tlSRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO

 
 .
 
 HOW TO STUDY 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX ON 
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 SELECTED BY 
 
 PROF. DOWDEN, THOMAS HARDY, GEORGE MEREDITH 
 AND MANY OTHERS 
 
 BY 
 
 T. SHARPER KNOWLSON 
 
 LONDON 
 GRANT RICHARDS 
 
 9 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 IQOI
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 1. THE object of this manual is to assist the 
 student and the general reader in the study 
 of English Literature. Consequently it is 
 a book of methods, and there will be no 
 attempt to tell the story of literature in 
 these islands or to enter into detail respect- 
 ing great writers and great periods. We 
 seek to render the same service that a 
 compass renders to a mariner in a voyage 
 across the ocean the compass, of itself, will 
 accomplish nothing unless the mariner will 
 adventure his ship on the high seas. In 
 like manner it is hoped this little book will 
 guide those who may use it in their first 
 attempts to understand the subject, and by 
 a wise economy of time and the adoption of 
 true methods bring about the best results 
 of enjoyment and culture.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE PLAN 
 
 2. How do we propose to carry out the 
 programme ? In this way. There is a kind 
 of study which is wrong wrong in principle 
 and wrong in its effects. This will be dealt 
 with under the heading of How NOT to Study 
 Literature. It treats of Reading versus 
 Study, Literary Knowledge versus Literary 
 Culture, and the undue prominence given to 
 Philology. The right kind of study will 
 then be discussed in two sections, the first 
 covering the ground of theory by attempting 
 to define literature and considering its nature 
 in reference to Language, Art, Personality, 
 History, and the Ideal. The second part 
 contains suggestions as to specimen studies 
 of a poem, a drama, a novel, and an essay. 
 Following this will appear a chapter on 
 Practical Hints, in which the results of 
 observation, experience, and reading will be 
 embodied. 
 
 A number of pages are devoted to Literary 
 Criticism, and the aim has been to indicate 
 the present condition of opinion on this im- 
 
 viii
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 portant topic. The wants of the examination 
 student receive attention in English Litera- 
 ture in Public Examinations. The cram 
 question is discussed, and an endeavour made 
 to steer a middle course between the evil and 
 the good ; specimen questions and answers 
 are provided. 
 
 The Appendix on Fine Passages in Prose 
 and Poetry is duly explained in a prefatory 
 note. 
 
 Doubtless this plan thus outlined is not 
 without defects, but if it can be justified as 
 a piece of frank utilitarianism it will have 
 served its end and accomplished the author's 
 design.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION . . . . . vii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 How NOT TO STUDY LITERATURE . . .1 
 
 1. Mere Reading is not Literary Study. 
 
 2. Knowledge about Literature is not necessarily Know- 
 
 ledge of Literature. 
 
 3. The Study of Philology is not the Study of Litera- 
 
 ture. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE TRUE METHOD . . . . .14 
 
 A. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 
 
 1. What is Literature ? 
 
 2. Literature and Art. 
 
 3. Literature and Language. 
 
 4. Literature and Personality. 
 
 5. Literature and History. 
 
 6. Literature and the Ideal. 
 
 B. SPECIMEN STUDIES IN OUTLINE. 
 
 1. Hints on the Study of a Drama. Shakespeare's 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 2. Hints on the Study of a Poem. Browning's AH 
 
 Vogler. 
 
 3. Hints on the Study of a Novel. Hardy's A Pair of 
 
 Blue Eyes. 
 
 4. Hints on the Study of an Essay. R. L. Steven- 
 
 son's Virginibus Puerisque. 
 xi
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III. PAOB 
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS . . . 51 
 
 1. The Need of a "General View." 
 
 2. On Reading a Classic through. 
 
 3. On Studying Great Books and Great Movements. 
 
 4. English Literature as influenced by Continental 
 
 Literature. 
 
 5. The Creators of New Forms of Literary Expression. 
 
 6. On Using the Comparative Method. 
 
 7. On a Knowledge of Mythology. 
 
 8. On Literary Geography and Biography. 
 
 9. On the Study of Literary Forms. 
 10. On Marking Books. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 LITERARY CRITICISM . . . 81 
 
 1. The Objective Standard. 
 
 2. The Subjective Standard. 
 
 3. Suggestions for Study. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATUKE IN PUBLIC EXAMINATIONS . 99 
 
 1. The Evils of the Examination System. 
 
 2. A Plan of Study. 
 
 3. How to Deal with Questions. 
 
 4. Specimen Papers. 
 
 5. Model Answers. 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY . .119 
 
 By Eminent Writers and Critics.
 
 HOW TO STUDY 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HOW NOT TO STUDY ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE 
 
 IT has been said that wherever there is a 
 virtue there is sure to be a vice, and 
 although I am not philosopher enough to 
 vouch for the universal truth of that saying, 
 I can affirm positively that in matters relating 
 to study it is very often pitiably true. There 
 are young people who fondly imagine they 
 are students because they are fond of reading, 
 or because they possess well-filled bookshelves, 
 and are in the habit of engaging in literary 
 conversations with their friends and acquaint- 
 ances. Nothing could be further from the 
 truth. Study is not simply mental exercise, 
 without aim or discriminating purpose, any
 
 HOW NOT TO STUDY 
 
 more than helter-skelter racing about a field is 
 trained athleticism. To be an athlete you must 
 introduce an intelligent plan into your physical 
 recreations, and in like manner, to be a student 
 you must foster a native bent to investigation 
 and reflection by systematic methods. 
 
 1. Do not Confuse the mere Reading of Books 
 with the Study of Literature. 
 
 It is quite possible to be a great reader, 
 and yet fall far short of understanding the 
 message and feeling the power of a classic 
 utterance. To know a large number of facts 
 relating to out-of-the-way subjects such as 
 the leading principles of a secret society in 
 the Middle Ages, or the psychic experiments 
 of Eliphas Levi ; to be able to talk volumi- 
 nously about the attempts of travellers to 
 cross Australia, and the adventures that befell 
 them on the way ; or to discourse at length 
 on the medicines of the Chinese people is 
 very interesting and even highly instructive ; 
 but the acquisition of knowledge is not what 
 we mean by the study of literature. Pure 
 literature makes an address to the soul as well 
 as to the mind. Hence the accumulating of 
 vast stores of information is altogether beside
 
 ON READING BOOKS 
 
 the mark. An increase in the bulk of know- 
 ledge is not synonymous with progressive 
 culture. If I might adapt the words of St. 
 Paul I would say, " Though I have the under- 
 standing of all mysteries and all knowledge, 
 and have not the insight of sympathy, I am 
 as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." 
 
 But let us suppose that you have no desire 
 to warehouse as many facts as possible ; rather 
 do you wish to appreciate the best literature 
 in the right way. Well, even then you must 
 achieve something more than the mere reading 
 of the English classics by getting through 
 them at breakneck speed. This sounds too 
 obvious to be stated, and yet there are not a 
 few to whom it is specially applicable. A 
 butterfly passage from novelists to poets, and 
 poets to prose writers, irrespective of age or 
 epoch, is not the way to understand the 
 thought and life of England as expressed in 
 her literature. I do not say that it is im- 
 possible to read the Canterbury Tales, and 
 then sacrifice Chaucer for a novel by Thomas 
 Hardy, or a poem by Stephen Phillips. We 
 make such leaps from century to century 
 every day. What I do say is that aimless 
 "leaping" from author to author will never 
 bring us the pleasures and profits of genuine 
 
 3
 
 HOW NOT TO STUDY 
 
 study. However disagreeable it may be, the 
 fact remains that literature must be pursued 
 according to a definite plan if we wish to 
 partake of its benefits. 
 
 2. Knowledge ABOUT Literature is not neces- 
 sarily knowledge OF Literature. 
 
 A man who knows the authors, titles, and 
 dates of the great books of English literary 
 history may be simply a man with a strong 
 memory. Perhaps, too, he can outline the 
 plots of all the best Elizabethan plays, and 
 yet fail to show how those plays are related 
 to the political life of the period, for the 
 reason that whilst he has a mind for literary 
 facts, he cares nothing about literary forces. 
 And there are students who think far more 
 of personal details respecting authors than of 
 the significance of the books they wrote. 
 Such a student is deeply interested in dis- 
 covering that Thomas Hobbes was rubbed 
 with oil in order to obtain longevity ; that 
 Berkeley once nearly hanged himself in order 
 to discover the sensations immediately prior 
 to death ; and that Charles Kingsley had a 
 hammock slung across his study. But The 
 Leviathan, The Principles of Human Know-
 
 A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF LITERATURE 
 
 ledge, and Alton Locke, as expressions of 
 contemporary movements in thought and life, 
 are relegated to quite a secondary position. 
 Of course, it cannot be denied that personal 
 details have peculiar attractiveness, especially 
 those belonging to very distinguished people ; 
 but what we object to here is that per- 
 sistency of literary gossiping which mas- 
 querades as genuine study. For instance, 
 there is Charles Lamb. I know men who 
 are great Lambites at least they think they 
 are ; they don't care about reading the Essays 
 of Elia ; they have read them. But they are 
 immensely interested in the conjecture as to 
 where Charles slept the night before he wrote 
 the essay on roast pig. This is nothing short 
 of substituting the husk for the kernel. A 
 book of gossip about authors is necessarily 
 pleasant reading, but it is not the study of 
 literature. 
 
 Closely allied with the type of student just 
 referred to is another type, if anything the 
 more distasteful of the two. He is the 
 literary bibliographer. Talk to him about 
 O'Shaughnessy, and he will tell you of that 
 poet's first work, where it was published, how 
 much it cost, and what was the extent of its 
 success. That is very good so far. No
 
 HOW NOT TO STUDY 
 
 knowledge can be despised ; but ask him 
 about O'Shaughnessy's metre, his style, his 
 subjects, and his general significance. What 
 reply do you get ? Usually a quotation from 
 some critic ; at any rate, nothing to show 
 that the bibliographer has entered into the 
 poet's feelings and felt his moments of rapture. 
 Once again it is the husk for the kernel. This 
 laborious compiling of data respecting editions, 
 dates, and prices has its proper place in the 
 writing of literary history and books of 
 reference ; but it is not the first task of the 
 student who wishes to understand English 
 literature. 
 
 Minutiae belong to the specialist and the 
 professor, and also to the private individual, 
 who, after repeated readings of a writer's best 
 work, has determined to make that writer the 
 object of a closer scrutiny. They do not 
 belong to the general student. 
 
 Perhaps the most disagreeable person of all 
 is the man who studies literature in histories 
 of the subject, interlarded with specimen 
 passages from the great writers. Could any- 
 thing be more diabolical from the standpoint 
 of sincerity ? And yet it is astonishing to 
 see what can be done by a man with a good 
 memory after reading Taine. He can talk
 
 A TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF LITERATURE 
 
 quite learnedly of Shakespeare's indebtedness 
 to Holinshed, quote the finest lines from the 
 tragedies, discourse on the comedies as com- 
 pared with those of Moliere, show how far 
 Shakespeare respected the unities and exhibit 
 the striking ingenuity of his plots. He can 
 do all these things, but he does not know his 
 Shakespeare nevertheless. I have known a 
 student identify a dozen quotations from 
 English authors, embracing a long period set 
 for examination, without ever opening a single 
 book in the original. He had gathered them 
 from " quote " books and histories, and fixed 
 them in his memory. The examination 
 methods can indeed never be perfect, but 
 they can be vastly improved. Here is an 
 excerpt from the experience of Dean Kitchin. 
 " Once, by the way of an easy opening to a 
 viva voce examination, I asked a candidate, 
 ' How does Bacon begin his famous essay on 
 marriage ? ' And the man, with a scared 
 look, replied, ' Might I ask you to erase that 
 book from my list of authors offered ? ' 
 ' Well/ I said, ' it is a very unusual request. 
 Why do you make it?' 'Oh !' he rejoined, 
 1 1 have unluckily lost my notebook to it.' 
 In other words, fre had taken down from his 
 tutor's dictation the recognised ' tips ' from 
 
 7
 
 HOW NOT TO STUDY 
 
 Bacon, and these, had he not mislaid his book, 
 he would have learned by heart, prepared to 
 impose on his examiner. As to looking into 
 the author himself, that he had never dreamed 
 of doing ; his tutor, no doubt, told him he 
 could save him all that trouble and ' waste 
 of time.' I have also often examined the 
 ladies who attend the literature classes given 
 under the London Society for the Extension 
 of University Teaching, and they, on the 
 whole, decidedly confirm the view I take. 
 Theirs is a stronger case ; they attend the 
 lectures solely to improve themselves. The 
 examination is not compulsory, and, so far 
 as I have seen, does its best to discourage 
 cramming. Yet, with some very honourable 
 exceptions, the results show that here also 
 there is a great risk of the student's mistaking 
 the teacher's dicta, or the facts given in some 
 textbook, for a real knowledge of the literary 
 masterpieces to which her attention has been 
 called. It is often hard to see whether the 
 student has read the works on which she has, 
 in name at least, been engaged."* It should 
 be impossible for any examiner to have such 
 doubts as these about the papers of a student, 
 
 * English Literature, and How to Study it. Pall Mall 
 Gazette Office. 
 
 8
 
 PHILOLOGY VERSUS LITERATURE 
 
 and it ought to be morally impossible for that 
 individual to present himself (or herself) for 
 examination in a book which has never been 
 read. 
 
 3. The Study of Philology is not the Study of 
 Literature. 
 
 Some years ago there was a heated contest 
 in the high places of education as to the best 
 methods of teaching English literature, and 
 the battle seemed to be in favour of those 
 who pleaded for a system carried out .on 
 philological lines. A good many authorities 
 fought against this proposal, and chief among 
 them was Mr. Churton Collins, who has repro- 
 duced the expressions of opinions in his The 
 Study of English Literature.* It is certainly 
 hard to overcome Mr. Collins 's logic. He 
 shows most conclusively that the methods 
 prevalent at the Universities take it for 
 granted that literature is simply a branch 
 an important one, of course of philology, 
 and he proves this by quotations from exami- 
 nation papers and from the notes supplied in 
 editions of English classics. We will take an 
 examination paper first. 
 
 * See also the Pall Mall Gazette "extra" previously re- 
 ferred to. 
 
 9
 
 HOW NOT TO STUDY 
 
 1. Point out textual difficulties, and mention and 
 criticise any suggested emendations on these passages 
 [then follow in due order the (a) the (b) the (c), etc.]. 
 
 2. Give some account of the extent and variety of 
 Shakespeare's vocabulary. 
 
 3. Mention and discuss some points in which Eliza- 
 bethan grammar differs from Victorian. 
 
 4. What are the relative proportions of the Teutonic 
 and Latin elements in the phraseology of Shakespeare. 
 
 Over against this class of question Mr. 
 Collins would suggest the following, which 
 are infinitely better because they deal with 
 matters that are vital to literature in itself. 
 
 1. The epithet which best characterises Shakespeare is 
 "myriad-minded." Discuss that statement. 
 
 2. Point out Shakespeare's obligations to his dramatic 
 predecessors and contemporaries, and discuss the state- 
 ment that " Pure Comedy" was his creation. 
 
 3. Discuss the theology and ethics of Shakespeare, 
 and show how they bear out Jonson's assertion, that he 
 was "not of an age, but for all time." 
 
 4. Discuss Goethe's analysis of the character of 
 Hamlet. 
 
 5. Discuss and account for the political teaching of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Now let us turn to the style of " notes " 
 that too often figure in edited editions of 
 English classics. Mr. Collins says most truly 
 that one often meets with a quarter of a page 
 of profuse erudition like this 
 
 10
 
 PHILOLOGY VERSUS LITERATURE 
 
 1. 619. Cp. Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi. 419 ; Faery Queen, 
 I. xi. 4. 
 
 1. 624. Cp. Ovid, Metamorphoses, ix. 6. 
 
 1. 630. Cp. Horace Odes, iii. 2, 17. 
 
 1.633. Cp. Paradise Lost, ii. 692; v. 710; vi. 156. 
 Kev. xii. 4. 
 
 1. 642, tempted our attempt. Keightley claims to have 
 been the first to point out that these plays upon words 
 are imitations of the Paronomasia in Scripture. Cp. v. 
 869; ix. 11; xii. 78. 
 
 1. 659. Iliad, i. 140. 
 
 1. 660, peace is despaired^ a Latinism. So "despair 
 thy charm " (Macbeth v. 7). 
 
 Can anyone say that this kind of thing is 
 really helpful ? No doubt it is to the student 
 of philology pure and simple ; but to the 
 student of literature, per se, it is a positive 
 hindrance. Professor Hiram Corson says, 
 " When a student perfectly understands a 
 familiar word in a poem, or any other com- 
 position he may be reading, to obtrude its 
 etymology, however interesting it may be, 
 upon his attention, is an impertinence. For 
 example, every civilised English-speaking boy 
 or girl knows what a sofa is. In the following 
 passage from Cowper's Task (Book I. vv. 
 86-88) 
 
 ' Thus first necessity invented stools, 
 Convenience next suggested elbow chairs, 
 And luxury the accomplished sofa last ' 
 11
 
 HOW NOT TO STUDY 
 
 the word 'accomplished/ as used here, really 
 needs explanation ; but in two different 
 editions of The Task in my library, prepared 
 for the use of the young, no explanation is 
 given of it ; but in both the Arabic origin of 
 ' sofa ' is given. In one the question is asked 
 what other words in English have been 
 derived from the Arabic, and in the other 
 the student is required to explain ' accom- 
 plished.' In the name of all that is reason- 
 able, what has the young student to do with 
 words of Arabic origin while he is reading 
 Cowper's Task? Uncalled-for, wholly un- 
 necessary information is obtruded upon the 
 student's attention, and an explanation is 
 required of him which it was the business 
 of the editor to give." * 
 
 The true student will not be a " word- 
 grubber," but he will have an intense interest 
 in the history and dynamic power of words 
 all the same ; and so far from despising 
 philology, he will give it a place at his right 
 hand as one of the chief means of knowing 
 that language which is the tangible embodi- 
 ment of the spirit of literature. 
 
 Someone asks the question, "If these are 
 
 * The Aims of Literary Study, pp. 79-81. 
 12
 
 PHILOLOGY VERSUS LITERATURE 
 
 the wrong methods of studying English 
 literature, what methods are right ? " Before 
 answering that question in detail there are 
 preliminary matters that call for attention, 
 and to these we will now address ourselves. 
 
 13
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 THE TKUE METHOD 
 PART I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS 
 
 1. What is Literature? 
 
 WHEN definitions of literature are legion 
 in number, and often conflicting in 
 character, it is no matter for surprise that 
 there should be confusion as to the real 
 truth. One critic will make the essence of 
 literature to reside in the substance, another 
 in the form, and a third in a union of both. 
 In prosecuting an inquiry into this subject 
 our best plan will be to examine the uses of 
 the word Literature, and I propose to begin 
 that examination by supposing the following 
 books are lying on my study table : 
 
 (1) An Almanac. 
 
 (2) A Guide to Paris. 
 
 (3) Huxley's Lay Sermons. 
 
 (4) Fielding's Tom Jones. 
 
 (5) Milton's Paradise Lost. 
 
 (6) The Works of Shakespeare. 
 
 14
 
 WHAT IS LITERATURE? 
 
 They are all written in the English 
 language and in a broad sense are classed 
 as literature. But are they literature really ? 
 Well, some of them are, and some of them 
 are not. The first three convey information 
 on various subjects, differing considerably in 
 degrees of utility. The almanac tells us 
 about the changes in the moon, and reminds 
 us of the anniversaries of great events ; some 
 of its columns warn us of the approaching 
 season for planting cabbages, and a few 
 sections are devoted to cooking recipes but, 
 somehow, we never think of calling an 
 almanac literature. The Guide to Paris 
 has perhaps a superior claim to be regarded 
 as a book; it contains interesting descriptions 
 of public buildings and monuments ; it has 
 an exciting account of the great siege and is 
 throughout written in clear, plain English. 
 Still, though greatly in advance of the 
 almanac, we hesitate to describe it as 
 literature. Next on the list is Huxley's 
 Lay Sermons, the main purpose of which 
 is to convey an expert's views on certain 
 aspects of science. In one sense the authors 
 of the almanac, the Guide to Paris, and 
 Lay Sermons have the same object, namely, 
 to supply information ; but in each case there 
 
 15
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 is a distinct advance in the quality of infor- 
 mation that of the almanac is mainly 
 statistical, that of the Guide is mostly topo- 
 graphical, whilst that of the Lay Sermons 
 is exposition of the highest class. At the 
 same time no one ventures to call even this 
 kind of exposition literature ; but in view 
 of the pure English, the absolute clearness of 
 statement, and the skilful manipulation of 
 sentence and paragraph, this book is said 
 to have literary flavour. 
 
 When, however, we turn to Fielding's Tom 
 Jones we come into another world altogether. 
 Here there is no attempt to impart informa- 
 tion, not even information about things that 
 actually happened to Tom Jones. The events 
 of his history, though probable, were never 
 real events except so far as they were facts in 
 the imagination of Henry Fielding. Never- 
 theless, they have an interest so absorbing 
 that as we follow the narrative of Tom, 
 Squire Western, and Sophy through its 
 tanglement of humour and gravity, noting 
 meanwhile the striking contrast and clever 
 surprises, together with the convincing pro- 
 gress of action leading to the denouement, 
 we say, " This is literature." 
 
 When, too, we turn to Paradise Lost and 
 
 16
 
 WHAT IS LITERATURE? 
 
 follow the poet in his flights of imagination ; 
 as we see the bliss of heaven and the dark 
 horrors of hell painted in language the like 
 of which men have not known since, we 
 quiver with infinite emotions and are sure 
 that here is literature of the highest. Lastly, 
 when we dwell on the pages of Shakespeare, 
 "the master of those who know," and witness 
 the broad strokes with which he has set forth 
 almost every human thing, as well as the 
 subtle, delicate pencilling with which he 
 suggests an ever-pervading mystery, we are 
 almost ready to say with the Lycaonians, " The 
 gods have come down to us in the likeness 
 of men." 
 
 There is, therefore, a peculiar something 
 about real literature that differentiates it from 
 other printed matter in the shape of books. 
 What is it ? Now of all definitions, perhaps 
 that of De Quincey is the most suggestive, 
 and I quote it as an answer to the question 
 just asked. He says, "There is first the 
 literature of knowledge (i.e. science) and 
 secondly, the literature of power. The func- 
 tion of the first is to teach; the function of 
 the second is to move."* Professor Dowden 
 conveys the same truth in different language : 
 
 * Essay on Pope, 
 c 17
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 "To ascertain and communicate facts is the 
 object of science ; to quicken our life into a 
 higher consciousness through the feelings is 
 the function of Art." * These definitions 
 teach us that the essence of literature lies 
 in the facts of life as they are artistically 
 conceived and expressed ; in other words, 
 experience supplies the raw material, and 
 this is idealised by the transfiguring power 
 of imagination. 
 
 2. Literature and Art. 
 
 Strictly speaking, there is but one art. 
 True, the word "artist" seems to have been 
 monopolised by the painter, but that is not 
 an act of selfishness on his part, rather is it 
 a mere accident of language, for painting, 
 poetry, sculpture, architecture, and prose 
 literature are all governed by the same laws, 
 though each branch of art has a distinct 
 sphere of its own. Now the first principle 
 of art is selection not imitation. 
 
