those certainly not the least whose style is furthest removed from
ornament, being simple and natural, or vehement, or severely business-like
and practical. Who so energetic and manly as Demosthenes? Yet he is said
to have transcribed Thucydides many times over in the formation of his
style. Who so gracefully natural as Herodotus? yet his very dialect is not
his own, but chosen for the sake of the perfection of his narrative. Who
exhibits such happy negligence as our own Addison? yet artistic
fastidiousness was so notorious in his instance that the report has got
abroad, truly or not, that he was too late in his issue of an important
state-paper, from his habit of revision and recomposition. Such great
authors were working by a model which was before the eyes of their
intellect, and they were labouring to say what they had to say, in such a
way as would most exactly and suitably express it. It is not wonderful
that other authors, whose style is not simple, should be instances of a
similar literary diligence. Virgil wished his Æneid to be burned,
elaborate as is its composition, because he felt it needed more labour
still, in order to make it perfect. The historian Gibbon in the last
century is another instance in point. You must not suppose I am going to
recommend his style for imitation, any more than his principles; but I
refer to him as the example of a writer feeling the task which lay before
him, feeling that he had to bring out into words for the comprehension of
his readers a great and complicated scene, and wishing that those words
should be adequate to his undertaking. I think he wrote the first chapter
of his History three times over; it was not that he corrected or improved
the first copy; but he put his first essay, and then his second, aside—he
recast his matter, till he had hit the precise exhibition of it which he
thought demanded by his subject.
Now in all these instances, I wish you to observe, that what I have
admitted about literary workmanship differs from the doctrine which I am
opposing in this,—that the mere dealer in words cares little or nothing
for the subject which he is embellishing, but can paint and gild anything
whatever to order; whereas the artist, whom I am acknowledging, has his
great or rich visions before him, and his only aim is to bring out what he
thinks or what he feels in a way adequate to the thing spoken of, and
appropriate to the speaker.
7.
The illustration which I have been borrowing from the Fine Arts will
enable me to go a step further. I have been showing the connection of the
thought with the language in literary composition; and in doing so I have
exposed the unphilosophical notion, that the language was an extra which
could be dispensed with, and provided to order according to the demand.
But I have not yet brought out, what immediately follows from this, and
which was the second point which I had to show, viz., that to be capable
of easy translation is no test of the excellence of a composition. If I
must say what I think, I should lay down, with little hesitation, that the
truth was almost the reverse of this doctrine. Nor are many words required
to show it. Such a doctrine, as is contained in the passage of the author
whom I quoted when I began, goes upon the assumption that one language is
just like another language,—that every language has all the ideas, turns
of thought, delicacies of expression, figures, associations, abstractions,
points of view, which every other language has. Now, as far as regards
Science, it is true that all languages are pretty much alike for the
purposes of Science; but even in this respect some are more suitable than
others, which have to coin words, or to borrow them, in order to express
scientific ideas. But if languages are not all equally adapted even to
furnish symbols for those universal and eternal truths in which Science
consists, how can they reasonably be expected to be all equally rich,
equally forcible, equally musical, equally exact, equally happy in
expressing the idiosyncratic peculiarities of thought of some original and
fertile mind, who has availed himself of one of them? A great author takes
his native language, masters it, partly throws himself into it, partly
moulds and adapts it, and pours out his multitude of ideas through the
variously ramified and delicately minute channels of expression which he
has found or framed:—does it follow that this his personal presence (as it
may be called) can forthwith be transferred to every other language under
the sun? Then may we reasonably maintain that Beethoven’s _piano_ music is
not really beautiful, because it cannot be played on the hurdy-gurdy. Were
not this astonishing doctrine maintained by persons far superior to the
writer whom I have selected for animadversion, I should find it difficult
to be patient under a gratuitous extravagance. It seems that a really
great author must admit of translation, and that we have a test of his
excellence when he reads to advantage in a foreign language as well as in
his own. Then Shakespeare _is_ a genius because he can be translated into
German, and _not_ a genius because he cannot be translated into French.
