I
When I was honoured by the invitation to deliver this course of
lectures, I did not accept without some hesitation. I am not qualified
to speak with authority upon such subjects as have been treated by my
predecessors--the course of political events or the growth of legal
institutions. My attention has been chiefly paid to the history of
literature, and it might be doubtful whether that study is properly
included in the phrase 'historical.' Yet literature expresses men's
thoughts and passions, which have, after all, a considerable influence
upon their lives. The writer of a people's songs, as we are told, may
even have a more powerful influence than the maker of their laws. He
certainly reveals more directly the true springs of popular action. The
truth has been admitted by many historians who are too much overwhelmed
by state papers to find space for any extended application of the
method. No one, I think, has shown more clearly how much light could be
derived from this source than your Oxford historian J. R. Green, in some
brilliant passages of his fascinating book. Moreover, if I may venture
to speak of myself, my own interest in literature has always been
closely connected with its philosophical and social significance.
Literature may of course be studied simply for its own intrinsic merits.
But it may also be regarded as one manifestation of what is called 'the
spirit of the age.' I have, too, been much impressed by a further
conclusion. No one doubts that the speculative movement affects the
social and political--I think that less attention has been given to the
reciprocal influence. The philosophy of a period is often treated as
though it were the product of impartial and abstract
investigation--something worked out by the great thinker in his study
and developed by simple logical deductions from the positions
established by his predecessors. To my mind, though I cannot now dwell
upon the point, the philosophy of an age is in itself determined to a
very great extent by the social position. It gives the solutions of the
problems forced upon the reasoner by the practical conditions of his
time. To understand why certain ideas become current, we have to
consider not merely the ostensible logic but all the motives which led
men to investigate the most pressing difficulties suggested by the
social development. Obvious principles are always ready, like germs, to
come to life when the congenial soil is provided. And what is true of
the philosophy is equally, and perhaps more conspicuously, true of the
artistic and literary embodiment of the dominant ideas which are
correlated with the social movement.
A recognition of the general principle is implied in the change which
has come over the methods of criticism. It has more and more adopted the
historical attitude. Critics in an earlier day conceived their function
to be judicial. They were administering a fixed code of laws applicable
in all times and places. The true canons for dramatic or epic poetry,
they held, had been laid down once for all by Aristotle or his
commentators; and the duty of the critic was to consider whether the
author had infringed or conformed to the established rules, and to pass
sentence accordingly. I will not say that the modern critic has
abandoned altogether that conception of his duty. He seems to me not
infrequently to place himself on the judgment-seat with a touch of his
old confidence, and to sentence poor authors with sufficient airs of
infallibility. Sometimes, indeed, the reflection that he is representing
not an invariable tradition but the last new æsthetic doctrine, seems
even to give additional keenness to his opinions and to suggest no
doubts of his infallibility. And yet there is a change in his position.
He admits, or at any rate is logically bound to admit, the code which he
administers requires modification in different times and places. The old
critic spoke like the organ of an infallible Church, regarding all forms
of art except his own as simply heretical. The modern critic speaks like
the liberal theologian, who sees in heretical and heathen creeds an
approximation to the truth, and admits that they may have a relative
value, and even be the best fitted for the existing conditions. There
are, undoubtedly, some principles of universal application; and the old
critics often expounded them with admirable common-sense and force. But
like general tenets of morality, they are apt to be commonplaces, whose
specific application requires knowledge of concrete facts. When the
critics assumed that the forms familiar to themselves were the only
possible embodiments of those principles, and condemned all others as
barbarous, they were led to pass judgments, such, for example, as
Voltaire's view of Dante and Shakespeare, which strike us as strangely
crude and unappreciative. The change in this, as in other departments of
thought, means again that criticism, as Professor Courthope has said,
must become thoroughly inductive. We must start from experience. We must
begin by asking impartially what pleased men, and then inquire why it
pleased them. We must not decide dogmatically that it ought to have
pleased or displeased on the simple ground that it is or is not
congenial to ourselves. As historical methods extend, the same change
takes place in regard to political or economical or religious, as well
as in regard to literary investigations. We can then become catholic
enough to appreciate varying forms; and recognise that each has its own
rules, right under certain conditions and appropriate within the given
sphere. The great empire of literature, we may say, has many provinces.