 Let me illustrate this statement from two 
 pictures : Turner's " Fighting Te'me'raire " and 
 Rossetti's "Dante's Dream." In Turner's 
 picture a superannuated war ship is being 
 towed into port by a small steam tug ; the 
 
 * Studies in Literature, p. 85. 
 18
 
 LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 sun is setting and flooding the world with glory, 
 and a pale moon appears in the sky. Is this 
 a scene the artist once saw and reproduced from 
 memory ? Certainly not. Very probably he 
 had never seen anything of the kind. It 
 is sufficient to know that Turner got the idea 
 of a man-of-war being towed into port for the 
 last time. The next question was, How could 
 the subject be treated artistically? The answer 
 is in the picture itself. "The setting sun 
 images forth the departing glory of the old 
 vessel, while the first quarter of the new moon 
 represents the ascendancy of steam power 
 over the old wooden ships, with their sweep 
 of canvas sail, as seen in the tug towing the 
 vessel into port. There seems to be sadness, 
 too, in the old sun as he takes his last farewell 
 of the fighting ship he has so often com- 
 panioned on the deep." * This means that 
 just as the writer uses words and all the re- 
 sources of language to tell others what he has 
 seen or thought, so the painter uses natural 
 objects and the facts of life to represent the 
 idea that is in his mind. Turn now to "Dante's 
 Dream." What do the red buds and poppies 
 mean ? We may be sure they were not put 
 into the picture by accident, or because the 
 
 * John Buskin, by J. M. MATHER. 
 19
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 artist thought they would look nice ; for the 
 details that go to make up a picture are not 
 chosen at random, but selected with the ut- 
 most care a care which keeps in view the 
 idea to be expressed. And when they have 
 been selected they should be grouped so that 
 the total effect will be harmonious and pleas- 
 ing. Rossetti desired to suggest love and 
 sleep in red buds and poppies. It is thus 
 that art makes an advance upon Nature ; it 
 uses Nature's gifts by weaving them into new 
 unities, thereby creating a new world. 
 
 What is true in painting is true in literature. 
 A novel is not an imitation or an exact copy 
 of life as we live it ; it is rather a selection of 
 characters and events drawn from reading, 
 observation, and experience, and woven into 
 an entirely new story. Take Illumination as 
 an illustration. It is quite possible that 
 Harold Frederic knew a Methodist minister 
 who " came a cropper " on account of know- 
 ledge that he could not digest ; as likely as 
 not he knew a cynical doctor after the type 
 of Dr. Ledsmar ; and a curiously disillusioned 
 priest like Father Forbes ; he certainly met 
 somebody who sat for Sister Soulsby. But 
 it is just as possible that Theron Ware's 
 original if he has any basis in fact was 
 
 20
 
 LITERATURE AND ART 
 
 never outside the boundary of his native 
 state ; that Dr. Ledsmar never knew the 
 priest, and the priest never knew Celia ; 
 Celia may have lived in California, and Dr. 
 Ledsmar in Washington who knows ? The 
 real facts underlying these characters are of 
 no concern to us at all ; the novelist called 
 them from the north, the south, the east, and 
 the west, and made them know each other in 
 a world which is ideal the world of art. He 
 may have met Sister Soulsby's prototype in 
 Michigan, and Theron Ware's in Nebraska it 
 matters little. What we think of now is the 
 way in which he brings them together and 
 shows us how they would have acted and re- 
 acted on each other, if they had met in the 
 flesh. 
 
 Art therefore is not imitation. Goethe 
 compares the man who thinks it is " to the 
 pet ape who was found eagerly examining the 
 plates in a Natural History, and greedily 
 devouring the pictured beetles." The com- 
 parison is more vigorous than polite, but it 
 hits the truth exactly. A picture of ripe 
 fruit is not great art because it makes the 
 observer long for grapes and peaches ; neither 
 is a novel fine literature because it contains 
 "just what we have heard people say." No ; 
 
 21
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 to quote an excellent phrase, Art is Nature 
 born again of the Spirit, and true literature 
 is never written unless the facts with which 
 Nature supplies us have been idealised in the 
 imagination and brought forth in concrete 
 forms of beauty. 
 
 If the reader, in view of this brief exposi- 
 tion of principles, will turn back to the list of 
 books which I supposed were lying on my table, 
 I think he will see how the volumes conveying 
 information can never be literature in the real 
 sense, and why the others have secured for 
 themselves a high place among the classics. 
 
 3. Literature and Language. 
 
 There are three elements in the creation of 
 a work of art : first comes the artist himself; 
 next, the public to whom he appeals ; and 
 thirdly, the medium of communication be- 
 tween the two. 
 
 As we, in these pages, have to do with 
 literature, the three elements will be : 
 
 1. The Writer ; 
 
 2. The Reader ; and 
 
 3. Language ; 
 
 and even in so brief a study of first principles 
 as that which we now pursue it would be 
 impossible to pass over the subject of language 
 
 22
 
 LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 
 
 in silence. One is often surprised at the 
 scant treatment which language receives from 
 its philosophical and psychological sides. Of 
 philology there is enough and to spare, but of 
 language as a means of arousing imagination 
 and conveying emotion, its dynamical power, 
 its capacity for suggesting what is beyond 
 exact representation there is far too little. 
 
 The first truth to be grasped is that 
 language is imperfect. The fact is quite 
 elementary, to be sure, but it needs to be 
 repeated in view of what is to follow. 
 "Words," said an eloquent Frenchman, "were 
 given to us to conceal thought." There is 
 enough truth in this paradox to warrant an 
 acceptance of the fact that lies beneath. Are 
 not most of our political, religious, scientific, 
 and philosophical discussions dependent on 
 the meaning we attach to words ? Is there 
 not something at once pathetic and humiliat- 
 ing in the picture of an author spending the 
 first fifty pages of his new book in analysing 
 terms, and otherwise preparing the way for 
 real exposition ? It is admirable as a model 
 system of treating a subject, but it is a sharp 
 criticism on the inadequacy of language. 
 
 Now what may be called solid thought is 
 usually supposed to be easy of expression ; 
 
 23
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 that is, words are sufficiently numerous and 
 comprehensive in meaning to set forth the 
 ideas in the writer's mind. For instance, the 
 late Professor Huxley could use the English 
 language with admirable effect, even when 
 dealing with the most difficult subjects ; 
 indeed, his expositions are classics of their 
 kind. But when this has been granted there 
 remains the fact that much of modern philo- 
 sophic thought Hegelianism in particular 
 is too deep for the resources of language, and 
 well might Hegel say, " Only one man has 
 understood me, and he has misunderstood 
 me. " Profound thoughts and exalted emotions, 
 these put our speech to the test ; but as pure 
 literature is the subject of these pages, we will 
 deal with language in relation to its power of 
 arousing feeling and imagination. Let us 
 begin with an opinion from Goethe. " We 
 never sufficiently consider that a language is 
 properly only symbolical, only figurative, and 
 expresses objects never immediately, but only 
 in reflection ; yet how difficult it is not to put 
 the sign in place of the thing, always to keep 
 the thing as it is before one's mind, and not 
 annihilated by the expression ! " 
 
 Symbol ! that is the very word. Perhaps 
 it is a stumbling-block to the reader who has 
 
 24
 
 LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 
 
 read fierce criticisms of French symbolists 
 such as MaHamae* and Maeterlinck. But 
 before joining in the condemnation of these 
 men it may be just as well to listen to one 
 whose name always calls for respect in matters 
 relating to language. He says, " That lan- 
 guage is not the instrument of thought in 
 poetic invention has long ago been implied 
 by one of the most popular of our poets. . . . 
 The poet is found confessing that his thoughts 
 present themselves to his mind in such a way 
 as to require a separate and distinct labour to 
 express them adequately in language. And 
 when we come to examine some of the cases 
 in which poets have written the most success- 
 fully, we shall find that it is very frequently 
 not by the direct use of language ; often by 
 using language so as not even to convey any 
 precisely intelligible direct meaning. Any- 
 thing like precision and deliberate accuracy is 
 felt to be antagonistic to our very conception 
 of poetry. . . . And as it is a mark of the 
 highest class of eloquence to fix the attention 
 of the hearer on the subject of discourse, and 
 not on the speaker or the language, so it is in 
 poetry a mark of the highest skill to excite 
 only emotion." * 
 
 * MAX MULLEB, Language and Poetry. 
 25
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 Nothing could be clearer as to the place 
 which language occupies in the highest flights 
 of literature ; but it is nothing more nor less 
 than what is called symbolism the name of 
 which is sufficient to arouse hostile feelings in 
 the minds of prejudiced people. A brief 
 analysis, however, will soon make the position 
 plain. Maeterlinck asserts that the clearest 
 ideas of the mind can be expressed in lan- 
 guage without much difficulty, but that the 
 clearest ideas are, after all, only the ideas of 
 the reason, the comprehending intelligence ; 
 the greatest ideas, those that are fullest and 
 deepest, can only be indicated by means of 
 language. At this point Mallarme continues 
 the theory by affirming that in a poem there 
 should be nothing but allusions suggestions. 
 The object should not be named, but words 
 should be used in order to create a mental 
 image and arouse a state of mind. It is 
 claimed for this method that it makes the 
 highest use of language, not the use which 
 results in clear ideas, for clear ideas are the 
 simplest and easiest ; but the use which serves 
 to bring out suggestions of the illimitable and 
 undefmable, the ideas of which are necessarily 
 apprehensions rather than comprehensions. 
 
 The truth of these claims can easily be put 
 
 26
 
 LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 
 
 to the test. Even Mr. Arlo Bates, who is 
 avowedly an anti- Symbolist, so far as the 
 school is concerned, confesses that "phrase 
 by phrase, word by word, literature is a 
 succession of symbols. The aim of the 
 imaginative writer is constantly to excite the 
 reader to an act of creation. He only is a 
 poet who can arouse in the mind a creative 
 imagination." * Experience is too large, too 
 deep, too high to be embodied in language ; 
 hence the poet uses words to suggest ideas, so 
 that they will affect the imagination rather 
 than be made clear to reasoning intelligence. 
 But what about the mot propre ? Did not 
 Flaubert advise De Maupassant to search for 
 the one word which alone could express his 
 thought, and to search for it until he found 
 it ? And is not a writer's excellence to be 
 found in the power he displays in manipulat- 
 ing words after this fashion ? "Whatever the 
 thing we wish to say there is but one word to 
 express it, but one verb to give it movement, 
 but one adjective to qualify it. We must 
 seek till we find this noun, this verb, and this 
 adjective, and never be content with getting 
 very near it ; never allow ourselves to play 
 tricks, even happy ones, or have recourse to 
 
 * Talks on the Study of Literature, p. 111. 
 27
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 sleights of language to avoid a difficulty. The 
 subtlest things may be rendered and suggested 
 by applying the hint conveyed in Boileau's 
 line 
 
 ' D'un mot inis en sa place enseigna le pouvoir.' 
 
 (He taught the power of a word in the right place.)"* 
 
 This is equally true in poetry and prose, 
 but perhaps the prose writer aims at exact- 
 ness of representation more often and more 
 naturally than the poet ; for the latter, as we 
 have seen, desires to suggest ; whilst the 
 former is at greater pains to describe. 
 Stevenson is frequently referred to as a 
 good exemplar of what can be done with 
 words in this connection. He himself says 
 that his practice was to keep two books in 
 his pocket one to read, one to write in. 
 " As I walked my mind was busy fitting what 
 I saw with appropriate words. When I sat 
 down by the roadside I would either read or 
 a pencil and penny version-book would be in 
 my hand to note down the features of the 
 scene or to commemorate some halting 
 stanzas." In The Silverado Squatters he 
 describes himself as carrying a pail of water 
 up a hill, " the water lipping over the side, 
 and a quivering sunbeam in the midst." Are 
 
 * DE MAUPASSANT, Preface to Pierre et Jean. 
 28
 
 LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 
 
 not the italicised words just the words re- 
 quired ? 
 
 In the following passage from Shakespeare 
 notice how he takes a word from one set of 
 associations and encompasses it with a set 
 entirely new, the result being as striking as 
 it is original 
 
 " Ay, but to die and go we know not where, 
 To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; 
 This sensible, warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 In thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice ; 
 To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
 And blown with restless violence round about 
 The pendent world." 
 
 Take the words obstruction, kneaded, thril- 
 ling, viewless, and pendent, and substitute 
 other words synonyms. Can you do that, 
 and retain the vigour of the lines of which 
 they form part? By no means. The word 
 pendent is the word, because it sets forth so 
 strikingly the position of our planet in space ; 
 we feel instinctively that no better word 
 could be used. 
 
 Thus, every great writer possesses language- 
 power in a high degree. Bunyan possessed 
 it in the Saxon purity and simplicity of his 
 style. Walter Pater possessed it in the
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 ability with, which he could chisel his sen- 
 tences into a cold but wondrous beauty. Swin- 
 burne shows it in his power of musical form, 
 and Stevenson in his witchery of phrase. 
 They have all mastered the relation between 
 the word and the idea or feeling. 
 
 Language-power, whether of the dynamic 
 or suggestive order, is only one feature of 
 true literature. The finest feature of all is 
 the sparkle of the writer's personality. 
 
 ^Literature and Personality. 
 
 \ 
 
 We have n 1J 5t yet reached the final stage of 
 the question, " What is literature ? " but in 
 touching upon personality we come to the 
 point where inquiry can proceed no further. 
 Beyond the personality of the author it is 
 impossible to go. Moreover in personality is 
 found that inscrutable something which gives 
 distinction to a writer and places his work in 
 the front rank. To quote the oft -repeated 
 saying of Buffon, " The style is the man." 
 Goethe confessed that personality is every- 
 thing in art and poetry. Perhaps no 
 pleasanter account of this fact could be 
 found than in the words of an American 
 critic. "Is it not true that, in literature 
 proper, our interest is always in the writer 
 
 30
 
 LITERATURE AND PERSONALITY 
 
 himself his quality, his personality, his 
 point of view? We may fancy that we care 
 only for the subject-matter; but the born 
 writer makes any subject interesting to us by 
 his treatment of it, or by the personal element 
 he infuses into it. When our concern is 
 primarily with the subject-matter, in the 
 fact or the argument, or with the information 
 conveyed, then we are not dealing with 
 literature in the strict sense. It is not what 
 the writer tells us that makes literature, it is 
 the way he tells it, or rather, it is the degree 
 in which he imparts to it some rare personal 
 quality or charm that is the gift of his own 
 spirit, something which cannot be detached 
 from the work itself, and which is as vital as 
 the sheen of a bird's plumage, as the texture 
 of a flower's petal. In other words, that 
 which makes literature in all its forms 
 poetry, fiction, history, oratory is personal 
 and subjective, in a sense and to a degree 
 that which makes science, erudition, and the 
 like is not. There is this analogy in nature. 
 The hive bee does not get honey from the 
 flowers ; honey is a product of the bee. 
 What she gets from the flowers is mainly 
 sweet water or nectar ; this she puts through 
 a process of her own, and to it adds a minute 
 
 31
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 drop of her own secretion, formic acid. It is 
 her special personal contribution that converts 
 the nectar into honey. In the work of the 
 literary artist common facts and experiences 
 are changed and heightened in the same 
 way." * 
 
 Against this it is said that if the writer's 
 personality is everything we should never be 
 able to appreciate a poem or a novel issued 
 anonymously. The objection is superficial, 
 even frivolous. The personality referred to is 
 not necessarily that of the man as a conver- 
 sationalist, a friend, or a public character ; it 
 is -personality as revealed in literature, " that 
 quality of mind which makes the writings of 
 Burke rank above those of Gladstone, Ruskin's 
 criticism rank above that of Hamerton, 
 Froude's histories above Freeman's, Kenan's 
 Life of Jesus above that of Strauss' ; which 
 makes the pages of Goethe, Coleridge, Lamb, 
 literature in a sense that the works of many 
 able minds are not." 
 
 It may be admitted that literature has 
 beauties apart from the personality of the 
 author. For instance, technique is quite an 
 impersonal affair, but after all technical accu- 
 racy in a poem does not make it poetry. A 
 
 * JOHN BURROUGHS in The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1899. 
 32
 
 LITERATURE AND HISTORY 
 
 sentence may be quite correct in grammar, 
 but it is not necessarily the embodiment of a 
 great idea; in fact, it may convey a foul 
 suggestion or one that is perfectly unmoral. 
 In like manner there are volumes of poetry 
 and works of fiction that are models of 
 literary technique, but because they lack soul 
 they are never classed as literature. 
 
 It is here that man appears as a " maker " 
 in the Greek sense, and a creator like unto 
 God. 
 
 He takes the materials of life and fuses 
 them together into new and fascinating 
 
 o o 
 
 unities ; he creates the light that never was 
 on sea or land ; he gives being to the 
 creatures of his imagination and makes 
 them real people possessed of personality 
 like himself; and he suffuses his whole work 
 with the soul that separates him from his 
 fellows, and which places him in the ranks of 
 genius.* 
 
 5. Literature and History. 
 
 The student who would understand the 
 course of English literature must also under- 
 
 * In connection with this subject of personality the 
 reader would do well to give some attention to the theories 
 laid down in Posnett's Comparative Literature, pp. 57-72. 
 D 33
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 stand the course of English history perhaps 
 I ought to say of European history for there 
 is the closest connection between the two. 
 To use a hackneyed phrase, every author is 
 the child of his age, and his works will bear 
 more or less the stamp of the period in which 
 he lived. Literature is not an other-worldly 
 product, in spite of its idealising of life, for 
 even the theologian betrays his epoch in 
 allusion, in style, and in the general drift of 
 his teaching. How, for instance, can we 
 understand the works of Chillingworth unless 
 we have some acquaintance with the contem- 
 porary religious life ? or appreciate the biting 
 sarcasms of Butler's Hudibras without a 
 knowledge of Eoyalist and Roundhead? It is 
 impossible. 
 
 Now this department of investigation into 
 literary forces is often called the "philosophy 
 of literature," but the phrase is misapplied. 
 What is really meant is the natural history 
 of literature those underlying agencies 
 which contributed, sometimes to progress 
 and sometimes to retrogression, and which 
 are responsible for the condition of English 
 literature as it is. I propose to make a brief 
 inquiry into one or two of these agencies by 
 way of illustrating the subject. 
 
 34
 
 LITERATURE AND HISTORY 
 
 A rough classification of influences which 
 have gone to form English literature is : 
 
 (1) those that have come from without and 
 
 (2) those that have been evolved from within. 
 Prominent among the first, indeed the very 
 first, is the classic poetry and prose of Greece 
 and Roman Italy. For convenience' sake we 
 will take the writers of Roman Italy who in 
 their turn had imbibed the best of Grecian 
 thought and learning. I cannot do better 
 than use the words of Mr. Churton Collins: 
 "Almost all our didactic poetry is modelled 
 on the didactic poetry of Rome, sometimes 
 directly, as in the Essay on Translated Verse, 
 the Essay on Poetry, the Essay on Criticism, 
 Cider, The Pleasures of the Imagination, 
 The Art of Preserving Health, and the in- 
 numerable poems of which in their turn these 
 became the patterns ; sometimes indirectly, as 
 in such poems as Daniel's Musophilus and 
 Philoscosmus, as Davies' Nosce Teipsum, as 
 Fulke Greville's Treatises; nay, it may be 
 questioned whether without De Rerum 
 Naturd we should have had, in the form in 
 which it now stands, the Excursion. One 
 important branch of our lyric poetry springs 
 directly from Pindar ; another important 
 branch directly from Horace ; another, again, 
 
 35
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 directly from the choral odes of the Attic 
 dramatists and Seneca. Our heroic satire 
 from Hall to Dryden, from Dryden to Pope, 
 and from Pope to GifFord; and Byron is simply 
 the counterpart, often, indeed, a mere imita- 
 tion, of Roman satire. The noblest moral 
 poem in our language owes to Juvenal its 
 suggestion, its inspiration, its method, and its 
 style ; again, the epistles which fill so large a 
 space in the poetical literature of the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries derived their 
 origin from Horace. From the Epistles of 
 Horace, too, flow the Religio Laid, the Essay 
 on Man, the Moral Essays, and the poems 
 which are in the estimation of Sainte-Beuve 
 the most charming and the most precious of 
 Cowper's contributions to our poetry. . . . 
 Backward to the jfEglogues of Barclay in the 
 early part of the sixteenth century, forward 
 to English Idylls of Lord Tennyson in the 
 present, at whatever period in its history, 
 from whatever point of view we contemplate 
 this important branch of our poetry, we must 
 contemplate it with reference to its source in 
 Sicily and Italy."* 
 
 What is true in poetry is true of prose. 
 
 "The history of English eloquence com- 
 
 * The Study of English Literature, pp. 74-6. 
 36
 
 LITERATURE AND HISTORY 
 
 mences from the moment when the Roman 
 classics moulded and coloured our style 
 when periodic verse modelled itself on Cicero 
 and Livy, when analytic prose modelled itself 
 on Sallust and Tacitus. From Wyatt to 
 Hooker, from Hooker to Milton, from Milton 
 to Bolingbroke, and from Bolingbroke to 
 Burke, Johnson, and Gibbon, this has been 
 the case. The structure of their periods 
 allowirg, of course, for differences of idiom 
 the evolution of their periods, their rhythm, 
 their colouring, their tone, are, when they 
 rise to eloquence, precisely those of rhetorical 
 Roman prose." * 
 
 ^At this point the student who does not 
 know the classics raises a grave question, Can 
 I not enjoy English literature without a 
 primary study of Greek and Latin authors ? 
 Yes ; it is quite possible to enjoy it, but there 
 is a difference between enjoying it and 
 thoroughly understanding it. Thus Cowper 
 is a favourite poet with many people who 
 really appreciate him ; and yet some of these 
 people have never read a page of Horace. 
 In like manner one can delight in Milton's 
 Samson Agonistes even though we have left 
 Greek tragedy severely alone. But, after all, 
 
 * Ibid., p. 77. 
 37
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 the difference is one between the positive and 
 the superlative ; it is good to read English 
 classics irrespective of their remote though 
 cogent origins ; it is by far the best to study 
 every great production in the light of 
 previous works of similar character. All 
 history is continuous, and literary history is 
 therefore no exception to the rule. 
 
 Another force which has worked in the for- 
 mation of English literature is the influence 
 exerted by geographical position. Had this 
 country been joined to the mainland of the 
 Continent as Denmark is joined to Germany, 
 it would have altered the course of our history, 
 and with a change in history there would 
 have been a change in the type and quality 
 of our literature. It needs a prophet to be 
 able to state what changes might have taken 
 place in politics, and all the affairs of the 
 nation, by assuming the existence of a narrow 
 isthmus instead of the Straits of Dover ; and 
 in like manner it is hard to prophesy the 
 probable differences effected in literary history. 
 At any rate, we do know that our isolation 
 made us a nation before we could otherwise 
 have attained such a destiny, and with the 
 coming of national unity there came a real 
 native literature independent, original, and 
 
 38
 
 LITERATURE AND HISTORY 
 
 expressive of the national feeling. Chaucer 
 was the first literary Englishman, and al- 
 though continental influences are easily dis- 
 cernible in the style and contents of his 
 Tales, he is emphatically an Angleman a 
 son of the new nation formed by the union 
 of Briton, Saxon, and Norman. 
 
 Thus in some respects insularity is a 
 blessing ; in other respects it is a curse, for 
 it has retarded development by inducing a 
 national egotism which is not always con- 
 sonant with fact. Had we been in closer 
 touch with continental forces we might have 
 reaped much earlier the benefits of literary 
 movements which we were too slow to recog- 
 nise. 
 
 The one author who has treated English 
 literature as a natural production is Taine, 
 and to his work the reader must be referred 
 for additional information as to the in- 
 fluence of environment. Professor Bascom's 
 Philosophy of English Literature is also 
 a brief and suggestive study of the whole 
 question of cause and consequence in literary 
 evolution. 
 
 39
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 6. Literature and the Ideal. 
 
