I.

The series of lectures which I last had the pleasure of delivering in

this hall was devoted to the exposition of what is beyond doubt the

most remarkable, the most persistent, the most wide-spread, and the

most noble of all those methods of arranging words and ideas in

definite relations, which have acquired currency among men--namely,

the methods of verse, or Formal Poetry. That exposition began by

reducing all possible phenomena of verse to terms of vibration; and

having thus secured at once a solid physical basis for this science,

and a precise nomenclature in which we could talk intelligibly upon

this century-befogged subject, we advanced gradually from the most

minute to the largest possible considerations upon the matter in hand.

Now, wishing that such courses as I might give here should preserve a

certain coherence with each other, I have hoped that I could secure

that end by successively treating The Great Forms of Modern

Literature; and, wishing further to gain whatever advantage of

entertainment for you may lie in contrast and variety, I have thought

that inasmuch as we have already studied the Verse-Form in General, we

might now profitably study some great Prose-Forms in Particular, and

in still further contrast; that we might study that form not so much

_analytically_--as when we developed the _Science_ of Formal Poetry

from a single physical principle--but this time synthetically, from

the point of view of literary _art_ rather than of literary science.

I am further led to this general plan by the consideration that so far

as I know--but my reading in this direction is not wide, and I may be

in error--there is no book extant in any language which gives a

conspectus of all those well-marked and widely-varying literary forms

which have differentiated themselves in the course of time, and of the

curious and subtle needs of the modern civilized man which, under the

stress of that imperious demand for expression which all men's

emotions make, have respectively determined the modes of such

expression to be in one case _The Novel_, in another _The Sermon_, in

another _The Newspaper Leader_, in another _The Scientific Essay_, in

another _The Popular Magazine Article_, in another _The

Semi-Scientific Lecture_, and so on: each of these prose-forms, you

observe, having its own limitations and fitnesses quite as

well-defined as the Sonnet-Form, the Ballad-Form, the Drama-Form, and

the like in verse.

And, with this general plan, a great number of considerations which I

hope will satisfactorily emerge as we go on, lead me irresistibly to

select the Novel as the particular prose-form for our study.

It happens, indeed, that over and above the purely literary interest

which would easily give this form the first place in such a series as

the present, the question of the Novel has just at this time become

one of the most pressing and vital of all the practical problems

which beset our moral and social economy.

The novel,--what we call the novel--is a new invention. It is

customary to date the first English novel with Richardson in 1740; and

just as it has been impossible to confine other great inventions to

the service of virtue--for the thief can send a telegram to his pal as

easily as the sick man to his doctor, and the locomotive spins along

no less merrily because ten car-loads of rascals may be profiting by

its speed--so vice as well as virtue has availed itself of the

novel-form, and we have such spectacles as Scott, and Dickens, and

Eliot, and Macdonald, using this means to purify the air in one place,

while Zola, in another, applies the very same means to defiling the

whole earth and slandering all humanity under the sacred names of

"naturalism," of "science," of "physiology." Now I need not waste time

in descanting before this audience upon the spread of the novel among

all classes of modern readers: while I have been writing this, a

well-considered paper on "Fiction in our Public Libraries," has

appeared in the current _International Review_, which, among many

suggestive statements, declares that out of pretty nearly five

millions (4,872,595) of volumes circulated in five years by the Boston

Public Library, nearly four millions (3,824,938), that is about

four-fifths, were classed as "Juveniles and Fiction;" and merely

mentioning the strength which these figures gain when considered along

with the fact that they represent the reading of a people supposed to

be more "solid" in literary matter than any other in the country--if

we inquire into the proportion at Baltimore, I fancy I have only to

hold up this copy of James's _The American_, which I borrowed the

other day from the Mercantile Library, and which I think I may say,

after considerable rummaging about the books of that institution,

certainly bears more marks of "circulation" than any solid book in it.

In short, as a people, the novel is educating us. Thus we cannot take

any final or secure solace in the discipline and system of our schools

and universities until we have also learned to regulate this

fascinating universal teacher which has taken such hold upon all

minds, from the gravest scholar down to the boot-black shivering on

the windy street corner over his dime-novel,--this educator whose

principles are fastening themselves upon your boy's mind, so that long

after he has forgotten his _amo_ and his _tupto_, they will be

controlling his relations to his fellow-man, and determining his

happiness for life.