There is a 'law of nature' deducible from universal principles of reason
which is applicable throughout, and enforces what may be called the
cardinal virtues common to all forms of human expression. But
subordinate to this, there is also a municipal law, varying in every
province and determining the particular systems which are applicable to
the different state of things existing in each region.
This method, again, when carried out, implies the necessary connection
between the social and literary departments of history. The adequate
criticism must be rooted in history. In some sense I am ready to admit
that all criticism is a nuisance and a parasitic growth upon literature.
The most fruitful reading is that in which we are submitting to a
teacher and asking no questions as to the secret of his influence.
Bunyan had no knowledge of the 'higher criticism'; he read into the
Bible a great many dogmas which were not there, and accepted rather
questionable historical data. But perhaps he felt some essential
characteristics of the book more thoroughly than far more cultivated
people. No critic can instil into a reader that spontaneous sympathy
with the thoughts and emotions incarnated in the great masterpieces
without which all reading is cold and valueless. In spite of all
differences of dialect and costume, the great men can place themselves
in spiritual contact with men of most distant races and periods. Art, we
are told, is immortal. In other words, is unprogressive. The great
imaginative creations have not been superseded. We go to the last new
authorities for our science and our history, but the essential thoughts
and emotions of human beings were incarnated long ago with unsurpassable
clearness. When FitzGerald published his _Omar Khayyam_, readers were
surprised to find that an ancient Persian had given utterance to
thoughts which we considered to be characteristic of our own day. They
had no call to be surprised. The writer of the Book of Job had long
before given the most forcible expression to thought which still moves
our deepest feelings; and Greek poets had created unsurpassable
utterance for moods common to all men in all ages.
'Still green with bays each ancient altar stands
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,'
as Pope puts it; and when one remembers how through all the centuries
the masters of thought and expression have appealed to men who knew
nothing of criticism, higher or lower, one is tempted to doubt whether
the critic be not an altogether superfluous phenomenon.
The critic, however, has become a necessity; and has, I fancy, his
justification in his own sphere. Every great writer may be regarded in
various aspects. He is, of course, an individual, and the critic may
endeavour to give a psychological analysis of him; and to describe his
intellectual and moral constitution and detect the secrets of his
permanent influence without reference to the particular time and place
of his appearance. That is an interesting problem when the materials are
accessible. But every man is also an organ of the society in which he
has been brought up. The material upon which he works is the whole
complex of conceptions, religious, imaginative and ethical, which forms
his mental atmosphere. That suggests problems for the historian of
philosophy. He is also dependent upon what in modern phrase we call his
'environment'--the social structure of which he forms a part, and which
gives a special direction to his passions and aspirations. That suggests
problems for the historian of political and social institutions. Fully
to appreciate any great writer, therefore, it is necessary to
distinguish between the characteristics due to the individual with
certain idiosyncrasies and the characteristics due to his special
modification by the existing stage of social and intellectual
development. In the earliest period the discrimination is impossible.
Nobody, I suppose, not even if he be Provost of Oriel, can tell us much
of the personal characteristics of the author--if there was an
author--of the _Iliad_. He must remain for us a typical Greek of the
heroic age; though even so, the attempt to realise the corresponding
state of society may be of high value to an appreciation of the poetry.