 In a previous section we have dealt with 
 literature and art, and since all art is an 
 expression of the ideal, I propose now to 
 examine the particular service which literature 
 renders to the interest, the happiness, and the 
 interpretation of life. This service has been 
 thus stated by John Morley : " The great 
 need in modern culture, which is scientific in 
 method, rationalistic in spirit, and utilitarian 
 in purpose, is to find some effective agency 
 for cherishing within us the ideal ; that is, I 
 take it, the business and function of liter- 
 ature." * It would be difficult to find a better 
 exposition of what literature is intended to 
 do than that of Hegel in his dEsthetik. His 
 words are applicable to art in general and 
 literature in particular. "It is its object and 
 aim to bring within the circle of our senses, 
 perceptions, and emotions everything which 
 has existence in the mind of man. Art 
 should realise in us the well-known saying, 
 ' Nihil humani a me alienum puto.' Its 
 appointed aim is to awake and give vitality 
 to all slumbering feelings, affections, and 
 passions ; to fill and expand the heart, and 
 
 * On the Study of Literature, p. 18. 
 40
 
 LITERATURE AND THE IDEAL 
 
 to make man, whether developed or unde- 
 veloped, feel in every fibre of his being all 
 that human nature can endure, experience, 
 and bring forth in her innermost and most 
 secret recesses ; all that has power to move 
 and arouse the heart of man in its profoundest 
 depths, manifold capabilities, and various 
 phases ; to garner up for our enjoyment 
 whatever, in the exercise of thought and 
 imagination, the mind discovers of high and 
 intrinsic merit, the grandeur of the lofty, the 
 eternal, and the true, and present it to our 
 feeling and contemplation. In like manner 
 to make pain and sorrow, and even vice and 
 wrong become clear to us ; to bring the heart 
 into immediate acquaintance with the awful 
 and terrible, as well as with the joyous and 
 pleasurable ; and lastly, to lead the fancy to 
 hover gently, dreamily, on the wing of imagi- 
 nation, and entice her to revel in the seductive 
 witchery of its voluptuous emotion and con- 
 templation. Art should employ this manifold 
 richness of its subject-matter to supply on 
 the one hand the deficiencies of our actual 
 experience of external life ; and on the 
 other hand to excite in us those passions 
 which shall cause the actual events of life 
 to move us more deeply, and awaken our 
 
 41
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 susceptibility for receiving impressions of all 
 kinds."* 
 
 These are the reasons why literature is 
 great, why we study it, and why it possesses 
 immortality. It reveals us to ourselves and 
 to each other ; it supplies a bond of sympathy 
 which is above all earthly distinctions, and 
 addresses us as human beings, altogether 
 ignoring the separating tendencies of race 
 and language ; but most of all it speaks to 
 the race of the ideal as opposed to the real, 
 the unseen as opposed to the seen, and of that 
 which endures when fleeting things are gone 
 for ever. Well might Matthew Arnold say 
 
 " Art still has truth, 
 Take refuge there." 
 
 B. SPECIMEN STUDIES IN OUTLINE. 
 
 1. In order to prosecute these studies in a 
 methodical manner it is necessary to adopt a 
 plan which can be followed out in the analysis 
 of any work of literary art. This plan will 
 be found in Professor "W. H. Crawshaw's 
 Interpretation of Literature, a book which 
 
 * From LEWES'S " Inner Life of Art," in his Principles of 
 Success in Literature (Scott Lib.). 
 
 42
 
 ought to be in the hands of every student. 
 It is full of acute analysis clearly and ac- 
 curately stated. The chief fault lies in its 
 placing the study of form before the study 
 of substance, and as the point is important 
 I propose to deal with it at once. He says : 
 "The order of literary study naturally re- 
 verses the order of literary creation. The 
 writer must proceed from substance to form ; 
 the reader meets the external form first, and 
 naturally proceeds from the outward to the 
 inward, from form to substance" (p. 85). 
 With this we must entirely disagree. Litera- 
 ture is addressed to soul first, and to the 
 critical intellect afterwards. When Words- 
 worth looked at a flower it suggested thoughts 
 that lie too deep for tears ; when the botanist 
 examines one it is a thing of stamens and 
 petals, and belongs to a certain order. We 
 need both poet and botanist to complete our 
 knowledge, but we have no hesitation in 
 placing the poet's estimate first. In like 
 manner the beauty and ideality of a poem 
 or a drama are the chief qualities which claim 
 a primary attention ; metre, style, dialogue, 
 and other matters should take a secondary 
 place. Of course, it is said that Professor 
 Crawshaw's outline is for the study of plays 
 
 43
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 or poems that we know already Hamlet, for 
 example. Even then the fault still remains, 
 for if a student has gone through Hamlet 
 seventy times without realising the inner 
 influences of the play the esoteric as distinct 
 from the exoteric he has completely missed 
 the mark. Consequently I have taken the 
 liberty to adapt such outlines as are here 
 reproduced in order to suit the order of pro- 
 cedure here advocated. 
 
 One danger needs a word or two of warning. 
 It is very easy to make literary study a fetich 
 by judging every work after a dogmatic form. 
 Now these outlines are not dogmatic in any 
 sense ; they are simply hints or suggestions 
 which the student may find it useful to act 
 upon when he proposes to analyse systematic- 
 ally a single volume, or a number of works 
 by one author. Literary appreciation, as will 
 be shown in a later chapter, is largely sub- 
 jective, not the result of measurement by an 
 objective standard. 
 
 44
 
 THE STUDY OF A DRAMA 
 
 1. Hints on the Study of a Drama. 
 SHAKESPEAEE'S HAMLET. 
 
 The best edition to use is that of Mr. 
 E. K. Chambers, a volume of The War- 
 ivick Shakespeare, under the general editor- 
 ship of Dr. C. H. Herford, whose aim is 
 "to present the greater plays of the drama- 
 tist in their literary aspect, and not merely 
 as material for the study of philology or 
 grammar." 
 
 Let the student first read the play through 
 sympathetically and giving himself up to 
 the author's leading. After this he should 
 read the editor's Introduction, and again go 
 through the text, making use of the notes at 
 the end of the book. He will then be 
 prepared for an analysis, according to the 
 following plan : 
 
 I. THE STUDY OF SUBSTANCE. 
 
 A. BEAUTY. 
 
 1. Beauty in the characters. 
 
 2. Beauty in the representation of human life. 
 
 3. Beauty in the plot. 
 
 4. The kind of beauty. 
 
 5. The unbeautiful element. 
 
 45
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 B. IDEALITY. 
 
 1. General notion of the main ideal conception. 
 
 2. The human element. 
 
 (a) The dramatic picture of life. 
 (&) The particular section of life portrayed. 
 (c) Character relations, as shown by character 
 groupings. 
 
 II. THE STUDY OF FORM. 
 
 A. STRUCTURE. 
 
 1. Acts and scenes. 
 
 2. Dialogues and dialogue groups. 
 
 3. Lyric element and alternation of prose and verse. 
 
 B. METRE. 
 
 C. STYLE. 
 
 1. Adaptation of the style to the characters. 
 
 2. Alternation of prose and verse. 
 
 3. Qualities manifested. 
 
 4. Eelative importance of these qualities. 
 
 Note. It must not be supposed that every 
 drama contains all the elements here referred 
 to. For instance, there is no alternation 
 between poetry and prose in Samson Agonistes; 
 but Professor Crawshaw endeavoured to draw 
 up a plan which would be applicable to the 
 study of every kind of drama. This plan, 
 too, should be regarded in the light of the 
 general table to be found on pages 80 and 81 
 of The Interpretation of Literature. 
 
 46
 
 THE STUDY OF A POEM 
 
 2. Hints on the Study of a Poem,* 
 
 BKOWNING'S ABT VOGLER. 
 It will be of some advantage to possess 
 Mrs. Sutherland Orr's Handbook. Mr. Arthur 
 Symons's Introduction is useful, but not of 
 such compass and insight as Professor W. J. 
 Alexander's (U.S.A.). Perhaps the most ser- 
 viceable work for reference is the Trans- 
 actions of the Browning Society. Abt Vogler 
 is classified as one of the poet's best lyric 
 utterances, and after studying it without 
 assistance of any kind, the student may profit- 
 ably seek the help of the above reference 
 books and of the following plan of analysis : 
 
 I. THE STUDY OF THE SUBSTANCE. 
 
 A. BEAUTY. 
 
 1. Beauty in the main ideal pictures of the work. 
 
 2. Beauty in the minor details of substance. 
 
 3. The kind of beauty. 
 
 4. The unbeautiful element. 
 
 B. IDEALITY. 
 
 1. The main ideal symbol or conception. 
 
 2. Minor ideal conceptions. 
 
 3. Relation of the various conceptions. 
 
 4. The real element. 
 
 (a) Thought and emotion. 
 (&) External realities. 
 
 * Mr. H. C. BEECHINQ'S Two Lectures Introductory to the 
 Study of Poetry should be carefully read. 
 
 47
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 II. THE STUDY OF FORM. 
 
 A. STKTJCTDEE. 
 
 1. Structure of song, ode, sonnet, etc. 
 
 2. Stanzas and stanza-groups. 
 
 B. METRE. 
 
 C. STYLE.* 
 
 3. Hints on the Study of a Novel. 
 THOMAS HARDY'S A PAIR OF BLUE EYES. 
 
 I have selected this novel because it is full 
 of beautiful workmanship and is therefore an 
 excellent model for study. Lionel Johnson's 
 The Art of Thomas Hardy is a good book to 
 have near at hand. It may be said that a 
 novel is meant to be read and enjoyed, not to 
 be "studied." The objection is superficial. 
 A novel is a work of art just as much as a 
 poem or a play, and has the same elements in 
 its composition and is susceptible to the same 
 analysis. This analysis may be pursued in 
 the following manner : 
 
 I. THE PLOT. 
 
 1. Its originality. 
 
 2. Its inevitableness. 
 
 * See note on p. 46. 
 48
 
 THE STUDY OF AN ESSAY 
 
 II. THE CHARACTERS. 
 
 1. Their originality as persons. 
 
 2. Their groupings. 
 
 3. Their relation to each other. 
 
 4. Character contrasts. 
 
 5. "What each is intended to bring out. 
 
 III. ARTISTIC POWER 
 
 In describing persons, scenes, and events. 
 
 IV. LITERARY QUALITIES. 
 
 1. Grammar. 
 
 2. Sentences and paragraphs. 
 
 3. Structural technique. 
 
 V. THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 4. Hints on the Study of an Essay. 
 K. L. STEVENSON'S VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE. 
 
 The selection of this volume of essays for 
 analysis needs no apology. Kobert Louis 
 Stevenson had the two great qualities of a 
 writer of the first order : a striking personality 
 and a wonderful gift of expression. Should 
 the student need a handbook that may help 
 him in his work he can safely use Professor 
 W. T. Brewster's Studies in Structure and 
 Style, in which there is a critical examination 
 of a chapter from The Amateur Emigrant. 
 For general purposes, however, the suggestions 
 
 E 49
 
 THE TRUE METHOD 
 
 contained in Mr. Punchard's Helps to the 
 Study of Leigh Hunt's Essays and the adop- 
 tion of the following outline will suffice : 
 
 A. THE STUDY OF SUBSTANCE. 
 
 1. The personal flavour. 
 
 2. The ideal conception. 
 
 3. The kind of beauty. 
 
 4. The dominant emotion. 
 
 5. The central thought. 
 
 B. THE STUDY OF FORM. 
 
 1. The style. Intellectual, emotional, imaginative, and 
 
 aesthetic qualities. 
 
 2. The structure. Sentences, paragraphs, and unity. 
 
 50
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 IN this chapter I propose to sketch a few 
 suggestions as to practical means that may 
 be adopted in studying English literature. 
 Some of them may be found useful, others 
 will be superfluous to a certain class of reader ; 
 but all of them are, I think, of sufficient 
 intrinsic value to bear an insertion in these 
 pages, and where possible I have added ex- 
 pository passages from authorities whose 
 names will carry respect. 
 
 1. Let every Student make it his duty to get 
 a General View of the Course of English 
 Literature from A.D. 670 to the Present 
 Time. 
 
 Having spoken previously of the evil of 
 merely reading histories of the subject, I 
 hope this counsel will not be misunderstood. 
 What I mean is not a "bird's-eye view," con- 
 sisting of a list of names, dates, and titles of 
 
 51
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 books, but the perusal of a little manual 
 such as Stopford Brooke's shilling primer, so 
 deservedly popular. "Had I my way," says 
 Professor Dowden, in his New Studies in 
 Literature, "had I my way in the teaching 
 of English literature, I would have the student 
 start with a general sketch of European litera- 
 ture somewhat resembling Mr. Freeman's 
 General Sketch of European History. . . . 
 Such a general sketch of European literature 
 I would fix once and for all as an outline map 
 in the brain of the young student. It is 
 essential that he should conceive the history 
 of English literature as part of a larger move- 
 ment." It follows from this that it is alike 
 essential for the student not to commence 
 with individual authors chosen at random, 
 but to obtain a general idea of English literary 
 progress from the beginning by going through 
 an authoritative history. The process is much 
 after the manner of a man who is about to 
 take a journey to the East. He purchases a 
 map and some guide-books, and makes him- 
 self familiar with the names of places on the 
 way, especially the ports of call. He prepares 
 himself for the voyage in a score of different 
 ways, and becomes wise enough to expect 
 both surprises and disappointments. Now a 
 
 52
 
 HOW TO READ A CLASSIC 
 
 history of literature is a handy guide-book 
 written to tell the traveller all about the 
 journey he will have to take. The reading 
 of it will whet his appetite with keen expect- 
 ancy, and contribute largely to the quality 
 and extent of his enjoyment when he actually 
 treads the country in which genius once lived 
 or studies the work which genius produced. 
 
 2. The First Duty of a Student is to Read a 
 Classic right through Without Assistance 
 of any kind in the shape of Notes and 
 Glossaries. 
 
 The reason for this is not far to seek. Turn 
 back to the section dealing with " What is 
 Literature ? " Was it not made plain that 
 real literature moved us by an appeal to the 
 feelings as distinct from the literature of 
 knowledge which appeals to the intellect ? 
 That being so, the spiritual message of a 
 classic cannot be appreciated if the student 
 stops every now and again to look up a word, 
 or consult a note, or compare some sentiment 
 with a similar one in a kindred poem. As 
 Professor Corson says, he must study details 
 last. " To begin with details, as is often (in 
 the schools generally) done, requires that they 
 be studied per se, and such study must be 
 
 53
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 utterly ' vain and impotent,' so far as their 
 relationship to the whole structure is con- 
 cerned. Details are lifeless considered apart 
 from 'the atmosphere that moulds and the 
 dynamic forces that combine.' " * Suppose 
 the reader takes up Hamlet in a plain edition. 
 By a plain edition I mean one which contains 
 the text alone. He reads on until he comes 
 to the words 
 
 "When yond same star that's westward from the pole." 
 
 On the principle of doing a thing "thor- 
 oughly " he pauses here to inquire what the 
 "d" is doing in "yond." After satisfying 
 himself on this point he will next spend some 
 minutes in finding out what a " sledded pole- 
 axe " means ; and if he passes by the reference 
 to " brazen cannon," he is likely to give a 
 little attention to the " skirts of Norway." 
 Now an annotated edition would save him a 
 great deal of time by supplying this infor- 
 mation in notes at the bottom of the page or 
 the end of the book ; but the real time to 
 consult such sources of information is on a 
 second reading. The first reading should 
 be given up to a general survey of the whole 
 in order to get unity of impression, and catch 
 
 * Aims of Literary Study, p. 29. 
 54
 
 HOW TO READ A CLASSIC 
 
 the true spirit. How can this be done if we 
 are to make little excursions afield into 
 mythology, philology, history, and social 
 customs ? A fine poem is not first of all a 
 specimen of language or a conglomeration of 
 facts relating to theology, ethics, social obser- 
 vances, fables, and a host of other subjects 
 all of which are material for hours of inves- 
 tigation. These things are quite secondary. 
 The poet's first concern was to utter his soul's 
 emotion, and the reader's first duty is to feel 
 it. Very often, perhaps I might say most 
 often, literary study is pursued in the wrong 
 way. I remember my own experiences in 
 college class-rooms when we went through the 
 Faerie Queene. The teacher, a philologian 
 by the way, and an amusing enthusiast on 
 Grimm's Law, got us through a couple of 
 stanzas in an hour, and at the end of twelve 
 months we had "analysed" a few cantos, but 
 we never knew Edmund Spenser. I some- 
 times think of this class when I remember 
 Professor Corson's words : " A teacher who 
 has himself assimilated the informing spiritual 
 life of a work of genius is not likely to be 
 disposed to taper his instruction into the 
 merely technical, still less to keep the minds 
 of his students occupied with details, and 
 
 55
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 these, too, considered apart from the general 
 vitality to which they may contribute. But 
 very many of those who conduct literary 
 studies in the schools have not themselves 
 assimilated the informing spiritual life of the 
 works studied, and they are in consequence 
 liable to become, by reason of the kind of 
 study to which their unfitness obliges them 
 to resort, mere Gradgrinds, who, like their 
 prototype, Thomas the ironmonger, in 
 Dickens's novel of Hard Times, are disposed 
 even to disparage the subtle metal of the 
 spirit with all its quickening power. With 
 literature as a power they have nothing to 
 do ; its value with them consists in its fur- 
 nishing material for various kinds of drill 
 which deal with things quite apart from what- 
 ever constitutes the power of any work of 
 genius." * It is to be feared that in wisdom 
 of this kind English teachers are a long way 
 behind their American cousins. 
 
 3. Study Great Books and the Movements 
 which Produced them. 
 
 To study a book apart from its place in 
 contemporary affairs is to miss an appreciable 
 portion of its significance ; hence five books 
 
 * Aims of Literary Study, p. 27. 
 56
 
 GREAT BOOKS AND GREAT MOVEMENTS 
 
 thoroughly understood as the expression of 
 one movement are as good as twenty books 
 out of a list of "The Best Hundred." A 
 few years ago it was the fashion to follow up 
 the " Best Hundred Books " idea, but by this 
 time there are not many people who guide 
 their reading on this plan. It is perfectly 
 obvious that the best in the world's literature 
 cannot be gauged by so arbitrary a rule as 
 that of a number selected haphazard, and just 
 as obvious that the best for one individual is 
 not the best for another. Moreover, as pre- 
 viously indicated, a book and an author are 
 part and parcel of a definite world-movement, 
 and it is difficult to exaggerate the importance 
 of taking a full account of these three factors 
 in their interrelations with each other. The 
 method is thus described by Professor Dowden : 
 " In the study of an individual author the 
 inquirer as we have seen first investigates the 
 peculiar nature of the author's genius, and 
 then endeavours to develop it through suc- 
 cessive stages ; so here in the historical study 
 of literature he will seek first to understand 
 the leading characteristics of the age, and 
 secondly, to follow the movement of the age, 
 observing how it arose out of the past, how it 
 culminated, how it prepared the way for a 
 
 57
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 new epoch, and then declined. To know a 
 period aright we must know its outward body 
 and its inward spirit ; we must study it in its 
 actions, its passions, and its thought. What 
 were its great achievements in the material 
 world and its daily habits of social life ? 
 What were its dominating emotions ? What 
 were its guiding ideas ? And, finally, is there 
 any common element or principle which 
 manifests itself alike in ideas, emotion, action? 
 ... I have ventured to assert that a pro- 
 found interest in reality as opposed to 
 abstractions, a rich feeling for concrete fact, 
 was the dominant characteristic of the 
 Elizabethan age."* 
 
 With this as an object lesson the student 
 cannot go astray. He will not conclude his 
 survey of Walter Scott without inquiring into 
 the "inward spirit" of the opening years of 
 the last century ; nor will he be surprised to 
 find that subtle forces emanating from the 
 Continent made their power felt beyond the 
 Cheviot Hills. There is no better guide to 
 the effects of the French Revolution than 
 Professor Dowden himself. 
 
 Another illustration may be sought in an 
 entirely different direction. It is a common- 
 
 * New Studies in Literature, p. 445. 
 58
 
 GREAT BOOKS AND GREAT MOVEMENTS 
 
 place of literary history that " a critical period 
 follows a creative period." "Of all men," 
 says Professor Shairp, "it is true that they 
 feel and energise first, they reflect and judge 
 afterwards. First comes impulse, emotion, 
 active outgoing ; then reflection analysing 
 the impulse and questioning the motive." * 
 What is true in the microcosm of the human 
 mind is true in the macrocosm of the world, 
 and after a period of great productiveness 
 there comes a period of apparent stagnation 
 when men busy themselves with analysing 
 and valuing the works of a preceding age, or 
 in other ways pursuing studies of a more 
 critical than creative order. I do not mean 
 to say that there is a law as exact and easily 
 traceable as a natural law, but that there are 
 certain features in the story of literature 
 which go to show the reasonableness of 
 prophesying a more or less intellectual epoch 
 after one marked by spontaneity. Thus after 
 the Shakespearian age of glorious splendour 
 there came in vogue the "metaphysical poets," 
 in whom ingenuity dominated over feeling, 
 and "who laboured after conceits, or novel 
 turns of thought, usually false, and resting on 
 some equivocation of language or exceedingly 
 
 * Aspects of Poetry, p. 37. 
 59
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 remote analogy." After these writers came 
 the really critical school of Dryden and 
 Pope. 
 
 Now one object of that series of manuals 
 edited by Dr. Herford, such as The Age of 
 Wordsworth, The Age of Dryden, is to show 
 important works in their natural setting of 
 historic circumstance, political, social, religious, 
 and literary. In this way the student of 
 Dryden and Pope does not read the Hind 
 and Panther and The Essay on Man as the 
 productions of important writers merely, but 
 as expressions of the spirit of the age. 
 Carlyle frequently speaks of the "divine idea" 
 of which literary men are the appointed inter- 
 preters. "For each age, by the law of its 
 nature, is different from every other age, and 
 demands a different representation of the 
 divine idea, the essence of which is the same 
 in all ; so that the literary man of one century 
 is only by mediation and re-interpretation 
 applicable to the wants of another."* Thus 
 feudalism, monarchism, Protestantism, and 
 Catholicism have each in turn had their 
 respective periods, and each in turn their 
 classic utterances in literature. The Age of 
 Wordsworth just mentioned and Professor 
 
 * Miscellanies, vol. i. p. 69. 
 60
 
 ENGLISH AND CONTINENTAL LITERATURE 
 
 Phelps's English Romantic Movement are 
 good examples of the kind of study here 
 recommended. 
 
 4. The Course of English Literature should be 
 Studied in connection with Contemporary 
 Movements on the Continent. 
 
 Foreign influences have played a consider- 
 able part in the shaping of our literary history, 
 and it is worth while putting them down in 
 chronological and tabular form. Professor 
 Dowden, in speaking of this matter, says most 
 truly that it is essential the student should 
 know where to find the headquarters of litera- 
 ture in each successive European period, 
 "now in Florence or in Rome, now in Paris, 
 now in London, now at Weimar. When 
 Boccaccio is spoken of in relation to Chaucer, 
 when Tasso or Ariosto is spoken of in relation 
 to Spenser, or Boileau in connection with 
 Dryden and Pope, or Goethe in connection 
 with Carlyle, he ought at least to be able to 
 place Boccaccio, and Tasso, and Ariosto, and 
 Boileau, and Goethe aright in the general 
 movement of European literature, and in 
 some measure to conceive aright the relation 
 of each to the literary movement in our own 
 country." 
 
 61
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 Let us take one of the latest of these out- 
 side influences as an illustration, that with 
 which the name of Goethe is most promi- 
 nently identified. This is concerned with 
 what we may call creative criticism, the dis- 
 covery of fruitful ideas relating to the values 
 of literary productions. A hundred years ago 
 we were actually blind to the superlative 
 merits of some of our greatest writers 
 Shakespeare in particular ; but there were 
 one or two men in Germany who saw things 
 in clearer light and committed their views to 
 print notably Lessing, in his Dramaturgic 
 (1767). Goethe, Schlegel, and others followed 
 in his steps, and their works were reviewed 
 and popularised in this country by Thomas 
 Carlyle, whose words we may pertinently 
 reproduce in order to show the effect of 
 German methods. " The problem is not now 
 to determine by what mechanism Addison 
 composed sentences and struck out simili- 
 tudes, but by what far finer and more 
 mysterious mechanism Shakespeare organised 
 his dramas, and gave life and individuality to 
 his Ariel and his Hamlet. Wherein lies that 
 life ? How have they attained that shape and 
 individuality ? Whence comes that empyrean 
 fire which irradiates their whole being, and
 
 ENGLISH AND CONTINENTAL LITERATURE 
 
 pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a 
 diviner thing into all hearts ? Are these 
 dramas of his not verisimilitudes only, but 
 true nay, truer than reality itself, since the 
 essence of unmixed reality is bodied forth in 
 them under more expressive symbols ? What 
 is this unity of theirs ? and can our deeper 
 inspection discern it to be indivisible, and 
 existing by necessity, because each work 
 springs, as it were, from the general elements 
 of all thought, and grows up therefrom into 
 form and expansion by its own growth ? Not 
 only who was the poet, but how did he com- 
 pose ? but what and how was the poem ? and 
 why was it a poem and not rhymed eloquence 
 creation, and not figured passion ? These are 
 the questions for a critic. ... As an in- 
 stance we might refer to Goethe's criticism of 
 Hamlet. . . . This truly is what may be 
 called the poetry of criticism ; for it is in 
 some sort also a creative art, aiming at least 
 to reproduce under a different shape the 
 existing product of the poet, painting to the 
 intellect what already lay painted to the heart 
 and the imagination." 1 Over against this 
 view of literary appreciation should be set the 
 views represented by the Edinburgh Review 
 
 * Miscellanies, i. pp. 60-72. 
 63
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 with its now notable expression "This will 
 never do." 
 
