Christian or heathen, we find the state of literature there as little
satisfactory as it is in these islands; so that, whatever are our
difficulties here, they are not worse than those of Catholics all over the
world. I would not indeed say a word to extenuate the calamity, under
which we lie, of having a literature formed in Protestantism; still, other
literatures have disadvantages of their own; and, though in such matters
comparisons are impossible, I doubt whether we should be better pleased if
our English Classics were tainted with licentiousness, or defaced by
infidelity or scepticism. I conceive we should not much mend matters if we
were to exchange literatures with the French, Italians, or Germans. About
Germany, however, I will not speak; as to France, it has great and
religious authors; its classical drama, even in comedy, compared with that
of other literatures, is singularly unexceptionable; but who is there that
holds a place among its writers so historical and important, who is so
copious, so versatile, so brilliant, as that Voltaire who is an open
scoffer at every thing sacred, venerable, or high-minded? Nor can
Rousseau, though he has not the pretensions of Voltaire, be excluded from
the classical writers of France. Again, the gifted Pascal, in the work on
which his literary fame is mainly founded, does not approve himself to a
Catholic judgment; and Descartes, the first of French philosophers, was
too independent in his inquiries to be always correct in his conclusions.
The witty Rabelais is said, by a recent critic,(38) to show covertly in
his former publications, and openly in his latter, his “dislike to the
Church of Rome.” La Fontaine was with difficulty brought, on his
death-bed, to make public satisfaction for the scandal which he had done
to religion by his immoral _Contes_, though at length he threw into the
fire a piece which he had just finished for the stage. Montaigne, whose
Essays “make an epoch in literature,” by “their influence upon the tastes
and opinions of Europe;” whose “school embraces a large proportion of
French and English literature;” and of whose “brightness and felicity of
genius there can be but one opinion,” is disgraced, as the same writer
tells us, by “a sceptical bias and great indifference of temperament;” and
“has led the way” as an habitual offender, “to the indecency too
characteristic of French literature.”
Nor does Italy present a more encouraging picture. Ariosto, one of the few
names, ancient or modern, who is allowed on all hands to occupy the first
rank of Literature, is, I suppose, rightly arraigned by the author I have
above quoted, of “coarse sensuality.” Pulci, “by his sceptical
insinuations, seems clearly to display an intention of exposing religion
to contempt.” Boccaccio, the first of Italian prose-writers, had in his
old age touchingly to lament the corrupting tendency of his popular
compositions; and Bellarmine has to vindicate him, Dante, and Petrarch,
from the charge of virulent abuse of the Holy See. Dante certainly does
not scruple to place in his _Inferno_ a Pope, whom the Church has since
canonized, and his work on _Monarchia_ is on the Index. Another great
Florentine, Macchiavel, is on the Index also; and Giannone, as great in
political history at Naples as Macchiavel at Florence, is notorious for
his disaffection to the interests of the Roman Pontiff.
These are but specimens of the general character of secular literature,
whatever be the people to whom it belongs. One literature may be better
than another, but bad will be the best, when weighed in the balance of
truth and morality. It cannot be otherwise; human nature is in all ages
and all countries the same; and its literature, therefore, will ever and
everywhere be one and the same also. Man’s work will savour of man; in his
elements and powers excellent and admirable, but prone to disorder and
excess, to error and to sin. Such too will be his literature; it will have
the beauty and the fierceness, the sweetness and the rankness, of the
natural man, and, with all its richness and greatness, will necessarily
offend the senses of those who, in the Apostle’s words, are really
“exercised to discern between good and evil.” “It is said of the holy
Sturme,” says an Oxford writer, “that, in passing a horde of unconverted
Germans, as they were bathing and gambolling in the stream, he was so
overpowered by the intolerable scent which arose from them that he nearly
fainted away.” National Literature is, in a parallel way, the untutored
movements of the reason, imagination, passions, and affections of the
natural man, the leapings and the friskings, the plungings and the
snortings, the sportings and the buffoonings, the clumsy play and the
aimless toil, of the noble, lawless savage of God’s intellectual creation.
