(a) To begin with, then, these valiant fighters, intent on
pushing their cause to the front, kept no sense of proportion.
All their geese were swans, and "Beowulf" a second "Iliad." I
think it scarcely too much to say that, of these men, all so
staunch in fighting for the claims of English Literature, not one
(with the exception of Dr Hales) appears to have had any critical
judgment whatever, apart from the rhyme, verse and inflectional
tests on which they bestowed their truly priceless industry.
Criticism, as Sainte-Beuve, Matthew Arnold or Pater understood
and practised it, they merely misprized.
(b) I think it was of true scholarly desire to vindicate English
Literature from the charge of being 'too easy,' that--as their
studies advanced--they laid more and more stress on Middle-English
and Old English writings than on what our nations of England and
Scotland have written since they learned to write. I dare to think
also that we may attribute to this dread of 'easiness' their
practice of cumbering simple texts with philological notes; on
which, rather than on the text, we unhappy students were carefully
examined. For an example supplied to Dr Corson--I take those three
lines of Cowper's "Task" (Bk I, 86-88):
Thus first necessity invented stools,
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
And luxury th' accomplish'd SOFA last.
Now in these three lines the word '_accomplish'd_' is the only one
that needs even the smallest explanation. 'But,' says Dr Corson,
'in two different editions of "The Task" in my library, prepared
for the use of the young, no explanation is given of it, but in
both the Arabic origin of 'sofa' is given. In one the question is
asked what other words in English have been derived from the
Arabic.' ('Abracadabra' would be my little contribution.)
(c) These valiant fighters--having to extol what Europe had,
wrongly enough, forgotten to count among valuable things--turned
aggressively provincial, parted their beards in the Anglo-Saxon
fashion; composed long sentences painfully innocent of any
word not derivable from Anglo-Saxon, sentences in which the
'impenetrability of matter' became the 'un-go-throughsomeness of
stuff (but that may have happened in a parody), and in general
comported themselves like the Anglo-Saxons they claimed for their
forbears; rightly enough for anything anyone cared, but wrongly
enough for the rest of us who had no yearning toward that kinship
and went on spelling Alfred with an A.
(d) They were--I suppose through opposition--extremely irascible
men; like farmers. Urbanity was the last note in their gamut, the
City--_urbs quam dicunt Romam_--the last of places in their ken.
There was no engaging them in dialectic, an Athenian art which
they frankly despised. If you happened to disagree with them,
their answer was a sturdy Anglo-Saxon brick. If you politely asked
your way to Puddlehampton, and to be directed to Puddlehampton's
main objects of interest, the answer you would get (see "Notes and
Queries" _passim_) would be, 'Who is this that comes out of
Nowhere, enquiring for Puddlehampton, unacquainted with Stubbs? Is
it possible at this time of day that the world can contain anyone
ignorant of the published Transactions of the Wiltshire Walking
Club, Vol. III, p. 159--"Puddlehampton, its Rise and Decline, with
a note on Vespasian?"'
(e) These pioneers--pushing the importance of English, but
occupied more and more with origins and with bad authors, simply
could not see the vital truth; that English Literature is a
continuing thing, ten times more alive to-day than it was in the
times they studied and belauded. The last word upon them is that
not a man of them could write prose in the language they thrust
on our study. To them, far more than to the old classical
scholars, English was a shut book: a large book, but closed and
clasped, material to heighten a desk for schoolmasters and
schoolmistresses.
But schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, like chickens and curses,
come home to roost. Once set up your plea for a Tripos of English
Language and Literature on the lower plea that it will provide
for what _they_ call a 'felt want,' and sooner or later you give
English Language and Literature into _their_ hands, and then you
get the fallacy full-flowered into a convention. English
Literature henceforth is a 'subject,' divorced from life: and
what they have made of it, let a thousand handbooks and so-called
histories attest. But this world is not a wilderness of
class-rooms. English Language? They cannot write it, at all events.
They do not (so far as I can discover) try to write it. They talk
and write about it; how the poor deceased thing outgrew infantile
ailments, how it was operated on for _umlaut,_ how it parted with
its vermiform appendix and its inflexions one by one, and lost
its vowel endings in muted e's.
And they went and told the sexton,
And the sexton toll'd the bell.
But when it comes to _writing_; to keeping bright the noble
weapon of English, testing its poise and edge, feeling the grip,
handing it to their pupils with the word, 'Here is the sword of
your fathers, that has cloven dragons. So use it, that we who
have kept it bright may be proud of you, and of our pains, and of
its continuing valiance':--why, as I say, they do not even _try._
Our unprofessional forefathers, when they put pen to paper, did
attempt English prose, and not seldom achieved it. But take up
any elaborate History of English Literature and read, and, as you
read, ask yourselves, 'How can one of the rarest delights of life
be converted into _this_? What has happened to merry Chaucer,
rare Ben Jonson, gay Steele and Prior, to Goldsmith, Jane Austen,
Charles Lamb?'
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces!
gone into the professional stock-pot! And the next news is that
these cooks, of whom Chaucer wrote prophetically
Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde,
And turnen substaunce into accident!
have formed themselves into professional Associations to protect
'the study of the subject of English Literature' and bark off any
intruder who would teach in another way than theirs.