But we can take no really effective action upon this matter until we

understand precisely what the novel is and means; and it is,

therefore, with the additional pleasure of stimulating you to

systematize and extend your views upon a living issue which demands

your opinion, that I now invite you to enter with me, without further

preliminary, upon a series of studies in which it is proposed, first,

to inquire what is that special relation of the novel to the modern

man, by virtue of which it has become a paramount literary form; and,

secondly, to illustrate this abstract inquiry, when completed, by some

concrete readings in the greatest of modern English novelists.

In the course of this inquiry I shall be called on to bring before you

some of the very largest conceptions of which the mind is capable; and

inasmuch as several of the minor demonstrations will begin somewhat

remotely from the Novel, it will save me many details which would be

otherwise necessary, if I indicate in a dozen words the four special

lines of development along one or other of which I shall be always

travelling.

My first line will concern itself with the enormous growth in the

personality of man which our time reveals when compared, for instance,

with the time of Aeschylus.

I shall insist with the utmost reverence that between every human

being and every other human being exists a radical, unaccountable,

inevitable difference from birth; this sacred Difference between man

and man, by virtue of which I am I, and you are you; this marvellous

separation which we express by the terms "personal identity,"

"self-hood," "me,"--it is the unfolding of this, I shall insist, which

since the time of Aeschylus (say) has wrought all those stupendous

changes in the relation of man to God, to physical nature, and to his

fellow, which have culminated in the modern cultus. I can best bring

upon you the length and breadth of this idea of modern personality as

I conceive it, by stating it in terms which have recently been made

prominent and familiar by the discussion as to the evolution of

genius; a phase of which appears in a very agreeable paper by Mr. John

Fiske in a recent _Atlantic Monthly_ on "Sociology and Hero Worship."

Says Mr. Fiske, in a certain part of this article, "Every species of

animals or plants consists of a great number of individuals which are

nearly, but not exactly alike. Each individual varies slightly in one

characteristic or another from a certain type which expresses the

average among all the individuals of the species.... Now the moth with

his proboscis twice as long as the average ... is what we call a

spontaneous variation; and the Darwin or the Helmholtz is what we call

a 'genius'; and the analogy between the two kinds of variation is

obvious enough." He proceeds in another place: "We cannot tell why a

given moth has a proboscis exactly an inch and a quarter in length,

any more than we can tell why Shakspeare was a great dramatist,"

there being absolutely no precedent conditions by which the most

ardent evolutionist could evolve William Shakspeare, for example, from

old John Shakspeare and his wife. "The social philosopher must simply

accept geniuses as data, just as Darwin accepts his spontaneous

variations."

But now if we reflect upon this prodigious series of spontaneous

variations which I have called the sacred difference between man and

man,--this personality which every father and mother are astonished at

anew every day, when out of six children they perceive that each one

of the six, from the very earliest moment of activity, has shown his

own distinct individuality, differing wholly from either parent; the

child who most resembles the parent physically, often having a

personality which crosses that of the parent at the sharpest angles;

this radical, indestructible, universal personality which entitles

every "me" to its privacy, which has in course of time made the

Englishman's house his castle, which has developed the Rights of Man,

the American Republic, the supreme prerogative of the woman to say

whom she will love, what man she shall marry; this personality, so

precious that not even the miserablest wretch with no other possession

_but_ his personality has ever been brought to say he would be willing

to exchange it entire for that of the happiest being; this personality

which has brought about that, whereas in the time of Aeschylus the

common man was simply a creation of the State, like a modern

corporation with rights and powers strictly limited by the State's

charter, now he is a genuine sovereign who makes the State, a king as

to every minutest particle of his individuality so long as that

kinghood does not cross the kinghood of his fellow,--when we reflect

upon _this_ awful spontaneous variation of personality, this "mystery

in us which calls itself _I_" (as Thomas Carlyle has somewhere called

it), which makes every man scientifically a human atom, yet an atom

endowed above all other atoms with the power to choose its own mode of

motion, its own combining equivalent,--when farther we reflect upon

the relation of each human atom to each other human atom, and to the

great Giver of personalities to these atoms,--how each is indissolubly

bound to each, and to Him, and yet how each is discretely parted and

impassably separated from each and from Him by a gulf which is simply

no less deep than the width between the finite and the infinite,--when

we reflect, finally, that it is this simple, indivisible, radical,

indestructible, new force which each child brings into the world under

the name of its _self_; which controls the whole life of that child,

so that its path is always a resultant of its own individual force on

the one hand, and of the force of its surrounding circumstances on the

other,--we are bound to confess, it seems to me, that such spontaneous

variations carry us upon a plane of mystery very far above those

merely unessential variations of the offspring from the parental type

in physique, and even above those rare abnormal variations which we

call genius.

