HRif ! it i HI; n! IIljh[j;Ht iifiipdji ij iiii ilHH illllllHilliMl iiiiiiiiiiii ipf illlilil IL ""'111 ii !i i 1 ' 1 i ^ I i ! 1 li 1 ii it' ll ijlll I GEinr oip Miss Charlotte Evans via, a finely tempered nature, gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture brings us to conceive it: a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which EXPOSITION 157 the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present, which unites "the two noblest of things," — as Swift, who of one of the two, at any rate, had himself all too little, most happily calls them in his Battle of the Books — 5 "the two noblest of things, sweetness and light.'' The €v0vr}<; is the man who tends toward sweetness and light; the d(pv7/s, on the other hand, is our Philistine. The immense spiritual significance of the Greeks is due to their having been inspired with this central and happy 10 idea of the essential character of human perfection; and Mr. Bright 's misconception of culture, as a smattering of Greek and Latin, comes itself, after all, from this wonder- ful significance of the Greeks having affected the very machinery of our education, and is in itself a kind of 15 homage to it. In thus making sweetness and light to be characters of perfection, culture is of like spirit with poetry, follows one law with poetry. Far more than on our freedom, our population, and our industrialism, many among us 20 rely upon our religious organizations to save us. I have called religion a yet more important manifestation of human nature than poetry, because it has worked on a broader scale for perfection, and with greater masses of men. But the idea of beauty and of a human nature 25 perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our animality, and of a human nature perfect on the moral side — which is the dominant idea of religion — 30 has been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other. The best art and poetry of the Greeks, in which religion and poetry are one, in which the idea of beauty and of a hu- 158 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING man nature perfect on all sides adds to itself .a religious and devout energy, and works in the strength of that, is on this account of such surpassing interest and instructive- ness for us, though it was — as, having regard to the human race in general, and indeed having regard to the Greeks 5 themselves, we must own — a premature attempt, an attempt which for success needed the moral and religious fiber in humanity to be more braced and developed than it had yet been. But Greece did not err in having the idea of beauty, harmony, and complete human perfection, 10 so present and paramount. It is impossible to have this idea too present and paramount; only, the moral fiber must be braced too. And we, because we have braced the moral fiber, are not on that account in the right way, if at the same time the idea of beauty, harmony, and 15 complete human perfection is wanting or misapprehended among us ; and evidently it is wanting or misapprehended at present. And when we rely as we do on our religious organizations, which in themselves do not and cannot give us this idea, and think we have done enough if we make 20 them spread and prevail, then, I say, we fall into our common fault of over-valuing machinery. Nothing is more common than for people to confound the inward peace and satisfaction which follows the subduing of the obvious faults of our animality with what I may call i,* absolute inward peace and satisfaction — the peace and satisfaction which are reached as we draw near to com- plete spiritual perfection, and not merely to moral perfection or rather to relative moral perfection. No people in the world have done more and struggled more to attain this 30 relative moral perfection than our English race has. For no people in the world has the command to resist the devil, to overcome tJie wicked one, in the nearest and most obvious sense of those words, had such a pressing EXPOSITION 159 force and reality. And we have had our reward, not only in the great worldly prosperity which our obedience to this command has brought us, but also, and far more, in great inward peace and satisfaction. But to me few 5 things are more pathetic than to see people, on the strength of the inward peace and satisfaction which their rudi- mentary efforts toward perfection have brought them, employ, concerning their incomplete perfection and the religious organizations within which they have found it, 10 language which properly applies only to complete perfection and is a far-off echo of the human soul's prophecy of it. Religion itself, I need hardly say, supplies them in abun- dance with this grand language. And very freely do they use it; yet it is really the severest possible criticism of such 15 an incomplete perfection as alone we have yet reached through our religious organizations. The impulse of the English race toward moral develop- ment and self-conquest has nowhere so powerfully man- ifested itself as in Puritanism. Nowhere has Puritanism 20 found so adequate an expression as in the religious or- ganization of the Independents. The modern Independents have a newspaper, the Nonconformist, written with great sincerity and ability. The motto, the standard, the pro- fession of faith, which this organ of theirs carries aloft, 25 is: "The Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." There is sweetness and light, and an ideal of complete harmonious human perfection! One need not go to culture and poetry to find language to judge it. Religion, with its instinct for perfection, 30 supplies language to judge it, — language, too, which is in our mouths every day. "Finally, be of one mind, united in feeling,*' says St. Peter. There is an ideal which judges the Puritan ideal: "The Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion ! " 160 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING And religious organizations like this are what people believe in, rest in, would give their lives for! Such, I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of having conquered even the plain faults of our animality, that the religious organization which 5 has helped us to do it can seem to us something precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as this. And men have got such a habit of giving to the language of religion a special application, of making it a mere jargon, 10 that for the condemnation which religion itself passes on the shortcomings of their religious organizations they have no ear; they are sure to cheat themselves and to explain this condemnation away. They can only be reached by the criticism which culture, like poetry, speaking a 15 language not to be sophisticated, and resolutely testing organizations by the ideal of a human perfection complete on all sides, applies to them. But men of culture and poetry, it will be said, are again and again failing, and failing conspicuously, in the necessary '^0 first stage to a harmonious perfection, in the subduing of the great obvious faults of our animality, which it is the glory of these religious organizations to have helped us to subdue. True, they do often so fail. They have often been without the virtues, as well as the faults, of the 'i5 Puritan ; it has been one of their dangers, that they so felt the Puritan's faults that they too much neglected the practice of his virtues. I will not, however, exculpate them at the Puritan's expense. They have often failed in morality, and morality is indispensable. And they have been 30 punished for their failure, as the Puritan has been rewarded for his performance. They have been punished wherein they erred ; but their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature complete on all its sides, remains EXPOSITION 161 the true ideal of perfection still; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfection remains narrow and inadequate, although for what he did well he has been richly rewarded. Not- withstanding the mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers' 5 voyage, they and their standard of perfection are rightly judged when we figure to ourselves Shakespeare or Virgil — souls in whom sweetness and light, and all that in human nature is most humane, were eminent — accompanying them on their voyage, and think what intolerable company 10 Shakespeare and Virgil would have found them! In the same way let us judge the religious organizations which we will see all around us. Do not let us deny the good and the happiness which they have accomplished; but do not let us fail to see clearly that their idea of human per- 15 fection is narrow and inadequate, and that the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion will never bring humanity to its true goal. As I said with regard to wealth: Let us look at the life of those who live in and for it, — so I say with regard to the religious or- 20 ganizations. Look at the life imaged in such a newspaper as the Nonconformist — a life of jealousy of the Establish- ment, disputes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, sermons ; and then think of it as an ideal of a human life com- pleting itself on all sides, and aspiring with all its organs 25 after sweetness, light, and perfection ! Another newspaper, representing, like the Noncon- formist, one of the religious organizations of this country, was a short time ago giving an account of the crowd at Epsom on the Derby Day, and of all the vice and hideous- 30 ness which was to be seen in that crowd: and then the writer turned suddenly round upon Professor Huxley and asked him how he proposed to cure all this vice and hideousness without religion. I confess I felt disposed to ask the asker this question: And how do you propose to 162 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING cure it with such a rehgion as yours ? How is the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattractive, so incomplete, so narrow, so far removed from a true and satisfying ideal of human perfection, as is the life of your religious organiza- tion as you yourself reflect it, to conquer and transform 5 all this vice and hideousness? Indeed, the strongest plea for the study of perfection as pursued by culture, the clearest proof of the actual inadequacy of the idea of perfection held by the religious organizations, — express- ing, as I have said, the most wide-spread effort which the 10 human race has yet made after perfection, — is to be found in the state of our life and society with these in possession of it, and having been in possession of it I know not how many hundred years. We are all of us included in some religious organization or other; we all call ourselves, in 15 the sublime and aspiring language of religion which I have before noticed, children of God. Children of God ! It is an immense pretension ; and how are we to justify it ? By the works which we do, and the words which we speak. And the work which we collective children of God do, 20 our grand center of life, our city which we have builded for us to dwell in, is London! London, with its unuttera- ble external hideousness, and with its internal canker of publice egestas, privatim opulentia, — to use the words which Sallust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome, — 25 unequaled in the world! The word, again, which we children of God speak, the voice which most hits our collective thought, the newspaper with the largest circula- tion in England, nay, with the largest circulation in the whole world, is the Daily Telegraph! I say that when our 30 religious organizations — which I admit to express the most considerable effort after perfection that our race has yet made — land us in no better result than this, it is high time to examine carefully their idea of perfection, EXPOSITION 163 to see whether it does not leave out of account sides and forces of human nature which we might turn to great use; whether it would not be more operative if it were more complete. And I say that the English reliance on our 5 religious organizations, and on their ideas of human per- fection just as they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, on muscular Christianity, on population, on coal, on wealth, — mere belief in machinery, and unfruitful i and that it is wholesomely counteracted by culture, bent on seeing 10 things as they are, and on drawing the human race onward to a more complete, a harmonious perfection. Culture, however, shows its single-minded love of per- fection, its desire simply to make reason and the will of God prevail, its freedom from fanaticism, by its attitude 15 toward all this machinery, even while it insists that it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mischief men do them- selves by their blind belief in some machinery or other, — whether it is wealth and industrialism, or whether it is the cultivation of bodily strength and activity, or whether 20 it is a political organization, or whether it is a religious organization, — oppose with might and main the tendency to this or that political and religious organization, or to games and athletic exercises, or to wealth and industrial- ism, and try violently to stop it. But the flexibility which 25 sweetness and light give, and which is one of the rewards of culture pursued in good faith, enables a man to see that a tendency may be necessary, and even, as a preparation for something in the future, salutary, and yet that the generations or individuals who obey 30 this tendency are sacrificed to it; that they fall short of the hope of perfection by following it; and that its mischiefs are to be criticized, lest it should take too firm a hold and last after it has served its purpose. Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a speech at Paris, — 164 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING and others have pointed out the same thing, — how neces- sary is the present great movement toward wealth and in- dustriaHsm, in order to lay broad foundations of material well-being for the society of the future. The worst of these justifications is that they are generally addressed to 5 the very people engaged, body and soul, in the movement in question; at all events, that they are always seized with the greatest avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite justifying their life; and that thus they tend to harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits 10 the necessity of the movement toward fortune-making and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows that the future may derive benefit from it; but insists, at the same time, that the passing generations of industrialists — ^forming, for the most part, the stout main body of Philistinism — 15 are sacrificed to it. In the same way, the result of all the games and sports which occupy the passing generation of boys and young men may be the establishment of a better and sounder physical type for the future to work with. Culture does not set itself against the games and 20 sports; it congratulates the future, and hopes it will make a good use of its improved physical basis; but it points out that our passing generation of boys and young men is, meantime, sacrificed. Puritanism was perhaps necessary to develop the moral fiber of the English race. Noncon- 25 formity, to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domination over men's minds and to prepare the way for freedom of thought in the distant future; still, culture points out that the har- monious perfection of generations of Puritans and Noncon- formists has been, in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom 30 of speech may be necessary for the society of the future, but the young lions of the Daily Telegraph in the mean- while are sacrificed. A voice for every man in his country's government may be necessary for the society of the future, EXPOSITION 165 but meanwhile Mr.Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are sacrificed. Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many faults; and she has heavily paid for them in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold upon the modern world. Yet we in Oxford, 5 brought up amidst the beauty and sweetness of that beauti- ful place, have not failed to seize one truth — the truth that beauty and sweetness are essential characters of a complete human perfection. When I insist on this, I am all in the faith and tradition of Oxford. I say boldly 10 that this our sentiment for beauty and sweetness, our sentiment against hideousness and rawness, has been at the bottom of our attachment to so many beaten causes, of our opposition to so many triumphant movements. And the sentiment is true, and has never been wholly 15 defeated, and has shown its power even in its defeat. We have not won our political battles, we have not carried our main points, we have not stopped our adversaries' advance, we have not marched victoriously with the modern world; but we have told silently upon the mind of 20 the country, we have prepared currents of feeling which sap our adversaries' position when it seems gained, we have kept up our own communications with the future. Look at the course of the great movement which shook Oxford to its center some thirty years ago ! It was 25 directed, as any one who reads Dr. Newman's Apology may see, against what in one word may be called "Liberal- ism. " Liberalism prevailed; it was the appointed force to do the work of the hour; it was necessary, it was in- evitable that it should prevail. The Oxford movement 30 was broken, it failed; our wrecks are scattered on every shore: Quse regio in terris nostri non plena laboris? But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. Newman saw it, 166 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING and as it really broke the Oxford movement ? It was the great middle-class liberalism, which had for the cardinal points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, and local self- government, in politics; in the social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted competition, and the making of large industrial 5 fortunes; in the religious sphere, the Dissidence of Dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. I do not say that other and more intelligent forces than this were not opposed to the Oxford movement: but this was the force which really beat it; this was the force which 10 Dr. Newman felt himself fighting with; this was the force which till only the other day seemed to be the paramount force in this country, and to be in possession of the future; this was the force whose achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such inexpressible admiration, and whose rule 15 he was so horror-struck to see threatened. And where is this great force of Philistinism now? It is thrust into the second rank, it is become a power of yesterday, it has lost the future. A new power has suddenly appeared, a power which it is impossible yet to judge fully, but which 20 is certainly a wholly different force from middle-class liberalism; different in its cardinal points of belief, different in its tendencies in every sphere. It loves and admires neither the legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor the local self-government of middle-class vestries, nor the 25 unrestricted competition of middle-class industrialists, nor the dissidence of middle-class Dissent and the Pro- testantism of middle-class Protestant religion. I am not now praising this new force, or saying that its own ideals are better; all I say is, that they are wholly different. 30 And who will estimate how much the currents of feeling created by Dr. Newman*s movements, the keen desire for beauty and sweetness which it nourished, the deep aversion it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity of EXPOSITION 167 middle-class liberalism, the strong light it turned on the hideous and grotesque illusions of middle-class Protestant- ism, — ^who will estimate how much all these contributed to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction which has mined 5 the ground under the self-confident liberalism of the last thirty years, and has prepared the way for its sudden collapse and supersession ? It is in this manner that the sentiment of Oxford for beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this manner long may it continue to conquer! 10 In this manner it works to the same end as culture, and there is plenty of work for it yet to do. I have said that the new and more democratic force which is now super- seding our old middle-class liberalism cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its main tendencies still to form. We 15 hear promises of its giving us administrative reform, law reform, reform of education, and I know not what; but those promises come rather from its advocates, wishing to make a good plea for it, and to justify it for superseding middle- class liberalism, than from clear tendencies which it has 20 itself yet developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of well- intentioned friends against whom culture may with ad- vantage continue to uphold steadily its ideal of human perfection; that this is an inward spiritual activity y having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, 25 increased life, increased sympathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both worlds, the world of middle-class liberalism and the world of democracy, but who brings most of his ideas from the world of middle-class liberalism in which he was bred, always inclines to inculcate that faith in ma- 30 chinery to which, as we have seen. Englishmen are so prone, and which has been the bane of middle-class liberalism. He complains with a sorrowful indignation of people who "appear to have no proper estimate of the value of the franchise;" he leads his disciples to believe, — 168 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING what the EngHshman is always too ready to believe, — that the having a vote, like the having a large family, or a large business, or large muscles, has in itself some edifying and perfecting effect upon human nature. Or else he cries out to the democracy, — "the men," as he calls 5 them, "upon whose shoulders the greatness of England rests," — he cries out to them: "See what you have done! I look over this country and see the cities you have built, the railroads you have made, the manufactures you have produced, the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest 10 mercantile navy the world has ever seen! I see that you have converted by your labors what was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful garden ; I know that you have created this wealth, and are a nation whose name is a word of power throughout all the world." Why, this is just 15 the very style of laudation with which Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Lowe debauch the minds of the middle classes, and make such Philistines of them. It is the same fashion of teaching a man to value himself not on what he is, not on his progress in sweetness and light, but on the number 20 of the railroads he has constructed, or the bigness of the tabernacle he has built. Only the middle classes are told they have done it all with their energy, self-reliance, and capital, and the democracy are told they have done it all with their hands and sinews. But teaching the democracy 25 to put its trust in achievements of this kind is merely training them to be Philistines to take the place of the Philistines whom they are superseding; and they too, like the middle class, will be encouraged to sit down at the banquet of the future without having on a wedding gar- 30 ment, and nothing excellent can then come from them. Those who know their besetting faults, those who have watched them and listened to them, or those who will read the instructive account recently given of them by EXPOSITION 169 one of themselves, the Journeyman