UNIVERSITY OF CA RIVERSIDE LIBRARY 3 1210 01712 8909 WORLD LITERATURE RGMOULTON THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE WORLD LITERATURE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO WORLD LITERATURE ITS PLACE IN GENERAL CULTURE RICHARD G. ArtCfl^B.), Ph.D. (Pbnna.) PROFESSOR OF LITERARY THEORT AND INtTTB^ETATIONJBft THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECWHtej^IN LrCERATURE (ENGLAND AND AHERICA^ ^"~"**' \ AUTHOR OF " SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMA^TFq ABb{ST," "*' SHAKE- SPEARE AS A DRAMATIC THINKER," " TH^\^lh!««NT Ct*S1^ICAL DRAMA," ETC. EDITOR OF "THE MODERN :^ADER'S BIBLE " THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1911 All rights reserved COPYBIQHT, 1911, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1911. Norhiaot) JPieea J. S. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE This book presents a conception of World Literature, not in the sense of the sum total of particular literatures, but as a unity, the literary field seen in perspective from the point of view of the English-speaking peoples. Theo- retical treatment is throughout supplemented by exposi- tion of masterpieces. To the general reader the book suggests a rational scheme of connection such as should be at the back of every attempt to make choice of "the best books." For the student it illustrates a treatment of the subject un- hampered by divisions between particular literatures in different languages, divisions which make the weakness of literary study in our academic systems. Its plea is that such World Literature belongs to every stage of general culture, from the most elementary to the most advanced. My life has been entirely occupied with the study and the teaching of literature. I have sought in the present work to embody the main results of my experience, so far as these bear upon the field of literature and the general interest of the subject. I purpose, at no distant date, to follow up this work with another, which will be a more formal introduction to literary theory and interpretation. RICHARD G. MOULTON. February, 1911. [V] CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE I. The Unity of Literature and the Conception of World Literature 1 n. Literary Pedigree of the English-speaking Peoples 10 III. World Literature from the English Point of View 53 SURVEY OF WORLD LITERATURE CHAPTER I The Five Literary Bibles. — The Holy Bible ... 59 CHAPTER II The Five Literary Bibles. — Classical Epic and Tragedy 99 CHAPTER III The Five Literary Bibles. — Shakespeare .... 164 CHAPTER IV The Five Literary Bibles. — Dante and Milton: The Epics of Mediaeval Catholicism and Renaissance Protestantism 179 CHAPTER V The Five Literary Bibles. — Versions of the Story of Faust 220 [vii] CONTENTS CHAPTER VI PAGE Collateral Studies in World Literature . . . 295 CHAPTER VII Comparative Reading 351 CHAPTER VIII Literary Organs of Personality: Essays and Lyrics . 381 CHAPTER IX Strategic Points in Literature 407 CHAPTER X World Literature the Autobiography of Civilization 429 CONCLUSION The Place of World Literature in Education . . 439 vMl] INTRODUCTION I The Unity of Literature and the Conception of World Literature II Literary Pedigree of the English-speaking Peoples III World Literature from the English Point of View [ixl INTRODUCTION THE UNITY OF LITERATURE AND THE CONCEPTION OF WORLD LITERATURE It has been among the signs of our times that popular inquiries have been started at intervals in reference to ''The Best Books." Eminent individuals have been importuned to name the ten, the twenty-five, the hun- dred best books ; or — since this is an age of democracy — the selection has been referred to newspaper voting. In all this there seems to be a certain simplicity min- gled with a strain of deep wisdom. The simplicity is the naive idea that everything knowable is of the nature of information, sure to be found in the right compen- dium ; only, as universal wisdom has not yet been alpha- betically indexed, it may be necessary to have recourse to an expert. The wisdom latent in such attempted selections is the suggestion that the popular mind, in however crude and shadowy a way, has grasped a prin- ciple ignored in more formal study — the essential unity of literature. This failure to recognize the unity of all literature ac- counts for the paradox that, while literary study is going on actively all around, yet the study of literature, in any B [1] THE CONCEPTION OF WORLD LITERATURE adequate sense, has yet to begin. When we speak of the study of philosophy, what we have in mind is not the reading of Greek philosophic writers by persons inter- ested in Greek studies, and the reading of German philo- sophers by persons interested in German studies, and the like : apart from all this we recognize that there is the thing philosophy, with an independent interest and his- tory of its own, the whole being something quite differ- ent from the sum of the parts. In other words, we recog- nize the unity of philosophy. Similarly, we recognize the unity of history, the unity of art ; even the separate languages of the world have coalesced into a unity in the study of philology. But when the question is of litera- ture, it would seem as if the humanities side of the edu- cational edifice has been built in water-tight compart- ments ; what goes on in our schools and colleges is the study in one class room of English Uterature in connec- tion with English history and language, in other class rooms Greek or Latin or French literature in connection with Greek or Latin or French history and language. We look in vain for an independent study of literature itself, and of literature as a whole. Perhaps it may be objected that such a thing is to be found under the name of Comparative Literature, or the Philosophy of Literature. Comparative Literature is an important advance towards recognizing unity for the whole literary field ; but that it is only an advance the title infallibly marks. For who would speak of Com- parative Philosophy, or Comparative Mathematics? Such names might indeed be used to denote specific pieces of work ; they could never indicate a whole study. 12] THE UNITY OF LITERATURE Similarly, the Philosophy of Literature can be nothing more than a single element in the whole study of litera- ture. The most important part of any treatment of literature must be a detailed and loving acquaintance with a large number of actual literary works : in propor- tion as a reader possesses this will the philosophy of the subject be valuable. To offer it as equivalent to the study of literature would be as futile as to think that a course in economics would of itself make a good business man, or that text-books in psychology and ethics would give a knowledge of human nature. No doubt there are special difficulties in the way of our compassing the study of literature as a whole. The first of these I should myself consider not so much a difficulty as a prejudice. It is obvious that the study of literature as a whole is impossible without a free use of translations. Now, there is a widespread feeling that the reading of translated literature is a makeshift, and savors of second-hand scholarship. But this idea is itself a product of the departmental study of literature which has prevailed hitherto, in which language and literature have been so inextricably intertwined that it has be- come difficult to think of the two separately. The idea will not bear rational examination. If a man, instead of reading Homer in Greek, reads him in English, he has unquestionably lost something. But the question arises. Is what he has lost literature ? Clearly, a great proportion of what goes to make literature has not been lost ; presentation of antique life, swing of epic narra- tive, conceptions of heroic character and incident, skill of plot, poetical imagery — all these elements of Homeric [3] THE CONCEPTION OF WORLD LITERATURE literature are open to the reader of translations. But, it will be said, language itself is one of the main factors in literature. This is true, but it must be remembered that the term "language" covers two different things: a considerable proportion of linguistic phenomena is common to related languages and will pass from one to the other, while other elements of language are idiomatic and fixed. What the English reader of Homer has lost is not language, but Greek. And he has not lost the whole of Greek ; the skilled translator can convey some- thing of the ethos of idiomatic Greek into his version, writing what may be correct English, but not such Eng- lish as an Englishman would write. When, however, all abatement has been made, the reader of the transla- tion has suffered a distinct loss ; and the classical scholar knows how great that loss is. But the point at issue is not the comparative value of literature and language, but the possibility of realizing hterature as a unity. One who accepts the use of translations where necessary secures all factors of literature except language, and a considerable part even of that. One who refuses trans- lations by that fact cuts himself off from the major part of the Uterary field; his literary scholarship, however poUshed and precise, can never rise above the provincial. To which it must be added that the prejudice against translations is of the nature of a prophecy which can ful- fil itself : where it has prevailed, the character of transla- tions has approximated to the schoolboy's " crib." On the other hand, it is noteworthy how classical scholars of front rank have devoted themselves to translation as the best form of commentary — Jowett, Munro, Coning- [4] THE UNITY OF LITERATURE ton, Jebb, Palmer, Gilbert Murray ; how poets of front rank have made themselves interpreters between one language and another — William Morris, Edwin Arnold, Chapman, Dryden, Pope ; when precise scholarship and poetic gifts mingle in such men as Mr. Arthur S. Way and Mr. B. B. Rogers, it can be brought about that Homer, Euripides, and Aristophanes shine equally as English and as Greek poetry. Again, men of the high- est literary refinement have made strong pronounce- ments on the side of translated literature. ''I do not hesitate," says Emerson in his Essay on Books, 'Ho read all the books I have named, and all good books, in trans- lations. What is really best in any book is translat- able; any real insight or broad human sentiment. ... I rarely read any Greek, Latin, German, Italian — sometimes not a French book — in the original which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which re- ceives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue." Let