In meditating upon this matter, I found a short time ago a poem of

Tennyson's floating about the newspapers, which so beautifully and

reverently chants this very sense of personality, that I must read you

a line or two from it. I have since observed that much fun has been

made of this piece, and I have seen elaborate burlesques upon it. But

I think such an attitude could be possible only to one who had not

passed along this line of thought. At any rate the poem seemed to me a

very noble and rapturous hymn to the great Personality above us,

acknowledging the mystery of our own personalities as finitely

dependent upon, and yet so infinitely divided from His Personality.

This poem is called _De Profundis--Two Greetings_, and is addressed to

a new-born child. I have time to read only a line or two here and

there; you will find the whole poem much more satisfactory. Please

observe, however, the ample, comforting phrases and summaries with

which Tennyson expresses the poetic idea of that personality which I

have just tried to express from the point of view of science, of the

evolutionist:

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,

When all that was to be in all that was

Whirl'd for a million aeons thro' the vast

Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light--

* * * * *

Thro' all this changing world of changeless law.

And every phase of ever-heightening life,

Thou comest.

* * * * *

O, dear Spirit, half-lost

In thine own shadows and this fleshly sign

That thou art thou--who wailest, being born

And banish'd into mystery and the pain

Of this divisible-indivisible world.

* * * * *

Our mortal veil

And shatter'd phantom of that infinite One

Who made thee inconceivably thyself

Out of his whole world--self and all in all--

Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grape

And ivy berry choose; and still depart

From death to death thro' life and life, and find--

* * * * *

This main miracle, that thou art thou,

With power on thy own act and on the world.

We feel we are nothing--for all is Thou and in Thee;

We feel we are something--that also has come from Thee;

We are nothing, O Thou--but Thou wilt help us to be;

Hallowed be Thy name--Hallelujah!

I find some expressions here which give me great satisfaction: The

Infinite One who made thee inconceivably thyself; this divisible,

indivisible world, this main miracle that thou art thou, etc.

Now it is with this "main miracle," that I am I, and you, you--with

this personality, that my first train of thought will busy itself; and

I shall try to show by several concrete illustrations from the lines

and between the lines of Aeschylus and Plato and the like writers,

compared with several modern writers, how feeble the sense and

influence of it is in their time as contrasted with ours.

In my second line of development, I shall call your attention to what

seems to me a very remarkable and suggestive fact: to-wit, that

Physical Science, Music, and the Novel, all take their rise at the

same time; of course, I mean what we moderns call science, music, and

the novel. For example, if we select, for the sake of well-known

representative names, Sir Isaac Newton (1642), John Sebastian Bach

(1685), and Samuel Richardson (1689), the first standing for the rise

of modern science, the second for the rise of modern music, the third

for the rise of the modern novel, and observe that these three men are

born within fifty years of each other, we cannot fail to find

ourselves in the midst of a thousand surprising suggestions and

inferences. For in our sweeping arc from Aeschylus to the present time,

fifty years subtend scarcely any space; we may say then these men are

born together. And here the word accident has no meaning. Time,

progress, then, have no accident.

Now in this second train of thought I shall endeavor to connect these

phenomena with the principle of personality developed in the first

train, and shall try to show that this science, music, and the novel,

are flowerings-out of that principle in various directions; for

instance, each man in this growth of personality feeling himself in

direct and personal relations with physical nature (not in relations

obscured by the vague intermediary, hamadryads and forms of the Greek

system), a general desire to know the exact truth about nature arises;

and this desire carried to a certain enthusiasm in the nature of given

men--behold the man of science; a similar feeling of direct personal

relation to the Unknown, acting similarly upon particular men,--behold

the musician, and the ever-increasing tendency of the modern to

worship God in terms of music; likewise, a similar feeling of direct

personal relation to each individual member of humanity, high or low,

rich or poor, acting similarly, gives us such a novel as the _Mill on

the Floss_, for instance, when for a long time we find ourselves

interested in two mere children--Tom and Maggie Tulliver--or such

novels as those of Dickens and his fellow-host who have called upon

our human relation to poor, unheroic people.

