Iconoclasm in Nineteenth Century Literature.
That history repeats itself is an apothegm which has descended to us
from a dateless antiquity. It has been made to serve so often as to
become trite; and yet its use is a necessity, inasmuch as it embodies a
verity, which to ignore were ignorance and folly linked together; and
as we stand on our eminence and scan the way humanity has worn with its
multitudinous feet, as the events of the world pass in review before
us, some so closely resemble others as that the one seems the echo of
the other; and there appears reason for that fascinating generalization
of the ancient philosopher, that the epochs and events of the physical
realm and history were a fixed and limited quantity, which, revolving
in a vast cycle, would bring from time to time the reiteration of the
facts or doings of an ancient era. There was no new thing thinkable,
only a reintroduction of the old. To illustrate this fact in brief, we
have but to note the history of philosophy. You read the names of
those who figure as founders of philosophical systems, and those
systems seem many. Read the systems as founded, and you find an
old-time philosophy, rejuvenated with some little addition of cap or
bell better to adapt it to the modern time. The much-lauded Hegelian
philosophy is the system of Democritus, with the addition of a little
more absurdity in the assertion of the identity of contradictories.
The multitudinous philosophies may thus be reduced to a single
quaternion, and the reputed inaugurator of a new philosophy is like to
be a charlatan. So history seems but a plagiarist.
There is an epoch in ecclesiastical history known as the War of the
Iconoclast; but that was only an embodiment of what had transpired
before, and what has occurred often since. Iconoclasm is a bias of
humanity. It grows out of the constitution of man. He is by heredity
a breaker of images. If this view be not fictitious, we must not be
surprised if there are developments of this spirit in our era or any
era. It is a perennial reappearance. Whether it come in religion,
statecraft, economic science, or literature, can be of little moment.
The fact is the matter of paramount importance. Christianity was the
iconoclast which broke in pieces the images of decrepit polytheism, and
hewed out a way where progress might march to fulfill her splendid
destiny. Luther was the iconoclast whose giant strokes demolished the
castle doors of Romish superstition, and broke to fragments the images
of Mariolatry. The practical induction of Bacon, Earl of Verulam, was
the death-warrant of the fruitless deductive philosophy which had
culminated in the vagaries of Scholasticism. The Declaration of
Independence and the Federation of the States were the iconoclast which
slew the phantom of the divine necessity of kings. It is thus evident
that iconoclasm abounds, and there will be no marvel if it have a place
in literature.
Innovation is a practical synonym of iconoclasm; for an innovation is
putting the new in the place of the old. In ancient literature and
literatures, prose was an innovation as regards poetry; and later,
rhyme was an innovation in the domain of poesy, and an innovation of
such a sort that against it the master-poet, Milton, lifted up his
voice in solemn protest, and the solitary epic in English literature is
a perpetual protestation against the custom. Shakespeare was an
innovator of the laws of the drama when he violated unities of time and
place; and in a sense the drama was an innovation on narrative poetry,
and the novel an iconoclast in its attitude to the drama.
The iconoclasm in literature in our time is objective rather than
subjective; and attention to the spirit of the age will give a
practical comprehension of this iconoclastic spirit.
It must be observed that the literature of an age is largely the
product of that age. Times create literatures. The literature of any
period, in an emphatic sense, will be directly and easily traceable to
something in that age for its peculiarity.
The Iliad and Odyssey were necessities of the age which gave them
birth. In so far as a literature is purely human, in so far will it be
stamped with the seal of the times, customs, and thoughts in the midst
of which it bloomed into beauty. In early Greek times an epic without
its gods and demigods, without resounding battle-shout and din of
mighty conflict, had been an anachronism for which there could have
been offered no apology. The splendid era of Pericles demanded the
tragedy, and such a tragedy as only Aeschylus and Sophocles could
originate; while the foibles of an earlier era made the comedy
imperative. On like principles, the writings of Lucretius are not
enigmatical, but easy of explanation.
The age which made possible the revels of Kenilworth, made possible
also the splendor, like that of setting suns, which characterizes the
"Faerie Queen." And the prowess, the achievement, the discovery, the
colonization, the high tide of life, which ran like lightning through
the Nation's arteries, made the drama, not only a possibility, but a
fact. It was the embodiment of the mighty activities of a mighty age.
The tragedy, to use the splendid figure of Milton, "rose like an
exhalation." A solitary lifetime brought it from sunrise to high noon;
and from that hour what could the sun do but sink?
