Now we all know, and understand, and like that man: for the
simple reason that he is every one of us.
You or I (say) have to take the Modern Languages Tripos, Section
A (English), in 1917[1]. First of all (and rightly) it is
demanded of us that we show an acquaintance, and something more
than a bowing acquaintance, with Shakespeare. Very well; but next
we have to write a paper and answer questions on the outlines of
English Literature from 1350 to 1832--almost 500 years--, and
next to write a paper and show particular knowledge of English
Literature between 1700 and 1785--eighty-five years. Next comes a
paper on passages from selected English verse and prose writings
--the Statute discreetly avoids calling them literature--between
1200 and 1500, exclusive of Chaucer; with questions on language,
metre, literary history and literary criticism: then a paper on
Chaucer with questions on language, metre, literary history and
literary criticism: lastly a paper on writing in the Wessex
dialect of Old English, with questions on the cornet, flute,
harp, sackbut, language, metre and literary history.
Now if you were to qualify yourself for all this as a scholar
should, and in two years, you would certainly deserve to be
addressed by Mr Hamerton as 'A Young Man of Letters who worked
Excessively'; and to work excessively is not good for anyone.
Yet, on the other hand, you are precluded from using, for your
'cerebral inconveniences,' the heroic remedy exhibited by Mr
Hamerton's enterprising tradesman, since on that method you would
not attain to the main object of your laudable ambition, a
Cambridge degree.
But the matter is very much worse than your Statute makes it out.
Take one of the papers in which some actual acquaintance with
Literature is required the Special Period from 1700 to 1785; then
turn to your "Cambridge History of English Literature", and you
will find that the mere bibliography of those eighty-five years
occupies something like five or six hundred pages--five or six
hundred pages of titles and authors in simple enumeration! The
brain reels; it already suffers 'cerebral inconveniences.' But
stretch the list back to Chaucer, back through Chaucer to those
alleged prose writings in the Wessex dialect, then forward from
1785 to Wordsworth, to Byron, to Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson,
Browning, Meredith, even to this year in which literature still
lives and engenders; and the brain, if not too giddy indeed,
stands as Satan stood on the brink of Chaos--
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross--
and sees itself, with him, now plumbing a vast vacuity, and anon
nigh-foundered, 'treading the crude consistence.'
The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to
_know_ it in any reputable sense of the word--let alone your
learning to write English--is, in short, impossible. And the
framers of the Statute, recognising this, have very sensibly
compromised by setting you to work on such things as 'the
Outlines of English Literature'; which are not Literature at all
but are only what some fellow has to say about it, hastily
summarising his estimates of many works, of which on a generous
computation he has probably read one-fifth; and by examining you
on (what was it all?) 'language, metre, literary history and
literary criticism,' which again are not Literature, or at least
(as a Greek would say in his idiom) escape their own notice being
Literature. For English Literature, as I take it, is _that which
sundry men and women have written memorably in English about
Life._ And so I come to my subject--the art of reading _that,_
which is Literature.
V
I shall take leave to leap into it over another man's back, or,
rather over two men's backs. No doubt it has happened to many of
you to pick up in a happy moment some book or pamphlet or copy of
verse which just says the word you have unconsciously been
listening for, almost craving to speak for yourself, and so sends
you off hot-foot on the trail. And if you have had that
experience, it may also have happened to you that, after ranging,
you returned on the track 'like faithful hound returning,' in
gratitude, or to refresh the scent; and that, picking up the book
again, you found it no such wonderful book after all, or that
some of the magic had faded by process of the change in yourself
which itself had originated. But the word was spoken.
Such a book--pamphlet I may call it, so small it was--fell into
my hands some ten years ago; "The Aims of Literary Study"--no
very attractive title--by Dr Corson, a distinguished American
Professor (and let me say that, for something more than ten--say
for twenty--years much of the most thoughtful as well as the most
thorough work upon English comes to us from America). I find, as
I handle again the small duodecimo volume, that my own thoughts
have taken me a little wide, perhaps a little astray, from its
suggestions. But for loyalty's sake I shall start just where Dr
Corson started, with a passage from Browning's, "A Death in the
Desert," supposed (you will remember)--