legislators for the new School, thinks otherwise, and we should like to
place the following passage on record. In his extraordinary _History of
English Prose_ (p. 485) he writes thus: “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.” And so it comes to pass that we read in the
account of the debate in Congregation, on the occasion of the former
attempt to establish this School:--
“The proposal to add the Professors of Greek and Latin to the Board of
Studies was rejected by thirty-eight votes to twenty-four, Professor
Earle maintaining that the fallacious notion that English literature was
derived from the classics was so strong that it was unwise to place even
the Professor of Latin on the Board.”--_Times_, May 26, 1887.]
[Footnote 5:
και μην πεπωκως γ’, ὡς θρασυνεσθαι πλεον,
βροτειον αιμα, κωμος εν δομοις μενει
δυσπεμπτος εξω ξυγγονων Ερινυων.
--_Agamem._, 1159-61.
]
[Footnote 6: For ample illustration of this, see _infra_ the review of
the Clarendon Press edition of Shelley’s _Adonais_.]
[Footnote 7: They may all be found in full in a _Pall Mall “Extra”_
(January, 1887), and in the present writer’s _Study of English
Literature_.]
[Footnote 8: It is amusing to notice how carefully the greater part of
what is most precious and instructive in Johnson’s work, the lives
namely of Cowley and Dryden, and the noble critique of _Paradise Lost_,
is expressly excluded, and the greater part of what is most trivial, and
regarded by himself as trivial, the lives of the minor poets of the
eighteenth century, selected instead. Macaulay ranks the lives of Cowley
and Dryden, with that of Pope, as the masterpieces of the work; and
Johnson himself considered the life of Cowley to be the best.]
ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES[9]
II. TEXT BOOKS
[Footnote 9: Shelley’s _Adonais_, edited with introduction and notes by
William Michael Rossetti. (Oxford: at the Clarendon Press.)]
If any proof were needed of what has been insisted on over and over
again, that, until the Universities provide adequately for the proper
study of English Literature--for the study of it side by side with
Classical Literature--there will be small hope of its finding competent
critics and interpreters, it would be afforded by the volume before us.
For this volume the delegates of the Oxford University Press are
responsible; and in allowing it their _imprimatur_ they have been guilty
of a very grave error. No such standard of editing would have been
tolerated in any other subject in which they undertake to provide books.
A work pertaining to Classics, to History, to Philosophy, to Science,
marked by corresponding deficiencies, would have been suppressed at
once, until those deficiencies had been supplied. To Mr. Rossetti
himself we attach no blame. What he was competent to do he has, for the
most part, done well and conscientiously,--conscientiously, as may be
judged from the fact that, while the poem itself occupies twenty pages
in large type, Mr. Rossetti’s dissertations and notes occupy one hundred
and twenty-eight in small type. It was, indeed, his misfortune, rather
than his fault, to be entrusted with a work which required a peculiar
qualification, an intimate acquaintance, that is to say, with Classical
Literature. That he has no pretension to this is abundantly plain from
his Introduction and from every page of his notes.
When one of the Universities undertakes to provide our colleges and
schools with comments and notes on a poem so saturated with classicism
as _Adonais_, the least that could be expected from bodies who are, as
it were, the guardians of classical literature, is the provision that
the classical part of the work should be done at least competently; it
would be hardly too much, perhaps, to expect that it should be done
excellently. Of this part of Mr. Rossetti’s work we scarcely know which
are the worse--his sins of commission or his sins of omission. His
classical qualifications for commenting on a poem as unintelligible,
critically speaking, without constant reference to the Platonic
dialogues, particularly to the _Symposium_ and the _Timæus_, and to the
Greek poets, as the _Æneid_ would be without reference to the Homeric
poems and the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius, appear to begin and end with
some acquaintance with Mr. Lang’s version of Bion and Moschus. We will
give a few specimens. Mr. Rossetti is greatly puzzled with Shelley’s
allusion to Urania in stanzas 2 to 4.
“Where was lone Urania
When Adonais died?”
“Most musical of mourners, weep again.
Lament, anew, Urania!”
“Why out of the nine sisters,” he asks, “should the Muse of Astronomy be
selected? Keats never wrote about astronomy.” Perhaps, he suggests,
Shelley was not thinking of the Muse Urania, “but of Aphrodite Urania.”
