In the preceding pages the progress of literature has been briefly traced
through its various periods--from the time when its meagre records were
confined to inscriptions engraved on stone, or inscribed on clay tablets
or papyrus leaves, or in its later and more perfect development when,
written on parchment, it was the possession of the learned few, hidden in
libraries and so precious that a book was sometimes the ransom of a city--
till the invention of printing gave to the world the accumulated treasures
of the past; and from that time to the present, when the press has poured
forth from year to year an ever increasing succession of books, the
records of human thought, achievement, and emotion which constitute
literature.
The question here naturally arises as to whether the human mind has now
reached its highest development in this direction, whether it is
henceforth to retrograde or to advance. It was only towards the close of
the last century that the idea of human progress gained ground, after the
American and French revolutions had broken down old barriers, inaugurated
new systems, inspired new hopes, and revealed new possibilities. What was
then but a feeble sentiment, later advances in the direction of science
have confirmed. Among them are the discovery of the correlation and
conservation of force, according to Faraday the highest law which our
faculties permit us to perceive; the spectroscope, that gives the chemist
power to analyze the stars; the microscope, that lays bare great secrets
of nature, and almost penetrates the mystery of life itself; the
application of steam and electricity, that puts all nations into
communication and binds mankind together with nerves of steel; above all,
the theory of evolution, which opens to man an almost illimitable vista of
progress and development. It is true that these great intellectual
triumphs of the nineteenth century are all in the direction of science;
but literature in its true sense embraces both science and art; science
which discovers through the intellect, and art which transmutes, through
the imagination, knowledge and emotion into beauty. When the stupendous
discoveries of our time have been fully recognized and appreciated and
followed, as they doubtless will be, by a long series of others equally
great, a higher order of thought must follow, and literature, which, is
but the reflection of the thought of any age, cannot but be in harmony
with it.
This consummation more than one poet, with the prescience of genius, has
already foretold. "Poetry," says Wordsworth, "is the first and last of all
knowledge, immortal as the heart of man. If the labors of men of science
should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our
condition and in the impressions we habitually receive, the poet will
sleep no more then than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps
of the man of science, and if the time should ever come when what is now
called science shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and
blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration."
"The sublime and all reconciling revelations of nature," writes Emerson,
"will exact of poetry a corresponding height and scope, or put an end to
it." George Eliot says,--
"Presentiment of better things on earth
Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls."
Throughout the verse of Tennyson the idea of progress is variously
expressed. He dreams of a future
"When the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are furled."
"When comes the statelier Eden back to man."
"When springs the crowning race of human kind."
Thus the inspirations of poetry not less than the conclusions of science
indicate that we must look for the Golden Age, not in a mythical past, but
in an actual though far-off future.