an appeal, moreover, be made to history. Luther's translation of the Bible, and the Eng- lish Authorized Version, laid the foundations of literary speech for two nations. Effects on some such wide scale may be looked for when high linguistic scholar- ship from critical shall turn to creative, and apply itself to naturalizing in each literature the best of all the rest. Quite apart, however, from this question of translation there are real and formidable difficulties that impede [5] THE CONCEPTION OF WORLD LITERATURE the study of literature as a whole. In such a subject as language the unit is a word or a phrase : in literature the smallest unit is a whole poem. In philology, and most other studies, we have to deal only with facts : with information, and that information digested. But information on the subject of literature is of all things the most barren ; what is wanted in this study is imagi- native knowledge, the reaction of the Uterary matter upon the reader's taste, upon his artistic and spiritual susceptibility. How is it possible to compass the uni- versal field, where the unit is so large, and the appreci- ation so deep seated ? With such a problem as this we are concerned in the present work only so far as it bears upon general culture. And that which seems to me the proper solution I am expressing by what is the title of this book — World Literature. It must be admitted that the term "world literature " may legitimately be used in more than one sense ; I am throughout attaching to it a fixed and special significance. I take a distinction between Uni- versal Literature and World Literature. Universal Literature can only mean the sum total of all literatures. World Literature, as I use the term, is this Universal Literature seen in perspective from a given point of view, presumably the national standpoint of the observer. The difference between the two may be illustrated by the different ways in which the science of Geography and the art of Landscape might deal with the same physical particulars. We have to do with a mountain ten thou- sand feet high, a tree-fringed pond not a quarter of an acre in extent, a sloping meadow rising perhaps to a hundred [6] PERSPECTIVE APPLIED TO LITERATURE feet, a lake some four hundred miles in length. So far as Geography would take cognizance of these physical features, they must be taken all in their exact dimensions. But Landscape would begin by fixing a point of view: from that point the elements of the landscape would be 8&fcn to modify their relative proportions. The distant mountain would diminish to a point of snow ; the pond would become the prominent centre, every tree distinct ; the meadow would have some softening of remoteness ; on the other side the huge lake would appear a silver streak upon the horizon. By a similar kind of perspec- tive, World Literature will be a different thing to the Englishman and to the Japanese : the Shakespeare who bulks so large to the Englishman will be a small detail to the Japanese, while the Chinese literature which makes the foreground in the one literary landscape may be hardly discernible in the other. World Literature will be a different thing even to the Englishman and the Frenchman; only in this case the similar history of the two peoples will make the constituent elements of the two landscapes much the same, and the difference will be mainly in distribution of the parts. More than this, World Literature may be different for different individ- uals of the same nation : obviously, one man will have a wider outlook, taking in more of universal literature ; or it may be that the individuality of the student, or of some teacher who has influenced him, has served as a lens focussing the multiplex particulars of the whole in its own individual arrangement. In each case the World Literature is a real unity ; and it is a unity which is a reflection of the unity of all literature. That it is [7] THE CONCEPTION OF WORLD LITERATURE a reflection relative to the particular student or thinker is a thing inseparable from culture : is indeed what makes the difference between the purely scientific and the educational point of view. The essential thing is that the observation of the whole field which gives us this World Literature should be cor- rect ; in other words, that there should be a sound phi- losophy at the basis of this perspective grouping. It is the absence of such underlying philosophy that takes the value out of mere lists of ''best books " as representa- tions of literature. And the theory on which a view of World Literature is to rest will resolve itself ultimately into two supplementary principles. One of these maybe termed the National Literary Pedigree, — the train of historic considerations that connects the reader's nation- ality with its roots in the far past, and traces its rela- tionship with other parts of the literary field. Here we are on the sure basis of history. But it will be history as seen from the standpoint of literature : literary pedi- gree may be very different from ethnological or linguis- tic descent. The other principle is Intrinsic Literary Interest. Quite apart from its association with history literature has an interest and values of its own. The in- dividuality of an author (to take the most obvious cases) or the accidental flowering of some literary type may lift portions of a literature quite out of the position that would have been given them by their historic settings, just as in our landscape illustration the mountain was so distant as to have been invisible if it had not happened to be ten thousand feet in height. The individuality of a Dante or an Aristophanes has modified for all of us the [8] PERSPECTIVE APPLIED TO LITERATURE general map of poetry. These two principles, then, of historic connection, and of intrinsic literary value, by their mutual interaction will elaborate a sound basis on which a conception of World Literature may rest. Such World Literature, conceived from the English point of view, is the subject of the present work. And our first step is to trace the Literary Pedigree of the English-speaking peoples. [9] II THE LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES I start from the position that our EngUsh civilization is the product of two main factors, the gradual union of which has made us what we are. These may be expressed by the terms " Hellenic " and " Hebraic." The one is the ancient Hellenic civilization embodied in the classical literature of Greece and Rome. The other is that special strain of Hebrew civilization which is crystallized in that literature we call the Bible. Our science, our art, our philosophy, our politics, are, in the main, the continuation of processes commenced by the ancient Greeks. But in our spiritual nature we are not Greek, but Hebrew : product of the spiritual movement which has made the Bible. The evolution of our modern life rests upon the gradual intermingling of these Hellenic and Hebraic elements. The two came together for the first time in the conquests of Alexander the Great. These had the effect of extend- ing the Greek culture to all the civiUzed races, and amongst them to the exclusive Hebrew people; after long resistance even Palestine was Hellenized, while in Alexandria had arisen a new centre of Jewish life only second to Palestine. The two elements met a [10] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC second time in the Roman Empire. Once more an Hellenic civilization was covering the world ; when this Roman Empire was Christianized, Hebraic culture permeated Hellenic, and Rome was grafted upon the biblical tree. For several centuries the Hellenic and Hebraic cultures, each in an imperfect form, remained in combination. Then by a third revolution the two elements, each now in its full force, were brought into reciprocal influence : and this Renaissance makes the threshold of our modern life. If for a moment we turn our attention to these two originating elements of our civilization, we find that these seem to hold a summarizing position in reference to the main civilizations of the world. The leading races ^ of the world may conveniently be divided into three classes. Two classes correspond with the Semitic and Aryan families of peoples ; the third class is not a related group, but merely a total of the races other than Semitic and Aryan, which have exercised a correspond- ingly small influence upon history, as history affects ourselves. In the Semitic group it was not the Hebrew people that first came to the front. A point was reached, however, at which other Semitic civilizations seemed to stop short ; the Hebrew civilization absorbed what was best in the other Semitic peoples, and further seemed endowed with an endless power of progression. A similar phenomenon is observable in the Aryan stock. ^ I use this word as a convenient term, without meaning to imply, necessarily, that it was the racial factor, and not (e.gr.) historical circumstances, that brought about the distinguishing influence of each civilization. Ill] U 09 ^ ca. o gc5 [12] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC Other Aryan civilizations, notably the Indian, seem at first to dominate ; yet a point is reached at which these become distinguished by fecundity rather than pro- gressive power, while Hellenic culture alike absorbs all that is best in allied civilizations, and carries for- ward its own with unhmited development. Thus the two ancient civilizations which are the component factors of our own seem to represent the flower of the civilizations of the world. Already then we begin to catch the main lines for a scheme of World Literature, as seen from the English point of view. The literatures of the world's leading peoples are seen to stand to us in closer or more remote degrees of relationship. Some literatures are entirely extraneous to the evolution of which we are the prod- uct; if they have an interest for us at all, this must rest entirely upon intrinsic literary attractiveness. To others our culture stands in the relation of col- lateral propinquity. But the Hellenic and Hebraic are to us in the fullest sense ancestral literatures : this is of itself sufficient to give them a foremost place in our conception of World Literature. The claims of Greek culture have always been fully acknowledged. It has been one of the great services of Matthew Arnold to literary study, that he insisted always upon the prominence of the Hebraic factor in our modern culture. At this point, a digression seems necessary, which I would willingly have avoided. What is the essential spirit of this Hellenism and