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 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ENGLISH COLLECTION 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES MORGAN HART 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGUSH 
 
 hrLVo°\^'] . *^'^^^ 
 
THE 
 
 QDARTERLY REVIEW. 
 
 V ■ / 
 
 VOL. 163. 
 
 PUBLISHED IN 
 
 
 ; : r 
 
 JULY ^ OCTOBER, 1886. 
 
 \z. aXoU ^ 4 /' ^"^^^^ ^^^^'^^ 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 1886 
 
A•^^?^o] 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 Printed by William Clotves and Sons, Limited, 
 Stamford Street and Charing CroBs. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 No. 326. 
 
 Abt. Page 
 
 I. — From Shakespeare to Pope. An Inquiry into the Causes 1/ 
 
 and Phenomena of the Eise of Classical Poetry in 
 England. By Edmund Gosse, Clark Lecturer on 
 English Literature at the University of Cambridge. 
 Cambridge : at the University Press. 1885 - - 289 
 
 II. — 1. Sport. By W. Bromley-Davenport. London, 1886. 
 
 2. The Badminton Library. Edited by the Duke of 
 Beaufort, K.G. Pishing : by H. Cholmondeley-Pen- 
 nell. London, 1886. 
 
 3. Salmon Problems. By Willis Bund. London, 1885. 
 
 4. Autumns on the Spey. By A. E. Knox, M.A., P.L.S. 
 London, 1872. 
 
 5. Twenty-fifth Annual Keport of the Inspector of 
 Fisheries (England and Wales). 
 
 6. The Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, attri- 
 buted to Dame Juliana Bemers, reprinted from the 
 Book of St. Albans. London, 1827 330 
 
 III. — 1. The Poetical Works of Bryant, Whittler, Emerson, 
 Longfellow, Poe, Holmes, Lowell, Harte, Miller, 
 Whitman. 
 
 2. The Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Edited 
 by Samuel Longfellow. London, 1886. 
 
 3. The Poets of America. By E. C. Stedman. London, 
 1885 - 363 
 
 IV. — 1. Annual Eeport of the Director of the National Gallery 
 to the Treasury, for the year 1885. Presented to 
 Parliament, 1886. 
 
 2. The Abridged Catalogue of the Pictures in the 
 National Gallery. Foreign Schools. 1885. 
 
 3. Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures 
 in the National Gallery, with Biographical Notices 
 of the deceased Painters. British and Modern 
 Schools. 1886. 
 
 4. Italian Art in the National Gallery. By Dr. Eichter. 
 L' Arte Italiana nella Galleria Nazionale di Londra. 
 
 By Dr. G. Frizzoni - 395 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 Aht. Pa<;e 
 
 v.— 1. Fifteenth and Sixteenth Annual Eeports of the De- 
 puty Master of the Mint. 1884, 1885. Presented to 
 the Houses of Parliament. 
 
 2. Journal of the Institute of Bankers. (The probable 
 results of an increase in the Purchasing Power of 
 Gold. By the Et. Hon. Geo. J. Goschen, M.P.) 
 May, 1883. 
 
 3. Essays in Finance. By Eobert Giffen. Second 
 series. London, 1886. 
 
 4. Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury to the Speaker 
 of the House of Eepresentatives. Washington. 
 March, 1886 434 
 
 VI. — 1. A Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books 
 of the New Testament ; being an expansion of Lec- 
 tures delivered in the Divinity School of the Uni- 
 versity of Dublin. By George Salmon, D.D., F.E.S., 
 Eegius Professor of Divinity. Second Edition. 
 London, 1886. 
 2. Lehrbuch der historisch-critischen Einleitung in das 
 Neue Testament. Von H. J. Holtzmann, Dr. und 
 ord. Professor der Theologie in Strassburg. Freiburg 
 i. B., 1885 460 
 
 VII. — 1. Treaty between Great Britain, Germany, Austria, 
 France, Italy, Eussia, and Turkey for the Settlement 
 of Affairs in the East, signed at Berlin, July 13th, 
 1878. 
 2. Correspondence respecting the Affairs of Eastern 
 Eomnelia and Bulgaria. Presented to Parliament, 
 February and June, 1886 - 489 
 
 VIII. — 1. Eeport from the Select Committee on Busiaess of the 
 House. (March 28th, 1871.) 
 
 2. Eeport from the Select Committee on Public Busi- 
 ness. (July 8th, 1878.) 
 
 3. Eeport from the Select Committee on Parliamentary 
 Procedure. (June 10th, 1886) 520 
 
 And other Works. 
 
 IX. — 1. Debates in the House of Commons, August and 
 September 1886. The ' Times ' Eeports. 
 
 2. The Irish Question. By the Et. Hon. W. E. Glad- 
 stone. 1886. 
 
 3. Eeturn of Judicial Eents (Irish Land Commission). 
 May to July 1886. 
 
 4. Speeches of the Marquis of Salisbury and Lord 
 Eandolph Churchill, August and September 1886 547 
 
THE 
 
 QUARTERLY REVIEW. 
 
 J<<'Abt. I. — From Shakespeare to Pope. An Inquiry into the Causes 
 and Phenomena of the Rise of Classical Poetrij in England. By 
 Edmund Gosse, Clark Lecturer on English Literature at the 
 University of Cambridge. Cambridge: at the University 
 Press. 1885. 
 