In later times we suffer from the opposite difficulty. Our descendants
will be able to see the general characteristics of the Victorian age
better than we, who unconsciously accept our own peculiarities, like the
air we breathe, as mere matters of course. Meanwhile a Tennyson and a
Browning strike us less as the organs of a society than by the
idiosyncrasies which belong to them as individuals. But in the normal
case, the relation of the two studies is obvious. Dante, for example, is
profoundly interesting to the psychologist, considered simply as a human
being. We are then interested by the astonishing imaginative intensity
and intellectual power and the vivid personality of the man who still
lives for us as he lived in the Italy of six centuries ago. But as all
competent critics tell us, the _Divina Commedia_ also reveals in the
completest way the essential spirit of the Middle Ages. The two studies
reciprocally enlighten each other. We know Dante and understand his
position the more thoroughly as we know better the history of the
political and ecclesiastical struggles in which he took part, and the
philosophical doctrines which he accepted and interpreted; and
conversely, we understand the period the better when we see how its
beliefs and passions affected a man of abnormal genius and marked
idiosyncrasy of character. The historical revelation is the more
complete, precisely because Dante was not a commonplace or average
person but a man of unique force, mental and moral. The remark may
suggest what is the special value of the literary criticism or its
bearing upon history. We may learn from many sources what was the
current mythology of the day; and how ordinary people believed in devils
and in a material hell lying just beneath our feet. The vision probably
strikes us as repulsive and simply preposterous. If we proceed to ask
what it meant and why it had so powerful a hold upon the men of the
day, we may perhaps be innocent enough to apply to the accepted
philosophers, especially to Aquinas, whose thoughts had been so
thoroughly assimilated by the poet. No doubt that may suggest very
interesting inquiries for the metaphysician; but we should find not only
that the philosophy is very tough and very obsolete, and therefore very
wearisome for any but the strongest intellectual appetites, but also
that it does not really answer our question. The philosopher does not
give us the reasons which determine men to believe, but the official
justification of their beliefs which has been elaborated by the most
acute and laborious dialecticians. The inquiry shows how a philosophical
system can be hooked on to an imaginative conception of the universe;
but it does not give the cause of the belief, only the way in which it
can be more or less favourably combined with abstract logical
principles. The great poet unconsciously reveals something more than the
metaphysician. His poetry does not decay with the philosophy which it
took for granted. We do not ask whether his reasoning be sound or false,
but whether the vision be sublime or repulsive. It may be a little of
both; but at any rate it is undeniably fascinating. That, I take it, is
because the imagery which he creates may still be a symbol of thoughts
and emotions which are as interesting now as they were six hundred years
ago. This man of first-rate power shows us, therefore, what was the real
charm of the accepted beliefs for him, and less consciously for others.
He had no doubt that their truth could be proved by syllogising: but
they really laid so powerful a grasp upon him because they could be made
to express the hopes and fears, the loves and hatreds, the moral and
political convictions which were dearest to him. When we see how the
system could be turned to account by the most powerful imagination, we
can understand better what it really meant for the commonplace and
ignorant monks who accepted it as a mere matter of course. We begin to
see what were the great forces really at work below the surface; and the
issues which were being blindly worked out by the dumb agents who were
quite unable to recognise their nature. If, in short, we wish to
discover the secret of the great ecclesiastical and political struggles
of the day, we should turn, not to the men in whose minds beliefs lie
inert and instinctive, nor to the ostensible dialectics of the
ostensible apologists and assailants, but to the great poet who shows
how they were associated with the strongest passions and the most
vehement convictions.
We may hold that the historian should confine himself to giving a record
of the objective facts, which can be fully given in dates, statistics,
and phenomena seen from outside. But if we allow ourselves to
contemplate a philosophical history, which shall deal with the causes of
events and aim at exhibiting the evolution of human society--and perhaps
I ought to apologise for even suggesting that such an ideal could ever
be realised--we should also see that the history of literature would be
a subordinate element of the whole structure. The political, social,
ecclesiastical, and economical factors, and their complex actions and
reactions, would all have to be taken into account, the literary
historian would be concerned with the ideas which find utterance through
the poet and philosopher, and with the constitution of the class which
at any time forms the literary organ of the society. The critic who
deals with the individual work would find such knowledge necessary to a
full appreciation of his subject; and, conversely, the appreciation
would in some degree help the labourer in other departments of history
to understand the nature of the forces which are governing the social
development. However far we may be from such a consummation, and
reluctant to indulge in the magniloquent language which it suggests, I
imagine that a literary history is so far satisfactory as it takes the
facts into consideration and regards literature, in the perhaps too
pretentious phrase, as a particular function of the whole social
organism. But I gladly descend from such lofty speculations to come to a
few relevant details; and especially, to notice some of the obvious
limitations which have in any case to be accepted.