 The following question set at a London 
 University examination will show the import- 
 ance of this section even from that point of 
 view : 
 
 " In what respects and with what justice has the 
 Reformation in England been considered to have exer- 
 cised an unfavourable influence on English literature and 
 culture? Give examples." 
 
 As a sort of map to guide one's reading it 
 would be difficult to find anything more useful 
 than Professor Nichol's Tables of Ancient 
 Literature (1877). 
 
 5. Study carefully those Writers who have 
 Created a New Form of Literature, or 
 Started a New Literary Movement. 
 
 For instance, there is the novel. Who 
 wrote the first English novel ? The question 
 depends on a definition of terms. If the 
 word " novel" simply means narrative prose, 
 we should have to go further back than 1740, 
 which saw the publication of Richardson's 
 Pamela, or even 1719, the year of Defoe's 
 Robinson Crusoe. But if the word means 
 "a story wrought round the passion of love 
 to a tragic or joyous conclusion," we must 
 
 64
 
 THE CREATORS OF NEW FORMS 
 
 then begin with Pamela, and devote consider- 
 able time to its author. 
 
 There can be no more thorough - going 
 method than that of Sainte-Beuve, as ex- 
 pounded by Professor Dowden.* 
 
 That method is as follows : 
 
 1. To pass from a particular book to the author's entire 
 
 work, and so 
 
 2. To the author himself. 
 
 3. Then to the author's family. 
 
 4. Group of friends and contemporaries. 
 
 5. The moment when the writer begins to decay, or 
 
 decline, or deviate. 
 
 6. As seen through his admirers and enemies. 
 
 7. The result ; the right word to describe his peculiar 
 
 talent. 
 
 If the reader will follow out this plan in 
 the case of Samuel Richardson, he will find 
 himself occupied with one of the most inter- 
 esting of literary studies ; he will trace the 
 influences of Richardson's humble origin and 
 early experiences as contributory factors in 
 the production of his works ; his little tribe 
 of feminine devotees, his maturity of years 
 at the time he began to write, his moralising 
 tendencies and his vanity all these will come 
 into the survey, in order to account in some 
 measure for that rare insight into the human 
 
 * New Studies in Literature, p. 393. 
 F 65
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 heart as displayed in Pamela and Clarissa 
 Harlowe. 
 
 The origins of a new literary movement 
 always demand an exhaustive inquiry and 
 delicate analysis. We are familiar with the 
 phrase, " The return to nature," as set forth 
 in the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
 others. 
 
 What was the force which caused them to 
 strike out in the direction of nature as com- 
 pared with the artificiality of the age that 
 immediately preceded them ? Was the force 
 in themselves? or partly within and partly 
 without ? The answer to these questions will 
 need to be sought for carefully, but the 
 seeking carries with it its own unique 
 pleasures. 
 
 We can do no more here than to indicate 
 the possible lines of investigation. The 
 primary question would have to decide what 
 elements of originality were due to the Lake 
 School of Poets, and how far their romanti- 
 cism can be traced to Ramsay, Thomson, 
 Collins, Gray and Goldsmith, Burns and 
 Cowper. Following this should come an in- 
 quiry into social and political changes, as 
 these would be likely to affect literature. The 
 student will then be ready for a reading of 
 
 66
 
 THE CREATORS OF NEW FORMS 
 
 Bowles's Sonnets, to which Coleridge expresses 
 his extreme indebtedness for inspiration. In 
 sending a copy to Mrs. Thelwall he said, "I 
 entreat your acceptance of this volume, which 
 has given me more pleasure, and done my 
 heart more good, than all the other books I 
 ever read, excepting my Bible." Here is one 
 of the curious facts of literary history, for the 
 Sonnets in question have no great literary 
 merit, and their chief interest lies in the 
 power they exerted over Coleridge, and after- 
 wards over Wordsworth. Even then it was 
 not poetic power ; it was simply the sugges- 
 tion of what possibilities lay concealed in the 
 romantic method. 
 
 Thus by the accident of circumstances 
 Bowles's Sonnets occupy a prominence in 
 literature far beyond their intrinsic value ; 
 but if we reckon dynamic quality as a literary 
 gift, we are bound to confess that William 
 Lisle Bowles was a more original poet than 
 critics are ready to allow. 
 
 We would commend therefore the syste- 
 matic study of those writers who invented 
 new forms of literary embodiment, and those 
 who were responsible for the creation of new 
 movements. 
 
 67
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 6. An Intelligent Use of the Comparative 
 Method will Illumine the Progress of 
 Thought as expressed in Literature. 
 
 Occasionally a student meets a question 
 like this in an examination paper, " Compare 
 Lamb's critical method with that of any well- 
 known critic of the present day." The ques- 
 tion is a very proper one, and will soon test 
 the quality of a man's reading how far he 
 has observed the growth of literary analysis, 
 and with what insight he has looked into 
 works that discuss literary values. Even 
 though the above question may never have 
 occurred to him previously, if he has studied 
 his Lamb thoroughly, and knows anything 
 at all of Matthew Arnold, he would not have 
 much difficulty in writing an answer. But 
 the best way is to study literature compara- 
 tively in a conscious manner. For instance, 
 as literary criticism has been referred to, we 
 will suppose that the student has just con- 
 cluded a happy reading of Sidney's Apology 
 for Poetry and Shelley's A Defence of Poetry. 
 Instinctively he compares the two if for no 
 other reason than their contiguity in his mind 
 and their identity of subject. But it would 
 be of inestimable advantage to his enjoyment 
 
 68
 
 THE COMPARATIVE METHOD 
 
 and to his knowledge if to these books he 
 would add Dryden's Preface to the Fables, 
 Johnson's Metaphysical Poets, Coleridge's 
 Poetic Genius, Wordsworth's Prefaces, Haz- 
 litt's Poetry in General, and compare them 
 together by observing their development in 
 the chronological order of their appearance. 
 
 In this way one can treat of Carlyle's bio- 
 graphical and critical method as compared 
 with that of Macaulay ; how the comedies of 
 Sheridan differ from those of Goldsmith, and 
 the irony of Swift from that of Gibbon ; or 
 the means employed by Shakespeare to arouse 
 the sense of horror as related to those used 
 by Webster in his Duchess of Malfi. 
 
 Closely allied with this comparative idea of 
 study is the topical reading of literature. Let 
 the topic be Ideal Commonwealths. You 
 turn to More's Utopia, then to Bacon's New 
 Atlantis, next to Harrington's Oceana, and 
 finally, to the works of Edward Bellamy. 
 That the "literary study," as it is called, 
 requires genuine investigation is one of its 
 chief merits. If you are asked to compare 
 the heroines of George Meredith with those 
 of Thomas Hardy you are bound to know 
 much more than a mere smattering of the 
 books concerned, as well as to possess a keen 
 
 69
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 insight into life and literary principle. Be- 
 sides, the topical method is productive of an 
 abiding interest in literature. Suppose the 
 subject be "The Jew in Fiction and Drama." 
 What exercise could be better than a 
 comparison of Shakespeare's Shylock with 
 Barrabas in Marlowe's Jew of Malta ? Isaac 
 in Scott's Ivanhoe with Mordecai in Daniel 
 Derondaf and all of them with Lessing's 
 Nathan the Wise ? 
 
 Moreover, the " literary study " knows no 
 defined limits, and if a student's proclivities 
 are in the direction of minute analysis he will 
 find sufficient scope in a suggestion like the 
 following from Dr. D. G. Brinton : 
 
 "... A study of the associations of colours 
 with certain thoughts, moods, emotions, and 
 states of mind, in Browning's poetry. Add a 
 comparison with the deficient sense, or at 
 least the deficient use of colour in the Greek 
 poets, and draw a parallel between Browning 
 in this respect and some of his contemporary 
 poets ; the chief aim being to ascertain if the 
 poets exhibit any constant relation between 
 certain colours and certain states of mind, 
 and is such a relation one of cause or merely 
 association ? " * 
 
 * Pod Lore, vol. viii. p. 51. 
 70
 
 THE STUDY OF MYTHOLOGY 
 
 7. A Knowledge of Mythology is of first-rate 
 Importance. 
 
 Every schoolboy picks up a certain amount 
 of information respecting Greek and Koman 
 gods and goddesses, but, unless the schoolboy 
 develops into a classic scholar, such informa- 
 tion is likely to be neither extensive nor 
 accurate. Mythology is one of the most 
 interesting of the byways of history, and 
 one wonders why it is so seldom considered 
 worthy of a special and separate study. 
 " Enough for practical purposes " seems to 
 be the criterion which guides the schoolmaster 
 in his handling of this subject. And w T hat, 
 forsooth, are the "practical purposes?" They 
 are, probably, the ability to "say something" 
 about a fabled god who appears in a Royal 
 Academy picture, or to whom reference is 
 made in a new poem. But myths are too 
 dignified for scrappy treatment on the plan 
 of " practical purposes " ; and although the 
 student need not aim at acquiring the learn- 
 ing of Max Mliller, he should at least aim at 
 mastering the most important facts and 
 theories. Undoubtedly this means a consider- 
 able tax on memory, but the subject possesses 
 
 71
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 special interest, and this assists greatly in 
 remembering names and events. 
 
 At this point the question arises, " What is 
 the best way of studying mythology ? " I 
 have heard it said in reply, " Read the 
 classics," or " read Max Miiller and the works 
 of Professor Cox." This advice is good so 
 far as it goes, but it is not of much service to 
 private students who have not had the 
 advantages of a classical education. Certainly 
 Professor Cox's Catechism is an admirable 
 manual which amply repays a reading, 
 especially to the beginner. But the real 
 want is supplied by an American professor 
 Mr. C. M. Gayley whose Classic Myths in 
 English Literature is just the kind of work 
 to place in the hands of those who wish to 
 study myths intelligently. Professor Gayley 
 has an introduction on " The Study of Myth- 
 ology in connection with English Poetry," 
 followed by chapters on " The Origin and 
 Elements of Myth," their distribution and 
 preservation. The body of the work analyses 
 Indian, Greek, Roman, and Norse myths, and 
 contains many useful portraits, maps, and 
 chronological charts. Not the least helpful 
 section is that devoted to what is called a 
 " Commentary " and in order to give an 
 
 72
 
 THE STUDY OF MYTHOLOGY 
 
 impression of its utility, I quote the follow- 
 ing : 
 
 TEXTUAL. Cephalus, the son of Mercury (Hermes) 
 and Herse, is irretrievably confounded with Cephalus the 
 son of Deion and grandson of jEolus. The former 
 should, strictly, be regarded as the lover of Aurora (Eos) ; 
 the latter is the husband of Procris, the great-grandfather 
 of Ulysses. 
 
 INTERPRETATIVE. Procris is the dewdrop (from Greek 
 Prox, dew) which reflects the shining rays of the sun. 
 The "head of the day," or the rising sun, Cephalus, is 
 also wooed by Aurora, the Dawn, but flies before her. 
 The Sun slays the dew with the same gleaming darts that 
 the dew reflects, or gives back to him. According to 
 Preller, Cephalus is the morning star beloved alike by 
 Procris, the Moon, and by Aurora, the Dawn. The 
 concealment of Procris in the forest and her death 
 would then signify the paling of the moon before the 
 approaching day. Hardly so probable as the former 
 explanation. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE. Aurora: Spenser, F. Q., 1, 2: 7; 1, 4: 
 1 6 ; Shakespeare, M. N. Dream, 3:2; Rom. and Jul., 1:1; 
 Milton, P. L., 5 : 6, " Now Morn, her rosy steps in the 
 eastern clime advancing," etc.; L'Att., 19 ; Landor, Gebir, 
 " Now to Aurora borne by dappled steeds, the sacred 
 gates of orient pearl and gold. . . . Expanded slow," etc. 
 Cephalus and Procris, in Moore's Legendary Ballads; 
 Shakespeare, M. N. Dream, " Shafalus and Procrus"; 
 A. Dobson, The Death of Procris. 
 
 IN ART. Aurora: paintings by Guido Eeni, J. L. 
 Hamon, Guercino ; " Procris and Cephalus," by Turner ; 
 "L'Aurore et Cephale," painted by P. Gue"rin 1810, en- 
 graved by F. Forster 1821." 
 
 73
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 In this way the reader can give mythology 
 systematic treatment by first learning the 
 known facts and the theories of interpretation, 
 and then by tracing their representation in 
 painting, poetry, and sculpture. "It goes 
 without saying that a rational series of some- 
 what consecutive stories is more serviceable 
 to the reader than a congeries of data acquired 
 by spasmodic consultation of the classical 
 dictionary a mass of information bolted, as 
 it were, but by no means digested. When, 
 however, these stories are treated in genea- 
 logical and realistic sequence, and are illus- 
 trated by lyric, narrative, and descriptive 
 passages of modern literature, there is fur- 
 nished not only that material of allusion and 
 reference for which the student nowadays 
 trusts to meagre and disjointed text -book 
 notes, but a potentiality which should render 
 the general reading of belles lettres more 
 profitable ; for a previous acquaintance with 
 the material of literary tradition heightens 
 the appreciation of each allusive passage as it 
 is encountered. It enables the reader to sym- 
 pathise with the mood, and to enter into the 
 purpose of the poet, the essayist, the novelist, 
 and 'the orator."* 
 
 * Classic Myths in English Literature. 
 
 74
 
 LITERARY GEOGRAPHY 
 
 8. Find a definite place for Literary Biography 
 and Geography. 
 
 Biographies of all kinds are almost as much 
 read nowadays as fiction, and certainly liter- 
 ary biographies are numerous enough and of 
 sufficient good quality to satisfy the most 
 avaricious reader. Of course, there can be but 
 few Boswells among modern biographers, partly 
 because there are no personalities like Johnson, 
 and partly because the Boswell style is out 
 of keeping with present-day tendencies. But 
 no student will neglect Lockhart's Life of 
 Walter Scott, and works of a similar character, 
 both on account of their intrinsic interest 
 and the light they throw upon the origin of 
 literary production and the action of literary 
 forces. 
 
 The notable series of manuals edited by 
 John Morley, and called " English Men of 
 Letters," are accessible in cheap editions, con- 
 tain the work of specialists, and have the 
 merit of being brief. They are not biogra- 
 phies in the ordinary sense of the word long, 
 "windy," two-volumed editions of letters, 
 most of which were not worth the cost of the 
 compositor's time in setting up but literary 
 treatises on a literary man's life. The " Great 
 
 75
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 Writers " series contains excellent accounts of 
 many English authors. 
 
 Literary geography seems to be a study 
 almost entirely neglected, at any rate on this 
 side of the Atlantic. The Americans pursue 
 it with characteristic ardour, and do not feel 
 that their knowledge of Wordsworth is com- 
 plete until they have explored the Wordsworth 
 country, or that Dr. Johnson has a full appre- 
 ciation until they have strolled down Fleet 
 Street, "the finest walk in Europe," and 
 visited "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese." 
 
 It is difficult to exaggerate the helpfulness 
 of a literary pilgrimage intelligently carried 
 out. That it aids memory may be a mere 
 utilitarian benefit ; but if to a sense of the 
 impressiveness of subject, as in Wordsworth's 
 "Tin tern Abbey," we add the impressiveness of 
 the scene itself, we participate in influences of 
 the utmost educational value. There are few 
 people who are at all far remote from literary 
 centres. The Yorkshireman has Haworth and 
 the Brontes ; the dweller in Somerset is not 
 far from Stratford-on-Avon, and Clevedon is 
 in his own county ; the Lake Country is within 
 easy distance of the populous Lancashire 
 towns ; and as for London, it literally teems 
 with associations. Some day readers may 
 
 76
 
 LITERARY FORMS 
 
 catch a little more of tlie spirit of Mr. Law- 
 rence Hutton, who in his " Landmarks " series 
 has invested several cities with such delightful 
 interest. 
 
 9. Literary Forms should receive Close 
 Attention. 
 
 The word " form " has several meanings, but 
 in this connection it denotes, first of all the 
 division of literary works into prose and 
 poetry ; and secondly, the many subdivisions 
 into which each of these has developed in 
 the course of a long history. The poem 
 comes first in chronological order, and the 
 student will find it necessary to pursue the 
 study of poetry and poetical principles as 
 complementary sides of one great subject. 
 He will probably follow his own instincts as 
 to what poets he will read after having 
 devoted time to those who occupy high 
 places in the esteem and veneration of the 
 world ; but although a knowledge of technical 
 criticism is not requisite for every species of 
 enjoyment, he is sure to discover that intelli- 
 gent appreciation can only spring from an 
 acquaintance with first principles. Moreover, 
 if he aims at a scholarly insight into things, 
 he is bound to know the history and scope of 
 
 77
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 the epic as distinct from the lyric, and both 
 of them as distinct from the drama. In fact, 
 he must make up his mind to investigate the 
 science of poetics and master thoroughly all 
 that is signified by metre, rhythm, and accent. 
 Hexameters, pentameters, iambic, choriambic, 
 and dactyl may not form a pleasing termino- 
 logy, but the difficulties are far more apparent 
 than real. In this connection he will find 
 Professor Gummere's Handbook of Poetics of 
 great service as a technical manual, but he 
 cannot afford to overlook the treatises of 
 Puttenham, Sidney, Shelley, Hazlitt, Leigh 
 Hunt, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. 
 
 Prose, too, has its many forms of embodi- 
 ment greatly increased during the last 
 century and it may be a useful investigation 
 for those who are philosophically minded to 
 inquire what the next literary form will be, 
 or whether we have exhausted all our possi- 
 bilities in this direction. Below is a list of 
 some of the chief methods of expression in 
 poetry and prose omitting the most obvious, 
 e.g. the novel, the epic, the essay : 
 
 Masques. Interludes. Mysteries. 
 
 Epithalamies. Miscellanies. Moralities. 
 Satires. Ballads. Allegory. 
 
 78
 
 BOOK-MARKING 
 
 10. If necessary, adopt a System of Marking 
 your Books. 
 
 You will observe I say, "If necessary." 
 Many people would call it a wicked practice 
 because it spoils the appearance of a book. 
 Certainly if appearances weigh with you, 
 there will be few marks in your editions of 
 authors, especially when they rejoice in 
 sumptuous bindings. But appearances do not 
 weigh with everybody, neither is it necessary 
 to spoil a book by marking it. I could not 
 recommend the system of hieroglyphics sug- 
 gested in Todd's Students Manual; they are 
 too "fearful" for anything. Still, markings 
 of some kind are often exceedingly useful, 
 and the simplest method is to draw a pencil- 
 mark at the side of the passage you wish to 
 note, and make an index of it on one of the 
 plain pages at the end of the book. The 
 index may be both simple and effective, as 
 only the subject and page number are neces- 
 sary. Thus in your edition of Browning you 
 could insert a reference thus 
 
 E | View of the nature of Evil | vol. i. p. 579. 
 
 and so forth, right through the alphabet. 
 In this way you can dispense with a great 
 79
 
 PRACTICAL HINTS 
 
 deal of copying should you be accustomed to 
 use a commonplace book, which is an article 
 you cannot well do without. 
 
 One point must not be forgotten. The 
 contents of your commonplace book and the 
 markings in the volumes on your shelves will 
 be an indication of the progress of your taste 
 and sense of discernment. By-and-by it will 
 be evident that you marked many passages 
 that had no special merit, and copied extracts 
 that possessed no merit whatever. 
 
 80
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 CAN we tell a good book from a bad one ? 
 The question seems absurdly simple as 
 thus stated ; but not long ago Mr. Augustine 
 Birrell addressed himself to the subject with 
 sufficient gravity to warrant a satisfactory 
 degree of complexity in an attempt to answer. 
 Still, one would have thought that it was a 
 very easy matter to distinguish a literary 
 failure from a literary success, even when 
 success is measured by the criterion of art 
 and not by that of mere popularity. Evi- 
 dently this is not the case, and when the 
 present condition of criticism is inquired into 
 perhaps we shall find small reason to wonder 
 why. Excellence in literary productions is 
 made to depend on so many points of view ; 
 critics disagree so conspicuously as to what 
 are the chief merits of classic utterances ; and 
 we have so many fleeting fashions in literary 
 taste that there is little to surprise us in the 
 
 G 81
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 foregoing question.* I hope, however, to 
 make plain such principles as are commonly 
 accepted and hazard a prophecy as to the 
 future of criticism. 
 
 1. The Objective Standard. 
 
 1. There are two schools of criticism 
 that which judges matters from an objective 
 standpoint, and that whose values are the 
 outcome of personal impressions. The first 
 school is almost extinct, and is exemplified in 
 Addison's criticism of Paradise Lost. Let 
 me give a summary as found in Mr. Basil 
 Worsfold's capital little primer on Judgment 
 in Literature : " Addison gives us the plan of 
 his criticism of Paradise Lost in the last of 
 the eighteen papers in the Spectator which he 
 devotes to the subject. Four papers are 
 assigned to the examination of the poem 
 under the respective heads of Fable (or Plot), 
 Characters, Sentiments, and Language ; that 
 is, to the four constituent elements of Aris- 
 totle's analysis of the tragedy which are 
 present in an epic poem. Two papers are 
 given to the ' censures which the author may 
 incur under each of these heads,' and the 
 
 * See Professor DOWDBN'S article in the Contemporary 
 Review, vol. for 1886. 
 
 82
 
 THE OBJECTIVE STANDARD 
 
 remaining twelve are devoted to a considera- 
 tion of each of the twelve books of the 
 poem in turn ; and in this consideration he 
 points out the ' particular beauties ' which 
 belong to each book, and tells ' wherein these 
 beauties consist.' As the result of this ex- 
 amination he pronounces a general verdict of 
 approval ; but at the same time he indicates 
 certain deficiencies. Milton, he says, ' excels 
 in general under each of these heads.' On 
 the other hand, he finds the ' plot ' of Para- 
 dise Lost to be deficient in two respects. 
 First, because ' the event is unhappy ' ; for 
 Aristotle, while he says that the plot of a 
 tragedy should terminate in a disaster, lays 
 down the general rule that an epic should end 
 happily. And secondly, because it contains 
 too many ' digressions.' ' 
 
 It should be said that although this gives 
 us an idea of Addison's method it does not 
 wholly represent his critical mind, since he 
 remarks that Milton's blemishes are like 
 "spots on the sun," and in his Pleasures of 
 the Imagination has given evidence of an 
 insight into the true method of criticism. 
 As previously noted, the formal style of 
 valuing a literary work is almost altogether 
 out of fashion. Perhaps Professor Minto's 
 
 83
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 Manual of English Prose Literature is one 
 of the last of serious contributions to critical 
 appreciation that partake of this style. His 
 plan of analysis is to take the "Elements of 
 Style," and under that head to deal with the 
 vocabulary, the sentence, the paragraph, and 
 figures of speech. Under the head of 
 " Qualities of Style " he considers qualities 
 that are intellectual and emotional, such as 
 simplicity, clearness, strength, pathos, the 
 ludicrous, melody, harmony, and taste. A 
 third division is taken up with description, 
 narration, exposition, and persuasion. It 
 must be admitted that the Professor makes 
 more out of his scheme than would appear 
 on the surface, and some of his characters 
 De Quincey, for instance are well done. 
 But after all, the scheme itself belongs to 
 rhetoric, and rhetoric is not literary criti- 
 cism. Schemes are too mechanical for judging 
 the expressions of literary feeling, and if 
 proof is needed one has only to remember 
 that the formal canons of an Edinburgh 
 reviewer compelled him to say that Coleridge's 
 Christabel was a mixture of raving and 
 drivelling, and Wordsworth's great ode "most 
 illegible and unintelligible." 
 