Engineer, will agree that the idea which culture sets before us of perfection, — an increased spiritual activity, having for its characters increased sweetness, increased light, increased life, in- 5 creased sympathy, — is an idea which the new democracy needs far more than the idea of the blessedness of the franchise, or the wonderfulness of its own industrial performances. Other well-meaning friends of this new power are for 10 leading it, not in the old ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in ways which are naturally alluring to the feet of democracy, though in this country they are novel and untried ways. I may call them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent indignation with the past, abstract systems of 15 renovation applied wholesale, a new doctrine drawn up in black and white for elaborating down to the very smallest details a rational society for the future, — these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. Frederic Harrison and other disciples of Comte, — one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an 20 old acquaintance of mine, and I am glad to have an op- portunity of publicly expressing my respect for his talents and character, — are among the friends of democracy who are for leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Frederic Harrison is very hostile to culture, and from a natural 25 enough motive; for culture is the eternal opponent of the two things which are the signal marks of Jacobinism, — its fierceness, and its addiction to an abstract system. Culture is always assigning to system-makers and systems a smaller share in the bent of human destiny than their 30 friends like. A current in people's minds sets toward new ideas; people are dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any other; and some man, some Bentham or Comte, who has the real merit of having early and strongly felt and helped the 170 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING new current, but who brings plenty of narrowness and mistakes of his own into his feeling and help of it, is credited with being the author of the whole current, the fit person to be trusted with its regulation and to guide the human race. 5 The excellent German historian of the mythology of Rome, Preller, relating the introduction at Rome, under the Tarquins, of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, healing, and reconciliation, will have us observe that it was not so much the Tarquins, who brought to Rome K the new worship of Apollo, as a current in the mind of the Roman people which set powerfully at that time toward a new worship of this kind, and away from the old run of Latin and Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, culture directs our attention to the natural current U there is in human affairs, and to its continual working, and will not let us rivet our faith U|>on any one man and his doings. It makes us see, not only his good side, but also how much in him was of necessity limited and transient ; nay, it even feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased «C freedom and of an ampler future, in so doing. I remember, when I was under the influence of a mind to which I feel the greatest obligations, the mind of a man who was the very incarnation of sanity and clear sense, a man the most considerable, it seems to me, whom i5 America has yet prcnluced, — Benjamin Franklin, — I remember the relief with which, after long feeling the sway of Franklin's imperturbable common sense, I came upon a project of his for a new version of the Book of Job, to replace the old version, the style of which, says 30 Franklin, has become obsolete, and thence less agreeable. **I give,'* he continues, **a few verses, which may serve as a sample of the kind of version I would recommend. " We all recollect the famous verse in our translation: EXPOSITION 171 "Then Satan answered the Lord and said: *Doth Job fear God for naught?*" Franklin makes this: "Does Your Majesty imagine that Job's good conduct is the eflFect of mere personal attachment and affection?" I 5 well remember how, when first I read that, I drew a deep breath of relief, and said to myself: "After all, there is a stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's victorious good sense!" So, after hearing Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of modern society, and Bentham's mind 10 and ideas proposed as the rules of our future, I open the Deontology. There I read : "While Xenophon was writing his history and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense under pretense of talking wisdom and morality. This morality of theirs con- 15 sisted in words; this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every man's experience. " From the mo- ment of reading that, I am delivered from the bondage of Bentham! the fanaticism of his adherents can touch me no longer. I feel the inadequacy of his mind and ideas 20 for supplying the rule of human society for perfection. Culture tends always thus to deal with the men of a system, of disciples, of a school; with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, or Mr. Mill. However much it may find to admire in these personages, or in some of them, 2."> it nevertheless remembers the text: "Be not ye called Rabbi!" and it soon passes on from any rabbi. But Jac- obinism loves a rabbi ; it does not want to pass on from its rabbi in pursuit of a future and still unreached perfection ; it wants its rabbi and his ideas to stand for perfection, 30 that they may with the more authority recast the world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, culture — eternally passing onward and seeking — is an impertinence and an offense. But culture, just because it resists this tendency of Jacobin- ism to impose on us a man with limitations and errors of 172 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING his own along with the true ideas of which he is the organ, really does the world and Jacobinism itself a service. So, too. Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred of the past, and of those whom it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with the inexhaustible indulgence proper 5 to culture, the consideration of circumstances, the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful judgment of persons. "The man of culture, is in politics," cries Mr. Frederic Harrison, "one of the poorest mortals alive ! " Mr. Frederic Harrison wants to be doing business, 10 and he complains that the man of culture stops him with a "turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish ease, and indecision in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except for "a critic of new books or a professor of belles- lettres?'* Why, it is of use because, in presence of the 15 fierce exasperation which breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses, through the whole production in which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the per- fection of humaa nature is sweetness and light. It is of use because like religion, — that other effort after perfection, 20 — it testifies that where bitter envying and strife are, there is confusion and every evil work. The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweet- ness and light. He who works for sweetness and light works to make reason and the will of (iod prevail. He 25 who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion — the passion for sweetness and light. It has one even yet greater — the passion for making them prevail. It is 30 not satisfied till we all come to a perfect man ; it knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and light. If I have not shrunk from EXPOSITION 173 saying that we must work for sweetness and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a broad basis, must have sweetness and Hght for as many as possible. Again and again I have insisted how 5 those are the happy moments of humanity, how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those are the flowering times for literature and art and all the creative power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and thought, when the whole of society is in 10 the fullest measure permeated by thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be real thought and real beauty, real sweetness and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they 15 think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoc- trinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. 