Yet, if so, why should she be called “musical”?--a question to be asked,
no doubt, as our old friend Falstaff would say. However, after balancing
the respective claims of both, he finally comes to the conclusion that
the Urania of _Adonais_ is Aphrodite. If Mr. Rossetti had been
acquainted with a work to which he never even refers, but which
exercised immense influence over Shelley’s poem--the _Symposium_ of
Plato--it would have saved him two pages of speculation. His ignorance
of this is the more surprising as Shelley has himself translated the
dialogue. But Mr. Rossetti need not, in this case, have gone so far
afield. Has he never read the prologue to the seventh book of Milton’s
_Paradise Lost_? In his note on the lines--
“The one remains, the many change and pass,”
it is really pitiable to find him supposing that this is an allusion to
“the universal mind,” and “the individuated minds which we call human
beings,” when any schoolboy could have told him that the allusion is, of
course, a technical one to the Platonic “forms” or archetypes; while
“the power” in stanza 42, the “sustaining love” in stanza 54, and the
“one spirit” in stanza 43, are allusions respectively to the Aphrodite
Urania in the discourse of Eryximachus in the _Symposium_, and to the
Divine Artificer in the _Timæus_. And these dialogues form the proper
commentary on Shelley’s metaphysics in this poem.
Still more extraordinary is Mr. Rossetti’s note on “wisdom the mirrored
shield”--
“What was then
Wisdom, the mirrored shield?”
(st. 27), which is as follows: “Shelley was, I apprehend, thinking of
the _Orlando Furioso_ of Ariosto (!). In that poem we read of a magic
shield which casts a supernatural and intolerable splendour ... a sea
monster, not a dragon, so far as I recollect, becomes one of the victims
of the mirrored shield.” This slovenly and perfunctory mode of reference
is, we may remark in passing, hardly the sort of thing to be expected
in works issued from University Presses. We wonder what the Universities
would say to an editor of Virgil who, in commenting on some Homeric
allusion in his author, contented himself with observing that Virgil “is
here thinking of the _Iliad_,” and, “so far as I can recollect,” etc.
The reference is, we need hardly remark, not to any magic shield in the
_Orlando_, but to the _scutum crystallinum_ of Pallas Athene, as any
well-informed fourth-form schoolboy would know. If Mr. Rossetti will
turn to Bacon’s _Wisdom of the Ancients_, chap. vii., he will find some
information on this subject, which may be of use to him, should this
work run into a second edition. Take, again, the note on the symbolism
of the flowers and cypress cone in stanza 33:--
“His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white and pied and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew.”
Here the editor’s ignorance of ancient Classical Literature has led him
into a whole labyrinth of blunders and misconceptions. “The ivy,” he
says, “indicates constancy in friendship”! Is it credible that a
Clarendon Press editor should be ignorant that ivy--_doctarum hederæ
præmia frontium_--is the emblem of the poet? The violet, he remarks,
indicates modesty. It neither indicates, nor can possibly indicate,
anything of the kind. Its traditional signification, deduced perhaps
from Pliny’s remark (_Nat. Hist._, xxi. c. 38), that it is one of the
longest-lived of flowers, is fidelity. But the passage of which Shelley
was thinking when he wrote this stanza--a passage to which Mr. Rossetti
makes no reference at all, was _Hamlet_, act iv. sc. 1: “There is
pansies that’s for thoughts.... I would give you some violets, but they
withered all when my father died.” So that it is quite possible that the
“faded violets,” associated as these flowers are with the Muses and the
Graces, merely symbolize the fading and drooping towards what may be
further symbolized in the cypress cone,--death. We are by no means sure,
however, that the cypress cone does, as Mr. Rossetti remarks, “explain
itself.” Shelley, assuming he gave the image another application, was
doubtless thinking of Silvanus--“teneram ab radice ferens, Silvane,
cupressum,” _Georg._ i. 20 (see, too, Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_, I. vi.
st. 14), and may possibly have been symbolizing his sympathy with the
genius of the woods--have been referring to that “gazing on Nature’s
naked loveliness,” which he describes in stanza 31. In any case, Mr.
Rossetti has entirely misinterpreted the meaning of the whole passage.
Wherever classical knowledge is required--as it is in almost every
stanza--he either gives no note at all, or he blunders. Thus in stanza
24 he gives no note on the use of the word “secret.” In stanza 28 he has
evidently not the smallest notion of the meaning of the word “obscene”
as applied to ravens. The fine adaptations from _Lucretius_ (II.