Our century is one of general iconoclasm. It is the Ishmael among the
ages. Its hand is against every man. It has reversed the old-time
order, that what was believed by our fathers and received by them
should be received by us. It takes no truth second-hand. It goes to
sources. Its motto is, "I came, I saw, I investigated." It found many
things believed of old, which were founded on the sand. Physical
science discovered the vast domain of physical law, and that science
began to legislate for the universe, forgetting sometimes that it was
not a law enactor, but a law discoverer. Investigation found that many
ideas and systems of ideas, supposed philosophies and sciences, were
false and unsubstantial as the "baseless fabric of a vision." Things
received as truths from time immemorial were shown to be untrue. The
tendency of the human intellect is to generalize; and finding many
previously received systems and facts to be without evidence sufficient
to substantiate them, there arose the unwilled generalization that all
these systems are likewise false. I do not say that man has formulated
this thought into speech, but that the trend of the intellect in our
century has been such as is explicable only on this theory. In many
instances the motto of investigation in the domain of history,
criticism, and science has been, "Believe all things false until you
prove them true." If such is the spirit of the age, and if literature
be colored with the light of the century which produces it, shall we
wonder if the nineteenth-century literature is distinctively an
iconoclastic one?
All about us is the battle of the books. War rages along the entire
line. No work of antiquity is free from this belligerency. Mars has
the field. The investigation has been crucial. In so far as it has
been learning coupled with wisdom, this is well. Truth never flinches
before the charge of a wise investigation. But no truth can stand as
such before a system of inquiry the canons of which are empirical,
fallacious, and false. The task of demolition is a fascinating one.
It possesses a charm impossible to explain, and impossible to fail to
perceive. When one has a taste, it is much as with the tiger which has
tasted blood. Such procedure seems to open vistas before men. Here
are open doors, from behind which seems to come a voice crying, "Enter."
It will be chronologically accurate if we shall first notice the
iconoclastic spirit as exemplified in the attack on the unity of the
Iliad; and I class this with the nineteenth-century doings because it
belongs to the spirit of that century, and was almost within its
borders. The Iliad had been the glory of international literature for
centuries. Greece held it in veneration from the beginning of its
authentic history; and that work had blazed with a solar luster out of
the Stygian darkness of prehistoric times. The book had made an epoch
in literature. The cyclic poets, who, for centuries after the
appearance of the Iliad and Odyssey, were the only Greek bards, were
confessedly disciples of one Homer, the reputed author of the poems
which embody the fact of the war of the races. The judgment of
antiquity was: (_a_) These two works were ascribed to a single author.
(_b_) This author was the master at whose wave of wand these revels had
begun. In other words, Homer wrote the books which bear his name.
However much they might discuss the location of the half-fabled Ilium,
or marvel over the battles fought "far on the ringing plains of windy
Troy," it was not doubted that a sublime and solitary bard conceived
and wrought the wondrous work ascribed to him. It is not shown that
this question was even mooted in the former times. Cities contended
for the honor of having given this man birth. He was as much a verity
as Pericles. Such was the status of the case when our century beheld
it first. Bentley had hinted at the probability or possibility of
separate authorship; but it remained for German criticism, in the
person of Wolf, to make the onslaught on the time-honored belief. The
attack was as impetuous as the charge of the Greeks across the plain of
the Scamander. It astonished the world. It abashed scholarship.
Grave philosophers and gifted poets were carried away in the rush of
the attack. Goethe gave and Schiller withheld allegiance. The Atomist
and Separatist for a time held the field. Wolf showed, by reasoning
which he deemed irrefutable, that the Iliad could not have been
composed by a single man. Writing did not exist. The story had many
repetitions, contradictions, and inferiorities. Later, the
philological argument was used against it. These statements summarize
the Wolfian theory. The contrariety in dialect form was thought to be
an invulnerable argument against the unity of authorship; and for a
time the epic of the ancient world was declared to be the work of many
hands, the ballads sung by rhapsodists of many names; and the Iliad,
with its astonishing display of genius, was declared to be authorless.
Less than a century has elapsed since the theory was propounded. The
subject has received a wealth of attention and study unknown before.
Discoveries have been made in philology which have practically raised
it to the rank of a science; and to-day the atomistic theory of Wolf is
not received. Grote and Mahaffy have theories which vary markedly from
the great original; and the result of a century of investigation is,
that scholars do now generally believe that some one author, or two at
most, did give shape to the great epic of the Greek people. Wolf,
Lachmann, and Bert have shown the follies of men of genius when
pursuing a line of evidence to prove a favorite theory. Their
assumptions are often absurd, and their conclusions, once admitting
their premises, are a logical necessity. The spirit of iconoclasm
rested, not with the authority of the book, but assailed the geographic
and topographical features. Troy was declared a dream. The Trojan War
had never been. But Schliemann has proven to virtual demonstration the
existence of, not only a Troy, but the Troy about which Hector and
Achilles fought.