20 Our religious and political organizations give an example of this way of working on the masses. I condemn neither way; but culture works differently. It does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready- 25 made judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes; to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely — nourished, and 30 not bound, by them. This is the social idea; and the men of culture are the true apostles of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, 174 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the best knowledge and thought 5 of the time, and a true source, therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard, in the Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing and Herder, in Germany, at the end of the 10 last century; and their services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Generations will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be pro- duced in Germany; and yet the names of these two men 15 will fill a German with a reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters will hardly awaken. And why.? Because they humanized knowledge; because they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to 20 make reason and the will of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave Thee alone to make, in the secret of thy knowledge, as Thou didst before the creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness ; let the children of thy spirit, placed in their 25 firmament, make their light shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed, and the new arises; the night is spent, the day is come forth; and Thou shalt crown the year with thy blessing, when Thou 30 shalt send forth laborers into thy harvest sown by other hands than theirs; when Thou shalt send forth new la- borers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." EXPOSITION 175 Suggestions: Where did Arnold find the title for this essay ? What, in your own words, is the significance of this title ? What is the connection between it, and the title of the volume from which this essay is taken, — Culture and Anarchy? Compare Arnold's definitions of "culture," "machinery," "curiosity," with "Honor" and "Americanism" as defined earlier in this book. What differences do we find in these modes of " ex- position by definition?" How definite a plan has the essay? Make an outline of it, or a diagram. What is the usual type of Arnold's paragraphs ? Note carefully all devices for transition and coherence in the first six pages. What is the function of the ninth paragraph? Find others in the essay which perform a similar office. Are the sentences usually loose or usually periodic? What peculiarities of construction (if any) do you notice about them ? Study, for example, the last sentence in the fourth paragraph. How does Arnold give hiai sentences emphasis ? What is your final impression of the way in which Arnold writes? Compare it with Mill's style, and with Huxley's style. ADAPTED SUBJECTS Is "sweetness and light" an attribute of student life at College? Students who have the "scientific passion," and students who have not. The "machinery" of college life: (a) in the class-room, (b) outside of the class-room. Athletes who are not " Philistines. " An essay to show that " competency to serve, and competency to appreciate and enjoy" are really only other names for "sweet- ness and light. " WHAT COLLEGE STUDENTS READ THE notion still lurks in some quarters that there are college men who are interested in other things than football; that somewhere in unregarded corners may be 176 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING hiding students who are not adequately represented by half-page portraits of fierce fullbacks and mountainous centers. Such a class does exist, and wliile there is life in it, there is hope for the future of our colleges. What its interests are, what it studies, what it reads, what it thinks, 5 may reasonably claim consideration, even though it be a mere concern of education. Information gathered at first-hand among several colleges would show that the larger number of students who read for their own pleasure devote most time to 10 newspapers and magazines. College men as a class know current news, at least from the headlines. They do not live a life of intellectual seclusion. In reading the news of the day, they turn first of all to, the athletic events and study the scores of all the games. It would be inexcusable 15 not to know the record of each athlete. Of the mag- azines in the reading-room, those that are devoted to current topics are invariably the most thumbworn. The average college man, even when not a football specialist, is not, as a rule, intellectually gifted; his tastes 20 are not discriminating; they are very much like those of the rest of the world. Like a true American, he looks upon things literary and artistic as a casual amusement, an easy way of using up time — right enough if one happens to like that sort of thing. The influence of the athletic ideal 25 on the reading of the undergraduate is plain. He knows his Kipling and he loves his Jack London. *' Those fellows are men," he remarks. "They can do things. They've got the goods with *em. " The self-glorification, the brutality, the cynicism, and the sensationalism, of a 30 man like London, answer exactly the demands of a new race of force-worshippers. There is, of course, another side. There is a remnant. Though no student would dare raise his voice against EXPOSITION 177 the precedence given to athletics, there are men in our colleges who are not ashamed to admit that they have a genuine liking for good literature; there are others, who, though they do not go so far as to confess it, yet indulge it 5 privately in the quiet of their rooms. It would embarrass them to be found on the campus with a copy of Pater in their hands; but when no one is looking they may furtively read a chapter of Marius. The tastes of this small class are an interesting subject for investigation. But one 10 must first draw the line between the reading that they do, along with many others, in connection with regular college courses — for example, a popular course in the his- tory of English fiction — and what they do simply for their own recreation. The fact that a man elects courses in 15 literature does not indicate, unfortunately, a true interest in the subject. The frothier current fiction is little read in college. This is no great misfortune. A novel even of the selling powers of The Masquerader catches the attention of few 20 collegians. This is in part due, no doubt, to the fact that most college libraries make no place for such books on their shelves. The number of students is naturally small who care to purchase their own novels. But there is a deeper reason. Students who read simply for a moment's 25 diversion do not take time for novels, while those who read with serious intention choose to invest their leisure where the returns will be of less questionable value. The college community is relatively free from the transient fads of the outer world. The fact that everybody is talking about 30 The House of Mirth wins very few readers for Mrs. Whar- ton among undergraduates. Our inquiries indicate that among the standard novelists Scott, Dumas, Dickens, and Stevenson are the best known. Thackeray and George Eliot find relatively few readers. 