Hebraism, which have thus been the dominant elements in our history? [13] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH As it appears to me, a mistaken conception of Hellen- ism has obtained currency; mistaken, in the sense of laying unwarranted emphasis on what is not really of prime importance. It has become traditional to find the essence of Hellenism in the civic spirit of Athens during the era of Pericles ; that spirit is conceived to be the subordination of all activity to the service of the state ; this is taken to be the inspiration of the highest art and poetry of the Greeks ; it is supposed to be voiced especially in the dramas of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes ; it is invaded by the spirit of inno- vation of which Euripides is the poetic representative ; from this point the hold of the state becomes less, individual and general culture prevails more and more, and Hellenism passes into its period of decay. This seems to me to be a mistaken reading of Hellen- ism. There is something seductive in the description of an ideal that subordinates all activity to the service of the state, until we remember that the word "state" in such a context has a different meaning from what the word suggests to modern ears. What the Greeks meant by "state" we should express by the word "con- stitution" : the point is, not the devotion of the indi- vidual to the good of the community, but the subordi- nation of everything to one particular conception of common life — the highly artificial conception of the city-state. The inability of the Greeks to rise above this ideal is by universal consent recognized as the cause of the submergence of Greek political civilization in the general history of mankind. This ideal, moreover, was maintained by the sacrifice of other ideals : of free- [14] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC dom, for Greek life was based on slavery; of family life, for the position of woman was at its lowest in the age of Pericles. Not only are these things true in historic fact, but in the idealization of Athenian polit- ical ideas by Plato we find marriage and family life surrendered in order to bolster up a special type of state organization; the whole spirit of the Republic is that the governed exist for the sake of the govern- ment, and not vice versa. Our modern thinking is more in sympathy with the primitive type of life reflected in Homer, with its lofty conception of woman and family life : Euripides is nearer to Homer than is the Athens of his day. Nor does there seem any warrant for the view that the civic spirit of Athens was the inspiration of its art and poetry. Naturally, in plays intended for performance in Athens, there are passages glorifying Athenian institutions; but these have little to do with the general spirit of the dramas. The dominating note of Greek tragedy is a very dif- ferent thing — overpowering awe in the presence of Destiny. The supreme tragic situation is that of a mortal, like Orestes, placed between opposite destinies — the oracle that forces him to do the deed and the Eumenides who crush him for doing it ; though it is true that ^schylus, with the audacity of a partisan in a political crisis, figures that even out of this tangle there is a way of escape in the aristocratic Court of Areopagus. So in Antigone, we see humanity placed between two equal and opposite forces, loyalty to kindred and loyalty to the state : alike Kreon and Antigone are crushed. And the irony that saturates the whole [15] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH Sophoclean drama is the mockery of man in his attempts to unravel or to resist Destiny. Thus it is a reUgious, not a poHtical, idea which is the basis of Greek tragedy. It is, no doubt, a splendid moment that opens Athenian history, with Marathon and the single-handed resist- ance to Oriental despotism ; and splendid is the oratory and historical writing by which this Athenian era is illuminated for us. But we must not mistake between the illumination and the thing illuminated. Grote did good service in vindicating the Athenian democracy against the traditional disparagement that had been inspired by prejudice against democracy in general ; yet, on an impartial review, the political history of Athens reveals the usual combination of evil and good, weakness and strength. The innovating spirit that comes in with Socrates and Euripides is not the decline of a lofty ideal, but the inevitable reaction against an artificial conception of things, a reaction in the direc- tion of ideals more general, saner, more natural. What then is the true conception of the Hellenic spirit? Hellenism, as I understand it, is the sudden, gigantic, well-nigh illimitable outflowering of human powers, alike creative and critical, but working upon a highly limited material. As art and literature, the productions of Greek genius reach unsurpassable greatness and stand in a class by themselves. But the permanent influence of Hellenism is at every point checked by its inherent limitations, limitations that are themselves largely the result of the sudden outgrowth. The silent generations had accumulated a floating poetry of tradition and myth. Homer and the trage- [16] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC dians gave to this matter a literary splendor that fixed it as the permanent source of poetic material for the Greeks. For all the centuries from Homer to Virgil every attempt to travel outside this circle of poetic matter failed. This has given to universal literature one of its permanent effects — the echoing of the poetry of the past. But inevitably at last there comes exhaustion of material, and classical poetry passes into the sterile imitation and uninspired polish of a silver age. Again, the period of a single lifetime saw the rise from the folk play to the magnificent Attic tragedy. But this sudden rise of Greek tragedy imparted to it a fixity of form : connection with the chorus and limitation to a single final situation — mere accidents of its origin^ — became accepted as essential to the very conception of tragedy. Such stiffness of form militated against natural expansion ; finally the Greek Drama of Situation became the Drama of Seneca, the rhetorical expansion of situations conventional or assumed. Greek religion was the naive awe and delight in presence of nature which is the religion of the world's childhood ; it inspired such poetry that the ideal is still dear to us, and a Schiller can sigh for the gods of Greece. But so limited a religion had nothing with which to satisfy the inevitably deepening life of the Greeks ; which was thus left to the freezing influence of Destiny with its closed circle of thought, until religion died out in Greece except as popular superstition. Its place was taken by the philosophy of nature and of man. We are bewildered by the rapid succession of philosophical schools, each school a complete explana- c [17] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH tion of the universe, elaborated with a subtilty that tasks our modern scholars even to follow. But these philosophies of the universe rest upon a basis of the narrowest observation; instruments of precision and experiment, which are the alphabet of modern philo- sophic research, have no existence ; such philosophies find their natural end in the curiosity hunting of a Pliny. So with moral speculation. The limiting hori- zon of the autonomous city-state determines the whole point of view : the moral nature, with infinite subtilty, is analyzed as if a political constitution. Greek ethics is thus the philosophy of static man ; society, or (with the Stoics) the universe, is brought in only as a sphere in which the individual may find exercise. There is no dynamic, no motive for progress, no reaction of the individual on his universe ; to its latest conceptions in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius virtue is the indi- vidual on his defence against the vanity of life. In the case of Greek art we have to take distinctions. Of the arts of sculpture and dancing the field is the human body : here the whole field is open to the Greeks, and they have exhausted the possibilities of these two arts, leaving the moderns only to imitate and modify. In architecture, the Greeks reached fulness of develop- ment for a single form, one consonant with their fixed open-air life ; the more varied life of the ages that were to come have added to architecture more than the Greeks gave to it. The art of music is bound up with mechanism, which in the Hellenic period was yet in its infancy; here it is the Greeks who are the pygmies, and the moderns the giants. [18] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC Perhaps the most astonishing achievement of the Greeks is their criticism and logic or dialectic : these seem to spring up in a moment full grown. But the in- evitable limitation comes in. Perhaps the Greek lan- guage is the most wonderful language the world has known : but it is also true that the Greeks knew no other language, and all other peoples were to them bar- barians. Hence Greek criticism, while it is funda- mental and final when it is regarded as analysis of Greek literature, yet falls short when brought to bear upon the literatures of the future ; in historic fact Greek criticism has proved chiefly an incumbrance to the natural de- velopment of poetry. Further, to say that the Greeks knew no language but their own is to say that, ulti- mately, they must lack the power to grasp what language really is, to seize clearly the horizon between words and things. And this one limitation undermines the sound- ness of their whole profound and subtle dialectic. The dialogues of Plato are dramatizations of thought pro- cesses : as such they are the marvel of universal litera- ture. As positive mental science, while the wisest of the moderns learns much from them, yet their author- ity breaks down continually by the confusion between things and the names of things ; Greek logic gives us a genealogy of ideas rather than the relation between ideas and realities. Rome presents a modified Hellenism. The one thing lacked by the Greeks is supplied by the Roman people : the instinct of political progression that can enlarge its conceptions gradually from the city-state to world em- pire, crystallizing all this institutional development in [19] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH law and jurisprudence. But again the fatal limitation comes in. When this Roman people reaches the point of literary adolescence, they surrender absolutely to Greece, and henceforward Roman culture