eá lâ meotodes miht! eá lâ middaneard!
eá lâ däg leóhta! eá lâ dreám godes!
eá lâ engla þreát! eá lâ upheofon!
eá lâ þät ic eam ealles leás êcan dreámes,
þät ic mid handum ne mäg heofon geræcan
ne mid eágum ne môt up lôcian
ne hûru mid eárum ne sceal æfre gehêran
þære byrhtestan bêman stefne.
--_Satan._ edit. Grein, 164-172.
]
[Footnote 14: _Some Remarks on Lydgate._ Gray, Aldine Ed. v. 292-321.]
[Footnote 15: That Lydgate’s verse should occasionally be rough and
halting is partly to be attributed to the wretched state in which his
text has come down to us from the copyists, and partly to the arbitrary
way in which he varies the accent. His heroic couplets in the _Storie of
Thebes_ are certainly very unmusical. For the whole question of his
versification see Dr. Schick, Introduction to his edition of _The Temple
of Glas_, pp. liv.-lxiii., and Schipper, _Altenglische Metrik_, 492-500.
But neither of these scholars does justice to the exquisite music of his
verse at its best.]
[Footnote 16: Page 474.]
[Footnote 17: Page 150.]
[Footnote 18: Page 63.]
OUR LITERARY GUIDES
II. A SHORT HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE[19]
[Footnote 19: _A Short History of Modern English Literature._ By Edmund
Gosse. London, 1898.]
The author of this work has plainly not pondered the advice of Horace,
“Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam viribus.” His ambitious
purpose is “to give the reader, whether familiar with books or not, a
feeling of the evolution of English Literature in the primary sense of
the term,” and he adds that “to do this without relation to particular
authors and particular works seems to me impossible.” This may be
conceded; for, a feeling of the evolution of English or of any other
literature, without reference to particular authors and particular
books, would be analogous to the capacity for feeling without anything
to feel. But, unfortunately, those of Mr. Gosse’s readers who wish to
have the feeling to which he refers will merely find the conditions
without which, as he so justly observes, the said feeling is
impossible. In other words, references, in the form of loose and
desultory gossip, to particular authors and particular works
chronologically arranged, are all that represent the “evolution” of
which he is so anxious “to give a feeling.”
Described simply, the work is an ordinary manual of English Literature
in which, with Mr. Humphry Ward’s _English Poets_, Sir Henry Craik’s
_English Prose Writers_, Chambers’ _Cyclopædia of English Literature_,
the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and the like before him, the
writer tells again the not unfamiliar story of the course of our
Literature from Chaucer to the present time. But Mr. Gosse is no mere
compiler, and brings to his task certain qualifications of his own, a
vague and inaccurate but extensive knowledge of our seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth century Belles Lettres; and here, as a rule,
he can acquit himself creditably. Though far from a sound, he is a
sympathetic critic; he has an agreeable but somewhat affected style, and
can gossip pleasantly and plausibly about subjects which are within the
range indicated. But at this point, as is painfully apparent, his
qualifications for being an historian and critic of English Literature
end. The moment he steps out of this area he is at the mercy of his
handbooks; so completely at their mercy that he does not even know how
to use them. And it is here that Mr. Gosse becomes so irritating, partly
because of the sheer audacity with which mere inferences are
substituted for facts and simple assumptions for deduced
generalizations, and partly because of the habitual employment of
phraseology so vague and indeterminate that it is difficult to submit
what it conveys to positive test. These are serious charges to bring
against any writer; and if they cannot be abundantly substantiated, a
still more serious charge may justly be urged against the accuser.