 THAT such a book as this should have been permitted to go 
 forth to the world with the imprimatur of the University 
 of Cambridge, affords matter for very grave reflection. But it 
 is a confirmation of what we have long suspected. It is one 
 more proof that those rapid and reckless innovations, whith 
 have during the last few years completely changed the faces of 
 our Universities, have not been made with impunity. We are 
 no sticklers for tbe old regime, no advocates of a policy of ultra- 
 Conservatism. We think that the Universities have done wisely 
 in extending the ancient boundaries of education, and that those 
 boundaries might with advantage be extepded still further. We 
 should, for example, be heartily glad to hear that Oxford and 
 Cambridge had provided as amply for the interpretation of 
 Modern Literature as they have for the interpretation of Ancient : 
 that the Laocoon was being studied side by side with the 
 Poetics, and Macbeth side by side with the Agamemnon, 
 But there are certain points on which the Universities cannot 
 be too Conservative. There are certain points on which any 
 departure from prescription and tradition is not merely to be 
 regretted, but to be deprecated. Whatever concessions Oxford 
 and Cambridge may find it desirable to make in consulting the 
 interests of modern life, it should be their first care to guard 
 jealously their own prerogatives. Of all revolutions, that would 
 be the most disastrous to learning and culture which should 
 subject University legislation to popular control. Six centuries 
 have not altered the relative position in which Oxford and 
 Cambridge stand to the outside world. In the infancy of civi- 
 Vol. 163.— iVo. 326. U lization 
 
 (f^ 
 
290 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 lization they preserved learning from extinction. As civiliza- 
 tion advances, they have the more difficult task of preserving it 
 from corruption. They have no longer to combat barbarism 
 and dulness, sloth and ignorance, but to counteract the mis- 
 chievous activity of agencies scarcely less antagonistic to all 
 that it is their glory to uphold. 
 
 It may sound paradoxical to say that the more widely educa- 
 tion spreads, the more generally intelligent a nation becomes, 
 the greater is the danger to which Art and Letters are exposed. 
 And yet how obviously is this, the case, and how easily is this 
 explained. The quality of skilled work depends mainly on the 
 standard required of the workman. If his judges and patrons 
 belong to the discerning few who, knowing what is excellent, 
 are intolerant of everything which falls short of excellence, the 
 standard required will necessarily be a high one, and the 
 standard required will be the standard attained. In. past times, 
 for example, the only men of letters who were respected formed 
 a portion of that highly cultivated class who will always be in 
 the minority ; and to that class, and to that class only, they 
 appealed. A community within a community, they regarded 
 the general public with as much indifference as the general 
 public regarded them, and wrote only for themselves, and for 
 those who stood on the same intellectual level as themselves. 
 It was so in the Athens of Pericles ; it was so in the Rome of 
 Augustus ; it was so in the Florence of the Medici ; and a 
 striking example of the same thing is to be found in our own 
 Elizabethan Dramatists. Though their bread depended on the 
 brutal and illiterate savages for whose amusement they catered, 
 they still talked the language of scholars and poets, and forced 
 their rude hearers to sit out works which could have been 
 intelligible only to scholars and poets. Each felt with pride 
 that he belonged to a great guild, which neither had nor 
 affected to have anything in common with the multitude. 
 Each strove only for the applause of those whose praise is not 
 lightly given. Each spurred the other on. When Marlowe 
 worked, he worked with the fear of Greene before his eyes, as 
 Shakspeare was put on his mettle by Jonson, and Jonson by 
 Shakspeare. We owe Much Ado about Nothing and the Alche- 
 mist not to men who bid only for the suffrage of the mob, but 
 to men who stood in awe of the verdict which would be passed 
 on them by the company assembled at the Mermaid and the 
 Devil. 
 
 As long as men of letters continue to form an intellectual 
 aristocracy, and, stimulated by mutual rivalry, strain every 
 nerve to excel, and as long also — and this is a condition equally 
 
 important — 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 291 
 
 important — as they have no temptation to pander to the crowd, 
 so long will Literature maintain its dignity, and so long will 
 the standard attained in Literature be a high one. In the days 
 of Dryden and Pope, in the days even of Johnson and Gibbon, 
 the greater part of the general public either read nothing, or 
 read nothing but politics and sermons. The few who were 
 interested in Poetry, in Criticism, in History, were, as a rule, 
 those who had received a learned education, men of highly 
 ■cultivated tastes and of considerable attainments. A writer, 
 therefore, who aspired to contribute to polite literature, had to 
 choose between finding no readers at all, and finding such 
 readers as he was bound to respect — between instant oblivion, 
 and satisfying a class which, composed of scholars, would have 
 turned with contempt from writings unworthy of scholars. A 
 classical style, a refined tone, and an adequate acquaintance 
 with the chief authors of Ancient Rome and of Modern France, 
 were requisites, without which even a periodical essayist would 
 have had small hope of obtaining a hearing. Whoever will 
 turn, we do not say to the papers of Addison and his circle in 
 the early part of the last century, or to those of Chesterfield and 
 his circle later on, but to the average critical work of Cave's 
 and Dodsley's hack writers, cannot fail to be struck with its 
 ■remalrkable merit in point of literary execution. 
 
 But as education spreads, a very different class of readers call 
 into being a very different class of writers. Men and women 
 begin to seek in books the amusement or excitement which 
 they sought formerly in social dissipation. To the old public 
 ■of scholars succeeds a public, in which every section of society 
 has its representatives, and to provide this vast body with the 
 sort of reading which is acceptable to it, becomes a thriving and 
 lucrative calling. An immense literature springs up, which has 
 no other object than to catch the popular ear, and no higher 
 aim than to please for the moment. That perpetual craving for 
 novelty, which has in all ages been characteristic of the multi- 
 tude, necessitates in authors of this class a corresponding rapidity 
 ■of production. The writer of a single good book is soon 
 forgotten by his contemporaries ; but the writer of a series of 
 bad books is sure of reputation and emolument. Indeed, a good 
 book and a bad book stand, so far as the general public are 
 concerned, on precisely the same level, as they meet with pre- 
 cisely the same fate. Each presents the attraction of a new 
 title-page. Each is glanced through, and tossed aside. Each 
 is estimated not by its intrinsic worth, but according to the 
 skill with which it has been puffed. Till within comparatively 
 ffecent times this literature was for the most part represented by 
 