 The great weakness of objective criticism 
 
 84
 
 THE OBJECTIVE STANDARD 
 
 lies in the fact that the "rules" of what is 
 good literature and what is not are derived 
 from good literature itself. Euripides and 
 Sophocles wrote their plays before Aristotle 
 published his Poetics, and it was from great 
 dramas that " the master of those who know " 
 deduced his literary criticism. This is rather 
 unfortunate for the "rules," as it gives every 
 new creator the opportunity of presuming 
 that the writing of a new kind of classic 
 would result in the deducing of new rules to 
 the detriment of the old ones. The position 
 is made all the more acute when a novelist 
 like Mr. George Meredith can produce good 
 literature in spite of breaking nearly every 
 canon of narrative art. Moreover, if literary 
 criticism consisted in applying a fixed and 
 unchangeable standard, why are critical 
 opinions so diverse ? Why did Goethe say 
 that Dante's Inferno was abominable and 
 the Paradiso tiresome ? or how could 
 Matthew Arnold depreciate Eossetti ? or 
 Robert Louis Stevenson say he could not 
 enjoy Robert Elsmeref In each case there 
 are responsible judges who agree and some 
 who disagree. This could not be so if literary 
 valuation were as exact a process as the ob- 
 jective method supposes. 
 
 85
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 Kegarding the matter from a philosophical 
 point of view, it must be confessed that there 
 is solid truth in the assertion that " analysis, 
 the method peculiar to science, is decried in 
 literature because synthesis is the method 
 peculiar to art." Personality is the essence 
 of the literary spirit, and although every 
 writer is more or less an item of the age in 
 which he lives, sharing its life, and actuated 
 by its ideas, as well as contributing to its 
 fulness of being, no amount of analysis can 
 compass the soul of genius, and at this point 
 the scientific method comes to a sudden stop. 
 Even Taine, that apostle of naturalism in 
 literary studies, said of Shakespeare, " All 
 came from within I mean from his soul and 
 his genius ; external circumstances contributed 
 but slightly to his development." * 
 
 2. The Subjective Standard. 
 
 The second method of arriving at the differ- 
 ence between good literature and bad literature, 
 or rather in apportioning merits and demerits 
 in a literary production, is the subjective 
 method. It depends almost entirely on the 
 impression which a poem or a prose work 
 makes on the mind of a critic, and a most 
 
 * English Literature, vol. i. p. 297. 
 86
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE STANDARD 
 
 important addition it depends on the insight 
 and knowledge of that critic as to how much 
 value we can attach to his "impressions." 
 This fact, however, does not militate against 
 the "subjective view" itself. Indeed, Pro- 
 fessor Dowden has confessed, with his usual 
 candour, that "the best criticism of Shake- 
 speare is not that which comes out of profound 
 cogitation, but out of immense enjoyment ; 
 and the most valuable critic is the critic who 
 communicates sympathy by an exquisite 
 record of his own delights."* What is this 
 but the much - belaboured impressionism of 
 Jules Lemaitre and Anatole France ? The 
 latter writer says his purpose in writing about 
 the works of others is to discourse pleasantly 
 of the adventures of his soul, as it ranges at 
 large in the ample domain of books ; and M. 
 Brunetiere, his doughty opponent, declares 
 that if this be criticism there is no possibility 
 of arriving at a definite conclusion as to the 
 good or bad in literary art, and that these 
 qualities are therefore just what we make 
 them. 
 
 Before considering this reasonable objection 
 it may be well to turn back to the definition 
 of literature on a previous page. We saw 
 
 * Shakespeare : his Mind and Art, p. 242. 
 87
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 that the real interest of pure literature lay in 
 the personality of a writer;* we are not 
 half so much interested in what he tells us as 
 the way in which he tells it. Now there is a 
 complementary truth in criticism. It is not 
 the man who examines a poem and "ticks 
 off " its beauties and defects in catalogue form 
 who interests us ; it is the man who gives us 
 an account of his personal feelings, how and 
 why he enjoyed reading the poem. As Henry 
 James says, "Criticism is the critic." But there 
 is a still deeper truth to be noticed. A great 
 creative personality Shakespeare, for instance 
 needs another great personality to accom- 
 plish effective interpretation. Pope speaks of 
 a certain Mr. Bymer as being one of the finest 
 critics of his day. And what was Rymer's 
 opinion of Hamlet, of Macbeth, of The Mer- 
 chant of Venice ? He could not tolerate 
 them, and said their author raved like a 
 madman ! 
 
 Exactly ! It needs a Goethe or a Coleridge 
 to criticise the Bard of Avon ; only the 
 supremely clever man can rightly appreciate 
 the supremely clever thing. After that, when 
 
 * "Art is valuable or otherwise, only as it expresses the 
 personality, activity, and living perception of a good and 
 great human soul." Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. iv.
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE STANDARD 
 
 hidden beauties have been revealed, we all 
 become appreciators in our turn. Listen to 
 Wordsworth when he speaks in self-defence : 
 " If there be one conclusion more forcibly 
 pressed upon us than another by the review 
 which has been given of the fortunes and fate 
 of poetical works, it is this that every 
 author, as far as he is great, and at the same 
 time original, has had the task of creating 
 the taste by which he is to be enjoyed ; so has 
 it been, so will it continue to be. This re- 
 mark was long since made to me by the 
 philosophical friend for the separation of 
 whose poems from my own I have previously 
 expressed regret. The predecessors of an 
 original genius of a high order will have 
 smoothed the way for all that he has in 
 common with them and much he will have in 
 common ; but, for what is peculiarly his own, 
 he will be called upon to clear and often to 
 shape his own road ; he will be in the con- 
 dition of Hannibal among the Alps." * Robert 
 Browning likewise had to wait until he had 
 created the taste for himself ; the interpreting 
 mind was slow to pronounce its verdict. 
 
 Mr. John Burroughs, in a luminous article 
 called "Criticism and the Man," says that by a 
 
 * Essay Supplementary, p. 87. A. J. George's ed. 
 89
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 great critic " we mean a great mind that finds 
 complete self-expression in and through the 
 works of other men. Arnold found more 
 complete self-expression through literary criti- 
 cism than through any other channel. Hence 
 he is greatest here ; his theological criticism 
 shows him to less advantage. . . . Criticism 
 in its scientific aspects, or as a purely intel- 
 lectual effort a search for the exact truth, 
 a sifting of evidence, weighing and comparing 
 data, disentangling testimony, separating the 
 false from the true, as with the lawyer, the 
 doctor, the man of science, the critic of old 
 texts and documents is one thing ; criticism 
 of literature and art, involving questions of 
 taste, style, poetic and artistic values, is quite 
 another, and demands quite other powers. 
 In the former case it is mainly judicial, dis- 
 passionate, impersonal ; in the latter case the 
 sympathies and special predilections are more 
 involved. We seek more or less to interpret 
 the imaginative writer, to draw out and 
 emphasise his special quality and stimulus, to 
 fuse and restate him in other terms ; and in 
 doing this we give ourselves more freely. We 
 cannot fully interpret what we do not love, 
 and love has eyes the judgment knows not of. 
 What man was born to say, what he speaks 
 
 90
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE STANDARD 
 
 out of his most radical self-hood that the 
 same fate and power in you can alone fully 
 estimate and interpret." * 
 
 It is because real literature deals with a 
 subjective view of the world that criticism 
 must follow on the same subjective lines ; 
 objective standards can never reach the high 
 altitudes of feeling, neither are they fitted to 
 judge work which is the offspring of another 
 and altogether distinct sphere of mental 
 activity. The beauty of a poem or prose 
 narrative is not a thing which can be worked 
 out and demonstrated like a mathematical 
 problem ; it is a thing that we either feel, or 
 do not feel, without any attempt to discover 
 it by elaborate processes. True, there are 
 objective facts in every work of art : the 
 accuracy or inaccuracy of the author's tech- 
 nique, his life and opinions in relation to his 
 poetry, his formative influences, and matters 
 of that kind these are objective facts to be 
 objectively treated. But the beauty, the 
 passion, the imagination, and the subtle 
 personality are all connected with the sub- 
 jective world, and must therefore be treated 
 in a subjective manner. 
 
 M. Ferdinand Brunetiere is one of the 
 
 * Atlantic Monthly, p. 346. September, 1899. 
 91
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 strongest opponents of the subjective method 
 of criticism, and it will be advisable to con- 
 sider the chief objections he urges against the 
 view adopted in this chapter. 
 
 Where, it is asked, is the true standard of 
 literary merit if every man's impression is to 
 be allowed the rank of a critical utterance ? 
 The true standard, we reply, is two-sided, 
 objective and subjective ; the merit of a poem 
 from the former point of view can be deter- 
 mined by the science of poetics, and is there- 
 fore a matter about which there can be little 
 difference of opinion ; but the subjective merit 
 depth of passion, vigour of imagination, 
 beauty of idea, and touch of sympathy are 
 only determined by the critic's capacity to 
 receive and feel them. It follows that the 
 value of a criticism is not an affair of know- 
 ledge, but of sympathetic insight, and the 
 man who possesses this quality in the highest 
 degree of sensitiveness is the greatest critic. 
 The objective standards have varied but little 
 since the day of Aristotle's Poetics, and the 
 dramatist of to-day must still embody the 
 unities in some form or other in his work ; but 
 the subjective view of things is ever changing 
 and by the nature of things is bound to be in 
 a state of "becoming." Now one of the 
 
 92
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE STANDARD 
 
 tendencies of certain types of mind is the 
 tendency to reduce everything to law and 
 order and rule. To this class Brunetiere and 
 his disciples belong. They cannot allow criti- 
 cal opinions to remain in a state of perpetual 
 flux : one man saying one thing, another man 
 precisely opposite, and a third disagreeing 
 with both. They strive for a fixed standard 
 which shall be the same for all men, irrespec- 
 tive of race or period. The aim is quite 
 natural, especially to minds of scientific build. 
 They detest the possibility expressed in the 
 lines 
 
 " All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams, are true, 
 
 All visions wild and strange ; 
 Man is the measure of all truth, 
 Unto himself. All truth is change." * 
 
 But these lines are hyperbolic beyond the 
 acceptance of any man who is not a Theoso- 
 phist, and M. France would reject them as 
 resolutely as M. Brunetiere. 
 
 The fact remains, however, that critical 
 judgments are, and always have been, as 
 variable as the personalities from which they 
 spring ; and as different as the personal views 
 of the writers who are criticised. " Behold how 
 
 * See "Brunetiere and his Work as a Critic," Atlantic 
 Monthly, June, 1897. 
 
 93
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 Macaulay's verdicts differ from Carlyle's, Car- 
 lyle's from Arnold's, Arnold's from Frederic 
 Harrison's, or Morley's, or Stephen's, or 
 Swinburne's ; how Taine and Sainte-Beuve 
 diverge upon Balzac ; how Eenan and Arnold 
 diverge upon Hugo ; how Lowell and Emerson 
 diverge on Whitman ; and how wide apart are 
 contemporary critics about the merits of 
 Browning, Ibsen, and Tolstoi ! Landor could 
 not tolerate Dante, and even the great Goethe 
 told Eckermann that Dante was one of the 
 authors he was forbidden to read. In Byron's 
 judgment, Griffiths and Rogers were greater 
 poets than Wordsworth and Coleridge. The 
 German Professor Grimm sees in Goethe ' the 
 greatest poet of all times and all people,' 
 which makes Matthew Arnold smile. Chateau- 
 briand considered Racine as much superior to 
 Shakespeare as the Apollo Belvidere is 
 superior to an uncouth Egyptian statue. 
 Every nation, says a French critic, has its 
 chords of sensibility that are utterly incom- 
 prehensible to another. 'Many and diverse,' 
 says Arnold, 'must be the judgments passed 
 upon every great poet, upon every consider- 
 able writer.' And it seems that the greater 
 the writer or poet, the more diverse and 
 contradictory will be the judgments upon him. 
 
 94
 
 THE SUBJECTIVE STANDARD 
 
 The small men are easily disposed of there 
 is no dispute about them ; but the great ones 
 baffle and try us. It is around their names, 
 as Sainte-Beuve somewhere remarks, that a 
 perpetual critical tournament goes on." * 
 
 The fact is, Brunetiere's criticism is itself 
 quite as subjective as that of any other man; 
 his vigorous onslaughts are only manifestations 
 of his personality the expression of the type 
 to which he belongs. No man can ever get 
 away entirely from himself; his prejudices 
 thrust themselves upon him whether he will 
 or no ; his training, his history, and his 
 peculiarly personal experiences all conspire to 
 affect his opinions in a particular way ; and, 
 if he be a man one who dares to be true to 
 himself he will always speak according to 
 that which is in him. From this standpoint 
 Brunetiere is a most impressive figure, and his 
 opponents do not stamp themselves on our 
 imagination with the same degree of signifi- 
 cance. Still, truth must prevail apart from 
 contending critics, and the fact that out of 
 this battle of the standards there have now 
 issued names everywhere recognised as great, 
 would seem to show that before a creative 
 
 * JOHN BURROUGHS, Atlantic Monthly, p. 344, September, 
 1899. 
 
 95
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 genius can take his true place it is necessary 
 for the different schools of criticism to ap- 
 praise him according to their respective 
 methods, until, long years after, a consensus 
 of opinion establishes his claims beyond all 
 possibility of dispute. 
 
 3. Suggestions for Study. 
 The beginner who wants a rapid and 
 effective survey of the whole subject should 
 read Mr. "W. B. Worsfold's Judgment in 
 Literature ; after which he will be prepared 
 for Vaughan's English Literary Criticism. 
 Some would advise him to commence with 
 Aristotle's Poetics and Lessing's Laocob'n, but 
 they are too technical, the latter especially, 
 for one who is making a commencement in 
 reading the literature of criticism. Crawshaw's 
 Interpretation of Literature forms a valuable 
 guide to the purely technical elements and 
 their relation to criticism. It ought to be 
 much better known than it is. Professor 
 C. T. Winchester's Some Principles of 
 Literary Criticism is one of the best 
 treatises on general lines that has come 
 from America, just as Professor Gayley's 
 Introduction to Literary Criticism is the 
 fullest from the point of view of technics. 
 
 96
 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 
 
 Of course, we must not forget our own 
 standard English writers. These are dealt 
 with in some measure by Professor Vaughan, 
 but we are deficient in handbooks, such as 
 those just mentioned. 
 
 The finest education, however, is not ob- 
 tained from manuals : it is obtained from 
 reading the best literature ; and it is good 
 practice to know how others have done this 
 before us, by reading the result of their 
 labours. Hence, De Quincey's Literary 
 Criticism, Walter Bagehot's Literary Studies, 
 Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library, Pro- 
 fessor Dowden's Transcripts and Studies, 
 Studies in Literature, and New Studies will 
 be eagerly devoured. 
 
 Mr. John Morley's Miscellanies will afford 
 a good introduction to the works of Sainte- 
 Beuve, and Taine's English Literature is a 
 classic that no one can possibly pass by. 
 Yetta Blaze de Bury's French Literature of 
 To-day is a series of essays showing the 
 latest modes of criticism in France, and 
 should be read prior to reading Brunetiere, 
 Anatole France, and Lemaitre. 
 
 Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann one 
 never wearies of consulting. Questions at 
 Issue and Critical Kit-Kats, by Edmund 
 H 97
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM 
 
 Gosse, Corrected Impressions, by George 
 Saintsbury, Essays Speculative and Sugges- 
 tive, by J. Addington Symonds, Obiter Dicta, 
 by Augustine Birrell, and Studies in Two 
 Literatures, by Arthur Symons, are among the 
 latest contributions to literary valuation. 
 
 98
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN PUBLIC 
 EXAMINATIONS 
 
 1. The Evils of the Exam System. 
 
 IN a previous section I have ventured to 
 say something in reference to the way in 
 which English literature figures in University, 
 Civil Service, and other examinations. With 
 few exceptions, the examination questions 
 place a premium on the man with a good 
 memory, whilst the man with a memory less 
 good, but who possesses real literary discern- 
 ment, has few chances of doing justice to 
 himself. Until the ideal of the examiner is 
 changed by being purged of its overplus of 
 philology and bald fact, this state of things is 
 likely to last for some time to come. It can 
 hardly be the fault of the student if he crams 
 for his " final," or the Civil Service candidate 
 for the " India Civil." The system is to blame. 
 How can a youth of twenty-one be expected 
 
 99
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 to know the whole story of English literature, 
 its chief epochs, its representative writers in 
 every department of practice, their chief 
 works and dates of publication ? How can 
 he take this subject as one among many with- 
 out resorting to methods which examiners 
 decry, but for which they are themselves 
 responsible ? Let the reader take a specimen 
 Civil Service examination paper for a Class I. 
 Clerkship, and scrutinise it carefully. He will 
 generally find, among other questions, a long 
 list of quotations which are to be identified 
 as to their authorship and the books in which 
 they appear. What does the student do ? 
 He knows one of two things must be done : 
 either he must read the chief works of all 
 important authors from Beowulf to Browning, 
 or else resort to a "quote" book, or a "coach" 
 who will supply him with a list of notable 
 passages from the masterpieces and show him 
 how to "get them up." Of course, he chooses 
 the latter method for obvious reasons ; it is, in 
 fact, the only possible method where the can- 
 didate must be ready in a given time. 
 
 Nothing could be more derogatory to real 
 study than cramming of this kind, but so long 
 as the modern examination system lives and 
 it shows no signs of dying yet so long will 
 
 100
 
 PLAN OF STUDY 
 
 students be compelled, more or less, to play 
 to the examiners' gallery. 
 
 In this chapter, therefore, I am attempting 
 to steer a middle course between the true 
 ideal as previously defined and the cynical 
 cramming which aspires to nothing more than 
 a high score in "marks." My justification 
 for a compromise must be found in the fact 
 that in some examinations the possibility of 
 success, and consequently the possibility of 
 earning a living, depends on the number 
 of marks, English literature being a necessary 
 subjec/t. 
 
 2. A Plan of Study. 
 
 1. There is a distinct art in answering the 
 questions of an examiner, let the subject be 
 what it may. He wants a certain series of 
 facts stated as clearly and briefly as possible. 
 No other facts, however closely related to 
 those asked for, will serve his purpose, and it 
 only angers him to see an attempted imposi- 
 tion. A student who is going to sit for an 
 examination should, therefore, accept the in- 
 evitable and prepare his subject in such a way 
 that its data will be as handy as possible. 
 English literature stored away in the " pigeon- 
 hole and compartment " fashion is artificial 
 101
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 enough in all conscience, but a candidate who 
 is called upon to write down within the space 
 of an hour or two answers to questions bear- 
 ing on literary history from Bede to the 
 present day has no time to go a-seeking ; he 
 must have his facts mentally handy, or, to 
 change the figure, within arm's length ready 
 for instant use. 
 
 First of all, then, he should firmly grasp 
 the great periods and their subdivisions, as 
 well as the terms that are used to denote 
 them. In spite of differences among authori- 
 ties as to what these periods are, the divisions 
 adopted by Shaw, in his Manual of English 
 Literature, are comprehensive enough to serve 
 as a safe guide to the beginner. 
 
 I. Old English, from 1250 to 1350 A.D. 
 II. Middle English, from 1350 to 1550 A.D. 
 III. Modern English, from 1550 A.D. to the 
 present day. 
 
 After this come the subdivisions, which 
 should embrace (l) great names; (2) great 
 books ; (3) the chief social and political events 
 and their effect upon literature ; (4) a list of 
 dates marking the foregoing facts; and (5) such 
 critical notes on the period as may be found 
 necessary and helpful. 
 
 102
 
 PLAN OF STUDY 
 
 The aim of a map of literary knowledge 
 arranged in this manner is purely utilitarian, 
 namely, to give the candidate easy mental 
 access to a date, an author, a title, a move- 
 ment, a quotation, or a critical judgment. 
 This will entail very considerable labour, 
 especially if it be done conscientiously; but 
 of the value of such a map to the prospective 
 examinee there can be no question. It will 
 give him much more than a bird's-eye view of 
 literature by showing the progression of letters 
 from Chaucer to modern times. 
 
 But after all, a map is a map and nothing 
 more ; what the student needs is the study of 
 the classics themselves. He must not be 
 content with the comments of the historian 
 and know nothing of Pope's Dunciad other 
 than that which he 'finds in Craik, or Taine, 
 or a book of "Typical Selections." 
 
 Before me is a question set at a Civil 
 Service examination asking for the authors, 
 the context, also title of books and date of 
 publication, of thirty poetical quotations. 
 How should a question like this be prepared 
 for? By studying the best English poetry. 
 Some students, however, pressed for time, will 
 "get up" Dry den from a Dryden anthology, 
 and are not above revising Shakespeare by a 
 
 103
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 perusal of Dodd. Probably they are as 
 ashamed of the process as they are eager to 
 pass the examination. It is at this point that 
 the map should be consulted and those books 
 studied (and ample notes made) which occupy 
 the chief places. Thus in the age of Chaucer 
 not only will the works be read which show 
 the poet's Romanticand Renaissance tendencies, 
 but Wycliffe, Gower, Mandeville, and others 
 will claim a share of attention. 
 
 Some idea of the way this information 
 should be planned may be obtained from 
 H. J. Nicoll's Landmarks of English Litera- 
 ture. The volume has value beyond its plan, 
 but its plan is the item which most concerns 
 us here. I do not say the plan is perfect and 
 a model of its kind, but it is suggestive, and 
 for that reason worthy of consultation. Mr. 
 F. Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English 
 Literature is much more scholarly and sounder 
 in every way. The author is an experienced 
 tutor, and knows how to serve his facts in the 
 form that students require them. His volume 
 should always be at hand. 
 
 104
 
 HOW TO DEAL WITH QUESTIONS 
 
 3. How to Deal with Questions. 
 
 2. The candidate has now seen his subject 
 from the distance ; its general scope is familiar 
 to him, and the chief names and dates are no 
 longer strange sounds to his ear. The time 
 has now come for closer study, and he must 
 leave the larger historical view for the work of 
 treating authors individually. How is this to 
 be done, bearing in mind the special needs of 
 an examination ? In addition to following out, 
 as far as possible, the special hints given in 
 a preceding section, he should make a careful 
 study of a series of specimen questions in 
 order to, know the points on which an ex- 
 aminer expects him to be well informed. 
 Having assured himself that he has mastered 
 the scope, the method, and the minutiae of 
 examiners' ways, he is ready to prosecute his 
 reading on this plan. Of course, such reading 
 has many vices, but the examination system 
 has many vices too, and the latter kind of 
 vice begets the former. There is, however, 
 at least one redeeming virtue, and it is that 
 much useful knowledge may be acquired in 
 a systematic manner. 
 
 105
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 (a) He will read with a keen eye for words 
 and their changes in form and meaning. 
 
 Question* Point out any peculiarity in the meaning or 
 scansion of these words in King John : ocean, remember, 
 rule, date, ensues. 
 
 (b) The sources of a writer's facts and 
 inspiration need to be noted. 
 
 Question. From what sources did Spenser draw material 
 for the Faerie Queene ? 
 
 (c) The chief facts of his life should be 
 recorded in chronological order. 
 
 Question. Give a list of the chief events in Milton's 
 life with dates. 
 
 (d) His books should be tabulated in a 
 similar fashion. 
 
 Question. Give a dated list and a classification of the 
 plays of Ben Jonson. 
 
 (e) The chief points in notable criticism, 
 should be memorised if possible. 
 
 Question. Give the substance of Lamb's remarks on 
 Webster's peculiar power. 
 
 (/) The advent of a new form in literature 
 or the disappearance of an old one are 
 matters of importance. 
 