It is well that we should clearly apprehend a truth so simple and
elementary as this, and not expect from the nature of man, or the
literature of the world, what they never held out to us. Certainly, I did
not know that the world was to be regarded as favourable to Christian
faith or practice, or that it would be breaking any engagement with us, if
it took a line divergent from our own. I have never fancied that we should
have reasonable ground for surprise or complaint, though man’s intellect
_puris naturalibus_ did prefer, of the two, liberty to truth, or though
his heart cherished a leaning towards licence of thought and speech in
comparison with restraint.
5.
2. If we do but resign ourselves to facts, we shall soon be led on to the
second reflection which I have promised—viz., that, not only are things
not better abroad, but they might be worse at home. We have, it is true, a
Protestant literature; but then it is neither atheistical nor immoral;
and, in the case of at least half a dozen of its highest and most
influential departments, and of the most popular of its authors, it comes
to us with very considerable alleviations. For instance, there surely is a
call on us for thankfulness that the most illustrious amongst English
writers has so little of a Protestant about him that Catholics have been
able, without extravagance, to claim him as their own, and that enemies to
our creed have allowed that he is only not a Catholic, because, and as far
as, his times forbade it. It is an additional satisfaction to be able to
boast that he offends in neither of those two respects, which reflect so
seriously upon the reputation of great authors abroad. Whatever passages
may be gleaned from his dramas disrespectful to ecclesiastical authority,
still these are but passages; on the other hand, there is in Shakespeare
neither contempt of religion nor scepticism, and he upholds the broad laws
of moral and divine truth with the consistency and severity of an
Æschylus, Sophocles, or Pindar. There is no mistaking in his works on
which side lies the right; Satan is not made a hero, nor Cain a victim,
but pride is pride, and vice is vice, and, whatever indulgence he may
allow himself in light thoughts or unseemly words, yet his admiration is
reserved for sanctity and truth. From the second chief fault of
Literature, as indeed my last words imply, he is not so free; but, often
as he may offend against modesty, he is clear of a worse charge,
sensuality, and hardly a passage can be instanced in all that he has
written to seduce the imagination or to excite the passions.
A rival to Shakespeare, if not in genius, at least in copiousness and
variety, is found in Pope; and _he_ was actually a Catholic, though
personally an unsatisfactory one. His freedom indeed from Protestantism is
but a poor compensation for a false theory of religion in one of his
poems; but, taking his works as a whole, we may surely acquit them of
being dangerous to the reader, whether on the score of morals or of faith.
Again, the special title of moralist in English Literature is accorded by
the public voice to Johnson, whose bias towards Catholicity is well known.
If we were to ask for a report of our philosophers, the investigation
would not be so agreeable; for we have three of evil, and one of
unsatisfactory repute. Locke is scarcely an honour to us in the standard
of truth, grave and manly as he is; and Hobbes, Hume, and Bentham, in
spite of their abilities, are simply a disgrace. Yet, even in this
department, we find some compensation in the names of Clarke, Berkeley,
Butler, and Reid, and in a name more famous than them all. Bacon was too
intellectually great to hate or to contemn the Catholic faith; and he
deserves by his writings to be called the most orthodox of Protestant
philosophers.
§ 4.
In its relation to the Literature of the Day.
1.
The past cannot be undone. That our English Classical Literature is not
Catholic is a plain fact which we cannot deny, to which we must reconcile
ourselves, as best we may, and which, as I have shown above, has after all
its compensations. When, then, I speak of the desirableness of forming a
Catholic Literature, I am contemplating no such vain enterprise as that of
reversing history; no, nor of redeeming the past by the future. I have no
dream of Catholic Classics as still reserved for the English language. In
truth, classical authors not only are national, but belong to a particular
age of a nation’s life; and I should not wonder if, as regards ourselves,
that age is passing away. Moreover, they perform a particular office
towards its language, which is not likely to be called for beyond a
definite time. And further, though analogies or parallels cannot be taken
to decide a question of this nature, such is the fact, that the series of
our classical writers has already extended through a longer period than
was granted to the Classical Literature either of Greece or of Rome; and
thus the English language also may have a long course of literature still
to come through many centuries, without that Literature being classical.