578-580) in stanza 21, and again from II. 990-1010 in stanzas 20 and 42;
the adaptation from the _Agamemnon_ (49-51) in stanza 17; from the
fragments of the _Polyidus_ of Euripides in stanza 39; from the _Iliad_
(vi. 484) in stanza 34; from Theocritus, _Idyll._, i. 66, and Virg.,
_Ecl._, x. 9-10 in stanza 2; and again from Theocritus, _Idyll._, i. 77
seqq., from which the procession of the mourners is adapted, and on
which the whole architecture of the poem is modelled--all these are
alike unnoticed. Nor is Mr. Rossetti more fortunate in explaining
allusions to passages in other literatures. The adaptation of the
sublime passage in Isaiah (xiv. 9, 10), by which one of the finest parts
of the poem was suggested, stanzas 45 and 46; the singular reminiscence
in stanza 28:--
“The vultures
... Whose wings rain contagion;”
of Marlowe’s _Jew of Malta_, act ii. sc. 1, where he speaks of the raven
which
“Doth shake contagion from her sable wings;”
the obvious reminiscence of Dante, _Inf._, 44 seqq. in stanza 44; of
Shakespeare’s _Romeo and Juliet_, v. 3, which forms the proper
commentary on lines 7 and 8 of stanza 3; of none of these is any notice
taken. On many important points of interpretation we differ _toto
cœlo_ from Mr. Rossetti. The “fading splendour,” for example, in
stanza 22, cannot possibly mean “fading as being overcast by sorrow and
dismay” (cf. stanza 25), it simply means vanishing, receding from
sight--a magnificently graphic epithet. Is Mr. Rossetti acquainted with
the proleptic use of adjectives and participles? We may add that Mr.
Rossetti has not even taken the trouble to ascertain who was the writer
of the famous article, of which so much is said both in the preface of
the poem and in the poem itself, but “presumes,” etc. _Et sic omnia._
And _sic omnia_ it will inevitably continue to be, until the
Universities are prepared to do their duty to education by placing the
study of our national Literature on a proper footing.
It is, we repeat, no reproach to Mr. Rossetti, who has distinguished
himself in more important studies than the production of scholastic
text-books, that he should have failed in an undertaking which happened
to require peculiar qualifications. Indeed, our respect for Mr. Rossetti
and our sense of his useful services to Belles Lettres would have
induced us to spare him the annoyance of an exposure of the deficiencies
of this work, had it not illustrated, so comprehensively and so
strikingly, the disastrous effects of the severance of the study of
English Literature from that of Ancient Classical Literature at our
Universities.
ENGLISH LITERATURE AT THE UNIVERSITIES[10]
III. TEXT BOOKS
[Footnote 10: _Shakespeare--Select Plays. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_
(Oxford: at the Clarendon Press. MDCCCXC.)]
More than a century and a half has passed since Pope thus expressed
himself about philologists,--
“‘Tis true on words is still our whole debate,
Dispute of _Me_ or _Te_, of _aut_ or _at_,
To sound or sink in _Cano_ O or A,
To give up Cicero or C or K;
The critic eye, that microscope of wit,
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit;
How parts relate to parts or they to whole,
The body’s harmony, the beaming soul,
Are things which Kuster, Burmann, Wasse shall see,
When man’s whole frame is obvious to a _Flea_.”
We need scarcely say that we have far too much respect for Dr. Aldis
Wright and for his distinguished coadjutor to apply such a description
as this to them as individuals, for no one can appreciate more heartily
than we do their monumental contribution to the textual criticism of
Shakespeare, but we can make no such reserve in speaking of this edition
of _Hamlet_. A more deplorable illustration, we do not say of the
subjection of Literature to Philology, for that would very imperfectly
represent the fact, but of the absolute substitution of Philology, and
of Philology in the lowest sense of the term, for Literature it would be
impossible to imagine. Had it been expressly designed to prove that its
editors were wholly unconscious of the artistic, literary, and
philosophical significance of Shakespeare’s masterpiece, it could
scarcely have taken a more appropriate form.