And in the first place, when we try to be philosophical, we have a
difficulty which besets us in political history. How much influence is
to be attributed to the individual? Carlyle used to tell us in my youth
that everything was due to the hero; that the whole course of human
history depended upon your Cromwell or Frederick. Our scientific
teachers are inclined to reply that no single person had much
importance, and that an ideal history could omit all names of
individuals. If, for example, Napoleon had been killed at the siege of
Toulon, the only difference would have been that the dictator would have
been called say Moreau. Possibly, but I cannot see that we can argue in
the same way in literature. I see no reason to suppose that if
Shakespeare had died prematurely, anybody else would have written
_Hamlet_. There was, it is true, a butcher's boy at Stratford, who was
thought by his townsmen to have been as clever a fellow as Shakespeare.
We shall never know what we have lost by his premature death, and we
certainly cannot argue that if Shakespeare had died, the butcher would
have lived. It makes one tremble, says an ingenious critic, to reflect
that Shakespeare and Cervantes were both liable to the measles at the
same time. As we know they escaped, we need not make ourselves unhappy
about the might-have-been; but the remark suggests how much the literary
glory of any period depends upon one or two great names. Omit Cervantes
and Shakespeare and Molière from Spanish, English, and French
literature, and what a collapse of glory would follow! Had Shakespeare
died, it is conceivable perhaps that some of the hyperboles which have
been lavished upon him would have been bestowed on Marlowe and Ben
Jonson. But, on the whole, I fancy that the minor lights of the
Elizabethan drama have owed more to their contemporary than he owed to
them; and that, if this central sun had been extinguished, the whole
galaxy would have remained in comparative obscurity. Now, as we are
utterly unable to say what are the conditions which produce a genius, or
to point to any automatic machinery which could replace him in case of
accident, we must agree that this is an element in the problem which is
altogether beyond scientific investigation. The literary historian must
be content with a humble position. Still, the Elizabethan stage would
have existed had Shakespeare never written; and, moreover, its main
outline would have been the same. If any man ever imitated and gave full
utterance to the characteristic ideas of his contemporaries it was
certainly Shakespeare; and nobody ever accepted more thoroughly the form
of art which they worked out. So far, therefore, as the general
conditions of the time led to the elaboration of this particular genus,
we may study them independently and assign certain general causes. What
Shakespeare did was to show more fully the way in which that form could
be turned to account; and, without him, it would have been a far less
interesting phenomenon. Even the greatest man has to live in his own
century. The deepest thinker is not really--though we often use the
phrase--in advance of his day so much as in the line along which advance
takes place. The greatest poet does not write for a future generation in
the sense of not writing for his own; it is only that in giving the
fullest utterance to its thoughts and showing the deepest insight into
their significance, he is therefore the most perfect type of its general
mental attitude, and his work is an embodiment of the thoughts which are
common to men of all generations.
When the critic began to perceive that many forms of art might be
equally legitimate under different conditions, his first proceeding was
to classify them in different schools. English poets, for example, were
arranged by Pope and Gray as followers of Chaucer, Spenser, Donne,
Dryden, and so forth; and, in later days, we have such literary genera
as are indicated by the names classic and romantic or realist and
idealist, covering characteristic tendencies of the various historical
groups. The fact that literary productions fall into schools is of
course obvious, and suggests the problem as to the cause of their rise
and decline. Bagehot treats the question in his _Physics and Politics_.
Why, he asks, did there arise a special literary school in the reign of
Queen Anne--'a marked variety of human expression, producing what was
then written and peculiar to it'? Some eminent writer, he replies, gets
a start by a style congenial to the minds around him. Steele, a rough,
vigorous, forward man, struck out the periodical essay; Addison, a wise,
meditative man, improved and carried it to perfection. An unconscious
mimicry is always producing countless echoes of an original writer.
That, I take it, is undeniably true. Nobody can doubt that all authors
are in some degree echoes, and that a vast majority are never anything
else. But it does not answer why a particular form should be fruitful of
echoes or, in Bagehot's words, be 'more congenial to the minds around.'