In my third train of thought, I shall attempt to show that the

increase of personalities thus going on has brought about such

complexities of relation that the older forms of expression were

inadequate to them; and that the resulting necessity has developed the

wonderfully free and elastic form of the modern novel out of the more

rigid Greek drama, through the transition form of the Elizabethan

drama.

And, fourthly, I shall offer copious readings from some of the most

characteristic modern novels, in illustration of the general

principles thus brought forward.

Here,--as the old preacher Hugh Latimer grimly said in closing one of

his powerful descriptions of future punishment,--you see your fare.

Permit me, then, to begin the execution of this plan by bringing

before you two matters which will be conveniently disposed of in the

outset, because they affect all these four lines of thought in

general, and because I find the very vaguest ideas prevailing about

them among those whose special attention happens not to have been

called this way.

As to the first point; permit me to remind you how lately these prose

forms have been developed in our literature as compared with the forms

of verse. Indeed, abandoning the thought of any particular forms of

prose, consider for how long a time good English poetry was written

before any good English prose appears. It is historical that as far

back as the seventh century Caedmon is writing a strong English poem in

an elaborate form of verse. Well-founded conjecture carries us back

much farther than this; but without relying upon that, we have clear

knowledge that all along the time when _Beowulf_ and _The

Wanderer_--to me one of the most artistic and affecting of English

poems--and _The Battle of Maldon_ are being written, all along the

time when Caedmon and Aldhelm and the somewhat mythical Cynewulf are

singing, formal poetry or verse has reached a high stage of artistic

development. But not only so; after the Norman change is consummated,

and our language has fairly assimilated that tributary stock of words

and ideas and influences; the _poetic_ advance, the development of

verse, goes steadily on.

If you examine the remains of our lyric poetry written along in the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries--short and unstudied little songs as

many of them are, songs which come upon us out of that obscure period

like brief little bird-calls from a thick-leaved wood--if, I say, we

examine these songs, written as many of them are by nobody in

particular, it is impossible not to believe that a great mass of

poetry, some of which must have been very beautiful, was written in

the two hundred years just before Chaucer, and that an extremely small

proportion of it can have come down to us.

But, in all this period, where is the piece of English prose that

corresponds with _The Wanderer_, or with the daintier Cuckoo-Song of

the early twelfth century? In point of fact, we cannot say that even

the conception of an artistic prose has occurred to English literary

endeavor until long after Chaucer. King Alfred's Translations, the

English Chronicle, the Homilies of Aelfric, are simple and clear

enough; and, coming down later, the English Bible set forth by Wyclif

and his contemporaries. Wyclif's sermons and tracts, and Mandeville's

account of his travels are effective enough, each to its own end. But

in all these the form is so far overridden by the direct pressing

purpose, either didactic or educational, that--with exceptions I

cannot now specify in favor of the Wyclif Bible--I can find none of

them in which the prose seems controlled by considerations of beauty.

Perhaps the most curious and interesting proof I could adduce of the

obliviousness of even the most artistic Englishman in this time to the

possibility of a melodious and uncloying English prose, is the prose

work of Chaucer. While, so far as concerns the mere music of verse, I

cannot call Chaucer a great artist, yet he was the greatest of his

time; from him, therefore, we have the right to expect the best

craftsmanship in words; for all fine prose depends as much upon its

rhythms and correlated proportions as fine verse; and, _now_, since we

have an art of prose, it is a perfect test of the real excellence of

a poet in verse to try his corresponding excellence in prose. But in

Chaucer's time there is no art of English prose. Listen, for example,

to the first lines of that one of Chaucer's Canterbury series which he

calls _The Parson's Tale_, and which is in prose throughout. It

happens very pertinently to my present discussion that in the prologue

to this tale some conversation occurs which reveals to us quite

clearly a current idea of Chaucer's time as to the proper distinction

between prose and verse--or "rym"--and as to the functions and

subject-matter peculiarly belonging to each of these forms; and, for

that reason, let me preface my quotation from the _Parson's Tale_ with

a bit of it. As the Canterbury Pilgrims are jogging merrily along,

presently it appears that but one more tale is needed to carry out the

original proposition, and so the ever-important Host calls on the

Parson for it, as follows:

As we were entryng at a thropes ende,

For while our Hoost, as he was wont to gye,

As in this caas, our joly compaignye,

Seyde in this wise: "Lordyngs, everichoon,

Now lakketh us no tales moo than oon," etc.,

and turning to the Parson,

"Sir Prest," quod he, "artow a vicary?

Or arte a persoun? Say soth, by thy fey,

Be what thou be, _ne_ breke _thou_ nat oure pley;

For every man, save thou, hath told his tale.

Unbokele and schew us what is in thy male.

Tel us a fable anoon, for cokkes boones!"

Whereupon the steadfast parson proceeds to assure the company that

whatever he may have in his male [wallet] there is none of your

light-minded and fictitious verse in it; nothing but grave and

reverend prose.

This Persoun him answerede al at oones:

Thou getest fable noon i-told for me.

(And you will presently observe that "fable" in the parson's mind

means very much the same with verse or poetry, and that the whole

business of fiction--that same fiction which has now come to occupy

such a commanding place with us moderns, and which we are to study

with such reverence under its form of the novel--implies downright

lying and wickedness.)

Thou getist fable noon i-told for me;

For Paul, that writeth unto Timothe,

Repreveth hem that weyveth soothfastnesse.

And tellen fables and such wrecchednesse, etc.,

For which I say, if that yow list to heere

Moralite and virtuous mateere,

(That is--as we shall presently see--_prose_).

And thanne that ye will geve me audience,

I wol ful fayne at Cristes reverence,

Do you pleasaunce leful, as I can;

But trusteth wel, I am a Suthern man,

I can nat geste, rum, ram, ruf, by letter,

Ne, God wot, rym hold I but litel better;

And therfor, if yow list, I wol not glose,

I wol yow telle a mery tale in prose.

Here our honest parson, (and he was honest;) I am frightfully tempted

to go clean away from my path and read that heart-filling description

of him which Chaucer gives in the general Prologue to the _Canterbury

Tales_ sweeps away the whole literature of verse and of fiction with

the one contemptuous word "glose"--by which he seems to mean a sort of

shame-faced lying all the more pitiful because done in verse--and sets

up prose as the proper vehicle for "moralite and virtuous mateere."

With this idea of the function of prose, you will not be surprised to

find, as I read these opening sentences of the pastor's so-called

tale, that the style is rigidly sententious, and that the movement of

the whole is like that of a long string of proverbs, which, of course,

presently becomes intolerably droning and wearisome. The parson

begins:

"Many ben the weyes espirituels that leden folk to our Lord Ihesu

Crist, and to the regne of glorie; of whiche weyes ther is a ful noble

wey, which may not faile to no man ne to womman, that thurgh synne

hath mysgon fro the right wey of Jerusalem celestial; and this wey is

cleped penitence. Of which men schulden gladly herken and enquere with

al here herte, to wyte, what is penitence, and whens is cleped

penitence? And in what maner and in how many maneres been the acciones

or workynge of penitence, and how many speces ben of penitence, and

which thinges apperteynen and byhoven to penitence and whiche thinges

destourben penitence."

In reading page after page of this bagpipe-bass, one has to remember

strenuously all the moral beauty of the Parson's character in order to

forgive the droning ugliness of his prose. Nothing could better

realize the description which Tennyson's _Northern Farmer_ gives of

_his_ parson's manner of preaching and the effect thereof:

An' I hallus comed to t' choorch afoor my Sally wur dead,

An' 'eerd un a bummin' awaay loike a buzzard-clock ower my yead;

An' I niver knaw'd what a meaned, but I thowt a 'ad summut to saay,

An' I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said, an' I comed awaay.