 u 2 novels 
 
292 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 novels and poems, and by those light and desultory essays, 
 sketches and ana, which are the staple commodity of our maga- 
 zines. And so long as it confined itself within these bounds it 
 did no mischief, and even some good. Flimsy and superficial 
 though it was, it had at least the merit of interesting thousands 
 in Art and Letters, who would otherwise have been indifferent 
 to them. It afforded nutriment to minds which would have 
 rejected more solid fare. To men of business and pleasure who, 
 though no longer students, still retained the tincture of early 
 culture, it offered the most agreeable of all methods of killing 
 time, while scholars found in it welcome relaxation from severer 
 studies. It thus supplied a want. Presenting attractions not to 
 one class only, but to all classes, it grew on the world. Its 
 patrons, who half a century ago numbered thousands, now 
 number millions. And as it has grown in favour, it has grown 
 in ambition. It is no longer satisfied with the humble province 
 which it once held, but is extending its dominion in all direc- 
 tions. It has its representatives in every department of Art and 
 Letters. It has its poets, its critics, its philosophers, its histo- 
 rians. It crowds not our club tables and news-stalls only, but 
 our libraries. And so what was originally a mere excrescence 
 on literature in the proper sense of the term, has now assumed 
 proportions so gigantic, that it has not merely overshadowed 
 that literature, but threatens to supersede it. 
 
 No thoughtful man can contemplate the present condition of 
 current literature without disgust and alarm. We have still, 
 indeed, lingering among us a few masters whose works would 
 have been an honour to any age ; and here and there among^ 
 writers may be discerned men who are honourably distin- 
 guished by a conscientious desire to excel, men who respect 
 themselves, and respect their calling. But to say that these are 
 in the minority, would be to give a very imperfect idea of the 
 proportion which their numbers bear to those who figure most 
 prominently before the public. They are, in truth, as tens are 
 to myriads. Their comparative insignificance is such, that they 
 are powerless even to leaven the mass. The position which they 
 would have occupied half a century ago, and which they may 
 possibly occupy half a century hence, is now usurped by a herd 
 of scribblers who have succeeded, partly by sheer force of 
 numbers, and partly by judicious co-operation, in all but 
 dominating literature. Scarcely a day passes in which some 
 book is not hurried into the world, which owes its existence not 
 to any desire on the part of its author to add to the stores of 
 useful literature, or even to a hope of obtaining monev, but 
 simply to that paltry vanity which thrives on the sort of homage 
 
 of 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 293 
 
 of which society of a certain kind is not grudging, and which 
 knows no distinction between notoriety and fame. A few years 
 ago a man who contributed articles to a current periodical, or 
 who delivered a course of lectures, had, as a rule, the good sense 
 to know that when they had fulfilled the purpose for which 
 they were originally intended, the world had no more concern 
 with them, and he would as soon have thought of inflicting 
 them in the shape of a volume, on the public, as he would have 
 thought of issuing an edition of his private letters to his friends. 
 Now all is changed. The first article in the creed of a person, 
 who has figured in either of these capacities, appears to be that 
 he is bound to force himself into notice in the character of an 
 author. And this, happily for himself, but unhappily for the 
 • interests of literature, he is able to do with perfect facility 
 and with perfect impunity. Books are speedily manufactured, 
 and as speedily reduced to pulp. It is as easy to invest a 
 worthless book with those superficial attractions which catch 
 the eye of the crowd, as it is a meritorious one. As the general 
 public are the willing dupes of puffers, it is no more difficult to 
 palm off on them the spurious wares of literary charlatans, than 
 it is to beguile them into purchasing the wares of any other sort 
 of charlatan. No one is interested in telling them the truth. 
 Many, on the contrary, are interested in deceiving them. As a 
 rule, the men who write bad books are the men who criticize 
 bad books ; and as they know that what they mete out in their 
 capacity of judges to-day is what will in turn be meted out to 
 them in their capacity of authors to-morrow, it is not surprising 
 that their relations should be similar to those which Tacitus tells 
 us existed between Vinius and Tigellinus — ' nulla innocentiae 
 cura, sed vices impunitatis.' The Edinburgh and Quarterly 
 Reviews appear unfortunately to have abandoned, for the most 
 part, to Reviews of a very different character the censorship of 
 current publications. 
 
 Meanwhile all those vile arts which were formerly confined 
 to the circulators of bad novels and bad poems are practised 
 without shame. It is shocking, it is disgusting to contemplate 
 the devices to which many men of letters will stoop for the sake 
 of exalting themselves into a factitious reputation. And the 
 evil is fast spreading. Indeed, things have come to such a pass, 
 that persons of real merit, if they have the misfortune to depend 
 on their pens for a livelihood, must either submit to be elbowed 
 and jostled out of the field, or take part in the same ignoble 
 scramble for notoriety, and the same detestable system of mutual 
 puffery. Thus everything which formerly tended to raise the 
 standard of literary ambition and literary attainment has given 
 
 place 
 
294 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 place to everything which tends to degrade it. The multitude 
 now stand where the scholar once stood. From the multitude 
 emanate, to the multitude are dedicated, two-thirds of the 
 publications which pour forth each year in myriads from our 
 presses — ■ 
 
 ' viviamo scorti 
 
 Da mediocrita : sceso il sapiente 
 
 E salita e la turba a vn sol confine 
 
 Che il mondo agguaglia.' 
 
 All this is no doubt inevitable, but what we sincerely trust 
 is not inevitable is the corruption of that small minority, whose 
 standards are not the standards of the crowd. The nurseries 
 and strongholds of that minority are the Universities. At the 
 Universities are still studied in a spirit too narrow indeed, but 
 reverently and conscientiously, those masterpieces which, so- 
 long as they shall continue to be studied, will be of power to- 
 purify and exalt. There, amid the din of voices blatant without 
 — the puffing and the cant, the gushing and the cackle — the 
 still small voice of sincerity is clear. No shallow dilettantism 
 has as yet found footing there. No sciolist, no pretender, 
 no dishonest worker, has ever escaped detection and con- 
 demnation there. Nothing which falls short of a standard, as- 
 high perhaps as it could possibly be, is tolerated either in 
 those who teach, or in those who seek honours in the schools. 
 What work is done, is done as legislators, whose moral and intel- 
 lectual ideals have been derived from Thucydides and Aristotle,, 
 from Plato and Sophocles, would necessarily insist upon its- 
 being done. And may this continue. For as long as this con- 
 tinues, as long as the Universities remain true to tradition, 
 and true to themselves, so long amid the general corruption- 
 will Art and Learning be sound at the core. 
 