This iconoclasm has nowhere more fully displayed itself than in its
attitude toward the Bible. That book comes properly under the head of
literature, for the reason that the general line of attack during this
century has been made from a literary standpoint. Of course, there has
always been, whether easily discoverable or not, an undertone of
skepticism of the rank sort. Oftentimes the battle has been avowedly
against the book as a professed inspiration. Strauss and Renan made no
cloak for their deed. But in many instances the method of procedure
has been to study, as under a calcium light, the literary style, the
linguistic peculiarities, the whole work as a literary composition. In
this regard the method of criticism was such as was used in dissecting
Homer's works. Each author laid down canons of criticism by which to
measure the book in question. He cut the work into fragments. He
stated such and such parts were the work of an early writer, while
certain others were the additions of men unknown, far removed in time
and place. For the most part these assumptions were wholly arbitrary,
as may be seen by reading the authors on the various books. The thing
which is the most observable is their lack of agreement, while the
method used is the dogmatic. They all agree that the book is not of
the date nor authorship usually assigned to it; but what the date and
who the author, is very seldom agreed between any two. The criticism
is largely of the _ipse dixit_ sort, and the grounds of attack are,
though rationalistic, seldom rationally taken. In the vaunted name of
reason, the most monstrous absurdities are perpetrated. The line of
argument professed to be used is inductive; but in reality the
inductive element in this criticism stands second, and the deductive
element has the chief seat in the synagogue. The assumption in the
case, the _a priori, sine qua non_ ("without which nothing")--these are
the all-important elements in the discussion. It is the Homeric
argument restated. Each man professes to find his hypothesis in the
structure and language of the book. In fact, the author usually began
with his hypothesis, and seeks to find proofs for the staying his
assumptions up. The Scriptures are open to investigation. They
challenge it. No one need offer an objection to the most scrutinizing
inquiry. The book is here, and must stand upon its merits. Its high
claims need not deter scholarship from its investigation. Only, to use
the language of Bishop Butler in regard to another matter, "Let reason
be kept to." If we are to be regaled with flights of imagination, let
them be thus denominated; but let men not profess to be following the
leadership of scholarship and scientific candor, when they are in
reality dealing in imagination and scientific dogmatism, and appealing
to philology to give them much needed support. After these years of
attack from a literary standpoint, the books of the Bible are less
affected than the Iliad. The Atomist has signally failed to make a
single case. Iconoclasm has performed its task as best it could, and
finds its labor lost. The criticism of to-day is, even in Germany,
professedly in favor of the integrity of the Scripture.
But I pass to another part of the literary field. From the Bible to
Shakespeare. This, at first thought, may seem a long journey. There
appears but little congruity between the two. The only needed
connection is the similarity of attack. The same spirit has whetted
its sword against each; but the lack of similarity is more apparent
than real. The Bible is God's exhibit of human nature and its relation
to the Divine personality and plans. Shakespeare is man's profoundest
exhibit of man in his relation to present and future. The fields are
the same. They differ in extent. The profoundness of Shakespeare
seems a shoreward shallow when viewed alongside the Bible. The Bible
and Shakespeare have a further similarity, not one of character, but of
results.
Each has been a potential factor in the stability of the English
language. They each present the noble possibilities of the speech of
the Anglo-Saxon. Each has left its indelible impress on speech and
literature. Kossuth's mastery of English is by him attributed to the
Bible, Shakespeare, and Webster's Dictionary. These were his sole
masters, and sufficed to give him a command of language which ranks him
among the princes of our English speech. That the authorship of the
Iliad and the books of the Bible should be attacked is cause for little
surprise. They were works of antiquity. It is an observable tendency
of the mind to doubt a thing far removed in time. We lose sight of
evidence. We dispense with the leadership of reason, and let
inclination and imagination guide. This is a bias which antiquity must
meet and, if it may, master. If the Iliad and the Bible were
vulnerable in this regard, Shakespeare was not. He was a modern. His
thought is neither ancient nor mediaeval. He has the characteristics
of modern life, begotten of the hot-blooded era in which he lived. The
modern Shakespeare is a target for the iconoclast. It seems but a
stone's-cast from our time to the reign of Elizabeth and the day of the
English drama. The time was one of action in every department of
society. Conquest, colonization, literature, were beginning to render
the Saxon name illustrious. It was the epoch of chivalry and
chivalrous procedure, such as to create a species of literature and
bring it to a perfection which half-wrested the scepter of supremacy
from the hand of the Attic tragedy. In this literature there is a name
which dwarfs all others. Otway, Ford, Massinger, Webster, Ben Jonson,