follows Greek culture through its phases of strength and weak- ness. Accordingly, when the poHtical genius of Rome has converted all civilization into a single empire, there is no national character to serve as soul of this world empire ; Roman society undergoes the decay of infinite viciousness, until the new force of Christianity comes to the rescue. Thus Hellenism in all its aspects presents the same appearance : colossal powers, with magnificent achieve- ments, yet forever checked by limitations of the con- ditions amid which these powers are working. It is a totally false reading of history to say that Hellenism was overthrown by Christianity. The seeds of decay were in the ancient world itself, and Hellenism everywhere showed symptoms of exhaustion long before Christian- ity arose. The world we call modern had to make an entirely fresh start, under new conditions. Yet this modern world must forever reckon among its most priceless possessions the heritage of literature, art, and philosophy it has received from the ancient Greeks. It is no less necessary to inquire. What is the essen- tial spirit of Hebraism ? I use this form of the word in order to emphasize that it is not the whole history and culture of the Hebrew people with which we are con- cerned, but only that element of it which is embodied in the Uterature we call the Bible. For we cannot insist too strongly upon the fact that the Bible is a Hterature. [20] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC One of the features of our age is a remarkable quicken- ing of the historic spirit. Historic criticism, as in other fields, has worked upon the Bible : analyzing the text as it stands into component elements, assigning these com- ponent elements to various dates, and attempting chron- ological reconstruction. There has thus arisen a con- fusion in the popular mind, as if the Bible were being recast. Now, such historical analysis is legitimate and valuable in its own sphere : but this sphere is that of Semitic antiquities. It is a misnomer to call such stud- ies biblical. If the Bible be taken to pieces, the compo- nent elements associated with particular historical sur- roundings, and the parts reconstructed in new sequence, the result so attained ceases to be the Bible, and becomes something quite different ; a valuable exhibit, it may be, for the Semitic specialist, but of no bearing upon the history of civilization. What makes the groundwork of our modern religion is, not the history of Israel, but one particular interpretation of the history of Israel, a spiritual interpretation made once for all by the sacred writers, and embodied in the finished literature we call the Bible. To recast this Bible is as impossible as to reconstruct Homer, or rewrite Plato, or bring Shakespeare up to date. It is true that the full literary character of the Bible is hidden from most of its readers. There are two reasons for this. In the first place — as a later chapter will show more at length — most of us read the Bible in what are really mediaeval versions, broken up by commentators of the Middle Ages into texts for com- ment ; however accurate may be the translation of the words, the literary connection is lost. Again, this Bible [21] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH has been worked over by theology after theology, each with a different principle of interpretation : the theologi- cal interpretations are more familiar than the natural literary sense. It becomes necessary, avoiding theo- logical formulations, to realize the content of Scripture simply read as literature. In form, the Bible contains a framework of historic narrative that is no more than a framework, a connei^ive tissue holding together higher literary forms — story, lyrics, drama, discourse, philosophic wisdom, epistolary exposition — which higher forms constitute the life and spirit of the whole. These higher forms are the He- braic " classics," the survival of the spiritually fittest. They hold a position similar to that of Greek "classics," yet are so different in literary structure that they would be important, if for no other reason, as enlarging opr conceptions of literary form. But, unlike their Hellenic counterparts, these Hebraic classics are further seen to draw together with a connectedness like the unity of a dramatic plot. The Bible thus presents a progression of things from first beginnings, in historic outline to the first Christian century, in spiritual vision to a consumma- tion in an indefinite future. Our immediate question is. What are the ideas, the literary motives, holding together this dramatic progression ? First, in contrast with Greek Uterature, we note in the Bible the total absence of any suggestion of Destiny. Though, as we have seen, scriptural literature is a pro- gression, its earlier conceptions widely sundered from the later, yet from first to last the supreme power of the universe is always conceived in the personal form — [22] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC God. The "work that God doeth from the beginning even unto the end" is not Destiny but Providence. It belongs to this freedom from any sense of Destiny that the Bible places its golden age always in the future, not in the past ; there is moral inspiration in this vista of an endless progression that is always a progression upward. Of course, the supreme Power of the universe is presented as infinite ; but the personal conception of Deity keeps this supreme Power always within the circle of human sympathies. At the same time there is the careful avoidance of anything that would make this human conception of Deity a limitation. In the first phase of Scripture, which we call the Law, the supreme sin is the sin of idolatry — the ascribing to Deity the likeness of anything in the heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth ; the New Testament lays down as a foundation thought that God is spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Thus the biblical conception of Deity can never be outgrown : as man enlarges, his conception of God enlarges with him. It is a conception that is anthropo- morphic only in the same sense and for the same reason that the sky must appear to us spherical and the horizon circular. With the expansion of man's vision comes the expansion of his horizon, that is God. With the idea of God another idea is kept side by side throughout the Bible : the communion between human- ity and Deity. The characteristic word of the Bible is ''covenant," the expression of the relationship between man and God. The Bible is a succession of covenants. The Old Covenant, or Old Testament, is the covenantal 123] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH relation between God and the People of Israel ; the New Covenant — which makes its first appearance in the book of Jeremiah — the covenantal relationship between God and all individuals in whose hearts and inward parts this new covenant is written. The lyrics of the Old Tes- tament voice the most intimate communion between man and God. In the New Testament the two have met. Whatever theology may formulate as to the person of Jesus Christ, the spirit of the New Testament is the meeting point of humanity and Deity. It is impossible to read the Fatherhood of God as a mere metaphor. And what pervades the whole New Testament is by the fourth gospel carried to a climax : in its mystic phrase- ology — "I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you" — the dividing line between humanity and Deity has disappeared. Furthermore, as with the passage from the Old Testament to the New, if not before, the idea of immortality has come in, and this a personal, in- dividual immortality, the communion between man and God is projected beyond the grave to an infinite future. With such ideas of man and God as its basis, the Bible presents a progression of things from first beginnings to a final consummation in a visionary future. What are the leading motives in this dramatic progression? They are two, that unite to make a third. The first may be described as Passionate Righteousness. Right- eousness, of course, is a basic idea in all the world's great systems of thought. But Righteousness in the Bible be- comes an enthusiasm, inspiring the same ecstasy that elsewhere is inspired by nature joys, by love, by ven- geance. In the earlier phase of Scripture, which we call [24] HELLENIC AND HEBRAIC the Law, righteousness appears chiefly as a restraining force, a hohness which separates from what is around. It is with the prophets that Righteousness becomes pas- sionate, ahke in its indignation against evil, and its glorying in the vindication of right. The second bib- lical motive is Love. It breathes through the lyrics of the Old Testament ; as the New Testament progresses, love becomes more and more the supreme attribute even of Deity itself. It is not the love that is self-cen- tred, desiring what is external for its own gratification ; but a love that goes outwards, a yearning that by its own force flows over everything around, until it can hold it in a universal embrace. These two motives combine to make a third. From first to last the Bible, in no uncertain terms, recognizes the evil that is in the world : in the presence of evil Righteousness and Love unite to make the supreme motive of Redemption. This word we are so accus- tomed to associate with theology, and its philosophical schemes of salvation, that it needs a purely literary read- ing of Scripture to realize that Redemption is of all con- ceptions the most poetic. The prophetic rhapsodies read like the day dreams of the spiritual life ; the most exuberant and delicate poetic imagery is poured forth over the recovery of the world from its moral chaos, its conquest not by war but by agencies gentle as the light. The supreme personality of prophetic vision announces his mission as that of preaching good tidings to the meek, binding up the brokenhearted, bringing liberty to the captives, bringing the oil of joy for mourning, the gar- ment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. It is this very [25] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH passage of the Isaiahan Rhapsody which the Jesus of the New Testament makes the announcement of his own mission ; the gospels describe this work of heaUng and redemption, and in the vision of the Transfiguration present the Law and the Prophets as doing it homage. And the final vision of all time in which the whole Bible culminates presents the figure of the Redeemer as su- preme over all other authority, while all history is to be summed up as the kingdom of the world