 But we have lately observed symptoms which are, we fear, 
 no uncertain indications that even the Universities have not 
 escaped contagion. It is not our intention here to offer any 
 remarks on the extraordinary innovations which have recently 
 been made in the old system, both at Oxford and Cambridge. 
 That the majority of them are mere reckless experiments, that 
 some of them are positively pernicious, and that almost all of 
 them are fraught with peril, is, we think, unquestionable. If 
 any proof of what these innovations are likely to lead to were 
 needed, it would be afforded by the volume which stands at 
 the head of this article. We have already pointed out the 
 enormous responsibility which rests with the Universities at 
 the present time. We have shown what was indeed self- 
 evident,. 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 295 
 
 evident, that unless they continue to oppose the true faith to 
 the false faith, the high standard to the low standard, the 
 excellent to the mediocre, the- sound to the unsound, the 
 prospects of literature are mournful indeed. It is therefore 
 with the greatest regret that we have had placed in our hands, 
 dated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and published by the 
 University Press, a work which we do not scruple to describe 
 as most derogatory to all concerned in its production. Whether 
 this volume is an indication of the manner in which the im- 
 portant subject with which it deals is studied at Cambridge, 
 we do not know. We sincerely trust that it is not. But of 
 two things we are very sure ; first, that a book so unworthy, in 
 everything but externals, of a great University has never before 
 been given to the world ; and secondly, that it is the bounden 
 duty of all friends of learning to join in discountenancing so 
 evil a precedent. 
 
 Not the least mischievous characteristic of the work is the 
 skill with which its worthlessness is disguised. From title to 
 colophon there is, so far as externals are concerned, everything 
 to disarm suspicion, everything to inspire trust. An excellent 
 index ; unexceptionable type ; unexceptionable paper ; 
 
 ' Chartse regise, novi libri, 
 Novi umbilici, lora rubra, membrana 
 Directa plumbo, et pumice omnia ssquata.' 
 
 On opening the volume our confidence redoubles. We turn 
 to the Preface. We there learn that the substance of the work 
 was delivered in the form of lectures to members of the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge in the Hall of Trinity College. 
 
 ' It has been,' says Mr. Gosse, ' no small advantage to me that among 
 the distingiiished listeners to whom I have had the honour of reading 
 these pages, there have been more than a few whose special studies 
 have rendered them particularly acute in criticising. In consequence 
 of such criticism I have been able profitably to revise the work, to add 
 evidence where it seemed wanting, to remove rash statements, and to 
 remould ambiguous sentences.' 
 
 In the course of the work we learn that many ' eminent friends ' 
 have been anxiously consulted ; for ' in an enquiry of this 
 nature,' observes the author, ' exact evidence, even of a minute 
 kind, outweighs in importance any expression of mere critical 
 opinion.' As we are not concerned with Mr. Gosse's eminent 
 friends, but only with Mr. Gosse himself, we shall merely remark 
 that we quite absolve Professor Gardiner and Mr, Austin Dobson 
 from all complicity in Mr. Gosse's delinquencies. 
 
 Of all offences of which a writer can be guilty, the most 
 
 detestable 
 
296 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 detestable is that of simulating familiarity with works which 
 he knows only at second hand, or of which he knows 
 nothing more than the title. That a Lecturer on English 
 Literature should not know whether the Arcadia of Sidney, 
 and the Oceana of Harrington, are in prose or verse, or, not 
 knowing, should not have taken the trouble to ascertain, is 
 discreditable enough ; but that he should, under the impression 
 that they are poems, have had the effrontery to sit in judgment 
 on them, might well, in Macaulay's favourite phrase, make us 
 ashamed of our species. And yet this is what Mr. Gosse has 
 done. In one place (page 26), he classes and compares the 
 Arcadia with the Faery Queen. In another place (page 75), 
 he classes and compares it with Giles Fletcher's Christ's 
 Victory and Triumph ; while on page 26 the Oceana, coupled 
 with the Arcadia, is compared, on the one hand with Spenser's 
 poem, and on the other hand with Phineas Fletcher's Purple 
 Island.* Of the gross chronological blunder of which he is 
 guilty, in placing the Oceana with the Arcadia, and the Faery 
 Queen in the ' great generation,' when the Oceana was published 
 in 1656, a period long subsequent to the time of which he is 
 speaking, we say nothing. It is easy to see what has misled him 
 with regard to the ' Oceana,' and his error certainly furnishes a 
 very amusing illustration of his method of investigation. He 
 has confounded James Harrington, the prose writer, who was 
 born in 1611, with Sir John Harrington, the poet, who was 
 born in 1561 ; and the title ' Oceana ' having a very poetical 
 sound, he has jumped to the conclusion that it is a poem. 
 