 Question. Upon what foreign model did Spenser frame 
 his stanza, and what part of it is his own addition ? 
 
 * Taken for the most part from London University papers. 
 106
 
 HOW TO DEAL WITH QUESTIONS 
 
 Question. Briefly describe what is meant by a masque, 
 an interlude, and a miscellany. When did they respect- 
 ively die out in England ? 
 
 (g) Wherever political and social forces 
 actively influence literature their effects are 
 worthy of special note. 
 
 Question. What events in the age [1558-1603] gave 
 a stimulus to scientific inquiry, and who were its chief 
 promoters 1 
 
 Question. What was the effect upon poetry of this 
 new tendency of the age 1 
 
 The examination of specimen questions in 
 this fashion will put the student into posses- 
 sion of methods that are specially suited to 
 his peculiar needs. He cannot hope, it is 
 true, to keep everything in view ; that would 
 be what is colloquially known as " too large an 
 order " ; but in the course of his reading he 
 will make a note of those items which a study 
 of examination papers will lead him to mark 
 as likely to contain possible questions. 
 
 1. " Before commencing to answer a paper 
 read carefully all that is printed on it. Some- 
 times the examiners indicate certain questions 
 which all must attempt to answer ; sometimes 
 they restrict the number of questions which 
 it is allowable to answer ; sometimes they 
 give directions as to penmanship, manner of 
 
 107
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 folding paper, margins, etc. From inattention 
 to any of these you may have a deduction 
 made from the valuation of your answers. 
 You must also note carefully the time allowed 
 for answering. 
 
 2. Read over the whole of the questions 
 before commencing to answer any ; note care- 
 fully those you think you can answer, and 
 confine your attention to them until they are 
 answered to your satisfaction. 
 
 3. In beginning to answer weigh each 
 question carefully, and make sure that you 
 perfectly understand its meaning. If you 
 have any doubt ask the examiner to ex- 
 plain it. 
 
 4. Never begin a sentence until you know 
 exactly what you are going to say in it. If 
 necessary, write it down on a piece of waste 
 paper ; you will thus avoid erasures on your 
 manuscript, and erasures are seldom made 
 without affecting the grammar and punctua- 
 tion of a sentence, for which the valuation of 
 an answer will be diminished. 
 
 5. Answer all that is asked in the question 
 as fully as you can, but not with undue 
 minuteness. A certain average time should 
 be allowed to each answer. No extra valua- 
 tion is given to an answer on account of its 
 
 108
 
 HOW TO DEAL WITH QUESTIONS 
 
 length ; and if you waste time you may have 
 to give in your paper before you have come 
 to the end of the questions that you can 
 answer, and you will thus lose marks that 
 may be all important. 
 
 6. It is understood that the maximum of 
 valuation can be obtained without answering 
 all the questions, therefore do not, in order 
 to increase your marks, attempt to guess any 
 answer. It is scarcely possible to do so 
 without being detected, and the examiner will 
 then suspect your other answers, and they 
 may suffer in valuation in consequence. 
 
 7. Write carefully and legibly, and read 
 over every answer attentively, looking well 
 to the spelling, grammar, and punctuation. 
 Make your sentences short and perfectly 
 unambiguous iu their meaning ; use no intro- 
 ductions ; do not attempt any fine writing, 
 either as exordium or peroration ; and avoid 
 all affectation of style, undue employment of 
 foreign words, and colloquial expressions."* 
 
 * Adapted from EngUsh Literature and Composition, by 
 R. DEMAUS, M.A. London : A. and C. Black. 
 
 109
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 4. Specimen Questions. 
 
 [Some of the following questions are splen- 
 did models of what such questions ought to 
 be. They are taken mainly from papers set 
 for candidates at recent examinations.] 
 
 1. Compare Bacon and Locke both as thinkers and 
 writers. 
 
 2. Give an account of the life and writings of Pope, and 
 characterise his poetry in comparison with that of Dryden, 
 making particular reference in your comparison to their 
 translations from the classic poets. 
 
 3. Whom do you reckon the greatest English poet of 
 the nineteenth century ? Justify your preference by 
 argument and quotation. 
 
 4. What do you consider to be the true epoch of the 
 commencement of English literature ? Give reasons. 
 
 5. Show in what manner the prologue to the Canter- 
 bury Tales throws light upon the social life of the period. 
 
 6. State what you consider to be the chief excellencies, 
 and also the chief defects, in the poetry of the Eliza- 
 bethan age. 
 
 7. Describe the plot or poetical framework of the 
 Faerie Queene. Is the poem a complete work ? 
 
 8. Upon what occasion, and with what object in view, 
 did Milton write his Areopagitica ? Give an outline of 
 this treatise. 
 
 9. Explain the titles Iconoclastes, Colasterion, Tetra 
 chwdon, Smectymnuus, Histrio-Mastix, Annus Mirabilis. 
 
 110
 
 SPECIMEN QUESTIONS 
 
 10. Describe, with illustrations, the nature of the foreign 
 influences which were acting upon English literature in 
 the reign of Charles II. 
 
 11. Characterise the humour of any one among the 
 following English humorists : Addison, Sterne, Fielding, 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 12. What is your estimate of Dr. Johnson's merits as 
 a writer, and also of the effects of his influence on 
 literary style 1 ? 
 
 13. Name the satire which you think the most forcible 
 in the language. Of what poem is Johnson's London a 
 free version? 
 
 14. Mention examples of the influence for good or for 
 ill of the events of English history on English literature. 
 
 15. Give a list of prose writers before 1550, and com- 
 pare the progress generally of English prose with that of 
 poetry. 
 
 16. Give a general account of the ballad literature of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 17. Name, with dates, the principal versions of the 
 Bible in English, and trace the effect of the Authorised 
 Version on the literature of the country. 
 
 18. What is your estimate of Samuel Taylor Cole- 
 ridge's poetical criticism? 
 
 19. Mention the principal translations of Homer into 
 English. Which do you consider to be the best ? Who 
 is believed to have been the first composer of English 
 hexameters ? Point out some of the causes which have 
 contributed to their failure. 
 
 20. What do you consider to be the greatest historical 
 work published during the last hundred and twenty 
 
 years ? Give reasons. 
 
 Ill
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 21. Quote Lord Bacon's definition of poetry, and give 
 the substance of any one of his essays. 
 
 22. Institute a comparison between Milton's Lycidas 
 Shelley's Adonais, and Tennyson's In Memoriam, and 
 name in each case the friend mourned. 
 
 23. State your view of the influence exerted on English 
 literature by translations from other tongues. 
 
 24. Which has the truer feeling for nature Shake- 
 speare or Milton? Prove the justice of your judgment 
 by quotations from both of these poets. 
 
 25. Compare the power exercised by the ballad writer 
 in ancient with that possessed by the newspaper writer of 
 modern times. 
 
 26. Estimate the influence of popular poetry on the 
 character and spirit of a nation, and quote any striking 
 passages that you may remember from English or Scottish 
 ballads. 
 
 27. State as precisely as you can to what foreign 
 sources Chaucer was indebted. Justify your statement 
 by reference to his works, and by the relative dates of 
 great Continental poets. 
 
 28. How far did Shakespeare borrow (1) from older 
 English dramatists, (2) from contemporary or earlier 
 chronicles, (3) from authors of classical antiquity. Illus- 
 trate your answer by a reference to various plays. 
 
 29. State what you know of the history of the Tatler 
 and the Spectator. Give an analysis of any paper in 
 either of them. 
 
 30. Mention the principal literary forgeries of the 
 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 112
 
 SPECIMEN QUESTIONS 
 
 31. Compare Dryden as a satirist with any other 
 satirist, ancient or modern, whose works you may have 
 read. 
 
 32. What is meant by the Lake School of Poets ? 
 Describe the characteristics of that school. 
 
 33. How do you define literature 1 Illustrate the uses 
 of the term and show its true meaning. 
 
 34. Write a brief outline of the origin and develop- 
 ment of the English novel. 
 
 35. "Truth is stranger than fiction." Discuss this 
 statement in relation to the work of a novelist. 
 
 36. Compare the criticism of Matthew Arnold with 
 that of Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 37. What are Dryden's chief prose works ? In what 
 respects of subject as well as of style did they help to 
 set English prose in a new channel ? 
 
 38. Compare or contrast the temper of mind and of 
 style displayed by Milton and Burke as political writers, 
 with allowance for their times, circumstances, and 
 personal characters. 
 
 39. Estimate the debt of Keats to Dryden in Lamia. 
 
 40. Describe the chief peculiarities of Lamb's prose 
 style. What were his models, and how did he use 
 them? 
 
 41. Classify Waverley, Rob Roy, Ivarihoe, The Anti- 
 quary, in order of date, and according to the group of 
 Scott's novels to which they belong. Give a leading 
 example from each novel of Scott's tragedy and of his 
 humour (1) in character, (2) in incident or scene. 
 
 i 113
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 42. Assign the following passages to their authors, 
 giving where you can the titles of the works in which 
 they occur : 
 
 (a) But Christes love and His apostles twelve 
 He taught, but first He followed it Himselve. 
 
 (&) ... unless above himself he can 
 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man ! 
 
 (c) for a lodge in some vast wilderness ! 
 
 (d) The world knows nothing of its greatest men. 
 
 (e) One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name. 
 
 (/) He prayeth well who loveth well 
 Both man, and bird, and beast. 
 
 (g) A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. 
 
 (h) Nature has done her part and why 
 Is mightier man in his to fail ? 
 
 5. Model Answers.* 
 
 1. Analyse the stanza of Spenser. 
 
 Answer. The Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines, 
 eight of them ordinary decasyllabic iambics, and the 
 ninth an Alexandrine. The rhymes are thus distributed : 
 the first line rhymes with the third ; the second with the 
 fourth, fifth, and seventh ; and the sixth with the eighth 
 and last. From its structure and the judicious distribu- 
 tion of its rhymes, this stanza has an unrivalled harmony 
 and fulness of cadence. 
 
 * From DEMAUS'S English Literature. 
 114
 
 MODEL ANSWERS 
 
 2. Compare Bacon and Locke both as thinkers and 
 writers. 
 
 Answer. As a thinker Bacon was distinguished by a 
 certain grandeur and vastness of thought that few others 
 have equalled. His imagination is as powerful as his 
 reason is profound, and his works are full of thoughts 
 that are at once practical and daring. Locke is a hard- 
 headed reasoner, wanting in breadth and almost destitute 
 of imagination; a patient, close thinker, who suspects 
 fancy and listens only to experience. Bacon wrote when 
 little attention had been paid to the graces of style, and 
 his works consequently want the polish and neatness of 
 a later age. His style, however, is one of great dignity 
 and force, wonderfully concise for his time, well sustained, 
 and adorned with rich imagery and felicitous illustration. 
 Locke, on the contrary, expresses himself in a clumsy, 
 rambling manner. He has very little command of 
 language, and his long, ill-constructed sentences have 
 neither precision, nor force, nor elegance. He is not 
 only inferior in this respect to his master, Hobbes, but as 
 compared with Bacon, who wrote nearly a century earlier, 
 he is inferior in vigour of language, in clearness and 
 happiness of expression, and in variety of illustration. 
 As a thinker Locke occupies a high place ; as a writer he 
 must be rated very low. 
 
 3. Show in what manner the Prologue to the Canter- 
 bury Tales throws light upon the social life of the 
 period. 
 
 Answer. In the Prologue Chaucer sketches the char- 
 acter and appearance of each of the personages who 
 figure in the Tales ; and as there were nine-and-twenty 
 pilgrims of both sexes, and of every grade of society, we 
 have thus a very complete outline of the social life of 
 115
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 the period. Among the pilgrims are a knight, a friar, 
 a merchant, a franklin, a squire, a parson, a miller, a 
 cook, and a student from Oxford, a jolly host, a bashful 
 nun, and a witty widow from Bath. All classes of 
 society, except the very highest and the very lowest, are 
 thus represented ; and as their dress, manners, and pecu- 
 liarities are portrayed with the fidelity and life of an 
 unrivalled master of description, we have a lively view 
 of the social life of England at the close of the fourteenth 
 century. 
 
 Question. Denote the origin of the following quota- 
 tions, and indicate the kind of verse in which the poem 
 is written : 
 
 1. Full many a flower is born to blush unseen 
 And waste its fragrance on the desert air. 
 
 2. But a bold peasantry their country's pride, 
 When once destroyed can never be supplied. 
 
 3. A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. 
 
 4. Let observation, with extensive view, 
 Survey mankind from China to Peru. 
 
 5. None but the brave deserve the fair. 
 
 6. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
 And their partitions do their bonds divide. 
 
 7. For why 1 the good old rule 
 
 Sufficeth them, the simple plan, 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can. 
 
 8. A mighty maze, but not without a plan. 
 
 9. The man that hath not music in himself, 
 
 Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; 
 116
 
 MODEL ANSWERS 
 
 The motions of his spirit are dull as night, 
 And his affections dark as Erebus : 
 Let no such man be trusted. 
 
 10. The vision and the faculty divine. 
 
 11. The proper study of mankind is man. 
 
 12. I was all ear, 
 
 And took in strains that might create a soul 
 Under the ribs of death. 
 
 13. Better fifty years of (Europe than a cycle of Cathay. 
 
 14. The starry Galileo and his woes. 
 
 15. Rightly to be great 
 
 Is not to stir without great argument, 
 But greatly to find quarrel in a straw 
 When honour's at the stake. 
 
 16. Or call up him who left half told 
 The story of Cambuscan bold. 
 
 17. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart. 
 
 18. That thou with ale or viler liquors 
 
 Didst inspire Withers, Prynne, and Vicars. 
 
 19. A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ, 
 But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit. 
 
 20. Who born for the universe narrow'd his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 
 
 21. For my purpose holds 
 
 To sail beyond the sunset and the baths 
 Of all the western stars until I die. 
 
 Answer. (1) From Gray's Elegy, written in elegiac 
 verse ; (2) Goldsmith's Deserted Village, written in ordin- 
 ary rhyming heroic verse ; (3) Keats' Endymion, in rhym- 
 ing heroics ; (4) Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, in 
 117
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE IN EXAMINATIONS 
 
 rhyming heroics : (5) Dryden's Alexander's Feast, a lyric 
 poem in irregular verse ; (6) Dryden's Absalom and 
 Achitophel, in rhyming heroics ; (7) Wordsworth's Lines 
 on Rob Roy's Grave, in a kind of ballad metre ; (8) Pope's 
 Essay on Man, in rhyming heroics ; (9) Shakespeare's 
 Merchant of Venice, in blank verse ; (10) Wordsworth's 
 Excursion, in blank verse; (11) Pope's Essay on Man; 
 (12) Milton's Comus, chiefly in blank verse; (13) Tenny- 
 son's Locksley Hall, a trochaic measure; (14) Byron's 
 Childe Harold, in the Spenserian stanza ; (15) Shake- 
 speare's Hamlet, in blank verse; (16) Milton's L' 'Allegro, 
 a lyric poem in octosyllabic verse ; (17) Wordsworth, 
 sonnet, "Milton "; (18) Butler's Hudibras, written in octo- 
 syllabics; (19) Dryden's Mac Flecnoe, a satire in rhyming 
 heroics ; (20) Goldsmith's Retaliation, in anapaestic 
 verse; (21) Tennyson's Ulysses, in blank verse. 
 
 118
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY.* 
 
 IN reproducing these selections from The, Fort- 
 nightly Review one or two explanations are 
 necessary. The most important is that fine passages 
 from the Greek and Latin classics, as well as foreign 
 authors, have been deleted, as it was not thought 
 advisable to include them in a book dealing with 
 English literature. I hope this fact will be borne 
 in mind, otherwise a grave injustice might be done 
 to those writers and critics who appear in the 
 following pages. 
 
 The second explanation is concerned with the 
 utility of publishing a selected list of what are 
 considered fine passages. Every collection of typi- 
 cal pieces is open to certain objections, but the 
 advantages easily outweigh the disadvantages. It is 
 easy to see, for instance, how the individuality of 
 the writer is expressed in the passages chosen ; and 
 how the chosen passages in their miscellaneous total 
 form an interesting guide, more or less safe, to what 
 is worthy of careful attention. But the chief merit 
 
 * I am indebted to the editor and proprietors of The 
 Fortnightly Review for permission to reproduce these pre- 
 ferences. 
 
 119
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 is that these passages form a sort of Reading Book 
 in Literary Criticism, and for this reason it is hoped 
 their republication will be justified. 
 
 1. Mr. Matthew Arnold writes : 
 
 "Acts of mental judgment attempted in compliance 
 with a sudden call like yours are difficult and untrust- 
 worthy. I should not like to pronounce on the spur of 
 the moment what work or what passage in prose or 
 poetry I think the best known to me. But indepen- 
 dently of any such weighing, judging, and comparing as 
 is needed for this, we have a positive test of the degree 
 in which passages, at any rate, have moved and pleased 
 us, from the force with which such passages have lodged 
 themselves in our mind and memory." 
 
 In applying this test Mr. Arnold referred to 
 several classical authors, the only English passage 
 being Burke's tribute to John Howard, the prison 
 reformer. 
 
 2. Mr. Grant Allen writes : 
 
 "I couldn't, with justice to my own taste, pick out 
 any one, or even any ten passages of English poetry as 
 being in my opinion absolutely best. The selection would 
 be naturally one-sided ; it would leave out much that is 
 essential to one's idea of true poetry ; and I don't know 
 that any poem ever strikes one as perfect except the 
 smallest lyrics, which have least in them. The first two 
 books of Paradise Lost, Shelley's Skylark, Keat's Night- 
 ingale, Austin Dobson's Dead Letter, Lang's Ballade of 
 Sleep these are among the things we cannot omit. But 
 then, in saying this, one is leaving out Tennyson and 
 
 120
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Coleridge and ought not Aenone and parts of In 
 Memoriam to be there as well ? Then again, one has 
 forgotten Thyrsis, and the Scholar Gipsy, and Empedodes 
 on Etna. 
 
 " I don't think I can do more than say that to me very 
 modern poetry, and especially contemporaneous poetry, is 
 the most satisfying William Morris, Matthew Arnold, 
 Andrew Lang, and Austin Dobson. Keats is glorious, but 
 I don't join in a conspiracy to kill our living Keatses by 
 overpraising him to their detriment. The literature 
 which expresses the thought of the day is the literature 
 which live men ought to read and revel in. 
 
 " As to prose, the difficulty is still greater. In prose, 
 except with a few posturing folk like Ruskin, the matter 
 is so infinitely more important than the manner. The 
 best passages I ever read are in Herbert Spencer, especially 
 the Biology. His style, which purely literary critics so 
 greatly misunderstand, is the most perfect instrument for 
 its particular purpose ever fashioned by the intellect of 
 man. But as mere literature, I think the introduction to 
 R. L. Stevenson's Dynamiter the finest thing in our 
 language except, perhaps, in Richard Feverel where 
 Richard and Lucy wander in the fields together." 
 
 3. Mr. Thomas Hardy writes : 
 
 "I should have replied sooner, but the words, 'the one 
 passage in all poetry which seems to me the finest,' quite 
 bewildered my mind by their immensity. I should say 
 there is no one passage finest ; that the various kinds of 
 best poetry are not reducible to a common standard. 
 ' There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the 
 moon, and another glory of the stars.' I know that you 
 ask, ' What seems the finest?' but that seeming varies with 
 121
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 the time and mood, and according to the class of poetry 
 that is for the nonce nearest to the tone of our situation. 
 
 " I have very often felt (but not always) that one of 
 the most beautiful of English lyrics is Shelley's Lament, 
 ' World ! Life ! Time ! ' And of descriptive 
 poetry I do not know that anything has as yet been 
 fairly able to oust our old friends in Childe Harold e.g. 
 Canto III., stanzas 85 to 87. 
 
 " I know this is an old-fashioned taste ; but it is a 
 well-considered relapse on my part, for though in past 
 years I have been very modern in this matter, I begin to 
 feel that mere intellectual subtlety will not hold its own 
 in time to come against the straightforward expression of 
 good feeling. 
 
 "With regard to prose, the task is somewhat more 
 practicable, and yet how hopeless ! But I will go thus 
 far : I think that the passages in Carlyle's French Revo- 
 lution on the silent growth of the oak have never been 
 surpassed by anything I have read, except, perhaps, by 
 his sentences on night in a city, as specimens of contem- 
 plative prose (if they may be so called); and that in 
 narrative prose the chapter of the Bible (2 Sam. xviii.) 
 containing the death of Absalom is the finest example of 
 its kind that I know, showing beyond its power and 
 pathos the highest artistic cunning." 
 
 4. Mr. Andrew Lang, in poetry, selects a classical 
 passage ; and in prose, chapter clxxvi. from Malory's 
 Mart d 'Arthur. 
 
 5. Mr. W. S. Lilly, among other passages, refers 
 to one from Milton's Areopagitica, beginning with, 
 "Methiuks I see in my mind," and closing with 
 " a year of sects and schisms." 
 
 122
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 6. Mr. George Meredith writes : 
 
 " . . . In modern English verse I would cite for excel- 
 lence Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn and Ode to Autumn ; 
 Tennyson's Aenone ; the Kubla Khan of Coleridge. In 
 modern prose the description of Eachel, under title of 
 ' Vashti,' in Villete, by Charlotte Bronte, chapter xxiii." 
 
 In general poetry Mr. Meredith refers to the 
 whole of the second scene in Act iv. of Shakespeare's 
 Henry the Eighth. In prose he quotes Hamlet's 
 speech to the players. 
 
 7. Mr. Augustine Birrell, the author of Obiter 
 Dicta, writes : 
 
 "My delay in replying to your kind communication 
 has certainly not been occasioned by any lack of interest 
 in your proposal, but because the time has been spent in 
 attempting to combat the conviction that I have not 
 earned any right to take part in such a trial of wits. 
 
 " But since you have asked me it would, perhaps, be a 
 refinement to decline, and I therefore say that in prose I 
 would instance (1) the two concluding paragraphs of Lord 
 Bacon's Plan of the Novum Organum, beginning, ' For 
 the matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation' 
 (Spedding's Bacon, vol. iv. p. 32); (2) Dr. Johnson's 
 final paragraph to his Preface to the English Dictionary, 
 beginning 'In this work, when it shall be found,' etc. 
 (Oxford Edition of Works, vol. v. p. 50). 
 
 " Were a bit of poetical prose permissible, I should 
 give the last passage of Sir Thomas Browne's Fragment 
 on Mummies, beginning, ' Egypt itself is now become the 
 land of obliviousness, and doteth ' (Works, vol. iv. p. 276. 
 Pickering's edition, 1835). 
 
 123
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 " In poetry it is surely Shakespeare first and the rest 
 anywhere ! "Were selection other than an outrage I should 
 give, for dramatic poetry, from Macbeth, Act ii., Scene 2, 
 the passage beginning, ' I have done the deed/ to the end; 
 and from Lear, the scene with Cordelia, Act iv., Scene 7, 
 beginning, ' Oh, my dear father,' to 'I am old and 
 foolish.' 
 
 "For pure poetry that is, examples of the magical 
 music of words it abounds everywhere in Shakespeare. 
 A specimen occurs in the Winter's Tale, Act iv., Scene 4, 
 in the passage beginning, ' Proserpina,' and ending, 'The 
 flower-de-luce being one ' ; but I cannot wonder that some 
 of your best judges have found it necessary to exclude 
 Shakespeare altogether from their consideration, though 
 such a course is hardly consistent with your scheme." 
 
 8. Lord Coleridge gives in poetry the Kulla Khan 
 of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel, the conclu- 
 sion to Part I., and the whole of Keats's Ode to a 
 Nightingale. 
 
 9. Miss Francis Power Cobbe writes : 
 
 " I send you as desired my favourite passages of prose 
 and poetry. "Whether they are the finest in literature I 
 am by no means prepared to say; but I like them best." 
 
 In poetry Tennyson, In Memoriam, Poems liv., Iv., 
 Ivi. 
 
 In prose Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I. 
 