To turn to the work. On page 85 Mr. Gosse favours us with the following
account of the _Faerie Queene_: “A certain grandeur which sustains the
three great Cantos of Truth, Temperance, and Chastity fades away as we
proceed.... The structure of it is loose and incoherent when we compare
it with the epic grandeur of the masterpieces of Ariosto and Tasso.” It
would be difficult to match this; every word which is not a blunder is
an absurdity. Where are “the three great Cantos”? Can Mr. Gosse possibly
be ignorant that the poem is divided into books, each book containing
twelve Cantos? Assuming, however, that he has confounded books with
Cantos, where is the great book dealing with ‘Truth’? As he places it
before ‘Temperance,’ we presume that he means the first book and that he
has confounded ‘Truth’ with ‘Holiness.’ This is pretty well, to begin
with. Where, we next ask in amazement, is the ‘grandeur’ which sustains
the prolix farrago of the third book, and which ‘fades away’ as we
proceed to the only book which almost rivals the first and second, the
fifth, and the sublimest portion of the whole work, the superb Cantos
which represent all that remains of the seventh? What, we gasp, is the
meaning of the ‘epic grandeur’ of Ariosto? and “the loose and incoherent
structure” of the _Faerie Queene_ when compared with that of the
_Orlando Furioso_? Could any poem be more loose and incoherent in
structure than the _Orlando_, or any term be less appropriate to its
tone and style than ‘grandeur’? On page 80 he actually tells us that
Fox’s well-known _Book of Martyrs_ was written in Latin and translated
by John Day, and that it is John Day’s translation of the Latin original
which represents that work, confounding Fox’s _Commentarii Rerum in
Ecclesiâ gestarum_, etc., printed at Basil with the _Acts and Monuments
of the Church_, and making John Day, the publisher of it, the translator
of it into English! And this is his account of one of the most
celebrated works in our language. Of Swift’s _Sentiments of a Church of
England Man_, we have the following account: “That such a tract as the
_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, with its gusts of irony, its
white heat of preposterous moderation, led on towards Junius is
obvious.” This is an excellent example of the confidence which may be
placed in Mr. Gosse’s assertions. Of this pamphlet, it may be sufficient
to say that there is not a single touch of irony or satire in it; that
it stands almost alone among Swift’s tracts for its perfectly temperate
and logical tone; it is a calm appeal to pure reason. There is the same
audacity of assertion in classing Feltham’s _Resolves_ with Hall’s and
Overbury’s Character Sketches, and Earle’s _Microcosmogonie_ as “a
typical example” of “a curious school of comic or ironic portraiture,
partly ethical and partly dramatic.” In 1625, we are told that Bacon
completed the _Sylva Sylvarum_. If Mr. Gosse knew anything of Bacon’s
philosophical writings, he would have known that the _Sylva Sylvarum_
never was and never could have been completed, for it was in itself a
fragment--a mere collection of materials to be incorporated in the
_Phœnomena Universi_, a work which was to have been six times larger
than Pliny’s _Natural History_. In giving an account of Tillotson, he
speaks of “the serene and insinuating periods” of the elegant
latitudinarian who “was assiduous in saying what he had to say in the
most graceful and intelligible manner possible.” A more perfect
description of the very opposite of Tillotson’s style could hardly be
given. Those who are acquainted with Fuller’s writings will be equally
surprised to find him classed with Jeremy Taylor and Henry More, and to
learn that his style is ‘florid and involved,’ distinguished by its
‘long-windedness’ and ‘exuberance.’ Has Mr. Gosse no apprehension of his
readers turning to the originals and testing his statements? We have
another of these bold assertions in the account of Lydgate, derived, we
suspect, from a hasty generalization from a remark made about him in Mr.
Ward’s _British Poets_. “Lydgate,” says Mr. Gosse, “had a most defective
ear; his verses are not to be scanned. His ear was bad and tuneless.”
Any one who has read Lydgate knows that, if we except his heroic
couplets, a more musical poet is not to be found in the fifteenth
century, or, indeed, in our language; the softness and smoothness of his
verse, wherever he writes in stanzas, as he generally does, is indeed
his chief characteristic. These remarks are minor illustrations of an
accomplishment in which Mr. Gosse has no rival.