Why did the _Spectator_ suit one generation and the _Rambler_ its
successors? Are we incapable of giving any answer? Are changes in
literary fashions enveloped in the same inscrutable mystery as changes
in ladies' dresses? It is, and no doubt always will be, impossible to
say why at one period garments should spread over a hoop and at another
cling to the limbs. Is it equally impossible to say why the fashion of
Pope should have been succeeded by the fashion of Wordsworth and
Coleridge? If we were prepared to admit the doctrine of which I have
spoken--the supreme importance of the individual--that would of course
be all that could be said. Shakespeare's successors are explained as
imitators of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is explained by his 'genius'
or, in other words, is inexplicable. If, on the other hand,
Shakespeare's originality, whatever it may have been, was shown by his
power of interpreting the thoughts of his own age, then we can learn
something from studying the social and intellectual position of his
contemporaries. Though the individual remains inexplicable, the general
characteristics of the school to which he belongs may be tolerably
intelligible; and some explanation is in fact suggested by such
epithets, for example, as romantic and classical. For, whatever
precisely they mean,--and I confess to my mind the question of what they
mean is often a very difficult one,--they imply some general tendency
which cannot be attributed to individual influence. When we endeavour to
approach this problem of the rise and fall of literary schools, we see
that it is a case of a phenomenon which is very often noticed and which
we are more ready to explain in proportion to the share of youthful
audacity which we are fortunate enough to possess.
In every form of artistic production, in painting and architecture, for
example, schools arise; each of which seems to embody some kind of
principle, and develops and afterwards decays, according to some
mysterious law. It may resemble the animal species which is, somehow or
other, developed and then stamped out in the struggle of existence by
the growth of a form more appropriate to the new order. The epic poem,
shall we say? is like the 'monstrous efts,' as Tennyson unkindly calls
them, which were no doubt very estimable creatures in their day, but
have somehow been unable to adapt themselves to recent geological
epochs. Why men could build cathedrals in the Middle Ages, and why their
power was lost instead of steadily developing like the art of
engineering, is a problem which has occupied many writers, and of which
I shall not attempt to offer a solution. That is the difference between
artistic and scientific progress. A truth once discovered remains true
and may form the nucleus of an independently interesting body of truths.
But a special form of art flourishes only during a limited period, and
when it decays and is succeeded by others, we cannot say that there is
necessarily progress, only that for some reason or other the environment
has become uncongenial. It is, of course, tempting to infer from the
decay of an art that there must be a corresponding decay in the vitality
and morality of the race. Ruskin, for example, always assumed in his
most brilliant and incisive, but not very conclusive, arguments that men
ceased to paint good pictures simply because they ceased to be good men.
He did not proceed to prove that the moral decline really took place,
and still less to show why it took place. But, without attacking these
large problems, I shall be content to say that I do not see that any
such sweeping conclusions can be made as to the kind of changes in
literary forms with which we shall be concerned. That there is a close
relation between the literature and the general social condition of a
nation is my own contention. But the relation is hardly of this simple
kind. Nations, it seems to me, have got on remarkably well, and made not
only material but political and moral progress in the periods when they
have written few books, and those bad ones; and, conversely, have
produced some admirable literature while they were developing some very
ugly tendencies. To say the truth, literature seems to me to be a kind
of by-product. It occupies far too small a part in the whole activity of
a nation, even of its intellectual activity, to serve as a complete
indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral
barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a
condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying
but not the less fallacious conclusions.
The succession of literary species implies that some are always passing
into the stage of 'survivals': and the most obvious course is to
endeavour to associate them with the general philosophical movement.