 On page 108, he informs us thiit Garth's Claremont is ' a 
 
 * As tbis may seem incredible to those of our readers wbo do not know what 
 modern bonkmakers are capable of, we will give the passages with their contexts 
 in full. ' Poetry began to be w)itten fur poets, for the elect, for a circle ; and 
 this was one of the deadly effects of that curious embargo upon publication, of 
 which I have spoken. Utter disregard was paid to unity, to proportion, to 
 extent. In the great generation there had been too little regard for these 
 qualities. Wilhout profanity be it spoken, Sidney's "Arcadia" is dreadfully 
 amorphous and invertebrate, and Macaulay's difficulty of being in at the death ' 
 of the " Blatant Beast " would never have been propounded, if the " Faery 
 Queen " had not been so long, that it is really excusable not to be aware that the 
 •'Blatant Bosst" does not die. But if the "Arciidia" is shapeless, what are 
 we to say ot " Oorana " ? and let him not call the " Fiiery Queen " tedious or dull 
 who has never prrappled witli Phineas Fletcher's " Purple Island." ' (Pp. 25, 26.) 
 ' The heroic poerras of the Elizabethan and Ja^chean ages, — " The Barons' Wars " 
 of Drayton, the " Alliion's England " of Warner, the " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " 
 of Chapman, for instance, had possessed various brilliant and touching qualities, 
 irregular force and sudden brilliance of style, but certainly not what Hobbes 
 meant by " perspicuity and facility of construction." The " Arcadia " of Sidney 
 is not facile, the "Christ's Victory and Triumph"of Giles Fletcher is not in this 
 sense perspicuous ; but Waller's "Battle of the Summer Islands" is, just as " The 
 Hind and the Panther" of Dryden is perspicuous, and " The Dunciad" admirable 
 for its facility of construction. (Page 75.) 
 
 direct 
 
Eriglish Literature at the Universities. 297 
 
 direct imitation of Denham's Cooper's Hill.' If he had taken 
 the trouble to read Garth's poem, he would have seen that, 
 beyond the fact that it derives its title from the name of a place, 
 and that it is written in heroics, it has simply nothing in 
 common with Cooper's Hill. Denham's poem is, as we need 
 scarcely say, a poem describing the prospect from Cooper's 
 Hill — St. Paul's, Windsor, the Thames, the valley of the 
 Thames — and with that description are interwoven such reflec- 
 tions as these objects severally call up ; it then goes on to 
 describe, and to describe with singular animation, a stag-hunt ; 
 and it concludes with some remarks bearing immediately on 
 contemporary politics, suggested by the view of Runnyraede. 
 Garth's poem, on the other hand, is simply a jeu d'esprit 
 written on the occasion of the name of Claremont being given 
 to the villa founded at Esher by the Earl of Clare. As a stream 
 took its rise in the hill on which the mansion stood, welling up 
 in a grotto where there was an echo, it struck Garth that he 
 might make out of this a pretty story in the manner of Ovid. 
 And so, with a few general remarks on the venality of poets 
 who are ready to flatter without distinction any one who will 
 pay them, and with the assurance that his own desire to please 
 his noble patron springs from the most disinterested motives, he 
 goes on to say that he has no intention of describing Claremont 
 and its beauties. That theme he leaves to a nobler muse ; his 
 task is merely to tell 
 
 'how ancient fame 
 Eecords from whence the villa took its name,' 
 
 and the legend of Montano and Echo, modelled on the legend of 
 Narcissus and Echo, in the third book of the Metamorphoses 
 begins. With that legend we do not propose to trouble our 
 readers. It is as easy to see what has misled Mr. Gosse in this 
 case, as in the other case. Indeed, Garth himself has set the trap, 
 and a reader who went no further than the title and the first words 
 of the preface, would be certain to be caught. ' They who have 
 seen,' he writes, ' those two excellent poems of Cooper's Hill 
 and Windsor Forest, will show a great deal of candour if they 
 approve of this.' What Garth meant of course was, as his work 
 sufficiently proves, not to institute any comparison between his 
 poems and the poems of Denham and Pope, but to obviate the 
 objections of those who might perhaps expect to find in a 
 poem taking its title from a place, what they had found in other 
 poems taking their titles from places. 
 
 But these are not the only examples of Mr. Gosse's offences 
 on this score. On page 102 he describes Daniel's Cleopatra, 
 
 ■ and 
 
298 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 and Philotas as ' choral tragi-comedies.' If he had consulted 
 them, he would have .seen that they are pure tragedies in the 
 most monotonously stilted style of pure classical tragedy. Again 
 on page 102 we are told that Denham's Sophy ' remains a 
 solitary specimen of the Seneca tragedy amongst the English 
 dramas of the age, just as the curious play of Tyr et Sidon 
 remains a solitary experiment in romantic tragedy in 17th- 
 century French.' Will our readers credit that the play thus 
 confidently asserted to be a ' specimen of Seneca tragedy ' has 
 absolutely no point in common with Seneca's plays ? It is a 
 drama as purely romantic as Lear or Hamlet. It does not 
 observe the unities, except perhaps the unity of place ; it has- 
 no Chorus ; one of the characters is obviously modelled on 
 the Shakspearian Clown ; * part of it is written in rhyme, part 
 of it in prose, and part of it in blank verse so loose and 
 straggling as to be scarcely distinguishable from prose. But 
 to proceed. Mr. Gosse speaks on page 118 of Fanshawe's 
 'little epic of Dido and JEneas;' Fanshawe's little epic, as 
 he would have seen if he had turned to it, is neither more 
 nor less than a translation of Virgil's Fourth ^neid in the 
 Spenserian stanza. On page 25, Henry More's philosophical 
 allegory, the Psychozoia, is described as an epic poem ! On 
 page 247 he informs us that the Faery Queen was re-written 
 by an anonymous hand in 1687. What this anonymous hand 
 re-wrote was simply the first book ; and as the volume was 
 licensed in 1686, we. presume that it was written not in 1687,, 
 but in or before 1686. On the same page we are told that 
 Butler, the author of Hudibras, ' re-wrote some of his most 
 characteristic pieces which had been composed in the older 
 prosody to conform them to the taste he had acquired.' He re- 
 wrote exactly one poem, the Elephant in the Moon. 
 