The Euphuists of the sixteenth century drew, for purposes of simile and
illustration, on a fabulous natural history which assumed the existence
of certain animals, herbs, and minerals, and of certain properties and
qualities possessed by them. This gave great point and picturesqueness
to their style, and though it was certainly misleading and occasionally
perplexing to those who went to them for natural history, it had a most
charming and imposing effect. Mr. Gosse seems to have imported a similar
fiction into criticism. Of this we have a most amusing illustration on
page 155. Speaking of Herrick Mr. Gosse remarks, “In the midst of these
extravagances, like Meleager winding his _pure white violets_”--the
Italics are ours--“into the _gaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism_, we
find Robert Herrick.” Meleager’s Anthology is not extant, but the
dedication is, and from that dedication we know exactly from what poets
it was compiled. It ranged from about B.C. 700 till towards the close of
the Alexandrian Age, for, with the exception of Antipater of Sidon, it
is very doubtful whether he inserted any epigrams by his contemporaries,
but he admitted a hundred and thirty-one of his own. In other words his
collection comprised epigrams composed by the masters preceding the
Alexandrian Age from Archilochus downwards, and by those who, during
that age and afterwards, cultivated with scrupulous care the simplicity
and purity of the early models. Indeed, the poets represented in his
Anthology are, with one exception, the artists of Greek epigram in its
purest, simplest, and chastest form. That one exception is himself. In
him are first apparent the _dulcia vitia_ of the Decadence; he is full
of dainty subtleties, he is almost more Oriental than Greek, his style
is luscious, elaborate and florid. Such, then, was the composition of
“the gaudy garland of late Greek Euphuism,” and such the nature of the
“pure white violets” wound into it by Meleager. It is amusing to trace
Mr. Gosse’s rodomontade to its source. In the well-known dedication to
which we have referred, Meleager prettily compares the various poets,
from whose works he selects, to flowers, speaking modestly of his own
contributions as “early white violets.” To critics like Mr. Gosse the
rest is easy. Meleager, he no doubt argued, was an excellent poet; he
belonged to a late age: ‘Euphuism’--a delightfully vague term, is likely
to characterise a late age; a poet who compares his verses to white
violets had evidently a taste for simplicity, and presumably, therefore,
was no Euphuist; a gaudy garland is an excellent set off for pure white
violets. And so, to the great perplexity of scholars, but to the great
satisfaction of those who enjoy a pretty sentence, Meleager will
continue “to wind his pure white violets into the gaudy garland of late
Greek Euphuism.”
We have a similar illustration of the same thing in Mr. Gosse’s account
of Shaftesbury. We are told that he “was perhaps the greatest literary
force between Dryden and Swift”; that “he deserves remembrance as the
first who really broke down the barrier which excluded England from
taking her proper place in the civilization of literary Europe”; that
“he set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the central
years of the century”; that “his style glitters and rings, and ... yet
so curious that one marvels that it should have fallen completely into
neglect”; that “he was the first Englishman who developed theories of
formal virtue, who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true
and the good”; that the modern attitude of mind seems to meet us first
in the graceful cosmopolitan writings of Shaftesbury; that “without a
Shaftesbury there would hardly have been a Ruskin or a Pater.” Such
amazing nonsense almost confounds refutation by its sheer absurdity.
With regard to the first statement, it may be sufficient to say that
between the period of Dryden’s literary activity and the publication of
Swift’s _Battle of the Books_ and _Tale of a Tub_ were flourishing
Hobbes, Izaak Walton, Bunyan, Temple, and Locke; that between the
publication of the _Tale of a Tub_ and of Shaftesbury’s collected
writings were flourishing Addison, Steele, De Foe, Arbuthnot, Berkeley.
With regard to the second statement, it would be interesting to know how
a writer who had been preceded by Bacon, Hobbes and Locke, could be
described as a writer who had been the first “to break down the barrier
which excluded England from taking her proper place in the civilization
of literary Europe.” The truth is, that Shaftesbury exercised no
influence at all on Continental Literature until long after our
Literature had generally become influential in France. Equally absurd
and baseless is the remark that he “set an example of the kind of prose
that was to mark the central years of the century.” Whose prose was
affected by him? Bolingbroke’s? or Fielding’s? or Richardson’s? or
Middleton’s? or Johnson’s? or Goldsmith’s? or Hume’s? or Hawkesworth’s?
or Sterne’s? or Smollett’s? or Chesterfield’s? that of the writers in
the _Monthly Review_? or in the _Adventurer_? or in the _World_? or in
the _Connoisseur_? To say of Shaftesbury’s style that “it glitters and
rings,” is to say what betrays utter ignorance of its characteristics.
