TŌKYŌ, September, 1902.
MY DEAR HENDRICK,--I had to wait several days before answering your
letter,--as I felt too much pleased to venture writing for that length
of time. And now, in answering, I shall have to talk a great deal about
myself, and my own affairs,--which seems to me rather graceless.
All that you proposed, except two things, appear to me very good. But
to put the question in the best _general_ way, I am convinced by long
experience that I can do nothing profitable with publishers, except
at such serious cost to health and to literary reputation as would be
utterly prohibitive. What I have been able to do so far has been done
mostly in dead opposition to publishers, and their advisers; and in the
few cases where I tried to do what publishers wished I have made very
serious mistakes.
Editorial work on a monthly or weekly paper, with a sympathetic head,
who would let me have my own way, and use a typewriter--let me agree
to furnish at fixed intervals certain material, while free to use the
over-time as I pleased--would be good....
Of course, the main trouble about any kind of newspaper work is that it
kills all opportunity for original literary work--but I could afford the
sacrifice.
Certain branches of teaching admit of opportunity for literary
work,--particularly those in which teaching rises to the dignity of the
lecture....
The main result of holding a chair of English literature for six
years has been to convince me that I know very little about English
literature, and never could learn very much. I have learned enough,
indeed, to lecture upon the general history of English literature,
without the use of notes or books; and I have been able to lecture upon
the leading poets and prose-writers of the later periods. But I have not
the scholarship needed for the development and exercise of the critical
faculty, in the proper sense of the term. I know nothing of Anglo-Saxon:
and my knowledge of the relation of English literature to other European
literature is limited to the later French and English romantic and
realistic periods.
Under these circumstances you might well ask how I could fill my chair.
The fact is that I never made any false pretences, and never applied
for the post. I realized my deficiencies; but I soon felt where I might
become strong, and I taught literature as the expression of emotion and
sentiment,--as the representation of life. In considering a poet I tried
to explain the quality and the powers of the emotion that he produces.
In short, I based my teaching altogether upon appeals to the imagination
and the emotions of my pupils,--and they have been satisfied (though the
fact may signify little, because their imagination is so unlike our own).
Should I attempt to lecture on literature in America, I should only
follow the same lines--which are commonly held to be illegitimate, but
in which I very firmly believe there are great possibilities. Subjects
upon which I think that I have been partly successful are such as
these:--
The signification of Style and Personality.
Respective values of various styles. Error of the belief that one method
is essentially superior to another.
Physiological signification of the true Realism--as illustrated by
the Norse writers and, in modern times, by Flaubert and Maupassant.
Psychological signification of Romantic methods.
Metaphysical poetry of George Meredith: illustrating the application of
the Evolutional Philosophy to Ethics.