 There are many things in Mr. Gosse's volume, as we shall 
 presently show, which prove his utter incapacity for the task he 
 has undertaken, but nothing is more derogatory to him than his 
 habitual inaccuracy with respect to dates. However limited a 
 man's reading may be, however treacherous his memory, how- 
 ever slender his abilities, he has no excuse for making blunders- 
 of this kind. It is plain that Mr. Gosse, so far from attempting 
 to verify his dates, has not even troubled himself to consult the 
 title-pages of the works to which he refers. We will give a few 
 examples. He says on page 165, speaking of the heroic 
 quatrain, that Hobbes ' adopted it for his translation of Homer, 
 
 * Tlie character of Solyman. See the dialogue between him and the King, 
 act i. scene 2 ; and, again, the dialogue between him and the Tormentors, act iv.. 
 scene 1. 
 
 and 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 299' 
 
 and this was followed a dozen years later by Dryden's Annus- 
 Mirabilis.' Now the first instalment of Hobbes's Homer was 
 his translation of four books of the Odyssey published in 1674, 
 then followed his version of the whole Iliad in 1675, and of 
 the whole Odyssey in 1677. Dryden's Annus Mirabilis was 
 published in 1667, seven years before the first instalment of 
 Hobbes's Homer. Mr. Gosse tells us (p. 234) that Oldham died 
 in 1684. Oldham died in December 1683. He informs us (p. 64) 
 that certain verses quoted from Fenton were ' sung ' by that poet 
 in 1730. The verses occur in the dedication of Fenton's well- 
 known edition of Waller's Poems, which was published in 
 1729. He informs us (p. 252) that in 1684 Roscommon 'threw 
 off the constraint of rhyme in his Art of Poetry.' Roscom- 
 mon's Art of Poetry, or rather his translation of Horace's- 
 Ars Poetica, the work to which Mr. Gosse with characteristic 
 slovenliness alludes, appeared in 1680. Speaking of the year 
 1642, he s^ys : ' Ford and Massinger were resigning the art 
 which they had received,' &c. Massinger had been dead two- 
 years, he died in March 16|^^-, and it is probable that Ford died 
 about the same time. On page 11 it is confidently asserted 
 that Philips's Cyder was written in 1699. Philips's Cyder was- 
 published in 1708, and all that is known about the time of its 
 composition is that it was begun at Oxford and completed in 
 the year before its publication. That the first book could not 
 have been composed before 1705, and the second before 1706, is- 
 proved by internal evidence. In the first book there is an 
 allusion to Harley being a member of Anne's Privy Council,, 
 and Harley was sworn of the Privy Council in the spring of 
 1704. There is an allusion to the intense heat of the summer 
 and autumn of 1705, and to the death of Miss Winchecombe^ 
 Bolingbroke's sister-in-law, who died in the autumn of that 
 year. In the second book there is an allusion to the con- 
 summation of the union between England and Scotland, the 
 articles of which were signed in July 1706. So much for Mr.. 
 Gosse's assertion, that Philips's poem was written in 1699. On 
 page 121 it is stated that Corneille's famous comedy, the- 
 Menteur, belongs to the year 1646. Corneille's Menteur was 
 produced in 1642, and was first printed in October 1644. 
 On page 237 we are informed that Dr. AUestree, the Provost 
 of Eton, died in 1668. Dr. AUestree, the Provost of Eton,, 
 died on the 28th of January, 1685-. We are told on page 210,. 
 that John Norris's Miscellanies were brought out in 1678. 
 John Norris brought out his Miscellanies in 1687. Indeed, 
 Mr. Gosse appears to be incapable of transcribing a date 
 correctly, even when it must have been before his very eyes. On 
 
 page- 
 
300 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 page 55, for example, he twice asserts that Waller's verses To 
 the King on his Navy were written in 1621, when the date 
 1626 is given under the title of the poem. On page 84 we read, 
 ' It was during the famous debate of February 8th, 1642, on the 
 Ecclesiastical Petitions that Waller seems to have made up his 
 mind to quit his party.' The ' famous debate ' on the Ecclesi- 
 astical Petitions commenced on February 8th, 164^. We shall 
 not weary our readers by multiplying instances of these 
 blunders, for we have cited quite enough to show how far Mr. 
 Gosse's chronological statements are to be depended on. But the 
 following is so exquisitely characteristic, not only of Mr. Gosse 
 himself but of the Dilettanti School generally, that we cannot 
 pass it by. ' Late in the summer, one handsome and gallant 
 young fellow ' — Mr. Gosse is speaking of the death of Sidney 
 Godolphin — ' riding down the deep -leaved lanes that led from 
 Dartmoor . . . , met a party of Roundheads, was cut down and 
 killed ' (p. 109). Now Sidney Godolphin was killed at the end 
 of January 164|^, when the lanes were, we apprehend, not deep- 
 leaved; he was, it may be added, not handsome, for Clarendon 
 especially enlarges on the meanness of his person ; he was not 
 ^ cut down and killed,' he was shot dead by a musket ball ; he 
 was not meeting a party of Roundheads in the lanes, he was 
 pursuing them into Chagford.* 
 
 We are sorry to say that, bad as all this is, worse is to come. 
 Almost all Mr. Gosse's statements and generalizations, literary 
 and historical alike, are on a par with his chronology. There 
 is not a chapter — nay, if we except the Appendices and index, it 
 would be difficult to find five consecutive pages which do not 
 swarm with errors and absurdities. And the peculiarity of 
 Mr. Gosse's errors is, that they cannot be classed among those to 
 which even well-informed men are liable. They are not mere 
 slips of the pen, they are not clerical and superficial, not such 
 as, casually arising, may be easily excised, but they are, to 
 borrow a metaphor from medicine, local manifestations of 
 constitutional mischief. The ignorance which Mr. Gosse dis- 
 plays of the simplest facts of Literature and History is suffi- 
 ciently extraordinary, but the recklessness with which he 
 exposes that ignorance transcends belief. Will our readers 
 credit that Mr. Gosse attributes the pseudo-classicism of the 
 diction of the eighteenth-century poetry to the influence of the 
 writings of Anthony Ashley Cooper,'Tirst Earl of Shaftesbury ; f 
 that he asserts that ' i t was Waller's duty to seize English 
 
 * Clarendon, 'History,' book vi. ; id., 'Life of Himself,' p. 24. 
 t Page 12 and Index. 
 