 10. Mr. Oswald Crawford writes : 
 
 "I am glad you have enlarged your invitation to us 
 and asked for such passages from great authors as have 
 ' lodged themselves in our memories and afforded us the 
 
 124
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 most continual delight.' The question is still a hard 
 enough one to deal with, and for my part I feel like that 
 adventurer in the Arabian Nights who, finding himself 
 in the Valley of Diamonds, had to fill his belt with the 
 lightest load of the finest stones at the shortest notice. 
 Like him I am picking up gems of thought and phrase 
 from the realm of literature and reluctantly laying them 
 down for what I fancy finer ones. 
 
 " Not only will your budget of selected passages give 
 us, your readers, a sure literary treat here, indeed, is a 
 lottery where there are prizes and no blanks at all but 
 we may please ourselves with the thought that many 
 worthy ladies and gentlemen, nay, some even who are 
 critics (though this is a bold word in me) may wake up 
 after reading your pages to perceive how very great a 
 thing, how high and noble an art, is this one of marshal- 
 ling words and phrases in prose and verse. 
 
 " As we are English-speaking people writing for English- 
 speaking readers it would seem well in these selections not 
 to travel outside the wide domain of English literature. 
 As to whether to select from living men or them of old 
 though, with Mr. Grant Allen, I find living authors par- 
 ticularly soul-satisfying it nevertheless appears to me 
 that they, one and all, suffer from one drawback, one 
 fault a defect indeed which I am far from wishing to 
 have amended in all cases : they are alive. Our judgment 
 of their merits may be sound, but surely it has to be con- 
 firmed in the appeal court of time. As the literary high- 
 way across the centuries is marked by many bleached 
 skeletons of famous reputations, may it not be that a 
 prophetic eye could even now discern the dry bones and 
 empty skull behind some modern singing robes ? May it 
 not be that some shrines where we now worship may 
 become ruins as the years run on? Absit omen! but it 
 
 125
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 seems wiser to choose from works which have been ap- 
 proved by the repeated verdicts of gone-by generations, 
 and have the seal of the centuries upon their fame. 
 
 " In prose I choose Fuller first. For good English 
 sense, almost undiluted by the pedantry of his day, for a 
 taking quaintness which is wit, for humour, for sympathy 
 with human nature, for noble thought, and for all this 
 set to the accompaniment of a compact and harmonious 
 and most artful style, he stands, to me, pre-eminent. The 
 passage I quote has been praised by Coleridge and by 
 Charles Lamb for its mastery in the art of swift narration 
 and for the address whereby the attention and sympathy 
 and judgment of the reader are held in suspense to the 
 last." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Fuller, Worthies of England, " Henry de Essex." 
 
 Dr. Johnson's Letter to Lord Chesterfield. 
 
 11. Mr. Wilkie Collins writes : 
 
 " Fortunately for myself I have what is called ' a 
 catholic taste ' in literature. When I think of the im- 
 mense variety of high achievement which literature pre- 
 sents, I am unable to understand the state of mind which 
 can prefer any one passage, or any one writer. If I had 
 the strength and the time I should be capable, I am 
 afraid, of overwhelming you with fifty favourite passages, 
 taken from the great poets of the world, which equally 
 excite my admiration and equally delight me. Let me 
 only quote as examples of what I mean : (1) the 4th 
 Scene in the 3rd Act of Lear ; (2) Byron's ' Address to 
 the Sea,' in the 4th Canto of Childe Harold ; (3) Walter 
 Scott, Canto II., stanzas 28 to 32, in The Lord of the 
 Isles ; (4) Gray's Elegy, excepting ' The Epitaph,' which, 
 
 126
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 I venture to think, is not quite worthy of that great poem ; 
 (5) Dryden's Ode on St. Cecilia 's Day ; (6) Pope's Elegy 
 to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. 
 
 "Here are six passages, from English poetry alone, 
 representing modes of thought and forms of expression 
 so entirely differing one from the other that it seems to 
 me to be absolutely impossible justly to compare them. 
 In each example I see equally, and admire equally, the 
 mind of a master. And if you asked me to sacrifice one 
 of my six passages I should be incapable of arriving at a 
 decision, and should be driven to ask for an appeal to the 
 laws of chance." 
 
 12. Lord Derby writes : 
 
 " It seems to me almost impossible to select from the 
 literature of all ages and countries any one passage, either 
 in poetry or prose, as being absolutely the best, and my 
 answer to the question contained in your circular must 
 therefore be necessarily imperfect. I would further ob- 
 serve that the finest passages generally lose most by being 
 detached from their surroundings, and that a few lines 
 can no more be taken as a sample of a poem, or of an 
 essay, than a brick as a sample of the house from which 
 it is removed. All, therefore, that I can do is to mention 
 those writings which, from whatever cause, have most 
 deeply impressed themselves on my mind as types and 
 models of literary excellence. 
 
 "In English prose, the essays of Bacon have always 
 appeared to me, both as regards style and substance, to 
 surpass all other compositions in our language ; but their 
 merit is so equal that I scarcely know which to pick out. 
 The compiler of an anthology could hardly go wrong 
 among them. 
 
 127
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 "In English poetry, Gray's Elegy, and the 'Address to 
 the Ocean,' in Childe Harold, would be my choice, though 
 I should be glad also to find room for Wordsworth's 
 famous ode. 
 
 "The task which you have set your correspondents 
 would be easier if the number of preferred passages were 
 less restricted." 
 
 13. Professor Dowden writes : 
 
 " I find it possible to give something like answers to 
 the questions proposed only by limiting my range of 
 choice to three or four writers of English verse and 
 three or four writers of English prose. King Lear 
 I take to be the greatest of Shakespeare's plays, but 
 whether it contains his ' finest passage of poetry ' I can- 
 not say. When we speak of a great dramatic passage we 
 speak of one which, though perhaps not in itself pre- 
 eminent for beauty, carries with it the dramatic force of 
 character and situation. Thus in Julius Ccesar the words 
 uttered by Brutus, ' No man bears sorrow better. Portia 
 is dead/ have in them all the ardour and self-restraint 
 and some of the self-esteem of the character of Brutus. 
 No single line in any English play perhaps is more thrill- 
 ing in its dramatic power than that put by Webster into 
 the mouth of Ferdinand, when Bosola displays the body 
 of the Duchess of Malfi, ' Cover her face : mine eyes 
 dazzle : she died young.' The following lines, when taken 
 in their dramatic surrounding, may rank, I suppose, 
 among the greatest written by Shakespeare : Lear, Act 
 iv., Scene 7, from 'Where have I been?' etc., to 'I think 
 this lady to be my child Cordelia.' 
 
 "No other passage of Milton's poetry haunts my 
 memory so often as that which brings the Samson 
 
 128
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Agnostes to a close : Choms, from ' All is best, though 
 we oft doubt,' to the end. 
 
 "Of Shelley's lyrics I think the greatest is his Ode 
 to the West Wind ' ; no stanza will bear to be severed 
 from the rest. Wordsworth never wrote lines of more 
 magical beauty than those inspired by the voice of the 
 solitary reaper 
 
 ' A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 
 In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 
 Breaking the silence of the seas 
 Among the farthest Hebrides. 
 
 ' Will no one tell me what she sings ? 
 Perhaps the plaintive murmurs flow 
 For old, unhappy, far-off things 
 And battles long ago : 
 
 ' Or is it some more humble lay, 
 Familiar matter of to-day ? 
 Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain 
 That has been, and may be again ? ' 
 
 "Keats has written nothing greater than the last 
 stanza of his Ode on Melancholy 
 
 ' She dwells with Beauty Beauty that must die ; 
 
 And Joy whose hand is ever at his lips 
 Bidding adieu ; and aching Pleasure nigh, 
 Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips : 
 
 Ay, in the very temple of Delight 
 Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, 
 
 Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue 
 Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ; 
 His soul shall taste the sadness of her might 
 And be among her cloudy trophies hung.' 
 
 " Tennyson is seen at his best in Ulysses, from ' Come, 
 my friends, 'tis not too late,' etc., to end of poem. 
 K 129
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 "Perhaps no English writer has written prose so ex- 
 quisitely effective as that which Paul Louis Courier has 
 written in certain pages of his best pamphlets. The 
 greatest English prose is not the prose of intelligence or 
 esprit, but the prose of enthusiasm and of passion, melan- 
 choly or joyous. The well-known passage on the death 
 of his son in Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, is of its 
 kind most admirable, from ' Had it pleased God,' etc., to 
 ' Duke of Bedford would have it from an unworthy 
 parent.' 
 
 " In another kind nothing can be more beautiful than 
 Bunyan's description of the approach of Christian and 
 Hopeful to the celestial city. From ' And now were these 
 two men, as 'twere, in heaven before they came at it ; 
 being swallowed up with the sight of angels, and with 
 hearing of their melodious notes. Here also they had 
 the city itself in view, and they thought,' etc., to ' And 
 thus they came up to the gate.' 
 
 "A famous passage in De Quincey's Autobiographic 
 Sketches, where he describes himself standing a child by 
 his dead sister's bed, while the solemn summer wind 
 blows, is a magnificent example of the rhetorical pathetic. 
 Of Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons, I know of 
 none more wonderful than that named 'The Invisible 
 World.'" 
 
 14. Mr. Edmund Gosse in poetry selects : 
 Milton, Paradise Regained, Book IV. ; 
 In prose 
 
 Thomas De Quincey, The English Mail Coach, Section 
 III. ; Dream Fugue, Section IV. 
 
 In selecting the passage from Paradise Regained, 
 " Mr. Edmund Gosse desires to explain that he has 
 130
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 chosen it, not as being the most pathetic, or im- 
 passioned, or even imaginative with which he is ac- 
 quainted, but as combining, with something of each of 
 those qualities, a greater variety and fulness of technical 
 excellence in the art of verse than perhaps any other 
 passage in English poetry ; workmanship being, as Mr. 
 Gosse conceives, the safest criterion in a comparative 
 criticism such as that suggested by the editor of the 
 Fortnightly Review. 
 
 " In like manner, the passage from De Quincey, which 
 is of the same order of writing, is selected as perhaps 
 the most successful example of deliberately balanced and 
 consciously elaborated style to be found in English prose." 
 
 15. Vernon Lee sends us the following list of 
 
 In poetry 
 
 R. Browning, The Ring and the Book, second speech 
 of Guido Franceschini. 
 
 In prose 
 
 Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, Death of Flavian. 
 Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversations, Henry 
 VIII. and Anne Boleyn. 
 
 16. Sir John Lubbock writes : 
 
 "Your letter has been much in my thoughts. One 
 passage after another has suggested itself to me : but 
 there are so many one would wish to include, and which 
 it seems ungrateful to omit, that I have felt in the utmost 
 perplexity. 
 
 "For reasons already alluded to by other corre- 
 spondents, you would probably omit the Bible, and I 
 scarcely think we can properly estimate living writers. 
 131
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 " In poetry I do not know anything grander than the 
 passage on ' Mercy,' from the Merchant of Venice, which 
 Lord Granville has already quoted ; while on a less ex- 
 alted level I would suggest Gray's Elegy. 
 
 " In prose, again, there are so many considerations that 
 I cannot select any single passage. As an illustration of 
 vivid description I would take Dean Stanley's description 
 of Thebes and Carnac (In Sinai and Palestine, p. xxxviii. 
 and onwards) ; while on the higher range of human 
 feelings the closing passages of the Plicedo (pp. 496-499, 
 in Jowett's vol. i.) appear to me to reach the height of 
 pathos and sublimity." 
 
 17. Mr. W. H. Mallock writes : 
 
 " As I understand the question you have addressed to 
 me, I am compelled to discriminate between sublimity 
 and greatness. Were I in search of sublimity I should 
 go to Pope or Tennyson, to such passages as ' Come down, 
 O maid,' from Tennyson's Princess, and to Pope's satire 
 on Addison ; but for passages combining both sublimity 
 and perfection the last four stanzas of the fifth ode of 
 Book III. of Horace's Odes, or if you prefer English, 
 Macbeth, Act v., Scene 5, from "Out, out" to "signifying 
 nothing," seem to me in poetry never to have been sur- 
 passed ; and in prose I prefer the famous passage in which 
 Macaulay speaks of the Romish Church in his essay on 
 Ranke's History of the Popes." 
 
 18. Mr. Ernest Ehys writes : 
 
 "For more than a month past I have been in such 
 confusion of overwork that it has been impossible until 
 now to reply to your request in the matter of selecting 
 fine passages of prose and verse. However, I do not 
 
 132
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 regret the delay altogether, for it has enabled me to 
 discover by this month's Fortnightly that you are allowing 
 your contributors of select passages a certain wider margin 
 to express their critical notions in than at first appeared 
 from your circular. In particular, I am very glad to be 
 saved from having to decide upon any passages with a 
 statement of critical belief in their absolute supremacy ; 
 for I do not feel that I have yet got hold of any ultimate 
 canon of literary excellence for either prose or verse. So 
 I offer the following passages for what they are worth, as 
 having given me, peculiarly among all prose and verse, 
 great delight and great literary stimulus. I should, it is 
 perhaps well to add, have included passages from Ruskin, 
 Matthew Arnold, Browning, and Walt Whitman, if it 
 were not that one's estimate of living writers, as Matthew 
 Arnold has pointed out, is apt to be too personal to have 
 much value on purely literary grounds." 
 
 In verse 
 
 Marlowe, Plays, Doctor Faustus, Act. v., Scene 4, from 
 Faust, "Oh, Faustus ! Now hast thou but one bare hour 
 to live " to " To practise more than heavenly power 
 permits " (the end of the play). 
 
 Wordsworth, Poems, the whole of the poem (seven 
 verses) beginning, "Three years she grew in sun and 
 shower." 
 
 Burns, Songs, from " my love's like a red, red rose " 
 to " Though it were ten thousand miles " (four verses). 
 
 Anon. (Sir Walter Scott's Border Minstrelsy), Clerk 
 Saunders, from " Clerk Saunders and May Margaret " to 
 "And dull and drowsie were his een" (first fourteen verses). 
 
 In prose 
 
 The passage from Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for 
 Poetrie, beginning with, " Now, therein, of all sciences." 
 133
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Milton, An Apology against a Pamphlet called a Modest 
 Confutation, 1642, from "I had my time, as others have 
 who have good learning " to " proved to me so many in- 
 citements to the love and steadfast observation of virtue." 
 
 De Quincey, Opium Eater (in the section, " The Pains 
 of Opium"), from "I thought that it was a Sunday 
 morning in May " to " seventeen years before when we 
 were both children." 
 
 19. Miss Olive Schreiner, author of On an African 
 Farm, writes : 
 
 " I found the question, ' What is finest in literature ? ' 
 scarcely answerable. 
 
 " The two passages I send have certain rare qualities 
 which fit them for a place in any anthology which aims 
 at being broadly human and representative." 
 
 R. Browning, A Grammarian's Funeral, from " Others 
 mistrust and say, 'But time escapes" to "Living and 
 dying." 
 
 Emerson, essay on "Friendship." 
 
 20. Mr. A. C. Swinburne writes : 
 
 " As to selecting a passage from Shakespeare, it would 
 be easy to select a hundred among which it would be 
 impossible to choose. The passage in Antony and 
 Cleopatra about evening clouds ('black Vesper's pageants'), 
 and that in The Tempest about the ' cloud-capped towers ' 
 are two instances of kindred inspiration, between which 
 no reasonable preference could decide. There are two 
 passages in one scene of Pericles which are in the very 
 front rank of my favourites 'Thou God of this great 
 vast, rebuke these surges,' and, 'A terrible childbed hast 
 
 134
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 thou had, my dear,' and so forth to the end of either 
 speech (iii. 1). There are half-a-dozen in the fourth act 
 of Timon, e.g. ' That nature, being sick of man's un- 
 kindness,' and as many in the unfinished fragment of the 
 Two Noble Kinsmen, e.g. the prayer of Arcite to Mars 
 (v. 1), 'Thou mighty one, that with thy power hast 
 turned green Neptune into purple,' to the close of the 
 speech ending, ' To my design march boldly. Let us 
 go.' From Lear, Othello, and Macbeth I should have to 
 choose whole parts instead of single speeches ; my 
 favourite passage in Hamlet is the great speech cut out 
 by the player-editors (iv. 4), 'How all occasions do inform 
 against me,' and in that speech, I need hardly say, the 
 divine verses on 'god-like reason.' 
 
 " I have no time to go further, and indeed should not 
 know where to stop, except to set down the numbers of 
 the following twenty sonnets for addition to my list : 
 18, 19, 29, 30, 33, 55, 60, 65, 71, 73, 74, 90, 98, 99, 102, 
 104, 106, 107, 116, 146." 
 
 21. In making his selections Mr. John Addington 
 Symonds chooses : 
 
 In English poetry 
 
 Shakespeare, Sonnet 129. 
 
 In English prose 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne's Hydnotaphia, chapter v. 
 
 22. Mr. Theodore Watts : 
 
 Shakespeare, Othello, Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 Mort d' 'Arthur, Book XXI. chapter xiii., from "And 
 thou wert the courtlyest Knighte that ever bare shelde " 
 to " that ever put sphere in the reyst." 
 
 Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act ii., Scene 2. 
 135
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Sterne. " ' Thou hast left this matter short,' said my 
 Uncle Toby to the Corporal, as he was putting him to 
 bed, 'and I will tell thee in what, Trim,'" down to 
 " blotted it out for ever." 
 
 23. Mr. Edwin Arnold writes : 
 
 "Returning from the country I found your letter 
 asking me to give you what, in my judgment, are the 
 finest passages in verse and prose, apparently in all litera- 
 tures. The request, much as it honours me, seems one 
 impossible to comply with. The masterpieces of literary 
 genius resemble those of music, in respect that different 
 specimens suit different times and moods ; sometimes one 
 delights, sometimes another. 
 
 "But as it would be discourteous not to offer some 
 reply, I will venture to name two or three things in lyric 
 verse which seem to me, at all times, of perfect workman- 
 ship and inspiration. 
 
 "1. To Altliea in Prison, by Lord Lovelace. 
 
 " 2. Verses from George Herbert, beginning with 
 ' Love bade me welcome ! yet my soul drew back.' 
 
 " 3. Walt Whitman's Address to Death." 
 
 24. Mr. Thomas Baily Aldrich writes : 
 
 " I doubtless could select two or three hundred passages 
 which seem to me as notable as the verses I venture to 
 quote ; but these somehow linger in my memory, and are 
 expressions which fit my moods and tenses more often 
 than possibly finer things do. Individual taste, however, 
 amounts to little. We like a thing because we like it ; it 
 has a quality, a magnetism, for us personally, and we are 
 right in yielding ourselves to the influence without too 
 much trying to justify it. I know some rather poor verses 
 
 136
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 I am not becoming autobiographical here in which I 
 take great pleasure ; and I know some technically perfect 
 poems which I cannot tolerate. I think that the late 
 Dr. Fell was very properly disliked. 
 
 "If I were compiling a volume of brief extracts in 
 prose and verse, I should instinctively turn to the 
 following : 
 
 " In poetry 
 
 "Shakespeare, Richard II., Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 " Emerson, Shakespeare. 
 
 " Robert, Lord Lytton, Aristocracy 
 
 " 'To thee be all men heroes : every race 
 Noble : all women virgins : and each place 
 A temple : know thou nothing that is base.' 
 
 " Matthew Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum. 
 
 " In prose 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg" 
 
 25. Mr. Austin Dobson writes : 
 
 " The list you ask for would, I fear, be a very large 
 one, and it is possible that to-day's examples would not 
 be those of to-morrow. I give you reference to four long- 
 remembered passages, but they are only four among 
 many." 
 
 In poetry 
 
 Chaucer, Knighte's Tale (Morris's text), from ' Nought 
 may the woeful spirit in myn herte" to 'Foryete not 
 Palamon, the gentil man.' 
 
 Tennyson, Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wel- 
 lington. 
 
 In prose 
 
 Passage from Bacon's essay, " Of Death," from " It is 
 137
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 as natural to die as to be born " to " Extinctus amabitur 
 idem." 
 
 Passage from Thackeray's Esmond. 
 
 26. The Eev. J. Llewellyn Davies writes : 
 
 " I assume that, at the present stage of your collection, 
 a contributor should rather avoid well-known passages. 
 I offer these extracts from Browning, and Maurice, and 
 Carlyle, not as the finest to be found in all literature, but 
 as pieces of verse and prose which have specially at- 
 tracted me." 
 
 In poetry 
 
 Browning's Paracelsus, near the end, from "I knew, 
 I felt (perception unexpressed." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Carlyle 's Past and Present, Book II. chapter iii. : "Death 
 of Landlord Edmund," from " Another version is " to " is 
 seen in this world." 
 
 Maurice, Prophets and Kings (end of Sermon II.), from 
 " They were lovely and pleasant in their lives " to " is 
 every hour working in you that you may be." 
 
 27. The Hon. and Kev. Canon Fremantle 
 writes : 
 
 " It seems to me it would take a lifetime to go through 
 all literature and determine what one would judge to be 
 the best or finest passage in prose or verse. Neither can 
 I say that of the literature with which I am conversant 
 any one or two pieces are absolutely the best. Things 
 gain a hold upon one through expressing one's own 
 feelings, or through association ; and one admires one at 
 one time, another at another. Moreover, I like certain 
 
 138
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 passages because I have thoroughly entered into them 
 and grasped them ; while I am conscious that there may 
 be many others of which I am either ignorant or have 
 imperfect knowledge, or which express feelings to which 
 I am a comparative stranger, and which may be in their 
 kind quite as good as those I name. 
 
 "I have looked up a few passages, both prose and 
 poetry, which I admire, and would willingly recommend, 
 but I could not give them as in my judgment the best in 
 all literature." 
 
 In poetry 
 
 Byron's Childe Harold, Canto IV., stanzas 88 to 98, 
 from " And thou " to " bring forth." 
 
 Tennyson's In Memoriam, pp. 89 and 90, from " Witch- 
 elms " to " My wish for thee." 
 
 Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, Act ii., Scene 5, "Song 
 of Asia." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Burke 's French Revolution (Burke's works, 4to, 1792, 
 Dodsley, vol. iii. p. 109), from " I hear that the august 
 person" [leave out paragraph in p. Ill beginning "This 
 mixed system," and the two on p. 112, each beginning 
 " On this scheme "] to " Kings will be tyrants from policy 
 when subjects are rebels from principle." 
 
 Ramden's Sermons at Cambi-idge in 1800, quoted by 
 Gladstone, State in Relation to Church, 4th edition 
 (Murray, 1841), p. 169. 
 
 28. Mr. Frederic Harrison writes : 
 
 " My absence abroad has prevented me from answering 
 your invitation to state my favourite passages in litera- 
 ture. I have some time ago published my opinion ; and 
 (putting aside the Bible and Shakespeare's plays) I do not 
 
 139
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 swerve from it ; that there exists nothing in literature to 
 surpass. In verse, the 24th Iliad, second half the burial 
 of Hector. In prose, Sir T. Malory's Morte d' Arthur, 
 concluding chapters ' Death of Lancelot.' 
 
 " I have not my books here, and I cannot give verse 
 and line. But to put aside the Bible and Shakespeare's 
 plays, my own reading in verse lies mainly in these poets 
 ^Eschylus, Agamemnon, Prometheus; Dante, Purga- 
 torio ; Milton, all the poetry ; Shakespeare, sonnets ; 
 Shelley, shorter lyrics ; Wordsworth, shorter lyrics. 
 
 "For English prose I do not think its wealth and 
 power could be shown without recurring to such books 
 as Malory, Morte d' Arthur ; Prayer Book, 'Burial of 
 the Dead'; Milton, Areopagitica (passages); J. Taylor, 
 Holy Living (passages) ; Bunyan, early portion of 
 Pilgrim's Progress ; Defoe, Crusoe alone on his Island : 
 his Illness ; Swift, Gulliver in Lilliput ; Goldsmith, early 
 part of Vicar of Wakefield ; Burke, on the French Revo- 
 lution ; Thackeray, Vanity Fair (later part). 
 