The volume contains 117 pages of Shakespeare’s text, printed in large
type; the text is preceded by a preface of twelve pages, and followed by
notes occupying no less than 121 pages in very small type; so that the
work of the poet stands in pretty much the same relation to that of his
commentators as Falstaff’s bread stood to his sack. In the case of a
play like _Hamlet_, so subtle, so suggestive, so pregnant with critical
and philosophical problems of all kinds, commentary on a scale like this
might have been quite appropriate. But in this stupendous mass of
exegesis and illustration there is, with the exception of one short
passage, literally not a line about the play as a work of art, not a
line about its structure and architecture, about its style, about its
relations to æsthetic, about its metaphysic, its ethic, about the
character of Hamlet, or about the character of any other person who
figures in the drama. The only indication that it is regarded in any
other light than as affording material for philological and antiquarian
discussion is a short quotation, huddled in at the conclusion of the
preface, from Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_, and an intimation that
“Hamlet’s madness has formed the subject of special investigation by
several writers, among others by Dr. Conolly and Sir Edward Strachey.”
A more comprehensive illustration of the truth of the indictment brought
against philologists by Voltaire, Pope, Lessing, and Sainte-Beuve than
is supplied by the notes in this volume it would be difficult to find.
Dulness, of course, may be assumed, and of mere dulness we do not
complain; but a combination of prolixity, irrelevance, and absolute
incapacity to distinguish between what to ninety-nine persons in every
hundred must be purely useless and what to ninety-nine persons in every
hundred is the information which they expect from a commentator, is
intolerable. We will give a few illustrations. A plain man or a student
for examination comes to these lines:--
“‘Tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar;”
and, though he knows what the general sense is wishes to know exactly
what Shakespeare means. He turns to the note for enlightenment, and the
enlightenment he gets is this:--
“_Enginer._ Changed in the quarto of 1676 to the more modern
form of engineer. Compare _Troilus and Cressida_ ii. 3. 8,
“Then there’s Achilles a rare enginer.” For a cognate form
mutiner see note on iii. 4. 83. So we have pioner for pioneer
_Othello_ iii. 3. 346. _Hoist_ may be the participle either of
the verb ‘hoise’ or ‘hoist.’ In the latter case it would be the
common abbreviated form for the participles of verbs ending in
a dental. _Petar._ So spelt in the quartos, and by all editors
to Johnson, who writes ‘petards.’ In Cotgrave we have ‘Petart:
a Petard or Petarre; an Engine (made like a bell or morter)
wherewith strong gates,’ etc.”--
And so the hungry sheep looks up and is not fed. Again, he finds--
“He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice,”
turns to the note, and reads:--
“_Polacks._ The quartos have ‘pollax,’ the two earliest folios
read ‘Pollax,’ the third ‘Polax,’ the fourth ‘Poleaxe.’ Pope
read ‘Polack’ and Malone ‘Polacks.’ The word occurs four times
in _Hamlet_. For ‘the sledded Polacks’ Molke reads ‘his leaded
pole-axe.’ But this would be an anticlimax, and the poet,
having mentioned ‘Norway’ in the first clause, would certainly
have told us with whom the ‘parle’ was held.”
The poet Young noted how
“Commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candles to the sun.”
The Clarendon Press editors are certainly adepts in these
accomplishments. Take one out of a myriad illustrations. The line in Act
i. sc. 2, “The dead vast and middle of the night,” is the signal for a
note extending to twelve closely printed lines. “’Tis bitter cold, and I
am sick at heart,” says Francisco. If any note were needed here, it
might have been devoted to pointing out to tiros the fine subjective
touch. The note is this:--
“_Bitter cold._ Here bitter is used adverbially to qualify the
adjective ‘cold.’ So we have ‘daring hardy’ in _Richard II._ i.
3. 43. When the combination is likely to be misunderstood,
modern editors generally put a hyphen between the two words.
_Sick at heart._ So _Macbeth_ v. 3. 19, ‘I am sick at heart.’
We have also in _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ ii. 1. 185, ‘sick at the
heart,’ and _Romeo and Juliet_ iii. 3. 72, ‘heart-sick
groans.’”
Now let us see how the poor student fares when real difficulties occur.
Every reader of Shakespeare is familiar with the corrupt passage, Act
iv. sc. 1:--
“The dram of eale
Doth all the noble substance of worth out
To his own scandal--
a passage which, as all Shakespearian scholars know, has been
satisfactorily emended and explained. We turn to the notes for guidance,
and find ourselves treated as poor Mrs. Quickly was treated by Falstaff,
“fubbed off”--thus:--
“We leave this hopelessly corrupt passage as it stands in the
two earliest quartos. The others read ‘ease’ for ‘eale,’ and
modern writers have conjectured for the same word base, ill,
bale, ale, evil, ail, vile, lead. For ‘of a doubt’ it has been
proposed to substitute ‘of worth out,’ ‘soul with doubt,’ ‘oft
adopt,’ ‘oft work out,’ ‘of good out,’ ‘of worth dout,’ ‘often
dout,’ ‘often doubt,’ ‘oft adoubt,’ ‘oft delase,’ ‘over-cloud,’
‘of a pound,’ and others.”
