the wreath of a
poet, tells us that it indicates “constancy.”[6] Nothing is more common
than to find elaborate critical comments on the _Faerie Queen_ without
the smallest reference to its connection with Aristotle’s _Ethics_, and
on Wordsworth’s great _Ode_ without any reference to Plato. But such is
the confidence reposed in Professor Earle and his theory, and so
determined are the legislators for the new School to exclude all
connection with classical literature, that it is not admitted even as a
special subject. A candidate has, as we have seen, the option of
studying the influence exercised on old English literature by French,
and on later literature by Italian and German; but the one thing which
he has not the option of studying is the influence exercised on it by
the literatures of Greece and Rome. Some of our readers may remember
that a few years ago a public appeal was made for an expression of
opinion on the question of associating the study of our own classics and
that of the ancients. Opinions were elicited from many of the most
distinguished men in England. They were all but unanimous, not merely in
supporting the association, but in deprecating the severance. So wrote
Mr. Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, Professor Jowett, Matthew Arnold, Lord
Lytton, Mr. John Morley, Walter Pater, Addington Symonds; so wrote the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, the Rector of
Lincoln, the President of Magdalen, the Warden of All Souls, and many
others. We may add, also--for we are now at liberty to state it
publicly--that this was emphatically the opinion of Robert Browning. We
cannot, of course, quote these opinions _in extenso_,[7] and that of the
late Professor Jowett and a portion of that of Mr. John Morley must
suffice.
I am as strongly of opinion that in an Honour School of English
Literature or Modern Literature the subject should not be
separated from classical literature, as I am of opinion that
English literature should have a place in our curriculum.
So writes Professor Jowett.
It seems to me to be as impossible effectively to study English
literature, except in close association with the classics, as
it would be to grasp the significance of mediæval or modern
institutions without reference to the political creations of
Greece and Rome. I should be very sorry to see the study of
Greek and Latin writers displaced, or cut off from the study of
our own.
So writes Mr. John Morley.
But the Professor of Anglo-Saxon and his friends, as we have seen, think
otherwise, and have, unhappily for the interests of letters and
education, persuaded Oxford to think otherwise too. We say advisedly the
interests of letters and education. For the precedent of excluding from
a School of “Literature,” and that at the chief centre and nursery of
liberal culture, the Literatures of Greece and Rome cannot but be
detrimental to the vitality and influence of the ancient classics; and,
as Froude truly observed, both the national taste and the tone of the
national intellect would suffer serious decline, if they lost their
authority. The reaction against philological study which has set in
during the last ten years has given them a new lease of life. But the
spirit of the age is against them; they have rivals in languages far
easier to acquire; they are not, and never can be, in touch with the
many. Let them become disassociated from our curriculums of Literature,
and they will cease to be influential, They will cease to be studied
seriously, to be studied even in the original, except by mere scholars.
Another absurdity, not less monstrous, in these regulations, is the
absence of all provision for instruction in the principles of criticism.
There is indeed an unmeaning clause about the history of criticism, and
of style in verse and prose, being included in the examination; but as
nothing is specified, and as no work on criticism, with the exception of
Dryden’s _Discourse on Epic Poetry_, and Johnson’s _Lives_ (of
eighteenth-century poets),[8] is included in the books prescribed for
special study, it is plain that this important subject has no place. Why
it should not have occurred to these legislators to substitute, say, for
Goldsmith’s _Citizen of the World_ and Burke’s _Thoughts on the Present
Discontents_, some work which would at least have opened the eyes of the
literary professors of the future to the existence of philosophical
criticism, is certainly odd. Had they prescribed select essays from
Hume; and Shaftesbury’s _Advice to an Author_, or Campbell’s _Philosophy
of Rhetoric_, or Burke’s _Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful_, or
even the critical portions of Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_, with
the two essays of Wordsworth, it would have been something. But the
truth is that, as they have excluded, except from the optional subjects,
all literatures but the English, one absurdity has involved them in
another. The course for the literary education of our future professors,
proceeding on the principle that they need know no language but Gothic
and Anglo-Saxon, has necessitated the elimination of all the great
masterpieces of critical literature. As they are assumed to know no
Greek, they can have no serious instruction in such works as Aristotle’s
_Poetic_ and _Rhetoric_, and in the _Treatise on the Sublime_. As they
are assumed to know no Latin, they can have no instruction in Roman
criticism. On the same principle such works as Lessing’s _Laocoon_ and
_Hamburgische Dramaturgie_, Schiller’s Æsthetical Letters and Essays,
Villemain’s Lectures, and Sainte-Beuve’s Essays, can find no place in
their curriculum of study. And so it comes to pass that Dryden’s
_Discourse on Epic Poetry_ and Johnson’s _Lives_ of the
eighteenth-century poets, represent--_proh pudor!_--the course in
Criticism.