It must be said, however, in justice to Chaucer, that he writes better

prose than this when he really sets about telling a tale. What the

Parson calls his "tale" turns out, to the huge disgust, I suspect, of

several other pilgrims besides the host, to be nothing more than a

homily or sermon, in which the propositions about penitence, with many

minor heads and sub-divisions, are unsparingly developed to the bitter

end. But in the _Tale of Meliboeus_ his inimitable faculty of

story-telling comes to his aid, and determines his sentences to a

little more variety and picturesqueness, though the sententious still

predominates. Here, for example, is a bit of dialogue between

Meliboeus and his wife, which I selected because, over and above its

application here as early prose, we will find it particularly

suggestive presently when we come to compare it with some dialogue in

George Eliot's _Adam Bede_, where the conversation is very much upon

the same topic.

It seems that Meliboeus, being still a young man, goes away into the

fields, leaving his wife Prudence and his daughter--whose name some of

the texts give in its Greek form as Sophia, while others, quaintly

enough, call her Sapience, translating the Greek into Latin--in the

house. Thereupon "three of his olde foos" (says Chaucer) "have it

espyed, and setten laddres to the walles of his hous, and by the

wyndowes ben entred, and beetyn his wyf, and wounded his daughter with

fyve mortal woundes, in fyve sondry places, that is to sayn, in here

feet, in her handes, in here eres, in her nose, and in here mouth; and

lafte her for deed, and went away." Meliboeus assembles a great

counsel of his friends, and these advise him to make war, with an

interminable dull succession of sententious maxims and quotations

which would merely have maddened a modern person to such a degree that

he would have incontinently levied war upon his friends as well as his

enemies. But after awhile Dame Prudence modestly advises against the

war. "This Meliboeus answerde unto his wyf Prudence: 'I purpose

not,' quod he, 'to werke by this counseil, for many causes and

resouns; for certes every wight wolde holde me thanne a fool, this is

to sayn, if I for thy counseil wolde chaunge things that affirmed ben

by somany wise.

Secondly, I say that alle wommen be wikked, and noon good of hem alle.

For of a thousand men, saith Solomon, I find oon good man; but certes

of alle wommen good womman find I never noon. And also certes, if I

governede am by thy counseil, it schulde seme that I hadde given to

the over me the maistry; and God forbid er it so were. For Ihesus

Syrac saith,'" etc., etc. You observe here, although this is dialogue

between man and wife, the prose nevertheless tends to the sententious,

and every remark must be supported with some dry old maxim or

epigrammatic saw. Observe too, by the way,--and we shall find this

point most suggestive in studying the modern dialogue in George

Eliot's novels, etc.,--that there is absolutely no individuality or

personality in the talk; Meliboeus drones along exactly as his

friends do, and his wife quotes old authoritative saws, just as he

does. But Dame Prudence replies,--and all those who are acquainted

with the pungent Mrs. Poyser in George Eliot's _Adam Bede_ will

congratulate Meliboeus that his foregoing sentiments concerning

woman were uttered five hundred years before that lady's tongue began

to wag,--"When Dame Prudence, ful debonerly and with gret pacience,

hadde herd al that her housbande liked for to saye, thanne axede sche

of him license for to speke, and sayde in this wise: 'My Lord,' quod

sche, 'as to your firste resoun, certes it may lightly be answered;

for I say it is no foly to chaunge counsel when the thing is

chaungid, or elles when the thing semeth otherwise than it was

bifoore.'" This very wise position she supports with argument and

authority, and then goes on boldly to attack not exactly Solomon's

wisdom, but the number of data from which he drew it. "'And though

that Solomon say _he_ fond never good womman, it folwith nought

therfore that alle wommen ben wicked; for though that he fonde noone

goode wommen, certes many another man hath founden many a womman ful

goode and trewe.'" (Insinuating, what is doubtless true, that the

finding of a good woman depends largely on the kind of man who is

looking for her.)

After many other quite logical replies to all of Meliboeus'

positions, Dame Prudence closes with the following argument: "And

moreover, whan oure Lord hadde creat Adam oure forme fader, he sayde

in this wise, Hit is not goode to be a man alone; makes we to him an

help semblable to himself. Here may ye se that, if that a womman were

not good, and hir counseil good and profytable, oure Lord God of heven

would neither have wrought hem, ne called hem help of man, but rather

confusion of man. And ther sayde oones a clerk in two versus, What is

better than gold? Jasper. And what is better than jasper? Wisdom. And

what is better than wisdom? Womman. And what is better than a good

womman? No thing."