Latin, for instance, was a living language for many hundred years after
the date of the writers who brought it to its perfection; and then it
continued for a second long period to be the medium of European
correspondence. Greek was a living language to a date not very far short
of that of the taking of Constantinople, ten centuries after the date of
St. Basil, and seventeen hundred years after the period commonly called
classical. And thus, as the year has its spring and summer, so even for
those celebrated languages there was but a season of splendour, and,
compared with the whole course of their duration, but a brief season.
Since, then, English has had its great writers for a term of about three
hundred years,—as long, that is, as the period from Sappho to Demosthenes,
or from Pisistratus to Arcesilas, or from Æschylus and Pindar to
Carneades, or from Ennius to Pliny,—we should have no right to be
disappointed if the classical period be close upon its termination.
By the Classics of a national Literature I mean those authors who have the
foremost place in exemplifying the powers and conducting the development
of its language. The language of a nation is at first rude and clumsy; and
it demands a succession of skilful artists to make it malleable and
ductile, and to work it up to its proper perfection. It improves by use,
but it is not every one who can use it while as yet it is unformed. To do
this is an effort of genius; and so men of a peculiar talent arise, one
after another, according to the circumstances of the times, and accomplish
it. One gives it flexibility, that is, shows how it can be used without
difficulty to express adequately a variety of thoughts and feelings in
their nicety or intricacy; another makes it perspicuous or forcible; a
third adds to its vocabulary; and a fourth gives it grace and harmony. The
style of each of such eminent masters becomes henceforth in some sort a
property of the language itself; words, phrases, collocations, and
structure, which hitherto did not exist, gradually passing into the
conversation and the composition of the educated classes.
2.
Now I will attempt to show how this process of improvement is effected,
and what is its limit. I conceive then that these gifted writers act upon
the spoken and written language by means of the particular schools which
form about them respectively. Their style, using the word in a large
sense, forcibly arrests the reader, and draws him on to imitate it, by
virtue of what is excellent in it, in spite of such defects as, in common
with all human works, it may contain. I suppose all of us will recognize
this fascination. For myself when I was fourteen or fifteen, I imitated
Addison; when I was seventeen, I wrote in the style of Johnson; about the
same time I fell in with the twelfth volume of Gibbon, and my ears rang
with the cadence of his sentences, and I dreamed of it for a night or two.
Then I began to make an analysis of Thucydides in Gibbon’s style. In like
manner, most Oxford undergraduates, forty years ago, when they would write
poetry, adopted the versification of Pope Darwin, and the Pleasures of
Hope, which had been made popular by Heber and Milman. The literary
schools, indeed, which I am speaking of, as resulting from the attractions
of some original, or at least novel artist, consist for the most part of
mannerists, none of whom rise much above mediocrity; but they are not the
less serviceable as channels, by means of which the achievements of genius
may be incorporated into the language itself, or become the common
property of the nation. Henceforth, the most ordinary composer, the very
student in the lecture-room, is able to write with a precision, a grace,
or a copiousness, as the case may be unknown before the date of the
authors whom he imitates, and he wonders at, if he does not rather pride
himself on, his
novas frondes, et non sua poma.
If there is any one who illustrates this remark, it is Gibbon; I seem to
trace his vigorous condensation and peculiar rhythm at every turn in the
literature of the present day. Pope, again, is said to have tuned our
versification. Since his time, any one, who has an ear and turn for
poetry, can with little pains throw off a copy of verses equal or superior
to the poet’s own, and with far less of study and patient correction than
would have been demanded of the poet himself for their production. Compare
the choruses of the Samson Agonistes with any stanza taken at random in
Thalaba: how much had the language gained in the interval between them!
Without denying the high merits of Southey’s beautiful romance, we surely
shall not be wrong in saying, that in its unembarrassed eloquent flow, it
is the language of the nineteenth century that speaks, as much as the
author himself.
I will give an instance of what I mean: let us take the beginning of the
first chorus in the Samson:—
Just are the ways of God.
And justifiable to men;
Unless there be who think not God at all;
If any be, they walk obscure,
For of such doctrine never was there school,
But the heart of the fool,
And no man therein doctor but himself.
But men there be, who doubt His ways not just,
As to His own edicts found contradicting,
Then give the reins to wandering thought,
Regardless of His glory’s diminution;
Till, by their own perplexities involved,
They ravel more, still less resolved,
But never find self-satisfying solution.