This, it may be added, is the sort of stuff--_incredibile dictu_--that
our children have to get by heart; for this Press, be it remembered,
practically controls half the English Literature examinations in
England. As students know quite well that nine examiners out of ten will
set their questions from “the Clarendon Press notes,” it is with “the
Clarendon Press notes” that they are obliged to cram themselves. But to
continue. Even a well-read man might be excused for not knowing the
exact meaning of the following expression:--
“They clepe us drunkards, and with _swinish phrase
Soil our addition_.”
He turns to the notes, and having been briefly informed that _clepe_
means “call,” and _addition_ “title,” is left to flounder with what he
can get out of--“Could Shakespeare have had in his mind any pun upon
‘Sweyn,’ which was a common name of the kings of Denmark?”
Another leading characteristic of the _genus_ philologist, we mean the
preposterous importance attached by them to the smallest trifles, finds
ludicrous illustration in the following note:--
“My father, in his habit, as he lived!”
exclaims Hamlet to his mother. This is the signal for:--
“There is supposed to be a difficulty in these words, because
in the earlier scenes the Ghost is in his armour, to which the
word ‘habit’ is regarded as inappropriate. In the earlier form
of the play, as it appears in the quarto of 1603, the Ghost
enters ‘in his nightgowne,’ and as the words ‘in the habit as
he lived’ occur in the corresponding passage of that edition,
it is probable that on this occasion the Ghost appeared in the
ordinary dress of the king, although this is not indicated in
the stage directions of the other quartos or of the folios.”
As a possible solution of this grave difficulty, we would suggest that,
as the Ghost was undoubtedly in a very hot place, he might have found
his nightgown less oppressive than his armour, and though it would
certainly have been more decorous to have exchanged his nightgown for
his uniform on revisiting the earth, yet, as the visit was to his wife,
he thought perhaps less seriously about his apparel than our editors
have done. We have nothing to warrant us in assuming that he was in his
“ordinary dress.” The choice must lie between the nightgown and the
armour. But a truce to jesting.
If any one would understand the opacity and callousness which
philological study induces, we would refer them to the note on Hamlet’s
last sublime words, “The rest is silence”:--
“The quartos have ‘Which have solicited, the rest is silence.’
The folios, ‘Which have solicited. The rest is silence.’ ‘O, O,
O, O. _Dyes._’ If Hamlet’s speech is interrupted by his death
it would be more natural that the words ‘The rest is silence’
should be spoken by Horatio.”
We said at the beginning of this article that there was not a word of
commentary on the poetical merits of the play. We beg the editors’
pardon. They have in one note, and in one note only, ventured on an
expression of critical opinion. We all know the lines--
“There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream,”
etc., etc. We transcribe the note on this passage that it may be a sign
to all men of what Philology is able to effect, an omen and testimony of
what must inevitably be the fate of Literature if the direction and
regulation of its study be entrusted to philologists:--
“This speech of the Queen is certainly unworthy of its author
and of the occasion. The enumeration of plants is quite as
unsuitable to so tragical a scene as the description of Dover
cliff in _King Lear_ iv. 6. 11-24. Besides there was no one by
to witness the death of Ophelia, else she would have been
rescued.”
As this beggars commentary, transcription shall suffice.
Now we would ask any sensible person who has followed us, we do not say
in our own remarks--for they may be supposed to be the expression of
biassed opinion--but in the specimens we have given of such an edition
as this of _Hamlet_, and of such an edition as we have just reviewed of
_Adonais_, what is likely to be the fate of English Literature, as a
subject of teaching, so long as our Universities ignore their
responsibilities as the centres of culture by not only countenancing,
but assisting in the production and dissemination of such publications
as these? How can we expect anything but anarchy wherever the subject
is treated?--there an extreme of flaccid dilettantism, here an extreme
of philological pedantry. Conceive the tone and temper which, especially
at the impressionable age of the students for whom the book is intended,
the study of Shakespeare, under such guides as the editors of this
_Hamlet_, would be likely to induce. Is it not monstrous that young
students between the ages of about fifteen and eighteen should have such
text books as these inflicted on them?