That suggests one obvious explanation of many literary developments. The
great thriving times of literature have occurred when new intellectual
horizons seemed to be suddenly opening upon the human intelligence; as
when Bacon was taking his Pisgah sight of the promised land of science,
and Shakespeare and Spenser were making new conquests in the world of
the poetic imagination. A great intellectual shock was stimulating the
parallel, though independent, outbursts of activity. The remark may
suggest one reason for the decline as well as for the rise of the new
genus. If, on the one hand, the man of genius is especially sensitive to
the new ideas which are stirring the world, it is also necessary that he
should be in sympathy with his hearers--that he should talk the language
which they understand, and adopt the traditions, conventions, and
symbols with which they are already more or less familiar. A generally
accepted tradition is as essential as the impulse which comes from the
influx of new ideas. But the happy balance which enables the new wine to
be put into the old bottles is precarious and transitory. The new ideas
as they develop may become paralysing to the imagery which they began by
utilising. The legends of chivalry which Spenser turned to account
became ridiculous in the next generation, and the mythology of Milton's
great poem was incredible or revolting to his successors. The machinery,
in the old phrase, of a poet becomes obsolete, though when he used it,
it had vitality enough to be a vehicle for his ideas. The imitative
tendency described by Bagehot clearly tends to preserve the old, as much
as to facilitate the adoption of a new form. In fact, to create a really
original and new form seems to exceed the power of any individual, and
the greatest men must desire to speak to their own contemporaries. It is
only by degrees that the inadequacy of the traditional form makes itself
felt, and its successor has to be worked out by a series of tentative
experiments. When a new style has established itself its representatives
hold that the orthodoxy of the previous period was a gross superstition:
and those who were condemned as heretics were really prophets of the
true faith, not yet revealed. However that may be, I am content at
present to say that in fact the development of new literary types is
discontinuous, and implies a compromise between the two conditions which
in literature correspond to conservatism and radicalism. The
conservative work is apt to become a mere survival: while the radical
may include much that has the crudity of an imperfect application of new
principles. Another point may be briefly indicated. The growth of new
forms is obviously connected not only with the intellectual development
but with the social and political state of the nation, and there comes
into close connection with other departments of history. Authors, so far
as I have noticed, generally write with a view to being read. Moreover,
the reading class is at most times a very small part of the population.
A philosopher, I take it, might think himself unusually popular if his
name were known to a hundredth part of the population. But even poets
and novelists might sometimes be surprised if they could realise the
small impression they make upon the mass of the population. There is,
you know, a story of how Thackeray, when at the height of his reputation
he stood for Oxford, found that his name was unknown even to highly
respectable constituents. The author of _Vanity Fair_ they observed, was
named John Bunyan. At the present day the number of readers has, I
presume, enormously increased; but authors who can reach the lower
strata of the great lower pyramid, which widens so rapidly at its base,
are few indeed. The characteristics of a literature correspond to the
national characteristics, as embodied in the characteristics of a very
small minority of the nation. Two centuries ago the reading part of the
nation was mainly confined to London and to certain classes of society.
The most important changes which have taken place have been closely
connected with the social changes which have entirely altered the limits
of the reading class; and with the changes of belief which have been
cause and effect of the most conspicuous political changes. That is too
obvious to require any further exposition. Briefly, in talking of
literary changes, considered as implied in the whole social development,
I shall have, first, to take note of the main intellectual
characteristics of the period; and secondly, what changes took place in
the audience to which men of letters addressed themselves, and how the
gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of the
literature addressed to them.
I hope and believe that I have said nothing original. I have certainly
only been attempting to express the views which are accepted, in their
general outline at least, by historians, whether of the political or
literary kind. They have often been applied very forcibly to the various
literary developments, and, by way of preface to my own special topic, I
will venture to recall one chapter of literary history which may serve
to illustrate what I have already said, and which has a bearing upon
what I shall have to say hereafter.
One of the topics upon which the newer methods of criticism first
displayed their power was the school of the Elizabethan dramatists. Many
of the earlier critics wrote like lovers or enthusiasts who exalted the
merits of some of the old playwrights beyond our sober judgments, and
were inclined to ignore the merits of other forms of the art. But we
have come to recognise that the Elizabethans had their faults, and that
the best apology for their weaknesses as well as the best explanation of
their merits was to be found in a clearer appreciation of the whole
conditions. It is impossible of course to overlook the connection
between that great outburst of literary activity and the general
movement of the time; of the period when many impulses were breaking up
the old intellectual stagnation, and when the national spirit which took
the great Queen for its representative was finding leaders in the
Burleighs and Raleighs and Drakes. The connection is emphasised by the
singular brevity of the literary efflorescence. Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_
heralded its approach on the eve of the Spanish Armada: Shakespeare, to
whom the lead speedily fell, had shown his highest power in _Henry IV._
and _Hamlet_ before the accession of James I.: his great tragedies
_Othello_, _Macbeth_ and _Lear_ were produced in the next two or three
years; and by that time, Ben Jonson had done his best work. When
Shakespeare retired in 1611, Chapman and Webster, two of the most
brilliant of his rivals, had also done their best; and Fletcher
inherited the dramatic throne. On his death in 1625, Massinger and Ford
and other minor luminaries were still at work; but the great period had
passed. It had begun with the repulse of the Armada and culminated some
fifteen years later. If in some minor respects there may afterwards have
been an advance, the spontaneous vigour had declined and deliberate
attempts to be striking had taken the place of the old audacity. There
can be no more remarkable instance of a curious phenomenon, of a
volcanic outburst of literary energy which begins and reaches its
highest intensity while a man is passing from youth to middle age, and
then begins to decay and exhaust itself within a generation.