Now it is not too much to say that, for a University like Oxford to
confer an honour degree in English Literature on a student who need
never have read a line of the works to which we have referred, is to
authorize not simply superficiality, but sheer imposture. How can a
teacher deal adequately even with the subject which these regulations
profess to include--the history of criticism--who need have no
acquaintance with the _Poetic_ and _Rhetoric_, the _Treatise on the
Sublime_, and the _Institutes of Oratory_? How could a teacher possibly
be a competent exponent and critic of the masterpieces of our
literature, who had not received a proper critical training, and how
could he have any pretension to such a training when all that is best
in criticism had been expressly excluded from his education?
It may be urged that he would himself supply these deficiencies, that
the study of our own Literature would naturally lead him to the study of
other Literatures, that intelligent curiosity, ambition, or a sense of
shame would induce him to supplement voluntarily, and by his own
efforts, what he needed in his profession. In some instances this would
undoubtedly be the case. In the great majority of instances such a
supposition would be against all analogy. As a general rule, a high
honour degree in any subject represented at the Universities is final.
It winds a man up for life. It determines, fixes, and colours his
methods, his views, his tone, in all that relates to the subject in
which he has graduated. If he chooses teaching as a profession, he has
no inducement to correct, to modify, or even materially add to what has
been imparted to him, for his scholastic reputation has been made, and a
comfortable independence is assured. To very many men, indeed, who go up
to the Universities with the intention of following teaching as a
profession, a high degree is a mere investment, the one instinct in them
which is not quite banausic being the conscientious thoroughness with
which they impart what they have been taught. Nothing, therefore, is of
more importance to education than the sound constitution of the Honour
Schools of Oxford and Cambridge, and nothing could be more disastrous
than the toleration in those Schools of inadequate standards, and of
palpably erroneous theories of study.
But to return to the Regulations. The ridiculous disproportion between
the ground covered and the work involved in the different “special
subjects” open to the option of candidates, would seem to indicate,
either that the regulators are very inadequately informed on those
subjects, or that divided counsels have resulted in the settlement of
very different standards of requirement. Compare, for instance, what is
involved respectively in such subjects as “English Literature between
1700 and 1745,” and “The History of Scottish Poetry.” Why, a competent
knowledge of the history of Scotch poetry in the fifteenth century alone
would be more than an equivalent to the first subject. Not less absurd
is the prescription of “English Literature between 1745 and 1797” as an
alternative for “English Literature between 1558 and 1637.” The
prescription of such “special subjects” as the influence exercised on
our Literature by the Literatures of Italy, Germany, and France, is one
of the few steps in a wise direction discernible in these regulations;
but, as no student is free to take more than one of them, or required to
take any of them at all, their inclusion in no way affects the
constitution of the School. A competent literary education is not very
much furthered by a student being invited to study how our Literature
has been affected by one out of the five Literatures which have
influenced it. As, moreover, the integrity of a chain depends on its
weakest link, so the efficiency of examinational tests, in their
application to purely optional subjects, depends on that subject in the
list which involves least labour. A candidate who can “get a first” out
of “English Literature between 1700 and 1745,” or between 1745 and 1797,
will be much too wise to attempt to “get a first” out of subjects which
will require treble the time and labour to master. Is it likely that
candidates, anxious, naturally, from less lofty motives than the love of
Literature for its own sake, to obtain an honour degree, will, after
laboriously acquiring Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, which are
compulsory, voluntarily specialize in a subject requiring a knowledge of
Italian and German, when it is open to them to choose, as their special
subject, “Old English Language and Literature down to 1150”?
The statute authorizing the foundation of this School recites that in
its curriculum and examinations “equal weight” is, “as far as possible,
to be given to Language and Literature, provided always that candidates
who offer special subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects
connected either with Language or Literature, or with both.” It would
be interesting to know what this means. If by “equal weight” be meant
equality in the proportions of what is prescribed for the study of
Literature, and what is prescribed for the study of Language, the
provision is stultified by the very constitution of the course. To
suppose that the history of English Literature, and the special study of
a few particular works like Shelley’s _Adonais_, Burke’s _Present
Discontents_, and the _Lyrical Ballads_, is equivalent to the History of
the English language, the Gospel of St. Mark in Gothic, the _Beowulf_,
and a volume of extracts in Anglo-Saxon, _King Horn_, _Havelok_, _Sir
Gawain_, and the prologue and seven _passus_ of _Piers Ploughman_ in
Middle English, is palpably absurd. If by “equal weight” be meant that
an examiner is to assign equal marks to candidates who distinguish
themselves in Literature, and to candidates who distinguish themselves
in Language, it involves gross injustice. For while the latter have
every opportunity for displaying knowledge and competence, the former
have not. If a student has literary tastes and sympathies, if he is
conversant with the Classics, if, attracted by what is best not merely
in our own but in other modern Literatures, he has indulged himself in
their study, if he has made himself a good critic and acquired a good
style, what chance has he of doing his attainments and accomplishments
justice? But if it be meant that “equal weight” will be given, not to
literary merit regarded as Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold would regard
it, but regarded in relation to the standard indicated by the
regulations of the School, then the philologists would have just reason
to complain.