And now take the opening stanza of Thalaba:—
How beautiful is night
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven.
In full-orb’d glory yonder Moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads,
Like the round ocean girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!
Does not Southey show to advantage here? yet the voice of the world
proclaims Milton pre-eminently a poet; and no one can affect a doubt of
the delicacy and exactness of his ear. Yet, much as he did for the
language in verse and in prose, he left much for other artists to do after
him, which they have successfully accomplished. We see the fruit of the
literary labours of Pope, Thomson, Gray, Goldsmith, and other poets of the
eighteenth century, in the musical eloquence of Southey.
3.
So much for the process; now for its termination. I think it is brought
about in some such way as the following:—
The influence of a great classic upon the nation which he represents is
twofold; on the one hand he advances his native language towards its
perfection; but on the other hand he discourages in some measure any
advance beyond his own. Thus, in the parallel case of science, it is
commonly said on the continent, that the very marvellousness of Newton’s
powers was the bane of English mathematics: inasmuch as those who
succeeded him were content with his discoveries, bigoted to his methods of
investigation, and averse to those new instruments which have carried on
the French to such brilliant and successful results. In Literature, also,
there is something oppressive in the authority of a great writer, and
something of tyranny in the use to which his admirers put his name. The
school which he forms would fain monopolize the language, draws up canons
of criticism from his writings, and is intolerant of innovation. Those who
come under its influence are dissuaded or deterred from striking out a
path of their own. Thus Virgil’s transcendent excellence fixed the
character of the hexameter in subsequent poetry, and took away the
chances, if not of improvement, at least of variety. Even Juvenal has much
of Virgil in the structure of his verse. I have known those who prefer the
rhythm of Catullus.
However, so summary a result is not of necessary occurrence. The splendour
of an author may excite a generous emulation, or the tyrannous formalism
of his followers a re-action; and thus other authors and other schools
arise. We read of Thucydides, on hearing Herodotus read his history at
Olympia, being incited to attempt a similar work, though of an entirely
different and of an original structure. Gibbon, in like manner, writing of
Hume and Robertson, says: “The perfect composition, the nervous language,
the well-turned periods of Dr. Robertson, inflamed me to the ambitious
hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps; the calm philosophy, the
careless inimitable beauties of his friend and rival, often forced me to
close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair.”(39)
As to re-actions, I suppose there has been something of the kind against
the supremacy of Pope, since the time that his successors, Campbell
especially, have developed his peculiarities and even defects into
extravagance. Crabbe, for instance, turned back to a versification having
much more of Dryden in it; and Byron, in spite of his high opinion of
Pope, threw into his lines the rhythm of blank verse. Still, on the whole,
the influence of a Classic acts in the way of discouraging any thing new,
rather than in that of exciting rivalry or provoking re-action.
And another consideration is to be taken into account. When a language has
been cultivated in any particular department of thought, and so far as it
has been generally perfected, an existing want has been supplied, and
there is no need for further workmen. In its earlier times, while it is
yet unformed, to write in it at all is almost a work of genius. It is like
crossing a country before roads are made communicating between place and
place. The authors of that age deserve to be Classics, both because of
what they do and because they can do it. It requires the courage or the
force of great talent to compose in the language at all; and the
composition, when effected, makes a permanent impression on it. In those
early times, too, the licence of speech unfettered by precedents, the
novelty of the work, the state of society, and the absence of criticism,
enable an author to write with spirit and freshness. But, as centuries
pass on, this stimulus is taken away; the language by this time has become
manageable for its various purposes, and is ready at command. Ideas have
found their corresponding expressions; and one word will often convey what
once required half a dozen. Roots have been expanded, derivations
multiplied, terms invented or adopted. A variety of phrases has been
provided, which form a sort of compound words. Separate professions,
pursuits, and provinces of literature have gained their conventional
terminology. There is an historical, political, social, commercial style.
The ear of the nation has become accustomed to useful expressions or
combinations of words, which otherwise would sound harsh. Strange
metaphors have been naturalized in the ordinary prose, yet cannot be taken
as precedents for a similar liberty. Criticism has become an art, and
exercises a continual and jealous watch over the free genius of new
writers. It is difficult for them to be original in the use of their
mother tongue without being singular.