Then the multiplication-table is the most gifted of all conceivable
compositions, because it loses nothing by translation, and can hardly be
said to belong to any one language whatever. Whereas I should rather have
conceived that, in proportion as ideas are novel and recondite, they would
be difficult to put into words, and that the very fact of their having
insinuated themselves into one language would diminish the chance of that
happy accident being repeated in another. In the language of savages you
can hardly express any idea or act of the intellect at all: is the tongue
of the Hottentot or Esquimaux to be made the measure of the genius of
Plato, Pindar, Tacitus, St. Jerome, Dante, or Cervantes?
Let us recur, I say, to the illustration of the Fine Arts. I suppose you
can express ideas in painting which you cannot express in sculpture; and
the more an artist is of a painter, the less he is likely to be of a
sculptor. The more he commits his genius to the methods and conditions of
his own art, the less he will be able to throw himself into the
circumstances of another. Is the genius of Fra Angelico, of Francia, or of
Raffaelle disparaged by the fact that he was able to do that in colours
which no man that ever lived, which no Angel, could achieve in wood? Each
of the Fine Arts has its own subject-matter; from the nature of the case
you can do in one what you cannot do in another; you can do in painting
what you cannot do in carving; you can do in oils what you cannot do in
fresco; you can do in marble what you cannot do in ivory; you can do in
wax what you cannot do in bronze. Then, I repeat, applying this to the
case of languages, why should not genius be able to do in Greek what it
cannot do in Latin? and why are its Greek and Latin works defective
because they will not turn into English? That genius, of which we are
speaking, did not make English; it did not make all languages, present,
past, and future; it did not make the laws of _any_ language: why is it to
be judged of by that in which it had no part, over which it has no
control?
8.
And now we are naturally brought on to our third point, which is on the
characteristics of Holy Scripture as compared with profane literature.
Hitherto we have been concerned with the doctrine of these writers, viz.,
that style is an _extra_, that it is a mere artifice, and that hence it
cannot be translated; now we come to their fact, viz., that Scripture has
no such artificial style, and that Scripture can easily be translated.
Surely their fact is as untenable as their doctrine.
Scripture easy of translation! then why have there been so few good
translators? why is it that there has been such great difficulty in
combining the two necessary qualities, fidelity to the original and purity
in the adopted vernacular? why is it that the authorized versions of the
Church are often so inferior to the original as compositions, except that
the Church is bound above all things to see that the version is
doctrinally correct, and in a difficult problem is obliged to put up with
defects in what is of secondary importance, provided she secure what is of
first? If it were so easy to transfer the beauty of the original to the
copy, she would not have been content with her received version in various
languages which could be named.
And then in the next place, Scripture not elaborate! Scripture not
ornamented in diction, and musical in cadence! Why, consider the Epistle
to the Hebrews—where is there in the classics any composition more
carefully, more artificially written? Consider the book of Job—is it not a
sacred drama, as artistic, as perfect, as any Greek tragedy of Sophocles
or Euripides? Consider the Psalter—are there no ornaments, no rhythm, no
studied cadences, no responsive members, in that divinely beautiful book?
And is it not hard to understand? are not the Prophets hard to understand?
is not St. Paul hard to understand? Who can say that these are popular
compositions? who can say that they are level at first reading with the
understandings of the multitude?
That there are portions indeed of the inspired volume more simple both in
style and in meaning, and that these are the more sacred and sublime
passages, as, for instance, parts of the Gospels, I grant at once; but
this does not militate against the doctrine I have been laying down.