becoming the kingdom of this Christ. To come back to our main argument : it is the an- cient Uteratures which are inspired by this Hellenic and this Hebraic spirit that have been the ancestral litera- tures of our modern English culture. Yet it is manifest that this statement will not of itself suffice for the liter- ary pedigree of the English-speaking peoples. A third factor has to be recognized, only less important than the first two. It is a factor much more difficult to state : we have in this case, not distinct ancestral literatures, but a complex of many forces working to- gether. Nor is there any generally accepted term by which these are known. I will adopt the expression Medisevalism and Romance : Mediaevalism to describe the historic conditions ; Romance, the literary aspect of the result. And to realize clearly this third factor of our pedigree, it will be necessary to summarize the history of the Middle Ages, the period of gestation for the forces with which we are concerned. I fear that to some of my readers I shall seem to be reciting very elementary historic facts. But in a case like this it is [26] MEDIiEVALISM AND ROMANCE the elementary facts that constitute the difficulty : in dealing with so vast and so vaguely known a period as the Middle Ages it needs some resolution to keep the semi- relevant details from obscuring the essential outline. I. The Middle Ages should not be understood as a chronological term, measurable in centuries; it is the expression of the transition from Roman to modern civilization. The Roman Empire, which is our start- ing point, was an Hellenic civilization centring around the Mediterranean : the name of this sea becomes highly significant in this connection. On the east of the Roman Empire we have the remnant of the great Persian Empire, the last but one of the world powers. To the same region belong, what are important for coming movements, the Semitic civilizations of the Arabs and the Jews. To the west of the Roman Em- pire lies the region of the barbarian peoples, raw material for the Europe of the future. It is simply bewildering to enumerate the separate races, which indeed have importance only in tfeeir amalgamation. We may perhaps think of them as falling into two classes, which may be described by the terms *' Ger- manic " and " Migratory." Germanic is not here used as a strict ethnological term, but a number of allied stocks may be signified by what was destined to be their dominant element. All barbarian races were migra- tory. But those of the Germanic order migrated only in the sense of gravitating to their permanent seats. Other races — Slavs, Huns, eventually Turks — ap- pear in European history as migratory in another sense : like sudden floods they descend at intervals upon the [27] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH comparatively settled society of Europe, making epochs of distm'bance and shock, until they at last find a place in the European system. II. The first onward stage from our starting-point is that, slowly but surely, this Roman Empue becomes Christianized. In its total significance this of course implies that Hebraic culture gradually pervades Hel- lenic. But of this wide revolution a single aspect has for us specific importance. As part of the institutions of Christianity we have the rise of the clergy, an order which is intellectual but not hereditary. As non- hereditary, the order of the clergy becomes a recruit- ing ground for talent of all kinds; from the lowest ranks of society, and even from among slaves, indi- viduals can by this means pass to the highest positions of influence. As an intellectual order, the clergy make the channels by which culture is conveyed from the centre to every part of the vast whole. The secular clergy bring the religious ideas of which Rome is the centre to every hamlet and every hearth, and keep them in evidence through each season of the changing year. Later on, the monastic clergy, dissociated from local ties, become the special instrument by which the Pope in Rome maintains his hold upon all Christen- dom : the Dominicans and Franciscans are his eccle- siastical knighthood, the mendicant friars his guerilla forces. More than anything else it is the order of the clergy that makes the bridge by which Roman culture is transported to future ages. The Middle Ages may almost be summed up as the transition of the Roman Empire into the Roman Church. [28] MEDIEVALISM AND ROMANCE III. We pass now into a period marked by the struggle for existence of the Roman Empire in conflict with barbarian races. The struggle becomes a drawn battle. The material side of civilization passes more and more into the hands of the barbarians; new and vigorous races control government, yet, as they settle into organized life, become tinctured with the civiliza- tion they have conquered. On the other hand, mental culture is retained by Rome through its clergy. From this time onward we find a monastic monopoly of learning. And the word "learning" must not deceive us : education down to its very elements is confined to the clergy. This is brought home to our imagination by a curious survival from this era into the far future — the " benefit of clergy," or right of the clergy to be tried by their own courts, the test of such clerical status being the power to read a book : a survival point- ing to the time when the reading, which we consider the first step in education, was of itself sufficient to constitute membership in the clerical profes- sion. In this period, moreover, of struggle and con- tinual war, not only is education confined to the non- combatant clergy, but what culture there is undergoes a great shrinkage: we have the "Dark Ages." The Hellenic learning that has descended from the Roman Empire becomes contracted to a minimum, and that minimum becomes adulterated with ecclesiastical limitations; mathematics tends to be little more than the "computus" or mode of determining the date of Easter, and history is dwarfed to the monastic chronicle. What is stranger still, Hebraic culture [29] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH undergoes a similar shrinkage. So far as Christianity is a theology, its foundation doctrines are emphasized by the mediaeval church and made prevalent. But if we regard Christianity as the religion of the Bible, resting therefore upon the basis of a rich and varied literature, we seek in vain for such biblical culture in the Dark Ages. To how small a point it has shrunk we may best realize by noting what appears long after- wards, when Europe has advanced from the Dark Ages to the verge of the Renaissance. We find a Martin Luther — already a university man, nearing his Bachelor's degree, and exceptionally inclined to reli- gious studies — as he rummages among books in the university library, coming by accident for the first time upon a copy of the Bible, and finding with amazement that it is a whole literature, and not merely the frag- ments of gospels and epistles read in the services of the Church : the shock of surprise altered his whole life. And another of the reformers, Carlstadt, tells us that he was a Doctor of Theology in the University of Wittenberg before he had ever read the Scriptures. The Dark Ages involve a loss of knowledge just as much as the confinement of knowledge to a single class. IV. From the Dark Ages we pass to the climax of "The Holy Roman Empire." The Middle Ages must no longer be described by negative terms ; they have attained a characteristic individuality that distinguishes a great period in universal history. In other epochs of European history we have to do with various races and peoples : in the Middle Ages European civilization conceives of itself as a single unity, at once a Church [30] MEDIiEVALISM AND ROMANCE and a State. Its one aspect is the Holy Catholic Church ; the other is the Holy Roman Empire. The drawn battle between Rome and barbarism, by which the new races have won material power and Rome has conquered in the spiritual world, here stands fully displayed ; it is some German potentate who represents the outward authority of Rome, a Pope in Rome itself who sways all Christendom in things of the spmt. And the one is as "holy" as the other : as the soul can- not operate except through the body, and the body is dead without the soul, so Emperor and Pope may be forever struggling for predominance, but neither can exist without the other. A conception like this is the passionate faith of great mediaeval thinkers like Dante ; it no less plays its part in the practical politics of the least imaginative rulers and statesmen. If from this general conception we descend to analysis, we find three elements side by side in this dominant phase of mediaeval history. We have the Catholic Church : the whole of civilization appears as a single spiritual body, with the Pope in Rome as the brain, and the clergy as the ramified system of nerves by which he communicates with the corporate whole. The second element is the Feudal System. Instead of natural divisions of mankind, like races and nations, we find shifting political units — the feudal tenures. The principle of feudalism is the combination of two things : the tenure of land by military service to a superior, and the hereditary principle. Each feudal chief, in the spirit of the parable, is a man under author- ity, having authorities under him : supreme in the 131] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH administration of his own realm, he yet has allegiance to powers above him, until the hierarchy ends in the ideal Emperor. The accidents that go with the heredi- tary principle — failure of heirs, intermarriage, to say nothing of violent action and war — keep these units of government forever shifting, and the map of Europe changes from day to day. To these two a third ele- ment must be added, prominent not so much at the time as in the light of the future. The common Roman language, acting upon various local modes of speech, begins to form varjdng languages ; where Latin is stronger than local linguistic influence, we have Romance languages, Italian, French, Spanish; where the local speech is the stronger of the two, we get Ger- manic languages, such as English or German. Lan- guage is the main basis of nationaUty; and thus in the heart of the Middle Ages, with its unity of Euro- pean civilization, are being gradually prepared the pohtical units of the future, the great nations of Europe. V. Thus the original Roman Empire had drawn the barbarian west into itself, and moulded the whole into an imperial and ecclesiastical unity. Meanwhile, a strangely parallel movement