As a rule, it is diffuse, involved, and cumbrous, affected, but with an
affectation which sedulously aims at the very opposite effects of
“glittering and ringing.” When he is eloquent, as in the _Moralists_, he
imitates the style of Plato; his vice is florid verbosity; it may be
doubted whether a single sentence could be found to which Mr. Gosse’s
description would be applicable. If, it may be added, his style had
“fallen completely into neglect,” it is somewhat surprising that “he
should set an example for the kind of prose which was to mark the
central years of the century.” When we are told that he was “the first
Englishman who attempted to harmonize the beautiful with the true and
the good,” we ask in amazement whether Mr. Gosse has ever inspected the
_Hymns_ of Spenser and the writings of the Cambridge Platonists; and
when he tells us that without a Shaftesbury there would hardly have been
a Ruskin or a Pater, we would suggest to him that both Ruskin and Pater
were perhaps not ignorant of the Platonic Dialogues. In the account
given of Spenser, a poem is attributed to him which he never wrote. “In
one of his early pieces, _The Oak and The Briar_, went far,” etc., the
oak and the briar is simply an episode in the second eclogue of the
_Shepherd’s Calendar_. Mr. Gosse, probably finding it quoted in some
book of selections, has jumped to the conclusion that it is a separate
poem. Of Mr. Gosse’s qualifications for dealing with Spenser, we have,
by the way, an excellent example in the following remark: “Spenser,
although he boasted of his classical acquirements, was singularly little
affected by Greek or even Latin ideas.” Spenser’s _Hymns_ in honour of
Love and in Honour of Beauty are simply saturated with Platonism, being
indeed directly derived from the _Phædrus_ and the _Symposium_,
numberless passages from which are interwoven with the poems. The whole
scheme of the _Faerie Queene_ was suggested by, and based on,
Aristotle’s _Ethics_ with elaborate particularity, Arthur, in his
relation to the several knights, corresponding to the virtue
μεγαλοψυχια in its relation to the other virtues. The conclusion of
the tenth canto of the first book is simply an allegorical presentation
of the relation of the βιος θεωρητικος to practical life. The
“Castle of Medina” in the second book is a minutely technical exposition
of the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean, modified by the Platonic
theory of morals: the three mothers being the λογιστικη, the
επιθυμητικη, and θυμητικη, the three daughters,
Elissa, Perissa, and Medina, being respectively the Aristotelian
ελλειψις, the ὑπερβολη and the μεσοτης. In fact,
the whole passage is simply an allegory of the Aristotelian doctrine of
the mean. The whole of the ninth canto of the second book is founded on
the famous passage in the _Timæus_ describing the anatomy of man. In
truth the poem teems with references to Plato and Aristotle, and with
passages imitated from the Greek poets, as every scholar knows. And this
is a poet “singularly little affected by Greek ideas!”
The same astonishing ignorance is displayed in a remark about Milton. We
are told that in his youth he was “slightly subjected to influence from
Spenser.” If Mr. Gosse had any adequate acquaintance with Milton and
Spenser, he would have known that Spenser was to Milton almost what
Homer was to Virgil, that Spenser’s influence simply pervades his poems,
not his youthful poems only, but _Paradise Lost_ and even _Paradise
Regained_. On page 194 we find this sentence: “From 1660 onwards ...
what France originally, and then England, chose was the _imitatio
veterum_, the Literature in prose and verse which seemed most closely
to copy the models of Latin style. Aristotle and Horace were taken, not
merely as patterns, but as arbiters.” It would be very interesting to
know what English author took Aristotle as a pattern for style. Is Mr.
Gosse acquainted with the characteristics of Aristotle’s style? Should
he ever become so, he will probably have some sense of the immeasurable
absurdity of asserting that our prose writers from 1660 onwards took
that style for their model. On a par with this is the assertion that up
to 1605 Bacon had mainly issued his works in “Ciceronian Latin.” Is Mr.