When we presently come to contrast this little scene between man and

wife in what may fairly be called the nearest approach to the modern

novel that can be found before the fifteenth century, we shall find a

surprising number of particulars, besides the unmusical tendency to

run into the sententious or proverbial form, in which the modern mode

of thought differs from that of the old writers from whom Chaucer got

his Meliboeus.

This sententious monotune (if I may coin a word) of the prose, when

falling upon a modern ear, gives almost a comical tang, even to the

gravest utterances of the period. For example, here are the opening

lines of a fragment of prose from a MS. in the Cambridge University

Library, reprinted by the early English Text Society in the issue for

1870. It is good, pithy reading, too. It is called "The Six Wise

Masters' Speech of Tribulation."

Observe that the first sentence, though purely in the way of

narrative, is just as sententious in form as the graver proverbs of

each master that follow.

It begins:

Here begynyth A shorte extracte, and tellyth how par ware sex

masterys assemblede, ande eche one askede oper quhat thing pai

sholde spek of gode, and all pei war acordet to spek of

tribulacoun.

The fyrste master seyde, pat if ony thing hade bene mor better to

ony man lewynge in this werlde pan tribulacoun, god wald haue

gewyne it to his sone. But he sey wyell that thar was no better,

and tharfor he gawe it hum, and mayde hume to soffer moste in

this wrechede worlde than euer dyde ony man, or euermore shall.

The secunde master seyde, pat if par wer ony man pat mycht be

wyth-out spote of sine, as god was, and mycht levyn bodely pirty

yheris wyth-out mete, ande also were dewote in preyinge pat he

mycht speke wyth angele in pe erth, as dyde mary magdalene, yit

mycht he not deserve in pat lyffe so gret meyde as A man

deservith in suffring of A lytyll tribulacoun.

The threde master seyde, pat if the moder of gode and all the

halowys of hewyn preyd for a man, pei should not get so gret

meyde as he should hymselfe be meknes and suffryng of

tribulacoun.

Now asking you, as I pass, to remember that I have selected this

extract, like the others, with the further purpose of presently

contrasting the _substance_ of it with modern utterances, as well as

the _form_ which we are now mainly concerned--if we cut short this

search after artistic prose in our earlier literature, and come down

at once to the very earliest sign of a true feeling for the musical

movement of prose sentences, we are met by the fact, which I hope to

show is full of fruitful suggestions upon our present studies, that

the art of English prose is at least eight hundred years younger than

the art of English verse. For, in coming down our literature from

Caedmon--whom, in some conflict of dates, we can safely place at

670--the very first writer I find who shows a sense of the rhythmical

flow and gracious music of which our prose is so richly capable, is

Sir Thomas Malory; and his one work, _The History of King Arthur and

His Knights of the Round Table_, dates 1469-70, exactly eight hundred

years after Caedmon's poetic outburst.

Recalling our extracts just read, and remembering how ungainly and

awkward was the sport of their sentences, listen for a moment to a few

lines from Sir Thomas Malory. I think the most unmusical ear, the most

cursory attention, cannot fail to discern immediately how much more

flowing and smooth is the movement of this. I read from the fifth

chapter of King Arthur.

"And King Arthur was passing wrath for the hurt of Sir Griflet.

And by and by he commanded a man of his chamber that his best

horse and armor be without the city on to-morrow-day. Right so in

the morning he met with his man and his horse, and so mounted up

and dressed his shield, and took his spear, and bade his

chamberlain tarry there till he came again." Presently he meets

Merlin and they go on together.

"So as they went thus talking, they came to the fountain and the

rich pavilion by it. Then King Arthur was ware where a knight sat

all armed in a chair. 'Sir Knight,' said King Arthur, 'for what

cause abidest thou here? that there may no knight ride this way

but if he do joust with thee?' said the King. 'I rede thee leave

that custom,' said King Arthur.

'This custom,' said the knight, 'have I used and will use, maugre

who saith nay; and who is grieved with my custom, let him amend

it that will.'

'I will amend it,' said King Arthur, 'And I shall defend it,'

said the knight." (Observe _will_ and _shall_ here).