had been going on upon the other side of the Mediterranean. In the far East another Semitic people had suddenly risen to be a world power; the Arabs, inspired by the powerful individuality of Mahomet, had produced a new reli- gion, a perverted Hebraism. Appealing as this religion does to the more facile side of the moral nature, it had spread like wild-fire through regions of Indian, Persian, Greek, African civilization, until from Babylon to the [32] MEDIEVALISM AND ROMANCE Atlantic coast of Africa Islam stood up to confront Christendom. Mohammedan civilization, like Christ- ian, exhibits the blending of Semitic and Aryan culture ; not only the seats of oriental learning, but Alexandria itself, centre of Greek literature and science, had been swept into the Mohammedan world. The parallel must be carried a step further. On the European side, of all binding forces the most potent was the Latin language, sole language alike of religion and education, the circulating medium for ideas from end to end of Christendom. In precisely the same way, the Arabic was the sole official language of the Mohammedan world : in this medium alone Indian, Persian, Greek wisdom could find currency. This has an important bearing upon future history. The Arabians of the Middle Ages had (so to speak) the main carrying trade in ideas, but they brought nothing of their own to the civilization of the future. Arabians gave a great impulse to mediaeval philosophy ; but they did this with translations of Aristotle. Arabians were the leading scientists of the Middle Ages, especially in the science of medicine, with the great names of Averroes and Avicenna; but the enormous medical literature in Arabic is a second-hand literature, and, except for small advances in pharmacopoeia, Greek medical art lost, rather than gained, in the hands of the Arabs. They gave an Arabic name to "Algebra" : but on their own showing it was a Greek science they were expounding. Most important of all : the Arabic notation seems to us the indispensable foundation of all mathematics, and through mathematics of all exact science. But D [33] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH the one thing certain about the Arabic notation is that it was not Arabic. In the form in which the Arabians conveyed it to Europe they had learned it from Indian philosophers; but it is still a moot question whether the essentials of the Arabic notation had not been established centuries earlier than this in the Greek Alexandria. In spite of the briUiant mediaeval career of Arabic learning the roots of our civilization remain Hellenic and Hebraic. VI. It was inevitable that sooner or later the West and the East, Christianity and Islam, should clash. By what seems one of the accidents of history, the Arabs — or, as they are then called, the Saracens — had been able to secure a strong foothold in the Spanish peninsula of Europe. From this as a base in the eighth century they make their advances. Europe concen- trates its full strength to oppose them under the leader- ship of Charles Martel; and in the great Battle of Tours — as decisive a world crisis as Marathon — it is settled forever that there shall be no Mohammedan domination of Europe. Three centuries afterwards we have, so to speak, the return match. In the suc- cession of expeditions known as the Crusades all Europe put its strength into the invasion of the Sara- cenic world. Christendom proved as powerless to subdue Islam as Islam had been powerless to defeat European Christendom. Meanwhile, these clashes of East and West had served as the great tides of the mediaeval ocean. Each civilization had been strained to its highest bent in conflict with the other. In Europe, more particularly, the constituent parts of the whole [34 1 MEDIiEVALISM AND ROMANCE by events like these had been shaken together; by the Crusades Europe was brought to a knowledge of itself. VII. With these elements of mediaeval history as a basis, we are now in a position to take a survey of mediaBval culture. But here a distinction must be made, if our survey is to escape being burdened with a great deal of what, however important in itself, is not strictly relevant to our present purpose. I have used the term '^ Middle Ages," not as a chronological term, but as the description of a transition. If we simply take the centuries that intervene between the Roman \No' Aevo European %/,^^ Modern Times Renaissance Middle Ages Dark Ages Empire and the Renaissance, and analyze the literary and philosophical content of these centuries, a con- siderable proportion of what we encounter has its true relevance not so much to contemporary history as to the future. We have seen that in the midst of the [35] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH European unity which is the essential distinction of the IVIiddle Ages we have also the gradual evolution, by slow linguistic divergence, of what are hereafter to be the nations of Europe. The literary movements and literary product of the mediaeval centuries belong in a very considerable degree to the separate history of the individual European peoples. We are here con- cerned only with that part of the whole which, in a strict sense, constitutes medisevalism. 1. The foremost element of mediaeval culture is that which is expressed by the picturesque yet appropriate name of Gothic Architecture. This has, of course, developmental connection with previous art — Greek, Byzantine, Saracenic ; yet it is strongly original, and seems to us to breathe the very soul of the centuries that produced it. It stands as the supremely great contribution of the Middle Ages to the culture of the world. 2. We may notice, next, the purely ecclesiastical literature. The Christian Fathers make a library in themselves, not only indispensable to the theologian and ecclesiastical historian, but holding a place of their own in philosophy. With these may be placed the grand Latin Hymns of the Church. Several of these in modern versions are still a part of Christian worship. Yet this seems to be a branch of poetry which less than most lends itself to translation. The Latin of these hymns has a rhythmic ring as far removed from classical Latin as it is difficult to convey into modern languages. They are, moreover, strong with the simplicity that seems never to come after the early stages of poetry. [36] MEDIiEVALISM AND ROMANCE In the feeling of no few readers, the Hymn as a poetic type has in these outpourings of the early Church reached its highest point. 3. Mediaeval Science has already been mentioned, and is the least important product of its era. What science the Greeks bequeathed to future ages appears here diluted by Arabic and Latin translations, and still further limited by the ecclesiastical uses to which it was put. Medical practice figured largely in the Middle Ages, but medical theory was almost stationary. 4. Of much greater importance is the philosophy of the Middle Ages, known by the name of Scholasticism, or Doctrine of the Schools. This forms a distinct chapter of Universal Philosophy ; one that must always be read with the deepest respect for the mental strength and infinite subtilty that it displays. But it is a portion of philosophy which stands entirely apart by itself. As philosophy is understood elsewhere, it can- not exist in the atmosphere of authority. But Scho- lasticism is a reasoned attempt to harmonize these two incompatible things, and to reach ecclesiastical dogma by logical methods. Hellenic systems of dia- lectic are applied to Hebraic truths as laid down by ecclesiastical authority. The conclusion is first as- sumed, and then the argument may wander until it finds it ; or indeed there is yet another alternative, the position that something may be true in logic and yet false in faith. As it appears to me, a somewhat false conception of Scholasticism is made current by the way in which our histories of philosophy confine their notice of it to the Nominalist and Realist controversy, [37] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH or at least to the works of the great scholastic doctors, Anselm, Thomas Aqumas, Duns Scotus. No doubt this is the portion of scholastic literature most inter- esting to the philosophic thinker. But we must re- member that the general character of mediaeval life involved, alike in poetry and philosophy, a return in some measure to floating literature ; written literature continued, but around it there played a transitory literature, vastly greater in extent, which was purely oral. In philosophy, this oral literature was the de- bate : the interminable public discussion in which doctor encountered doctor before an excited audience. In such debates the activity of the Schoolmen found its main expression; the written works of the leaders of Scholasticism were a small part of the whole. Thus the main influence of Scholasticism in the history of thought is that it shifted the emphasis in philosophy from investigation or exposition to disputation. The combative instinct became a disturbing force to logical sequence. The continuity of the treatise or lecture gave place to the series of numbered propositions — like the ninety or hundred theses with which Luther and Eck contended — each brief proposition a clenched fist of challenge to dispute ; a change closely analogous to that other mediaeval change by which the literary continuity of Scripture was broken up into numbered texts for comment. It was this aspect of Scholasticism which impressed the men of the modern type of mind who came nearest to it, men like Erasmus and Bacon. What Erasmus says must of course be read as humorous satire. [38] MEDIEVALISM AND ROMANCE They fence themselves in with so many surrounders of magisterial definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit and im- plicit, that there is no falling in with them ; or if they do chance to be urged to a seeming nonplus, yet they find out so many evasions, that all the art of man can never bind them so fast, but that an easy distinction shall give them a starting-hole to escape the scandal of being baffled. They will cut asunder the toughest argument with as much ease as Alexander did the Gordian Knot. . . . They have yet far greater difficulties behind, which, notwithstanding, they solve with as much expedition as the former, as . . . whether this proposition is possible to be true, the first person of the Trinity hated the second ? Wliether God, who took our nature on him in the form of a man, could as well have become a woman, a devil, a beast, a herb, or a stone ? and were it so possible that the God- head had appeared in any shape of an inanimate substance, how he should then have preached his gospel ? or how have been nailed to the cross ? . . . There are a thousand other more sublimated and refined niceties of notions, relations, quantities, formalities, quiddi- ties, haeccities, and such like abstrusities, as one would think no one could pry into, unless he had not only such cat's eyes as to see best in the dark, but even such a piercing faculty as to see through an inch board, and spy out what really never had any being.