Recollect, Gentlemen, my distinction when I began. I have said Literature
is one thing, and that Science is another; that Literature has to do with
ideas, and Science with realities; that Literature is of a personal
character, that Science treats of what is universal and eternal. In
proportion, then, as Scripture excludes the personal colouring of its
writers, and rises into the region of pure and mere inspiration, when it
ceases in any sense to be the writing of man, of St. Paul or St. John, of
Moses or Isaias, then it comes to belong to Science, not Literature. Then
it conveys the things of heaven, unseen verities, divine manifestations,
and them alone—not the ideas, the feelings, the aspirations, of its human
instruments, who, for all that they were inspired and infallible, did not
cease to be men. St. Paul’s epistles, then, I consider to be literature in
a real and true sense, _as_ personal, _as_ rich in reflection and emotion,
as Demosthenes or Euripides; and, without ceasing to be revelations of
objective truth, they are expressions of the subjective notwithstanding.
On the other hand, portions of the Gospels, of the book of Genesis, and
other passages of the Sacred Volume, are of the nature of Science. Such is
the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, which we read at the end of Mass. Such
is the Creed. I mean, passages such as these are the mere enunciation of
eternal things, without (so to say) the medium of any human mind
transmitting them to us. The words used have the grandeur, the majesty,
the calm, unimpassioned beauty of Science; they are in no sense
Literature, they are in no sense personal; and therefore they are easy to
apprehend, and easy to translate.
Did time admit I could show you parallel instances of what I am speaking
of in the Classics, inferior to the inspired word in proportion as the
subject-matter of the classical authors is immensely inferior to the
subjects treated of in Scripture—but parallel, inasmuch as the classical
author or speaker ceases for the moment to have to do with Literature, as
speaking of things objectively, and rises to the serene sublimity of
Science. But I should be carried too far if I began.
9.
I shall then merely sum up what I have said, and come to a conclusion.
Reverting, then, to my original question, what is the meaning of Letters,
as contained, Gentlemen, in the designation of your Faculty, I have
answered, that by Letters or Literature is meant the expression of thought
in language, where by “thought” I mean the ideas, feelings, views,
reasonings, and other operations of the human mind. And the Art of Letters
is the method by which a speaker or writer brings out in words, worthy of
his subject, and sufficient for his audience or readers, the thoughts
which impress him. Literature, then, is of a personal character; it
consists in the enunciations and teachings of those who have a right to
speak as representatives of their kind, and in whose words their brethren
find an interpretation of their own sentiments, a record of their own
experience, and a suggestion for their own judgments. A great author,
Gentlemen, is not one who merely has a _copia verborum_, whether in prose
or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid
phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and
knows how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, any great depth of
thought, or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of
human nature, or experience of human life, though these additional gifts
he may have, and the more he has of them the greater he is; but I ascribe
to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense the faculty of
Expression. He is master of the two-fold Logos, the thought and the word,
distinct, but inseparable from each other. He may, if so be, elaborate his
compositions, or he may pour out his improvisations, but in either case he
has but one aim, which he keeps steadily before him, and is conscientious
and single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth what he has
within him; and from his very earnestness it comes to pass that, whatever
be the splendour of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with
him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. Whatever be his subject,
high or low, he treats it suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet,
“nil molitur _ineptè_.” If he is an orator, then too he speaks, not only
“distinctè” and “splendidè,” but also “_aptè_.” His page is the lucid
mirror of his mind and life—
“Quo fit, ut omnis
Votivâ pateat veluti descripta tabellâ
Vita senis.”
He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he
conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to
be otiose; he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is rich; he
embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent;
he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. When his
imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament; when his heart is touched,
it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right
idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because few words
suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, and
aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses
what all feel, but all cannot say; and his sayings pass into proverbs
among his people, and his phrases become household words and idioms of
their daily speech, which is tesselated with the rich fragments of his
language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked
into the walls and pavements of modern palaces.
Such pre-eminently is Shakespeare among ourselves; such pre-eminently
Virgil among the Latins; such in their degree are all those writers who in
every nation go by the name of Classics. To particular nations they are
necessarily attached from the circumstance of the variety of tongues, and
the peculiarities of each; but so far they have a catholic and ecumenical
character, that what they express is common to the whole race of man, and
they alone are able to express it.