Here, you observe not only is there musical flow of single sentences,

but one sentence remembers another and proportions itself thereto--if

the last was long, this, is shorter or longer, and if one calls for a

certain tune, the most calls for a different tune--and we have not

only grace but variety. In this variety may be found an easy test of

artistic prose. If you try to read two hundred lines of Chaucer's

_Meliboeus_ or his _Parson's Tale_ aloud, you are presently

oppressed with a sense of bagpipishness in your own voice which

becomes intolerable; but you can read Malory's _King Arthur_ aloud

from beginning to end with a never-cloying sense of proportion and

rhythmic flow.

I wish I had time to demonstrate minutely how much of the relish of

all fine prose is due to the arrangement of the sentences in such a

way that consecutive sentences do not call for the same tune; for

example, if one sentence is sharp antithesis--you know the well-marked

speech tune of an antithesis, "do you mean _this_ book, or do you mean

_that_ book?" you must be careful in the next sentence to vary the

tune from that of the antithesis.

In the prose I read you from Chaucer and from the old manuscript, a

large part of the intolerableness is due to the fact that nearly every

sentence involves the tune of an aphorism or proverb, and the

iteration of the same pitch-successions in the voice presently becomes

wearisome. This fault--of the succession of antithetic ideas so that

the voice becomes weary of repeating the same contrariety of

accents--I can illustrate very strikingly in a letter which I happen

to remember of Queen Elizabeth, whom I have found to be a great sinner

against good prose in this particular.

Here is part of a letter from her to King Edward VI. concerning a

portrait of herself which it seems the king had desired. (Italicised

words represent antithetic accents.)

"Like as the rich man that daily gathereth _riches_ to _riches_,

and to _one_ bag of money layeth a great sort till it come to

_infinite_; so methinks your majesty, not being sufficed with so

many benefits and gentleness shewed to me afore this time, doth

now increase them in _asking_ and _desiring_ where you may _bid_

and _command_, requiring a thing not worthy the desiring for

_itself_, but _made_ worthy for your highness' _request_. My

picture I mean; in which, if the _inward_ good mind toward your

grace might as well be _declared_, as the _outward_ face and

countenance shall be _seen_, I would not have _tarried_ the

commandment but _prevented_ it, nor have been the _last_ to

_grant_, but the _first_ to _offer_ it."

And so on. You observe here into what a sing-song the voice must fall;

if you abstract the words, and say over the tune, it is continually;

tum-ty-ty tum-ty-ty, tum-ty-ty tum-ty-ty.

I wish also that it lay within my province to pass on and show the

gradual development of English prose, through Sir Thomas More, Lord

Berners, and Roger Ascham, whom we may assign to the earlier half of

the 16th Century, until it reaches a great and beautiful artistic

stage in the prose of Fuller, of Hooker, and of Jeremy Taylor.

But the fact which I propose to use as throwing light on the novel, is

simply the lateness of English prose as compared with English verse;

and we have already sufficiently seen that the rise of our prose must

be dated at least eight centuries after that of our formal poetry.

But having established the fact that English prose is so much later in

development than English verse, the point that I wish to make in this

connection now requires me to go and ask the question why is this so.

Without the time to adduce supporting facts from other literature, and

indeed wholly unable to go into elaborate proof, let me say at once

that upon examining the matter it seems probable that the whole

earlier speech of man must have been rhythmical, and that in point of

fact we began with verse which is much simpler in rhythm than any

prose; and that we departed from this regular rhythmic utterance into

more and more complex utterance just according as the advance of

complexity in language and feeling required the freer forms of prose.

To adduce a single consideration leading toward this view: reflect for

a moment that the very breath of every man necessarily divides off his

words into rhythmic periods; the average rate of a man's breath being

17 to 20 respirations in a minute. Taking the faster rate as the more

probable one in speaking, the man would, from the periodic necessity

of refilling the lungs, divide his words into twenty groups, equal in

time, every minute, and if these syllables were equally pronounced at,

say, about the rate of 200 a minute, we should have ten syllables in

each group, each ten syllables occupying (in the aggregate at least)

the same time with any other ten syllables, that is, the time of our

breath.

But this is just the rhythm of our English blank verse, in essential

type; ten syllables to the line or group; and our primitive talker is

speaking in the true English heroic rhythm. Thus it may be that our

dear friend M. Jourdain was not so far wrong after all in his

astonishment at finding that he had been speaking prose all his life.