Green, and Marlowe (some of these men of surprising genius) must take a
lower place, for the master of revels is come. William Shakespeare is
here. His life is not lengthily but plainly writ. He might have said,
as did Tennyson's Ulysses, "I am become a name." It would seem that a
man at such a time, with such a reputation, would have naught to fear
from iconoclasm, however fierce. He, in a sense, was known as Raleigh
or Essex were not. He has put himself into human history, and made the
world his debtor. The existence of a man whose personality was
admitted by his contemporaries must be believed in. Stories concerning
him haunted the byways of London and literature. Ben Jonson paid him a
tardy tribute. Men received him as they received Chaucer. But the
spirit of the age finds him vulnerable. Delia Bacon, Smith, O'Connor,
Holmes, and Donnelly are leaders who deny Shakespeare's identity. I
may note Donnelly, an American gentleman of research and painstaking
which would be creditable to a German scholar. He must be allowed to
be a man of ingenuity. His method of discovering that Shakespeare was
not himself has all the flavor of an invention. It glitters, not with
generalities, but ingenuities. A sample page of his folio, covered
with hieroglyphics which mark the progress of finding the cipher which
he thinks the plays contain--such sample page is certainly a marvel,
even to the generation which has read with avidity "Robert Elsmere" and
"Looking Backward." A peculiarity in it all is, that his explanation
makes marvelous doubly so. To believe that a man should have hidden
his authorship of such works as the plays of Shakespeare makes a draft
on the credulity of men too great to be borne. Why Junius should not
have revealed himself is not difficult to discover. His life was at
stake. But why the author of "The Tempest," or "King Lear," or "The
Merchant of Venice," should have concealed his personality so carefully
that three centuries have elapsed before men could discover it--this is
an enigma no man can solve. In general, it is objected by
non-believers in Shakespeare that it is impossible to conceive of a man
whose rearing possessed so few advantages as did that of Shakespeare,
having written the plays attributed to him. This is really the strong
point in the whole discussion. All other arguments are subordinate.
It is admitted that it does seem impossible for the poacher and wild
country lad to become the poet pre-eminent in English literature. But
this question is not to be decided by _a priori_ reasoning. The genius
displayed in the dramatic works under consideration is little less than
miraculous. This all concede. Now, history has shown that to genius
there is a sense in which "all things are possible." Genius can cross
the Alps, can conquer Europe, can dumfound the world. Genius knows no
rules. Once allow genius, and the problem is solved. It is conceded
that for a common man, or even for one of exceptional ability, to have
acquired without help the learning which characterizes the works of
Shakespeare is impossible. But the man who wrote Hamlet was no
mediocre, be he Bacon or Shakespeare. He was a superlative genius.
This fact admitted, we need have no difficulty with the problem. It
becomes a question a child can answer. The "myriad-minded Shakespeare"
could do what to an ordinary, or even extraordinary, man would be an
absolute impossibility. One critic discovers Shakespeare to be a
musician; another, a classical scholar; and so he has been claimed in
almost every field. He was not all. So critics confound us. They
also confound themselves. The genius which could write the plays could
master all these, though he squandered his youth. Let the history of
genius guide from this labyrinth. Was not Caesar orator, general,
historian? Was not Napoleon the same? Does not genius destroy all
demonstrations with reference to itself? Do not Pascal, Euler, Da
Vinci, and Angelo confound us? How dare we dogmatize as to the doings
of genius? Read Shakespeare, and find you can not discover the
characteristic of the man. You can not in his writings read his
interior life. David Copperfield may display Dickens, and Byron's
poems may give us the author's autobiography, and Shelley's writings
may give a photograph of his intellectual self; but Shakespeare's plays
give no clew to his character. He is all. He grovels in Falstaff; he
towers in Prospero. He smites all strings that have music in them. He
baffles us like a spirit, hiding himself in darkness. To attribute the
authorship of the plays to Bacon is, to my thought, not to rid us of
our difficulty, but rather to increase difficulty. Bacon we know. He
was jurist, statesman, natural philosopher. Add to these the
possibility of his having written Shakespeare, and the magnificence of
his achievement would dwarf that of Shakespeare. Space forbids
dwelling on this longer, though the theme is fascinating to any lover
of letters. The thought in this paper (and that goes without the
saying) is, not to discuss thoroughly these various phases of literary
iconoclasm, but rather to call attention to them and to co-ordinate
them.
I desire to show that these phases of criticism are not difficult of
explanation. These are natural, and are the outgrowth of an
image-making age. Study the age, understand it thoroughly, and the
literature of that period can hardly be a puzzling question. The
nineteenth century will stand in history as the chiefest iconoclast
which has arisen in the world's first six thousand years. And its
science, statecraft, art, and literature will be looked upon as
segments of the one circle, and that circle the century.