^ But Bacon's criticism is sober analysis : — . . . the manner or method of handling a knowledge, which among them was this ; upon every particular position or assertion to frame objections, and to those objections, solutions ; which solutions were for the most part not confutations, but distinctions : whereas in- deed the strength of all sciences is, as the strength of the old man's faggot, in the bond. For the harmony of a science, supporting each part the other, is and ought to be the true and brief confutation and suppression of all the smaller sort of objections. But, on the other side, if you take out every axiom, as the sticks of the faggot, one by one, you may quarrel with them and bend and break them at your 1 Erasmus : Praise of Folly. [39] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH pleasure. . . . And such is their method, that rests not so much upon evidence of truth proved by arguments, authorities, simiUtudes, examples, as upon particular confutations and solutions of every scruple, cavillation, and objection, breeding for the most part one question as fast as it solveth another.^ Upon both Erasmus and Bacon we see that Scholas- ticism impresses itself as a vitiation of philosophic method : the natural perspective of investigation or exposition lost in the perspective of debate. 5. Mediaeval literature includes a body of Religious Epic Poetry : of legends, miracles, lives of saints. This pervaded the centuries as a floating literature ; it is best known to us in the collection of these stories, roughly associated with the successive parts of the ecclesiastical year, under the name of The Golden Legend. This Golden Legend of course is not an epic poem, but it may be regarded as a cycle of epic poetry. These stories of the saints, more than anything else, bring us into close touch with the pulsating everyday life of the Middle Ages. It would be a shallow criticism that would regard these as the product of credulity. Credulity is a negative that cannot create : these golden legends are filled with creative reality. It is at this point that mediaevalism is in sharpest contrast with the spirit of the present age. The objective material world, so clear cut to us as seen in the light of science, was dim to the men of the Dark Ages. Theirs was the inward vision, the eye opened to the spiritual world interpenetrating the life of ordinary experience: a palpable spiritual realm filled with ^ Bacon : Advancement oj Learning. [40] MEDIEVALISM AND ROMANCE hierarchies of superhuman powers, fighting on oppo- site sides in the battle of salvation. In such a world miracle becomes the ordinary course of things; the measure of probability is the stimulus each incident gives to faith. If the sense of wonder is present at all, it is present only as the salt to the food of devotion. 6. To Mediaeval Religious Epic must be added Mediaeval Religious Drama. The whole spirit of pub- lic worship was dramatic, and the mass was the daily presentation of miracle. In time, complete dramatic scenes were evolved with an independent interest of their own : the Miracle Play, in which the plot was an incident of sacred history ; the Morality, in which the plot was latent in the allegorical personages repre- sented. It is well known how the Miracle Play and Morality became further and further dissociated from their ecclesiastical origin; the use of realistic details as a mode of vivification introduced a spirit of seculari- zation, and the mediaeval drama was at last brought, through the Interlude, to the very verge of the modern play. But there is a more deep-seated influeti^e than this of mediaeval drama in literary history. The Ancient Classical Drama was the Drama of Situation : however much its successive phases might vary, it re- tained from first to last a fixity of form — the suggestion of a whole story through the actual presentation of only a single situation. The effect of the mediaeval drama was to shift the dramatic emphasis from situation to in- cident ; in the earlier Miracle Plays to a single incident, in the Collective Miracle Play to a series of incidents covering the whole of sacred history. In this way the [411 LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH medijEval drama became a transition stage to the com- ing Romantic Drama with its presentation of whole stories. VIII. Yet all that has so far been enumerated con- stitutes the less significant aspects of medisevalism. The most important product of the Middle Ages, at least from the standpoint of the present discussion, is the grand popular imaginative hterature ultimately to be known by the name of " Romance." From the very beginning of modern literary history a leading question has been the Origin of Romance. But the older theories fell into the error of seeking single causes for this vast literary phenomenon. The real source of Romance is the constitution of the Middle Ages as a whole. The Middle Ages constitute a vast gathering ground of poetic material for fusion and intermingling; for poetic use at the time, and as foundation for the poetry of the future. Europe at this period was possessed by a sense of unity, never possible before or in the future. Diversity of language, the greatest of dividing forces, was then at its minimum ; nationality was only begin- ning its process of formation; the consciousness of unity, inherited from the Roman Empire, was empha- sized by unity of religion, and brought home to daily life by uniformity of worship ; there was one single educated class, speaking a single language of education. We may say that the very stratification of society tended in the same direction. With us, the divisions of society are (so to speak) vertical ; the higher and lower classes of the same nation are more closely in [42] MEDI.EVALISM AND ROMANCE sympathy with one another than with corresponding ranks abroad. In the Middle Ages the stratification was horizontal : the knights formed a freemasonry all over Europe; the populace everywhere had the same troubles and the same clergy to voice them ; everywhere the towns had the same practical problems and the same modes of meeting them. For such a European com- munity a circulating medium of ideas was found in the various wandering classes : the wandering minstrels, the wandering scholars, the wandering friars and palmers, the wandering merchants. Finally, great movements like the Crusades brought, not profes- sional armies, but great bodies of the people, down even in one case to children, from all regions into actual personal contact. Of what nature were the poetic materials brought together by this unification of Europe? In the first place, we have the original folklore of the races thus intermingling : English folklore and German ; Celtic lore, with the delicate fairy tracery of Irish imagina- tion ; Norse heroic saga, in its poetic potentiality the peer of Greek epic ; all the accumulations of Oriental nations, brought into Europe by the Arabs ; these, in addition to what remained of Hellenic story, especially Greek novels, and the story wealth of the Bible, with traditions of miracle and martyrdom that had gathered round it. But in addition to all this there are special poetic motives generated by mediaeval life itself. Of these, the most prominent is Chivalry. The feudal system multiplied courts, and "courts" (as Spenser has said) are the root of "courtesy"; of 143] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH the gay science (we may add), and what has been called "the metaphysics of love" ; all this the secular product of that Germanic instinct which m religion added Mariolatry to biblical Christianity. Again, we have Allegory and Mysticism : this is to be found in all ages of literature, but we may look for it in special force where we have an educated class excluded from the dominant interests of war and love, except so far as these can appear in symbolic forms. The interest of Marvels and Wonderland is a universal interest; but it will be accentuated in an age of travel and wan- dering life. And we must add the special interest of Magic. Magic of some kind belongs to widely different eras, witness the Thessalian Witch and the Witch of Endor : it was the dominating reality of mediaeval hfe. Gustave Dore's picture of the Triumph of Christ- ianity represents the Messiah and his angels driving before them into the pit of hell figures easily recog- nizable as the gods of Greek or Oriental rehgions. This exactly reproduces the historic fact : the Christ- ianization of the barbarian peoples was, not the extinction, but the conquest of heathendom, the gods of the old religions becoming the demons of the new. Thus was provided in mediaeval thought a whole appa- ratus of supernatural powers, warring in the fight of good against evil; the "White Magic" of the miracle- working Church was pitted against the " Black Magic " of wonders wrought by demonic powers for the price of human souls. Or, if any nature powers were of too neutral a character to have place in the contest of good and evil, the Rosicrucian Magic presented these as [44] MEDI.EVALISM AND ROMANCE elemental beings of earth, air, fire, water. Chivalry, Allegory, Wonderland, Magic — these together make an atmosphere favorable to the most prolific invention of imaginative poetry, to be added to the rich imagina- tive stores inherited from earlier ages. We have thus a limitless variety of poetic materials and a common field on which they may unite. The free intermingling and fusion of these varieties is further favored by two circumstances. One is that in the Middle Ages we have a partial reversion to the condi- tions of floating literature. Oral literature prepon- derates over written; hearers ready to listen are universal, reading is the special function of a profes- sional class. It is obvious that writing tends to fixity in literature; oral poetry, free to vary with every recitation, makes a floating medium in which the most varied elements can come together, and gradually feel their way to amalgamation. To this it must be added, that all through the period under discussion the limit- ing influence of criticism was in abeyance. In Greek