Thus the language has become in a great measure stereotype; as in the case
of the human frame, it has expanded to the loss of its elasticity, and can
expand no more. Then the general style of educated men, formed by the
accumulated improvements of centuries, is far superior perhaps in
perfectness to that of any one of those national Classics, who have taught
their countrymen to write more clearly, or more elegantly, or more
forcibly than themselves. And literary men submit themselves to what they
find so well provided for them; or, if impatient of conventionalities, and
resolved to shake off a yoke which tames them down to the loss of
individuality, they adopt no half measures, but indulge in novelties which
offend against the genius of the language, and the true canons of taste.
Political causes may co-operate in a revolt of this kind; and, as a nation
declines in patriotism, so does its language in purity. It seems to me as
if the sententious, epigrammatic style of writing, which set in with
Seneca, and is seen at least as late as in the writings of St. Ambrose, is
an attempt to escape from the simplicity of Cæsar and the majestic
elocution of Cicero; while Tertullian, with more of genius than good
sense, relieves himself in the harsh originality of his provincial Latin.
There is another impediment, as time goes on, to the rise of fresh
classics in any nation; and that is the effect which foreigners, or
foreign literature, will exert upon it. It may happen that a certain
language, like Greek, is adopted and used familiarly by educated men in
other countries; or again, that educated men, to whom it is native, may
abandon it for some other language, as the Romans of the second and third
centuries wrote in Greek instead of Latin. The consequence will be, that
the language in question will tend to lose its nationality—that is, its
distinctive character; it will cease to be idiomatic in the sense in which
it once was so; and whatever grace or propriety it may retain, it will be
comparatively tame and spiritless; or, on the other hand, it will be
corrupted by the admixture of foreign elements.
4.
Such, as I consider, being the fortunes of Classical Literature, viewed
generally, I should never be surprised to find that, as regards this
hemisphere, for I can prophesy nothing of America, we have well nigh seen
the end of English Classics. Certainly, it is in no expectation of
Catholics continuing the series here that I speak of the duty and
necessity of their cultivating English literature. When I speak of the
formation of a Catholic school of writers, I have respect principally to
the matter of what is written, and to composition only so far forth as
style is necessary to convey and to recommend the matter. I mean a
literature which resembles the literature of the day. This is not a day
for great writers, but for good writing, and a great deal of it. There
never was a time when men wrote so much and so well, and that, without
being of any great account themselves. While our literature in this day,
especially the periodical, is rich and various, its language is elaborated
to a perfection far beyond that of our Classics, by the jealous rivalry,
the incessant practice, the mutual influence, of its many writers. In
point of mere style, I suppose, many an article in the _Times_ newspaper,
or Edinburgh Review, is superior to a preface of Dryden’s, or a Spectator,
or a pamphlet of Swift’s, or one of South’s sermons.
Our writers write so well that there is little to choose between them.
What they lack is that individuality, that earnestness, most personal yet
most unconscious of self, which is the greatest charm of an author. The
very form of the compositions of the day suggests to us their main
deficiency. They are anonymous. So was it not in the literature of those
nations which we consider the special standard of classical writing; so is
it not with our own Classics. The Epic was sung by the voice of the
living, present poet. The drama, in its very idea, is poetry in persons.
Historians begin, “Herodotus, of Halicarnassus, publishes his researches;”
or, “Thucydides, the Athenian, has composed an account of the war.” Pindar
is all through his odes a speaker. Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero, throw
their philosophical dissertations into the form of a dialogue. Orators and
preachers are by their very profession known persons, and the personal is
laid down by the Philosopher of antiquity as the source of their greatest
persuasiveness. Virgil and Horace are ever bringing into their poetry
their own characters and tastes. Dante’s poems furnish a series of events
for the chronology of his times. Milton is frequent in allusions to his
own history and circumstances. Even when Addison writes anonymously, he
writes under a professed character, and that in a great measure his own;
he writes in the first person. The “I” of the Spectator, and the “we” of
the modern Review or Newspaper, are the respective symbols of the two ages
in our literature. Catholics must do as their neighbours; they must be
content to serve their generation, to promote the interests of religion,
to recommend truth, and to edify their brethren to-day, though their names
are to have little weight, and their works are not to last much beyond
themselves.
5.