10.
If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any that can be
named,—if the origin of language is by many philosophers even considered
to be nothing short of divine,—if by means of words the secrets of the
heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is
carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience recorded, and
wisdom perpetuated,—if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity,
national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the
East and the West are brought into communication with each other,—if such
men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the human family,—it
will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study;
rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever
language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own
measure the ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, be
they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life,—who are
united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal
influence.
Lecture III.
English Catholic Literature.
One of the special objects which a Catholic University would promote is
that of the formation of a Catholic Literature in the English language. It
is an object, however, which must be understood before it can be suitably
prosecuted; and which will not be understood without some discussion and
investigation. First ideas on the subject must almost necessarily be
crude. The real state of the case, what is desirable, what is possible,
has to be ascertained; and then what has to be done, and what is to be
expected. We have seen in public matters, for half a year past,(36) to
what mistakes, and to what disappointments, the country has been exposed,
from not having been able distinctly to put before it what was to be aimed
at by its fleets and armies, what was practicable, what was probable, in
operations of war: and so, too, in the field of literature, we are sure of
falling into a parallel perplexity and dissatisfaction, if we start with a
vague notion of doing something or other important by means of a Catholic
University, without having the caution to examine what is feasible, and
what is unnecessary or hopeless. Accordingly, it is natural I should wish
to direct attention to this subject, even though it be too difficult to
handle in any exact or complete way, and though my attempt must be left
for others to bring into a more perfect shape, who are more fitted for the
task.
Here I shall chiefly employ myself in investigating what the object is
_not_.
§ 1.
In its relation to Religious Literature.
When a “Catholic Literature in the English tongue” is spoken of as a
_desideratum_, no reasonable person will mean by “Catholic works” much
more than the “works of Catholics.” The phrase does not mean a _religious_
literature. “Religious Literature” indeed would mean much more than “the
Literature of religious men;” it means over and above this, that the
subject-matter of the Literature is religious; but by “Catholic
Literature” is not to be understood a literature which treats exclusively
or primarily of Catholic matters, of Catholic doctrine, controversy,
history, persons, or politics; but it includes all subjects of literature
whatever, treated as a Catholic would treat them, and as he only can treat
them. Why it is important to have them treated by Catholics hardly need be
explained here, though something will be incidentally said on the point as
we proceed: meanwhile I am drawing attention to the distinction between
the two phrases in order to avoid a serious misapprehension. For it is
evident that, if by a Catholic Literature were meant nothing more or less
than a religious literature, its writers would be mainly ecclesiastics;
just as writers on Law are mainly lawyers, and writers on Medicine are
mainly physicians or surgeons. And if this be so, a Catholic Literature is
no object special to a University, unless a University is to be considered
identical with a Seminary or a Theological School.
I am not denying that a University might prove of the greatest benefit
even to our religious literature; doubtless it would, and in various ways;
still it is concerned with Theology only as one great subject of thought,
as the greatest indeed which can occupy the human mind, yet not as the
adequate or direct scope of its institution. Yet I suppose it is not
impossible for a literary layman to wince at the idea, and to shrink from
the proposal, of taking part in a scheme for the formation of a Catholic
Literature, under the apprehension that in some way or another he will be
entangling himself in a semi-clerical occupation. It is not uncommon, on
expressing an anticipation that the Professors of a Catholic University
will promote a Catholic Literature, to have to encounter a vague notion
that a lecturer or writer so employed must have something polemical about
him, must moralize or preach, must (in Protestant language) _improve the
occasion_, though his subject is not at all a religious one; in short,
that he must do something else besides fairly and boldly go right on, and
be a Catholic speaking as a Catholic spontaneously will speak, on the
Classics, or Fine Arts, or Poetry, or whatever he has taken in hand. Men
think that he cannot give a lecture on Comparative Anatomy without being
bound to digress into the Argument from Final Causes; that he cannot
recount the present geological theories without forcing them into an
interpretation _seriatim_ of the first two chapters of Genesis. Many,
indeed, seem to go further still, and actually pronounce that, since our
own University has been recommended by the Holy See, and is established by
the Hierarchy, it cannot but be engaged in teaching religion and nothing
else, and must and will have the discipline of a Seminary; which is about
as sensible and logical a view of the matter as it would be to maintain
that the Prime Minister _ipso facto_ holds an ecclesiastical office, since
he is always a Protestant; or that the members of the House of Commons
must necessarily have been occupied in clerical duties, as long as they
took an oath about Transubstantiation. Catholic Literature is not
synonymous with Theology, nor does it supersede or interfere with the work
of catechists, divines, preachers, or schoolmen.