 Poetry 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 301 
 
 Poetry bj the win^s, and to shut it up in a cage for a hundred 
 and fifty years ' ; * that Cleveland and Wild were the leaders 
 of a reaction against the classical school ; f and that he 
 accounts for the fact, that it was Waller who 'revolutionized' 
 poetry in England, and not Milton, ' because Milton was born 
 three years later than Waller'? The latter part of this amazing 
 nonsense we give in Mr. Gosse's own words : — 
 
 ' Why was it not John Milton instead of Edmund Waller to whom 
 it was given to revolutionize poetry in England? Here again, as 
 everywhere, where we look closely into the historic development of 
 literature, we see the value of dates and the paramount importance 
 of a clear chronological sequence. Broadly speaking, it was because 
 Milton was born three years later than Waller, and did not so rapidly 
 come to maturity, that we did not receive from him a classical bias 
 which would have been something very different from Waller's.' 
 —Page 40. 
 
 We shall certainly not condescend to discuss such stuff as 
 this. We may, however, remark, with regard to the assertion 
 about Shaftesbury, that Mr. Gosse has of course confounded 
 the Shaftesbury of the Cabal — the great Shaftesbury who was 
 the first Earl — with the Shaftesbury of the Characteristics, who 
 was the third Earl. And this is a University Lecturer ! We 
 need scarcely say that the Shaftesbury of the Characteristics 
 was as guiltless of being the first to corrupt diction with the 
 peculiar kind of classicism to which Mr. Gosse alludes, as the 
 Shaftesbury of the Cabal. If Mr. Gosse were not ignorant of 
 the very rudiments of the history of our prose literature, he 
 would know that the style of which he is speaking was simply 
 a phase of Euphuism, that it is abundantly illustrated in 
 such well-known books as Howel's Familiar Letters, pub- 
 lished in 1645, quarter of a century before Shaftesbury was 
 born, and Urquhart's Jewel, published in 1652, and that it is 
 to be found in full perfection, as Dunlop's extract shows, in 
 the romance of Eliana, published nearly fifty years before the 
 earliest of Shaftesbury's compositions saw the light. 
 
 But to proceed. What, in Mr. Gosse's opinion, constitutes 
 one of Waller's chief claims to the honour of ' having revolu- 
 tionized our poetry,' is the fact that he was the first who, in 
 composing heroic couplets, terminated on principle the sense 
 with the couplet. That Waller was writing in this style as 
 early as 1621, is Mr. Gosse's grand discovery ; and as a proof 
 that Waller was writing in this style as early as 1621, Mr. Gosse 
 
 * Page 47. t Pases 183-4. 
 
 characteristically 
 
302 English Literature at the Uniuersities. 
 
 ■characteristically cites a poem written in or after 1626 ;* ' I shall 
 show,' he says in another place, ' by irrefragable proof that 
 Waller was writing didactic occasional poems in distichs which 
 were often as good as Dryden's ever became' — he means, we 
 .presume, poems in which the proportion of distichs is as great 
 •as will be found in Dryden's poems — ' as early as 1623 ' (p. 20). 
 Mr. Gosse does not seem to be aware that Johnson and others 
 had made the same astounding discovery, though without 
 ■drawing the same astounding conclusion. 'In his eighteenth 
 year,' says Johnson, ' Waller wrote the poem On the Prince's 
 Escape at St. Andero, a piece which justifies the observation 
 ■made by one of his editors, that he attained by a felicity like 
 instinct a style which will perhaps never be obsolete. His 
 versification was, in his first essay, such as it appears in his 
 last performance.'! Indeed, there is nothing in Mr. Gosse's 
 Tolume more annoying than his habit of perpetually thrusting 
 himself into prominence where there is no occasion for it. 
 Who requires irrefragable proofs of dates and facts which no 
 ■one questions, and which are to be found in so common a book 
 ■as Johnson's Lives ? There are probably not half-a-dozen well- 
 read people in England who do not know that the famous lines 
 in Denham's ' Cooper's Hill ' beginning ' O could I flow like 
 "thee,' were added in the second edition. Indeed, they are the 
 stock illustration of what Johnson calls ' felicitous afterthoughts.' 
 Now hear Mr. Gosse, announcing another ' discovery ' ; ' There 
 exists a mystery about these lines. In collating the first 
 ■edition I was amazed to find them absent, and they do not 
 ■occur,' X &c. A very offensive instance of the same kind of 
 thing may be found on pp. 159-60. Speaking of a certain 
 well-known pamphlet relating to ' Gondibert,' — ' Certain verses 
 written by several of the author's friends to be reprinted with 
 the second edition of " Gondibert," ' — Mr. Gosse says, referring 
 ■to its authorship, ' I believe that I detect Denham, Cleveland, 
 the younger Donne, and Jasper Mayne, as the wicked anony- 
 mous quartet;' adding, in a note, 'After forming this conjecture, 
 
 * Page 55. The poem which Mr. Gosse cites is the poem to the 'Kiag on his 
 ISTavy,' -which was certainly not written before 1626, and may, as Fentou supposes, 
 have been -written as late as 1635 ; but the poem to which he means to allude is 
 no doubt the verses on His Majesty's escape in the Koad at St. Andero, which 
 ■one editor dates 1621, but whicli could not have been written before the autumn 
 of 1623, as the event to which they refer occurred either at the end of September 
 or the beginning of October in that year. 
 
 t 'Life of Waller.' 
 
 X Among many other places where this had been pointed out, it may suffice to 
 specify the following ; Spence's ' Anecdotes ' (Singer's edit.), p. 218. Malono, 
 'Prose Works of Dryden,' vol. iv. p. 521, note. Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' 
 •(Cunningham's edition), vol. i. p. 78. Moore's "Life of Byron,' vol. ii. p. 193. 
 ■Ohalmeis's ' Biog. Diet.,' art. Denham.' Campbell's ' Specimens,' ed. 1841, p. 244. 
 