As the constitution of this School is still open to amendment, it is
devoutly to be hoped that Oxford will see its way to reconsidering a
matter so seriously affecting the interests of education and culture. It
is neither too late to remedy what has been done, nor to devise a
remedy. Let it be remembered that there is an essential distinction
between what should constitute an Honour School and what should
constitute a Pass School, between what is to educate those who are to
educate others, and what guarantees nothing more than a smattering. The
present institution could be reformed in two ways. By reducing the
philological part of its provisions to the level of the literary part,
it could, with a little further simplification, be made into an
excellent Pass School, which would supply a real want. By eliminating
the literary part, and adding proportionately to the philological, it
could be transformed into a perfectly satisfactory Honour School of
Modern Languages. But no modification could make it into an Honour
School of English Literature correspondingly adequate, for the simple
reason that the study of English Literature cannot be isolated from the
study of those literatures with which it is inseparably linked. The
absurdity of assuming that the student of Philology could separate a
single language or dialect from the group to which it belongs, that he
could isolate Anglo-Saxon from Gothic, or Middle English from
Anglo-Saxon, the Celtic of the Cymbry from the Celtic of the Gaels, is
not greater than to assume that the study of our Literature can be
severed from the study of those literatures which stand in precisely the
same relation to it as one of those dialects stands to the others in the
same group.
If the legislators of this School decline to reform it, then it is the
duty of Oxford--a duty which she owes alike to education and to her own
honour--to counteract the mischief which this institution must, by
degrading throughout England and the colonies the whole level of liberal
instruction and study on its most important side, inevitably do. To the
herd of imperfectly and erroneously disciplined teachers which this
institution will turn loose on education, let her oppose, at least, a
minority which shall worthily represent her. Let her establish a proper
degree or diploma in Literature. There exist, as we have already said,
scattered throughout the various institutions of the University, nearly
all the facilities for a complete course in this subject, and nothing
more is needed than to encourage and render possible their
co-ordination. Let it be open to a man who has obtained a high class in
Moderations and in the Final Classical Schools, who has availed himself
of the opportunities offered for the study of Modern Languages and
Literatures in the Taylorian Institute, and who has studied what he
would at present have to study for himself, our own Literature--let it
be open to him to present himself for examination in these subjects, and
to obtain, as the result of such an examination, a degree analogous to
the Bachelorship of Civil Law. It would no doubt not be possible for
these studies to be pursued, systematically, side by side with the work
required for a high class in Moderations and _Literæ Humaniores_. Nor is
it necessary. There need be no limit assigned to the time at which a
candidate would be free to qualify himself for obtaining this diploma.
As a general rule it would probably be about six months, possibly a
year, after the attainment of the present degree in Arts. And,
considering the high prizes open to teachers in Literature, it would be
well worth a student’s while to spend this additional time in preparing
himself for the examination. If a post-graduate scholarship, analogous
to the Craven or the Derby scholarships, could be founded for the
encouragement of a comparative study of Classical and Modern Literature,
an important step would, at any rate, be taken in a right direction;
something would be done for the competent equipment of future Professors
of Literature.
Thus would a precedent, disastrous beyond expression to the interests of
liberal instruction and culture, as well as to the reputation of the
University--we mean the severance of the study of Classical Literature
from that of our own--be at least deprived of its authority. Thus would
the mass at any rate be leavened, and such institutions in the provinces
and elsewhere as have, unlike Oxford and Cambridge, had the wisdom to
separate their Chairs of Language and Literature, know where to go for
those who should fill them; and thus, finally, would there be some
chance of the literary curriculum in Oxford ceasing to be a by-word in
the Universities of the Continent and America.
Since the first edition of these essays appeared the liberality
of Mr. John Passmore Edwards has supplied the scholarship here
desiderated, and Oxford has instituted a University
scholarship, bearing the donor’s name, “for the encouragement
and promotion of the study of English Literature in connection
with the Classical Literatures of Greece and Rome.”
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: For the sort of textbook from which the student who is a
candidate for “honours in English” will be required to get his knowledge
of this poem, see _infra_, the review of the Clarendon Press Edition of
Shelley’s _Adonais_.]