178 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING They are considered rather slow. Dickens is usually much admired or much disliked; he seems to excite more violence of opinion than any other popular novelist. The judgment of the college reader is refreshingly candid — a candor, to be sure, that is often the result of ignorance. 5 He does not care a rap for tradition, he decries authority. He likes to be an iconoclast. One student thus expressed himself. "Frankly, now," he said, "don't you think that if the critics didn't all run her down so, you'd call Marie Corelli as great a novelist as any of the century? The 10 trouble is just this: the critics have got to be down on somebody, and they've chosen her just because she dares to be original and different. " With rare exceptions, the modern collegian does not read poetry unless he has to. He may study it in his regular 15 college course; but that is a different matter. Except for a few admirers of, say, Byron, Rossetti, and Stephen Phillips, the spontaneous reading of poetry has gone to the w:all in our colleges. Even the Barrack-Room Ballads and the Seven Seas seem to have had their day. An 20 interesting complement to this statement is the direct testimony from four colleges that a rather widespread interest is showing itself in the modern drama. Ibsen land Pinero and Jones and Maeterlinck are being read and discussed by a surprisingly large number of college 25 men — men, too, who do very little serious reading along other lines. Nevertheless, the man of aggressive literary enthusiasm finds a depressing indifference in the college community. It is stony ground. We speak, of course, only of rough 30 averages. Conditions vary, and there are institutions where the work of a single professor may alter everything. But, in general, the average student of literary leanings is aware that few sympathize with his taste. He comes EXPOSITION 179 to the discovery that the most convenient way of living with his fellows is to keep his reading to himself. One little group of four men in a certain college used to meet every fortnight to read together a play of Sophocles or 5 poems of Swinburne or an essay by Pater. But they never told their love. It would have been much easier to admit that one had been off on a drunk, than that one had been reading Sophocles for pleasure. A turn of affairs for the better can hardly be looked for 10 so long as the athletic ideal is tyrant. But the athletic ideal itself is the logical issue of American commercialism. People who value success above character must submit with what grace they can when their sons rank a football victory above any college honor. That the word culture 15 should sound remote and ridiculously priggish to a dev- otee of the new idolatry, is inevitable. Such a thing as intellectual discipline is a mere hobby of weak-eyed, un- practical professors. Reading stories and essays and poems is the business of a five-o'clock-tea specialist. — New 20 York Evening Post, December 9, 1905. THE FLUMMERY OF COLLEGE CAPS ^ AND GOWNS BY way of such explanation as may avert confusion of mind, the Springfield Republican has thought it well, in its issue of October 20, to devote half a column 30 of space to an explanation of the meaning of academic costumes, in the matter of stuffs, colors, forms, facings, linings, and the like. In our very practical age one wonders as to the why and wherefore of these things; and, very reverently and 180 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING respectfully, I venture to ask Columbia University, whose statutes are cited as authoritative in such matters, why it should pass any such statutes, and why it should not recog- nize popular education and the universal ability to read, instead of cherishing those means of communication 5 which were necessary in medieval times when kings who knew not how to write dipped their hands into ink and impressed them upon documents as a verification of their validity. We all know how the cotton- velvet-clad stage king 10 certifies his will by giving his signet ring to the hero as an attestation. We wonder what he does for another signet ring in the meanwhile. But in our time men know how to read and write. If King Edward of England or John D. Rockefeller or J. P. Morgan or any other ruler of men 15 wishes to make his will known, he takes up a pad and writes on it what he wishes to say and signs his name at the bottom, and that half sheet of paper is potent to transfer multitudinous millions or to change the policy of great corporations or to do anything else that the writer 20 directs. Why should our colleges and universities — which are founded upon the idea of the ability of men to read and write — cherish and preserve the traditions of a more ignor- ant age and dignify them with the recognition of university 25 statutes ? Why should not these great agencies of modern education be the foremost leaders in the use of modern means for the communication of ideas .^ Thus we are told that on a college platform a hood faced with scarlet means that its wearer has a degree in divinity 30 that one faced with purple means a degree in law; one in green a. degree in medicine, and so on to the end of the curious chapter. But why all this flummery in an age when all men know how to read? Why should not the EXPOSITION 181 several bachelors and doctors of divinity, law, medicine, and the rest simply inscribe their respective degrees on the dressing-gowns or bath robes that they wear at com- mencements and upon other occasions of scholastic state ? 5 Then everybody would understand. Or, better still, why should not our universities put aside this medieval flummery altogether and stand bravely upon their merits as institutions that educate modern men for modern life? The cap and gown are simply relics of a time when educa- 10 tion was monastic and its recipients were clerics. In our time they are lies. Why not be honest and abolish them? The newspapers every year record the names of those who receive degrees at the hands of our great uni- versities — whether real degrees, conferred as the recogni- 15 tion and reward of actual study, or honorary degrees, con- ferred for less worthy reasons. The cyclopedias and dictionaries of biography never omit to give one who achieves anything worth while credit for all his degrees, as well as for all his actual achievements in scholarship. 20 Why not leave the matter at that ? What is the use of all this millinery of caps and gowns, with their silk or their fustian, their purples and yellows, their dark and light blues, their scarlets, and all the rest of it ? Are not these flummeries distinctly unworthy of the 25 universities of an age and country that looks more to the future than to the past and regards condition as a thing of greater worth than tradition ? Is it not the duty of our educational institutions to teach young men to *'look forward, not backward, out and not 30 in, up and not down?" — George Gary Eggleston, in New York Times {Saturday Review), Nov. 2, 1901. Suggestions : In planning an editorial, a definite order of arrangement should be followed as nearly as possible, i. e., (1) statement of the situation, (2) opinion upon the situation. Ob- 182 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING serve that each of the foregoing editorials follows this plan quite clearly. Try to illustrate, as concretely as possible, the points that you are explaining. Nothing is so convincing as a definite case, or example. ADAPTED SUBJECTS* Classes should begin later (or earlier) in the morning at College. Is the spirit of democracy disappearing at College? Should Freshmen be obliged to wear class hats? The evils (benefits) of a class "rush." Why more men are not out for the crew, (basket-ball, track, etc.) The desirability (or futility) of " simplified spelling. " "Yellow" journalism and "yellow" drama. The influence of the Sunday comic supplement. Should chapel exercises be abolished ? (resumed ?) THE STUDY OF POETRYf Matthew Arnold THE