Gosse aware of the meaning of “Ciceronian Latin”? Very “Ciceronian”
indeed is Bacon’s Latinity, and particularly that of the _Meditationes
Sacræ_, the only work published in Latin by Bacon up to 1605! It is
scarcely necessary to say, in passing, that such works as Bacon had
published up to 1605 were, with the one exception referred to, all in
English. Nothing, it may be added, is so annoying in this book as its
slushy dilettantism. Mr. Gosse appears to be incapable of accuracy and
precision. Thus he tells us that Chaucer’s expedition to Italy in 1372
was “the first of several Italian expeditions.” Chaucer, so far as is
known, visited Italy, after this, exactly once. Again, he tells us that
the _Complaint of Mars_ and the _Parliament of Fowls_ are interesting as
showing that Chaucer had completely abandoned his imitation of French
models. Chaucer wrote several poems in the pure French style, and based
on French models, after the date of these poems. Such would be the
Rondel _Merciless Beauty_ suggested by Williamme d’Amiens, the
_Compleynt of Venus_, partly adapted and partly translated from three
Ballades by Sir Otes de Graunson, and the _Compleynt to his Empty
Purse_, modelled on a Ballade by Eustache Deschamps, while French
influence continued to modify his work throughout. On page 238 we are
told that Thomson revived the Spenserian stanza; it had been revived by
Pope, Prior, Shenstone, and Akenside. On page 151 we are informed that
the first instalment of Clarendon’s History remained unprinted till
1752, and the rest of it till 1759. If Mr. Gosse knew anything about one
of the most remarkable controversies of the eighteenth century, he would
have known that the greater part of it was printed and published between
1702 and 1704, and frequently reprinted between 1704 and 1731.
There is not a chapter in the book which does not teem with errors.
Trissino’s _Sofonisba_ was not the only work in which blank verse had
attained any prominence in Italy about 1515; it had been employed in
works equally prominent, by Rucellai in his _Rosmunda_, and in his
_Oreste_, as well as in his didactic poem _L’Api_, and by Alamanni in
his _Antigone_, all of which were composed within a few years of that
date. On page 120 we are told that Davies was the first to employ, on a
long flight, the heroic quatrain; it had been employed by Spenser in a
poem extending to nearly a thousand lines. Nor was Surrey’s essay in
_terza rima_ “the earliest in the language.” Chaucer made the same
experiment, though a little irregularly, in the _Compleynt to his Lady_.
We are told on page 79 that Gascoigne was “the first translator of Greek
tragedy.” Gascoigne never translated a line from the Greek. His
_Jocasta_, to which presumably the reference is made, is simply an
adaptation of Ludovico Dolce’s _Giocasta_. On page 25 we are informed
that “Gower’s French verse has mainly disappeared.” Gower is not known
to have written anything in French except the _Ballades_ and the
_Speculum Meditantis_, both of which are extant, as it is inexcusable in
any historian of English Literature not to know. The account given on
page 25 of the _Confessio Amantis_ shows that Mr. Gosse is very
imperfectly acquainted with what he so fluently criticises, or he would
have been aware that the seventh book is purely episodical and has
nothing whatever to do with “The lover’s symptoms and experience.” In
the account of Pope we are informed that “Boileau discouraged love
poetry and Pope did not seriously attempt it.” Pope is the author of
the most famous love poem in the eighteenth century, _Eloisa to
Abelard_, to say nothing of the _Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady_, of the
beautiful hymn to Love in the second chorus in the tragedy of _Brutus_,
and the exquisite fragment supposed to have been addressed to Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu. “The satires of Pope,” he continues, “would not have
been written but for those of his French predecessor.” Can Mr. Gosse
possibly be ignorant that the satires of Pope are modelled on the
Satires and Epistles of Horace, that they owe absolutely nothing to
Boileau, not even the hint for applying Roman satire to modern times, as
he had precedents in his own countrymen Dryden and Rochester?