literature creative poetry and criticism sprang up simultaneously; not of course the systematized criti- cism of an Aristotle, but that unconscious criticism of the public mind which favors fixity of form and literary conservatism; such critical sense as kept tragedy and comedy distinct at Athens, limited dramatic structure by unity of scene, or even resented any enlargement by Euripides of dramatic practice followed by Sophocles. There is not a trace of such critical stiffness in mediaeval poetry. The tragic and the comic may mingle as freely as they do in actual life. Even the sharp line that 145] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH divides story from history has been lost : the historic chronicle is filled in with imaginative details by a trouvere, and becomes history to a future chronicler. In this way it is the general condition of things we call ''Mediaevalism" that brings about the literary product which comes to be called "Romance." The name seems natural in an age of which a leading phenomenon is the breaking up of the dominant Roman language into a number of allied languages the larger part of which go by the name of "Romance" languages. The essential character of this Romantic poetry is the amalgamation of the literary riches of many races in a product that becomes infinitely richer as it amalga- mates. Such Romance becomes something of a World Literature in itself, as we follow adventures of Charle- magne's Peers that involve episodes in Ireland or Sicily, the speakers in these incidents citing parallels from legends of Troy or Thebes, with references to Russia and Lithuania, while at times Christian hermits have to work miracles that may counteract the magic power of a Proteus, or Venus, or Osiris. The supreme creative power that can produce the Greek masterpieces carries with it, as its shadow, critical limitations ; these powers and limitations may well be in abeyance for a few cen- turies while new veins of poetic matter are being worked, to supplement the exhausted material of classical poetry. Or, if we go no further than the elementary consideration of quantity, the mass of Romance has its significance as a counterpoise, in the European mind, to the overpowering authority of the classical models soon to be recovered. [ 46 ] MEDIiEVALISM AND ROMANCE IX. The movement which terminates the Middle Ages and ushers in our modern times is known as the Renaissance. Great is the power of the metaphors hidden in words : it has become a matter of dispute in what sense this movement is a "new birth." Some have been wilUng to recognize only a sudden movement, dated from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in A.D. 1453, which produced an exodus of Greek schol- ars westward, bringing to Europe as a whole both the classical literature itself and the classical scholarship that could interpret it. But to take this view is to ignore the steady advance towards the constitution of the modern world which had been made all through the latter part of the Middle Ages. Others have made the birth of the modern world consist in the recovery, whether gradual or sudden, of classical thought and art : this ignores the immense contribution made by the Middle Ages to modernism, a contribution including Christianity itself. The fundamental principle of this work is that modern civilization rests upon the union of the Hellenic and Hebraic factors. The Middle Ages had added Christianity to Hellenism, but (as we have seen) both biblical and classical literatures were known in an imperfect and distorted form; the Renaissance from our point of view is the recovery of Hellenic and Hebraic culture in their completeness. Thus the movement is twofold ; and each half carries with it what is a spurious counterpart of itself. In the first place, we have the complete recovery of classical litera- ture and art ; classical manuscripts replace the mediaeval translations and perversions, and a classical scholar- [47] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH ship is formed by the study of these, while in poetry an era of translation makes an apprenticeship of modern poets to Greek masters. This is the Renais- sance Proper. But in its earlier stages there goes with it the Pseudo-Hellenism of the age of the Medici : in religion a recrudescence of paganism, in art a blind worship of what is classical, all other types ignored as "gothic" barbarity. The other half of the Renaissance is what is usually called the Reformation. We now have Hebraic literature recovered in its fulness: the manuscripts brought into western Europe include the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures; the scholarship of a Budseus and an Erasmus is applied to their elucidation ; when the results of this have had time to reach the general mind, the great religious movement super- venes which brings back Christianity to its foundation upon the Bible as a whole. But the Reformation in its later stages brings the Pseudo-Hebraism that makes Puritanism. The translated Bible has reached the whole people ; it is a complete Scripture, but Scripture broken by mediaeval doctors into texts by which all literary continuity is lost. Melancthon's ideal also is lost, that learning should be the bulwark to religion against enthusiasm. The words and phrases of Scrip- ture, and its mere surface meanings divorced from literary or historic setting, are seized upon by a reli- gious earnestness that mistakes the fervor of novelty for spiritual inspiration ; faith and culture are divorced, and tumultuous religious warfare supersedes the sanity of devotion. It is only when this fever of distorted Hebraism has worn itself out that the biblical element [481 MEDIiEVALISM AND ROMANCE can be recognized in its true influence on the formation of the modern world. X. Thus Modern Culture, the point up to which this discussion has led, may be summed up as a New Thought, a New Poetry, a New Religion, and a New Art. A New Thought : we have a fresh start of science and philosophy from the point at which the Greeks left off. But the intervening period has pro- duced two inventions which have revolutionized think- ing. The silent, unheralded, almost unperceived rise of scientific experimentation, not only has restored observation as the essential basis of science and phi- losophy, but further serves to carry this observation direct to the crucial points at which truth is likely to be found. The more obvious invention of printing perpetuates and distributes records : the ancient con- ception of philosophy, which leads each thinker to attempt a complete explanation of all things, gives place to the New Thought, in which observers and thinkers of all races and generations gradually resolve into a cooperation for the advance of truth, as limitless as the human race itself. We have again a New Poetry : the combined influences of Medisevalism and Hellenism give to modern literature its fundamental antithesis of Romantic and Classical. These are the centripetal and centrifugal forces of creative literature : the Classical impulse is towards echoing the poetry of the past, ministering to an established sense of form, recalling creative details already dear to the imagina- tion in ever new kaleidoscopic variations ; the Roman- tic impulse is towards novelty, free invention and B [49] LITERARY PEDIGREE OF THE ENGLISH surprise. The mutual play of these antithetic ten- dencies keeps poetry in wholesome equilibrium. And there is a sense in which a New Religion distinguishes the modern world. It will have its Protestantism and Catholicism, its religions of authority, its rationalistic, mystical, or agnostic systems. But all alike will differ from what has gone before by their free play of religious thought, in which authority itself must be a voluntarily accepted authority. And they will all rest upon an Hebraic basis : to whatever limit their final conclusions maj^ be carried, the only possible starting-point for modern religions will be the moral and spiritual conceptions of which the Bible is the literary monument. In a somewhat different sense we may speak, finally, of a New Art for the modern world. The other arts have come to us by a continuous development, quickened no doubt by the Renaissance ; but the special art of the modern world is the art of music. It has its roots in the ecclesiastical worship of the mediaeval church and the folk songs of European peoples. But the backbone of musical art is the orches- tra, in which of course human voices find a place as one type of instruments. Now the orchestra is in- separably bound up with mechanical invention, the great achievement of modern times. Each invention of a musical instrument, or enlargement of the power of an existing instrument, means an enlargement of musical thought ; the enlarging musical thought in its turn calls for enlarged instrumental technique, until what leaders of music in Beethoven's day pronounced impossible, has become easy to our modern players. [50] MEDI.EVALISM AND ROMANCE Music thus becomes the most progressive of the fine arts. And it is music which has placed the modern world on a par artistically with the greatest ages of the past. A symphony of Beethoven or Tschaikowsky, rendered by one of the half-dozen supremely equipped orchestras of our own day, is as colossal an artistic achievement as a statue by Phidias or Cologne Cathe- dral. These seem to be the historic considerations that determine the descent of our modern English culture from influences of antiquity, and its varied relationship with the culture of other peoples. We recognize two ultimate factors : ancestral literatures, completed and belonging to the far past. A third factor is the complex of historic conditions and literary relation- ships constituting Mediaevalism, in its literary aspect Romance; into this Mediaevalism the primitive Eng- lish literature passed, along with the primitive litera- tures of allied European races, and in this way entered into associations with the culture of various peoples, ancient and modern. The original chart, with which (on page 12) we sought to indicate the relationship of English civilization to the main civilizations of the world, needs to be modified in order to give its proper place to this new factor of Mediaevalism and Romance. As so modified (page 52), it may stand for the Liter- ary Pedigree of the English-speaking Peoples, bringing out, in all that has a bearing upon literature, our nearer or more remote relationship to the rest of the world. It thus satisfies one of the two conditions necessary for forming our conception of World Litera- [51] QJ O .E i=3 •E Oja •S « i