A popular view used to throw the responsibility upon the wicked Puritans
who used their power to close the theatres. We entered the
'prison-house' of Puritanism says Matthew Arnold, I think, and stayed
there for a couple of centuries. If so, the gaolers must have had some
difficulty, for the Puritan (in the narrower sense, of course) has
always been in a small and unpopular minority. But it is also plain
that the decay had begun when the Puritan was the victim instead of the
inflictor of persecution. When we note the synchronism between the
political and the literary movement our conception of the true nature of
the change has to be modified. The accession of James marks the time at
which the struggle between the court and the popular party was beginning
to develop itself: when the monarchy and its adherents cease to
represent the strongest current of national feeling, and the bulk of the
most vigorous and progressive classes have become alienated and are
developing the conditions and passions which produced the civil war. The
genuine Puritans are still an exception; they only form the left wing,
the most thorough-going opponents of the court-policy; and their triumph
afterwards is only due to the causes which in a revolution give the
advantage to the uncompromising partisans, though their special creed is
always regarded with aversion by a majority. But for the time, they are
the van of the party which, for whatever reason, is gathering strength
and embodying the main political and ecclesiastical impulses of the
time. The stage, again, had been from the first essentially
aristocratic: it depended upon the court and the nobility and their
adherents, and was hostile both to the Puritans and to the whole class
in which the Puritan found a congenial element. So long, as in
Elizabeth's time, as the class which supported the stage also
represented the strongest aspirations of the period, and a marked
national sentiment, the drama could embody a marked national sentiment.
When the unity was broken up and the court is opposed to the strongest
current of political sentiment, the players still adhere to their
patron. The drama comes to represent a tone of thought, a social
stratum, which, instead of leading, is getting more and more opposed to
the great bulk of the most vigorous elements of the society. The stage
is ceasing to be a truly national organ, and begins to suit itself to
the tastes of the unprincipled and servile courtiers, who, if they are
not more immoral than their predecessors, are without the old heroic
touch which ennobled even the audacious and unscrupulous adventurers of
the Armada period. That is to say, the change is beginning which became
palpable in the Restoration time, when the stage became simply the
melancholy dependent upon the court of Charles II., and faithfully
reflected the peculiar morality of the small circle over which it
presided. Without taking into account this process by which the organ of
the nation gradually became transformed into the organ of the class
which was entirely alienated from the general body of the nation, it is,
I think, impossible to understand clearly the transformation of the
drama. It illustrates the necessity of accounting for the literary
movement, not only by intellectual and general causes, but by noting how
special social developments radically alter the relation of any
particular literary genus to the general national movement. I shall soon
have to refer to the case again.
I have now only to say briefly what I propose to attempt in these
lectures. The literary history, as I conceive it, is an account of one
strand, so to speak, in a very complex tissue: it is connected with the
intellectual and social development; it represents movements of thought
which may sometimes check and be sometimes propitious to the existing
forms of art; it is the utterance of a class which may represent, or
fail to represent, the main national movement; it is affected more or
less directly by all manner of religious, political, social, and
economical changes; and it is dependent upon the occurrence of
individual genius for which we cannot even profess to account. I propose
to take the history of English literature in the eighteenth century. I
do not aim at originality: I take for granted the ordinary critical
judgments upon the great writers of whom so much has been said by judges
certainly more competent than myself, and shall recall the same facts
both of ordinary history and of the history of thought. What I hope is,
that by bringing familiar facts together I may be able to bring out the
nature of the connection between them; and, little as I can say that
will be at all new, to illustrate one point of view, which, as I
believe, it is desirable that literary histories should take into
account more distinctly than they have generally done.