future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a re- 5 ceived tradition which does not tlu'eaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the sup- posed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry 10 *These may be infinitely varied, according to local conditions. fPubiished in 1880 as the General Introduction to The English Poets* edited by T. H. Ward. EXPOSITION 183 attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our rehgion to-day is its unconscious poetry. " Let me be permitted to quote these words of my own, as 5 uttering the thought which should, in my opinion, go with us and govern us in all our study of poetry. In the present work it is the course of one great contributory stream to the world-river of poetry that we are invited to follow. We are here invited to trace the stream of English poetry. •10 But whether we set ourselves, as here, to follow only one of the several streams that make the mighty river of poetry, or whether we seek to know them all, our governing thought should be the same. We should conceive of poetry worth- ily, and more highly than it has been the custom to con- 15 ceive of it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies, than those which in general men have assigned to it hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we. have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without 20 poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. Science, I say, will appear incom- plete without it. For finely and truly does Wordsworth call poetry "the impassioned expression which is in the 25 countenance of all science;" and what is a countenance without its expression ? Again, Wordsworth finely and truly calls poetry "the breath and finer spirit of all know- ledge:" our religion, parading evidences such as those on which the popular mind relies now; our philosophy, plum- 30 ing itself on its reasonings about causation and finite and infinite being; what are they but the shadows and dreams and false shows of knowledge .^ The day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves for having trusted to them, for having taken them seriously; and the more 184 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING we perceive their hollowness, the more we shall prize "the breath and finer spirit of knowledge" offered to us. by poetry. But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must also set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, 5 to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry of a high order of excellence. We must accustom ourselves to a high standard and to a strict judgment. Sainte-Beuve relates that Napoleon one day said, when somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan: 1€ "Charlatan as much as you please; but where is there not charlatanism?" "Yes," answers Sainte-Beuve, "in politics, in the art of governing mankind, that is perhaps true. But in the order of thought, in art, the glory, the eternal honor is that charlatanism shall find no entrance; 15 herein lies the inviolableness of that noble portion of man's being." It is admirably said, and let us hold fast to it. In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal honor, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and 20 inviolable. Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating the distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only half- t: ue. It is charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, when- ever we confuse or obliterate these. And in poetry, more 25 than anywhere else, it is unpermissible to confuse or obliterate them. For in poetry the distinction between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half- sound, true and untrue or only half-true, is of paramount importance. It is of paramount importance because of 30 the high destinies of poetry. In poetry, as a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find, we have said, as time goes on and as other EXPOSITION 185 helps fail, its consolation and stay. But the consolation and stay will be of power in proportion to the power of the criticism of life. And the criticism of life will be of power in proportion as the poetry conveying it is excellent 5 rather than inferior, sound rather than unsound or half- sound, true rather than untrue or half-true. The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delight- ing us, as nothing else can. A clearer, deeper sense of 10 the best in poetry, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, is the most precious benefit which we can gather from a poetical collection such as the present. And yet in the very nature and conduct of such a collection there is inevitably something which tends to obscure in us 15 the consciousness of what our benefit should be, and to distract us from the pursuit of it. We should therefore steadily set it before our minds at the outset, and should compel ourselves to revert constantly to the thought of it- as we proceed. 20 Yes; constantly, in reading poetry, a sense_for the best, the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what we read. But this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we are not 25 watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious. A poet or a poem may count to us historically, they may count to us in grounds personal to ourselves, and they may count to us really. They may count to us 30 historically. The course of development of a nation's language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet's work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, 186 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in criticizing it; in short, to overrate it. So arises in our poetic judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic. Then, again, a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves. 5 Our personal affinities, likings, and circumstances, have great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet's work, and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance. Here also we overrate 10 the object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments, — the fallacy caused by an estimate which we may call personal. Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally 15 the study of the history and development of a poetry may incline a man to pause over reputations and works once conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel with a careless public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition and habit, from one famous name or work in its national 20 poetry to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of the reason for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole process of growth in its poetry. The French have become diligent students of their own early poetry, which they long neg- lected; the study makes many of them dissatisfied with this 25 so-called classical poetry, the court-tragedy of the seven- teenth century, a poetry which Pellisson long ago reproach- ed with its want of the true poetic stamp, with its politesse sterile et rampante, but which nevertheless has reigned in France as absolutely as if it had been the perfection of 30 classical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is natural; yet a lively and accomplished critic, M. Charles d'HericauIt the editor of Clement Marot, goes too far when he says that "the cloud of glory playing round a classic is a mist as EXPOSITION 187 dangerous to the future of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes of history." "It hinders," he goes on, "it hinders us from seeing more than one single point, the culminating and exceptional point; the summary, 5 fictitious and arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It substitutes a halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue where there was once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study but veneration; it does not show us how the 10 thing is done, it imposes upon us a model. Above all, for the historian this creation of classic personages is inad- missible; for it withdraws the poet from his time, from his proper life, it breaks historical relationships, it blinds criticism by conventional admiration, and renders the in- 15 vestigation of literary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human personage no longer, but a God seated immovable amidst his perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus; and hardly will it be possible for the young student, to whom such work is exhibited at such a distance from him, to 20 believe that it did not issue ready made from that divine head." All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a distinction. Everything depends on thejreajity of a poet's classic character. If he is a dubious classic, 25 let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and right meaning of the word classic, classical), then the great thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, 30 and to appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has not the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of poetry. Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injurious. 188 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded with superstition ; we must perceive when his work comes short, when it drops out of the class of the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at its proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is not in it- 5 self, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. To trace the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine classic, to acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical relationships, is mere literary 10 dilettantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that the more we know about a classic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, 15 this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The elaborate philological groundwork which we require them to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciating the 20 Greek and Latin authors worthily. The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time were not so short, and schoolboys' wits not so soon tired and their power of attention exhausted; only, as it is, the 25 elaborate philological preparation goes on, but the authors are little known and less enjoyed. So with the investigator of "historic origins" in poetry. He ought to enjoy the true classic all the better for his investigations; he often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and with the 30 less good he overbusies himself, and is prone to overrate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him. The idea of tracing historic origins and historical rela- tionships cannot be absent from a compilation like the EXPOSITION 189 present. And naturally the poets to be exhibited in it will be assigned to those persons for exhibition who are known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have no special inclination toward them. Moreover the very 5 occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting him, disposes us to affirm and amplify his importance. In the present work, therefore, we are sure of frequent temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal estimate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, 10 nevertheless, we must employ if we are to make poetry yield us its full benefit. So high is that benefit, the benefit of clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excel- lent, the truly classic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying poets 15 and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it the one principle to which, as the Imitation says, whatever we may read or come to know, we always return. Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet redire principium. 20 The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate modern. ] The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in 25 themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly enters the general ear; probably they do not al- ways impose even on the literary men who adopt them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So we hear Csedmon, amongst our own poets, compared to 30 Milton. I have already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French critic for "historic origins. " Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet, comments upon that famous document of the early poetry of his nation, the Chanson de Roland. It is indeed a most interesting docu- 190 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING ment. The joculator or jongleur Taillefer, who was with William the Conqueror's army at Hastings, marched be- fore the Norman troops, so said the tradition, singing "of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and of the vassals who died at Roncevaux;" and it is suggested that 5 in the Chanson de Roland by one Turoldus or Theroulde, a poem preserved in a manuscript of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chaunt which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigor and freshness; 10 it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a document of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose conception, 15 in its details he finds the constant union of simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it from the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly given. Higher 20 praise there cannot well be, and it is the praise due to epic poetry of the highest ->rder only, and to no other. Let us try, then, the Chanson de Roland at its best. Roland mortally wounded, lays himself down under a pine tree, with his face turned toward Spain and the enemy: 25 "De plusurs choses k remerabrer li prist De tantes teres cume li l>ers cunquist, De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, De Carlemagne sun seignor ki Tnurrit."* That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise and such praise 80 is sufficient for it. But now turn to Homer: ♦"Then began he to call many things to remembrance, — all the lands which his valor conquered, and pleasant Franc^e, and the men of his lineage, and Charlemagne his liege lord who nourished him." — Chan" son de Rokmdy iii. 939-942. EXPOSITION 191 ^^fis (pnrot Tovs 5' ^5^ Karix^^ i Supieu TItjX^i duaKTt OvrjT^l vfxus 5' hoTov dyrjpco r aOavarco r§, ^ tj'tt Svar-qvoiai fifr* dvbpdciv d\y(' lx^''o»'.'t the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus; or, take finally, his *"So said she; they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, There, in their own dear land, their father land, Lacedaemon." Iliad, iii. 243-4 (translated by Dr. Hawtrey) +"Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a mortal? but ye are without old age, and immortal. Was it that with men born to misery ye might have sorrow.?" — Iliad, xvii. 443-5. 192 A COLLEGE COURSE IN WRITING Kal ai, yipoVt rb nplu fi^y aKovontv oK^iov ttvai 4; the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino's tremendous words: "lo no piangeva; si dentro impietrai. Piangevan elli . . ."f take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil: "lo son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, Ne fiamma d'esto incendio non m'assale . . ."J take the simple, but perfect, single line : "In la sua volontade e nostra pace."** Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's expostulation with sleep: "Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge ..." and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio: "If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart. Absent thee from feUcity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story. . ." Take of Milton that Miltonic passage: "Darken'd so, yet shone Above them all the archangel; but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek ..." *"Nay, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear, happy.' — Iliad, xxiv. 5-i3. t"I wailed not, so of stone grew I within; —