§ 2.
In its relation to Science.
1.
And next, it must be borne in mind, that when we aim at providing a
Catholic Literature for Catholics, in place of an existing literature
which is of a marked Protestant character, we do not, strictly speaking,
include the pure sciences in our _desideratum_. Not that we should not
feel pleased and proud to find Catholics distinguish themselves in
publications on abstract or experimental philosophy, on account of the
honour it does to our religion in the eyes of the world;—not that we are
insensible to the congruity and respectability of depending in these
matters on ourselves, and not on others, at least as regards our
text-books;—not that we do not confidently anticipate that Catholics of
these countries will in time to come be able to point to authorities and
discoverers in science of their own, equal to those of Protestant England,
Germany, or Sweden;—but because, as regards mathematics, chemistry,
astronomy, and similar subjects, one man will not, on the score of his
religion, treat of them better than another, and because the works of even
an unbeliever or idolator, while he kept within the strict range of such
studies, might be safely admitted into Catholic lecture-rooms, and put
without scruple into the hands of Catholic youths. There is no crying
demand, no imperative necessity, for our acquisition of a Catholic Euclid
or a Catholic Newton. The object of all science is truth;—the pure
sciences proceed to their enunciations from principles which the intellect
discerns by a natural light, and by a process recognized by natural
reason; and the experimental sciences investigate facts by methods of
analysis or by ingenious expedients, ultimately resolvable into
instruments of thought equally native to the human mind. If then we may
assume that there is an objective truth, and that the constitution of the
human mind is in correspondence with it, and acts truly when it acts
according to its own laws; if we may assume that God made us, and that
what He made is good, and that no action from and according to nature can
in itself be evil; it will follow that, so long as it is man who is the
geometrician, or natural philosopher, or mechanic, or critic, no matter
what man he be, Hindoo, Mahometan, or infidel, his conclusions within his
own science, according to the laws of that science, are unquestionable,
and not to be suspected by Catholics, unless Catholics may legitimately be
jealous of fact and truth, of divine principles and divine creations.
I have been speaking of the scientific treatises or investigations of
those who are not Catholics, to which the subject of Literature leads me;
but I might even go on to speak of them in their persons as well as in
their books. Were it not for the scandal which they would create; were it
not for the example they would set; were it not for the certain tendency
of the human mind involuntarily to outleap the strict boundaries of an
abstract science, and to teach it upon extraneous principles, to embody it
in concrete examples, and to carry it on to practical conclusions; above
all, were it not for the indirect influence, and living energetic
presence, and collateral duties, which accompany a Professor in a great
school of learning, I do not see (abstracting from him, I repeat, in
hypothesis, what never could possibly be abstracted from him in fact), why
the chair of Astronomy in a Catholic University should not be filled by a
La Place, or that of Physics by a Humboldt. Whatever they might wish to
say, still, while they kept to their own science, they would be unable,
like the heathen Prophet in Scripture, to “go beyond the word of the Lord,
to utter any thing of their own head.”
2.