 "I rather doubt the possibility of selecting one, or 
 even two, short passages. For absolutely perfect 
 mastery of verse I would select (1) Iliad xxiv. (sub. 
 Jin.}, and (2) Lycidas. And of prose (1) ' Death of 
 Lancelot'; (2) Burial Service; (3) opening of Vicar of 
 Wakefield. 
 
 "As you see, I am for the accepted judgment of the 
 world for the books and the passages which are house- 
 hold words, which it would be commonplace to cite again. 
 The world is right in this matter. The best passages 
 are the most familiar passages. I have nothing new 
 to add, and I very much doubt if anything new is to be 
 added." 
 
 140
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 29. Dr. Hornsby selects, in poetry, from : 
 
 Shakespeare, Henry V., Act ii., Scene 2, the passage 
 which begins : 
 
 "K. Hen. The mercy, that was quick in us but late" 
 and ends with : 
 
 " Their faults are open, 
 Arrest them to the answer of the law ; 
 And God acquit them of their practices ! " 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, lines 544-621, from "All in a 
 moment " to " found out their way." 
 
 Sir W. Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto II., 
 stanzas 7 to 28 inclusive, from "Again on the 
 knight " to " Still he prayed." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Milton, Areopagitica, third paragraph in Mitford's 
 edition, about 150 lines from the beginning of the trea- 
 tise, " I deny not but that it is of the greatest concern- 
 ment " to " whole nations face the worse." 
 
 30. Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers writes : 
 
 "In the remarks with which you, Mr. Editor, have 
 prefaced this anthology you express surprise at the num- 
 ber of admired passages which your contributors have 
 cited from languages other than our own. Permit me to 
 say that I, on the other hand, am impressed with the 
 growth and prevalence of the view which you seem per- 
 sonally to hold as to the absolute superiority of English 
 poetry and prose ; the growth and prevalence, I mean, of 
 this view, as compared with any overt expression given to 
 it by men of letters in former generations. If voices far 
 more numerous and more ardent are raised for Shake- 
 speare than for all antiquity nay, for all foreign tongues 
 141
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 together if as many votes are given to De Quincey as 
 to Plato, more to Keats than to Sophocles, more to Byron 
 than to Horace; if Dryden is honoured, and nowhere 
 Pindar ; Baudelaire, and nowhere Lucretius ; Mr. Lang, 
 and nowhere Catullus; Mr. Dobson, and nowhere Sappho; 
 surely the champions of modern literature, and of English 
 as the finest of literatures, have no cause for dismay." 
 
 After discussing this matter at length, Mr. Myers 
 says : 
 
 "Turning from Plato to English prose, there seems 
 little outside the Bible and Prayer Book which does not 
 jar by comparison. Let me select the Magnificat, on 
 which no comment is needed. 
 
 " In English poetry, for brevity's sake, I will mention 
 only Wordsworth's Laodamia, Blanco White's sonnet, 
 Night and Death ; Rossetti's sonnet, The One Hope ; and 
 two short poems by a living classic Lord Tennyson's 
 The Voyage and To Virgil. 
 
 "' NIGHT AND DEATH. 
 
 " ' Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew 
 Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, 
 Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, 
 
 This glorious canopy of light and blue ? 
 
 Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, 
 
 Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
 Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 
 
 And lo ! creation widened in man's view. 
 
 Who could have thought such, darkness lay concealed 
 Within thy beams, O sun ! or who could find, 
 
 Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed, 
 That to such countless orbs tnou mad'st us blind ! 
 
 Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife 1 
 
 If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ? ' " 
 
 142
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 31. Mr. H. D. Traill writes : 
 
 " Your request puts me in a double difficulty. If you 
 ask me Avhat I like best in poetry I find the question 
 hard enough to answer, but when you imply, as you do, 
 that the passages in poetry and prose which have 'lodged 
 themselves most fixedly in my memory, and have afforded 
 me the most continual delight,' are also and necessarily 
 those which I think most worthy of a place in an antho- 
 logy, I ask myself whether, with me at any rate, that is 
 so. I am not at all sure that it always, or indeed that it 
 often, is so. The ' personal equation ' seems to me to play 
 so large a part in one's poetical tastes that the charm which 
 certain passages have for certain persons is no assuredly 
 accurate measure of the force of their appeal to the 
 common heart and imagination of mankind. Besides, the 
 effect of these varies with the individual at different 
 periods of his life. Milton's Lycidas haunted me for 
 many years, until Wordsworth's Intimations of Im- 
 mortality displaced it. Since then, and to this hour, I 
 can seldom look up at the sky by night or day without 
 one or another strophe of Shelley's Cloud (richer, I 
 think, in word-magic than any poem of equal length) re- 
 curring to my mind. But if fixed lodgment in the 
 memory and continual power of delighting are to be the 
 tests, there is many another passage, even outside the in- 
 exhaustible treasury of Shakespeare, which would have 
 an equal right with these to my suffrage. From among 
 them I select the three following strophes of Coleridge's 
 Dejection, a passage which sets forth a profoundly true 
 theory of poetic sensibility with exquisite beauty of 
 poetic form. 
 
 " In prose I will choose two passages, each from an 
 English divine, the one a model of subdued and chastened 
 
 143
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 eloquence, the other full of the exuberance of fancy and 
 the unrestrained play of emotion ; the two together show- 
 ing by their contrast how wonderfully diverse are the 
 tones which can be sounded, with equal melody and 
 majesty, from the ' clear harp ' of our language." 
 
 In poetry 
 
 Coleridge, Dejection, an Ode. " Lady ! we re- 
 ceive but what we give " to " And now is almost grown 
 the habit of my soul." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Sydney Smith, Essay on the Defence of Prisoners. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, Sermon on the Return of Prayers. 
 
 32. Mr. Herbert Warren, the President of Mag- 
 dalen, Oxford, writes : 
 
 " I do not wish these selections to be regarded as pieces 
 more beautiful or more excellent than many others which 
 could be found on even a very superficial survey of all 
 literature. They are simply what you have asked me to 
 send you, passages which amongst others have impressed 
 themselves upon and dwelt in my own mind and memory, 
 and to which I often return, and always with renewed 
 pleasure. I say amongst many others, for I have found 
 it difficult to select at all from so wide and rich a field as 
 that to which you invited me. The fact is that of litera- 
 ture peculiarly the maxim holds good, Securus judicat 
 orbis terrarum. The great world-classics have none of 
 them been given their place in the firmament of letters 
 without reason ; though they be many and differ in glory, 
 they are all stars. Many pieces therefore might, and in 
 justice perhaps one ought to, be taken from every great 
 author. I have endeavoured to find a principle of selec- 
 tion. If I venture to think there is any special charac- 
 
 144
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 teristic which attaches to these pieces which I have 
 chosen, many or most of which are well and commonly 
 known, it is this, that they are, in so far as single pieces 
 can be, typical, each of them, of the style and merits of 
 the author from whom they are drawn, and have in each 
 case something of his peculiar cachet upon them. 
 
 " Again, I repeat, I do not propose them either as the 
 best passages even in this way or as in any sense dis- 
 coveries of mine, but simply as passages which in my 
 opinion might form part of a world anthology of verse 
 and prose." 
 
 In poetry Mr. Warren selects 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, opening of the third book, 
 lines 1-55. 
 
 Tennyson, well-known passage in The Passing of 
 Arthur, "And slowly answered Arthur" to "grievous 
 wound." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Ezekiel (in the Authorised Version), chapter xxvii., 
 " The Burthen of Tyre." 
 
 Gibbon, the " Death of Hosein," chapter 1. of Decline 
 and Fall of the Roman Empire, " A familiar story " to 
 " sorrow and indignation." 
 
 Carlyle, French Revolution, Book V. chapter vii., "0 
 evening sun of July " to " it is a revolution " (at the end 
 of the chapter). 
 
 Burke, Letter to a Noble Lord (towards the end), " Had 
 it pleased God to continue to me "to " from an unworthy 
 parent." 
 
 33. Mr. Sidney Colvin writes : 
 
 "In common with several of the correspondents who 
 have answered your interesting inquiry, I find it no very 
 L 145
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 easy matter to tell exactly what are the passages in prose 
 and verse which have 'lodged themselves the most fixedly 
 in my memory and afforded me the most continual 
 delight.' 
 
 "To reduce the choice within reasonable compass I 
 must confine myself to English, and even in English 
 must ask leave to put aside both Shakespeare whose 
 riches, the more one thinks of them, seem the more en- 
 tirely to baffle selection and the writers of our own day, 
 whose words are naturally the most familiar to one's mind 
 and memory. 
 
 "Leaving these out of account, the passage of verse 
 in the remainder of English literature which most haunts 
 me (while at the same time I think it critically the most 
 perfect and sustained piece of poetical execution out of 
 Virgil) is certainly that towards the end of the first book 
 of Paradise Lost, from 'Then straight commands, that 
 the warlike sound' to ' Stands on the blasted heath.' 
 
 " Next, I think, to this, at least in my private affection 
 and daily remembrance, come three lyrical passages from 
 the moderns, very dissimilar from each other, but I find 
 I can make no distinction in my love of them the cele- 
 brated ninth stanza of Wordsworth's ode on the Intima- 
 tions of Immortality, Shelley's Stanzas ivritten in 
 Dejection in the Bay of Naples (omitting the last), and 
 the Belle Dame sans Merci of Keats. 
 
 " The above, of course, are all among the best known 
 things in English poetry. In prose my choice is probably 
 more singular, for the passage which on the whole most 
 moves me with the sense of vital truth impressively 
 expressed is that on the relations of poetry to science in 
 Wordsworth's Preface to the later editions of his lyrical 
 ballads. 
 
 " For other virtues of prose one must turn elsewhere. 
 146
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Thus for pure and equable charm of style I should make 
 Addison's 'Vision of Mirza,' in the Spectator, my first 
 choice. For the union of masculine strength with har- 
 mony several passages from Landor occur to me, pre- 
 eminently perhaps the speech of Scipio to Polybius on 
 the destruction of Carthage (Selections from Landor, in 
 Macmillan's 'Golden Treasury' series, pp. 40, 41 'No, 
 Polybius ... in search of death ') ; while as a model of 
 stirring panegyric I would take the conclusion of Southey's 
 Life of Nelson as incomparable (Southey's Life of Nelson, 
 ad fin., from 'The death of Nelson was felt in England' 
 down to 'departed in a brighter blaze of glory.') 
 
 " Lastly, I should like to mention, as among the pas- 
 sages humanly and morally most attractive to me, Burke's 
 ' Character of his Wife ' (with a few omissions), (Prior's 
 Life of Burke, chap, ii., towards the end, and omitting 
 the sentences, ' There is more of the coquette . . . affec- 
 tation,' and, ' She does not display it so much . . . ought 
 not to say or do ') ; and Scott's reflections in his Diary on 
 first learning the probability of his ruin (Lockhart's Life 
 of Scott, vol. viii. pp. 161-63, but particularly the sen- 
 tences, ' Sad hearts too . . . was daily bread '). Techni- 
 cally the two passages last named have a contrasted 
 interest one, as an example, old-fashioned to us, of 
 deliberate and balanced composition in the way of 
 Johnson ; the other as the perfectly unstudied and artless 
 utterance of a manly spirit in distress." 
 
 34. Archdeacon Farrar writes : 
 
 " When I received your request to mention the pass- 
 ages of verse and prose which I most admired I felt that 
 insuperable difficulty of making a choice which has been 
 expressed by many of your correspondents. The splen- 
 147
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 dour of particular passages is often greatly dimmed by 
 isolation from their context; and many passages which 
 exercise the most powerful spell on the imagination derive 
 no little of their force from the fact that they form the 
 climax to all that has preceded them. 
 
 " I will, however, mention a few strains of magnificent 
 eloquence by which I have been most deeply impressed. 
 In doing so I will exclude the Bible, and exclude all but 
 English literature. If you wish to make an anthology 
 of all that is loveliest in Greek, in Latin, and in any other 
 literature, I think that you should ask for separate selec- 
 tions in each language. 
 
 "Among the finest passages known to me in English 
 prose I should mention the following : 
 
 "1. On the Inward Reverence of a man towards his 
 own Person, in Milton's Reason of Church Government, 
 from 'And if the love of God as a fire sent from heaven' 
 down to ' though in the deepest secrecy.' 
 
 " 2. The almost dithyrambic outburst which forms the 
 conclusion of Milton's Of Reformation in England, be- 
 ginning at ' sir, I doe now feele myself inwrapt ' to the 
 end. 
 
 " 3. The passage in Milton's Apology beginning ' And 
 long it was not after when I was confirmed in this opinion' 
 down to ' deft curing and dishonourable ' from which 
 passage, however, I should strike out several unsuitable 
 sentences. 
 
 " These would not exhaust the passages which I should 
 choose from the prose writings of Milton. They derive 
 no little of their charm from the illustrations which they 
 furnish of a uniquely noble personality. 
 
 "Among other passages of the loftiest religious elo- 
 quence I should name that on the ' Two Consciences ' ; 
 the passage which begins, ' Be not deceived, for sin doth 
 148
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 not end as it begins,' down to ' all his lights are put out 
 at once,' from the sermon on The Betrayal of Christ, by 
 Henry Smith, ' the silver-tongued.' 
 
 "Hooker, last clause of Book I. of the Ecclesiastical 
 Polity, ' Of law there can be no less acknowledged ' down 
 to ' peace and joy.' 
 
 "Jeremy Taylor, second sermon on the Return of 
 Prayer, from ' For so have I seen a lark,' etc., to ' So in 
 the prayer of a good man. 1 Holy Dying, i. s. 2, ' So have 
 I seen a rose ' to ' outworn faces.' 
 
 " Coleridge, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit, Letter 
 III., from 'Curse ye Meroz,' down to 'confusion of 
 spirit.' 
 
 "Among prose passages of a descriptive and ethical 
 kind I would mention Ruskin's Modern Painters, ii. pp. 4, 
 5. ' This Nebuchadnezzar curse ' down to ' ploughed into 
 the dust,' Stones of Venice, p. 1. Macaulay, end of the 
 essay on Lord Chatham. De Quincey, Confessions of an 
 English Opium-eater, ad fin., 'Then suddenly would 
 come a dream ' down to ' everlasting farewells.' 
 
 "Among specimens of oratory I would place Burke's 
 passage on John Howard, in his farewell speech to his 
 Bristol constituents. 
 
 " The passage about popularity in Mansfield's speech at 
 a trial respecting the outlawry of John Wilkes, June 8th, 
 1768, beginning, 'I have received many anonymous 
 letters,' down to ' Gloriam non invidiam putarem.' 
 
 " Chatham's famous apostrophe to Lord Suffolk, Nov- 
 ember 8th, 1779, 'I am astonished, shocked, to hear 
 such principles professed ' down to ' let them purify this 
 house and this country from this sin.' 
 
 "Brougham's speech on Law Reform, February 7th, 
 1828, from ' Of a truth sceptres are chiefly to be envied ' 
 down to ' No change can take away.' 
 L 2 149
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 " But, sir, you have set us an endless task ; it would 
 be easy without a pause to mention twenty passages more, 
 each equal in their way to most or all of these. The 
 task of selecting the finest passages of English poetry is 
 still more hopeless. In a volume entitled With the Poets 
 I have endeavoured to select them from all except living 
 writers. 
 
 " Pardon the necessary haste in which I write." 
 
 35. Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton writes : 
 
 " It would seem to me something impossible to do, and 
 almost presumptuous to attempt to fix upon the best 
 passage with which I am familiar, even in prose. Certain 
 chapters of the Bible, certain noble sentences from Plato 
 and from Marcus Aurelius, some pages from Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, bits of Lamb where laughter and tears com- 
 mingle, extracts from Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, Steven- 
 son, George Meredith what scores of well-remembered 
 passages put forth claims it were hardly possible to 
 disavow ! 
 
 " In poetry an absolute expression of preference would 
 be yet more difficult than in prose for one to whom the 
 love of verse has been a life-long passion. I should like 
 to take pages on pages, both from the plays and the 
 sonnets of Shakespeare. I would have songs glad and 
 sad from the Elizabethan men ; sonnets and lyrics from 
 Wordsworth ; Shelley's Skylark, and his odes to the 
 Night and to the West Wind; the passionate, immortal 
 melancholy of Keats' Ode to the Nightingale ; his Ode to 
 a Grecian Urn also, and his sonnet, On First Looking into 
 Chapman's 'Homer.' One could hardly pass by Coleridge's 
 Kubla Khan, his Ancient Mariner, or his ChristabeL 
 Then I should like to linger in Swinburne's Forsaken 
 
 150
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Garden. I should hesitate between the Tithonus and the 
 Ulysses of Tennyson; and from the many noble poems 
 of Browning, or the exquisite work of Morris and Rossetti, 
 how would it be possible to content oneself with a single 
 extract 1 
 
 " But if it must be that I choose, I fix on the lines in 
 Act iv., Scene 1, of The Tempest, from ' These our actors ' 
 to ' Is rounded with a sleep,' and on the 30th Sonnet of 
 Shakespeare, ' When to the sessions of sweet silent 
 thought,' etc. 
 
 "Then, for souls who have suffered and doubted, 
 would not the passage I am about to quote from Brown- 
 ing's ' Saul ' almost transform a doubtful hope to a divine 
 certainty?" 
 
 36. The Dean of St. Paul's writes : 
 
 " I comply with your request, and send you the two 
 passages which happen to be those which I find recurring 
 oftenest to my mind just now. But you have asked a 
 hard thing. I could not say absolutely that they are the 
 passages in which I take most delight. Passages haunt 
 one and give delight according to one's mood ; they give 
 way to others, and return in their season. So it is difficult 
 to feel that I have fulfilled your request. At another time 
 I might have sent you something from an alternative list. 
 
 " Your form is apparently intended for two passages. 
 The two passages which I should send you just now 
 are, for poetry, the following lines from Miss Smedley's 
 Story of Queen Isabel, beginning with 'There is a day 
 in Spring' and closing with 'And such a day was this for 
 Isabel.' 
 
 " In prose this passage in Newman's Sermons, XIV., 
 beginning with ' I mean musical sounds, as they are 
 151
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 exhibited,' and closing with 'has the gift of eliciting 
 them.' " 
 
 In poetry 
 
 Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey, 90-112, "For I have 
 learned" to "moral being"; the "Immortality" ode. 
 
 Blanco White, sonnet, Night. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, Act i., Scene 3, speech of 
 Ulysses, 83-123. 
 
 Coleridge, Ode to Dejection, Sections IV. arid V. 
 
 The opening stanzas of F. Myers' Simmenthal, 
 
 Verses by Clough, beginning with " Say not, the 
 struggle nought availeth." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I. chapters i., xvi. 
 
 Burke, French Revolution, p. 178 (ed. 1852), "By a 
 constitutional policy " to " our sepulchres and our altars " ; 
 p. 229, " Society is indeed a contract " to " employed 
 and sanctified." 
 
 Macaulay, History of England, chapter v., "The chapel 
 of the Tower." 
 
 37. The Eev. E. H. Plumptre, Dean of Wells, 
 writes : 
 
 " I should find it easier to select a hundred passages 
 than half a dozen as examples, each in its way, of a com- 
 pleteness which leaves nothing to be desired. Happily 
 the world is richer than it thinks. I assume, from the 
 absence of any reference on the part of others to passages 
 in the Old or New Testament, that they are excluded from 
 the area of selection, otherwise they might, I think, 
 simply as literature, have supplied at least ten out of my 
 hundred. As it is, I note down ten passages which seem 
 to me to be in the first class, above the line noble, spirit- 
 stirring, searching. I need not say that having written 
 
 152
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 these many other passages throng my memory, reproaching 
 me with their omission ; but I am starting on a journey, 
 and have not time to balance their claims, so ' what I 
 have written I have written.' " 
 
 The English passages are : Milton, Lycidas ; Shake- 
 speare, Sonnet 33 ; Newman, Lead Kindly Light ; and 
 Hooker, Ecdes. Pol., I. 
 
 38. Mr. William Sharp writes : 
 
 " It indisputably is no easy matter to name the best 
 passages in prose and verse with which one may be 
 acquainted, nor is it a much simpler task even to fix 
 upon one's favourites. So much depends upon mood 
 and circumstance. Yet (without designating them as 
 the best) I venture to specify a few passages and 
 poems (or extracts) which have a permanent fascina- 
 tion for me. 
 
 " In poetry 
 
 "(1) The penultimate stanza of Keats's Ode to a 
 Nightingale, beginning 
 
 ' Thou wast not born for death, Immortal Bird ! ' 
 " (2) Marlowe's lines about Helen in Faustus 
 
 ' Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
 And burned the topless towers of Ilium ? 
 
 Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.' 
 
 " (3) This stanza from Wordsworth's Ode to Duty 
 ' Stern lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 As is the smile upon thy face : 
 153
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
 And the most ancient heavens, through 
 Thee, are fresh and strong.' 
 
 " (4) The first thirty lines of Coleridge's Kubla Khan. 
 11 (5) Sydney Dobell's Keith of Ravelston. 
 "(6) The stanza from Fitzgerald's translation of Omar 
 Khayyam's Rubaiydt 
 
 ' They say the Lion and the Lizard keep 
 The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep : 
 And Bahrain, that great Hunter the Wild Ass 
 Stamps o'er his Head but cannot break his sleep.' 
 
 " (7) Rossetti's sonnet on Giorgione's Pastoral ; and 
 the lines describing the mystic wood in the third stanza 
 of The Portrait (with the succeeding stanza), the wood 
 with 
 
 ' Many a shape whose name 
 Not itself knoweth, and old dew, 
 And your own footsteps meeting you.' 
 
 " (8) The stanza in Keats's Ode to Melancholy, begin- 
 ning 
 
 ' She dwells with beauty Beauty that must die ! ' 
 
 "(9) Principal Shairp's ballad, The Bush Aboon 
 Traquair. 
 
 " In prose 
 
 " Sir Thomas Browne's Hydriotaphia, chapter v. 
 
 " Ruskin's Modern Painters (Cloud Beauty). 
 
 " And the description of a sea wave (from Introduction 
 to Harbours of England). 
 
 "The passage from Raleigh's History of the World, 
 beginning ' eloquent, just, and mighty death ! ' down 
 to the words, ' Hie jacet / ' 
 
 " The description of ' La Gioconda ' in Walter Pater's 
 154
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 essay on Leonardo, second edition, pp. 134-6, beginning 
 'The presence that rose,' etc., down to end of top line, 
 p. 136, 'eyelids and the hands.' The passage from Epi- 
 logue to first edition of Pater's Studies in the Renaissance, 
 beginning with ' To burn always with this hard, gemlike 
 flame.' 
 
 " Sir William Rowan Hamilton's Collegiate 'Address on 
 Astronomy,' 1831. 
 
 "Milton's Areopagitica, the passage beginning 'Me- 
 thinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation 
 rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking 
 her invincible locks,' and ending with the words, ' above 
 aU liberties.' " 
 
 39. Mr. Frederick Tennyson writes : 
 
 In poetry 
 
 Shakespeare, Hamlet, " To be, or not to be, that is the 
 question " to " And lose the name of action," etc. Measure 
 for Measure, " Aye, but to die and go we know not 
 where" to "To what we fear of death." 
 
 In prose 
 
 St. John's Gospel, chapter xi., verse 25, " I am the 
 Resurrection and the Life " to " Believest thou this 1 " 
 Revelation, chapter xix. verse 1, " And after these things 
 I heard a great voice " to " For the Lord God omnipotent 
 reigneth." 
 
 40. Mr. Edmund Yates selects, in poetry : 
 
 Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern 
 Abbey, " Five years have passed " to " More dear, both 
 for themselves and for thy sake." 
 155
 
 FINE PASSAGES IN PROSE AND POETRY 
 
 Tennyson, Maud, Canto XVIII., "I have led her 
 home " to " Let all be well, be well." 
 
 In prose 
 
 Thackeray, The Neiccomes, last chapter, "Clive, and 
 sometimes the boy with him" to "the presence of the 
 master"; also another piece of the last chapter begin- 
 ning with " So, weeks passed away." 
 
 WILLIAM BEENDON AND SON, PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH.
 
 A 000 687 423 4 
 
 CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 University of California, San Diego 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 CI39 
 
 VCSD Libr.