 I discovered, 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 303 
 
 I discovered, in a copy of the 1653 pamphlet in the Library of 
 Yale College a MS. note suggesting that the four authors were 
 Denham, the younger Donne, Sir Allen Broderick, and William 
 Crofts.' Now Mr. Gosse must have been perfectly aware that 
 what he ' detected ' and « discovered ' had been long ago detected 
 and discovered by Isaac Disraeli in a work as well known as any 
 work in the English language. « It is said,' observes Disraeli, 
 referring to this tract, ' that there were four writers, probably 
 Sir John Denham and Jo. Donne, Sir Allen Broderick and 
 Will Crofts.'* A still more offensive illustration of this 
 officious egotism will be found on page 243. If there is any 
 fact in biographical chronology which has never been disputed, 
 it is that Denham died in March 166|. That date was 
 €ntered, and may still, of course, be seen, in the register at the 
 Abbey ; it is given correctly by Anthony Wood, by Johnson, 
 by Chalmers; it is, with two exceptions, given correctly in 
 every biographical dictionary, in every encyclopaedia, in every 
 manual of English Literature which we have consulted. But 
 in the ' Biographia Britannica,' 1688 chances, by a mere clerical 
 error, to be substituted for 1668. This gives Mr. Gosse an 
 opportunity for displaying his knowledge of 'contemporary 
 records' — these 'contemporary records' dwindling somewhat 
 ignominiously into two or three extracts from ' Pepys's Diary : ' 
 * In many text-books,' he begins by observing, ' the date of 
 Denham's death is given as 1688. But this seems highly 
 improbable. From contemporary records I have collected a 
 few dates,' &c. . . . ' On the 21st of February, 1665, Pepys 
 dined with Denham, who was evidently perfectly well. ... In 
 the early part of 1666 the Duke of York's attentions to Lady 
 Denham became marked ; in the summer she yields to them, and 
 Denham becomes mad. In 1668 Pepys hears a rumour of his 
 •death, which rumour may or may not be true, but has no doubt 
 introduced that date into the text-books.' And so on. It was this 
 rumour, we presume, which accounts for the entry of Denham's 
 burial in the register at the Abbey, a reference to which would 
 have saved us from all this ' skimble skamble stuff' about 
 contemporary records, rumours and text-books. 
 
 But these are trifles. We return to Mr. Gosse's grand dis- 
 covery, that we owe to Waller ' the first experiment in distich ' 
 (p. 40) ; that Waller was, that is to say, the first who in com- 
 posing the heroic couplet ' concluded the sense in the couplet,' 
 and that he was writing in distichs in 1621, nearly quarter of 
 a century before any one else in England was doing so ' (p. 55). 
 No more absurd statement was ever made. Before 1557 
 Nicholas Grimoald was thus writing heroic couplets : — 
 
 * ' Calamities and Quarrels of AutUora ' (Popular Edition), p. 409. 
 
 'In 
 
304 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 ' In mean is virtue plac'd ; on either side, 
 Both right and left, amiss a man may slide. 
 Icar, with fire hadst thou the midway flown, 
 Icarian heck by name had no man known. 
 If middle path had kept proud Phaeton 
 Ne burning brand this earth had fallen upon. 
 Ne cruel power, ne none so soft can reign, 
 That keeps a mean the same shall still maintain.' 
 
 And so on through the whole poem.* 
 
 Before 1593 Robert Greene was thus habitually writing heroic 
 couplets : — 
 
 ' Most gracious King, — that they that little prove 
 Are mickle blest from hitter sweets of love. 
 And well I wot 1 heard a shepherd sing, 
 That like a bee, Love hath a little sting ; 
 He lurks in flowers, he percheth on the trees, 
 He on king's pillows bends his pretty knees. 
 The boy is blind, but when he will not spy. 
 He hath a leaden foot and wings to fly.' t 
 
 Before 1597 Hall was thus writing: — 
 
 ' Their royal plate was clay, or wood, or stone ; 
 The vulgar, save his hand, else had he none. 
 Their only cellar was the neighbour brook ; 
 None did for better care, for better look. 
 Was then no plaining of the brewer's scape, 
 Nor greedy vintner mix'd the strained grape. 
 The King's pavilion was the grassy green 
 Under safe shelter of the shady treen. 
 Under each bank men laid their limbs along. 
 Not wishing any ease, not fearing wrong.' % 
 
 And so habitually does Hall confine the sense to the couplet, 
 that of the forty couplets of which the ' Satire ' from which we 
 have quoted is composed, there are only two in which the 
 second line flows over into the first line of the following couplet. 
 At least ten years before Waller had published a line, George 
 Sandys was writing heroic couplets simply undistinguishable 
 from Pope's couplets, of which these are the type : — 
 
 ' Our graver Muse from her long dream awakes, 
 Peneian groves and Cirrha's caves forsakes ; 
 Inspir'd with zeal, she climbs th' etherial hills 
 Of Solyma, where bleeding balm distills ; 
 Where trees of life unfading youth assure, 
 And living waters all diseases cure.' 
 
 * ' Praise of Measure keeping,' (published iu Tottel'a ' Miscellany,' 1557). 
 
 t 'James IV.,' act i. so. 1. 
 
 X Hall's ' Satires,' Sat. 1, Bk. iii. (published in 1597). 
 
 But 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 305 
 
 But we need go no further than page 246 to show how utterly 
 erroneous, how incredibly reckless Mr. Gosse's assertions are. 
 He there observes that ' Herrick for once in his life, merely 
 because he had been reading Cooper's Hill, writes in excel- 
 lent distichs ; ' and he then proceeds to quote six lines, adding, 
 ' No one would suspect that these lines were written by the 
 song-bird of the Hesperides.' Why, the very opening lines 
 of the ' Hesperides ' are composed in distichs as correct and 
 smooth as Pope's, in distichs infinitely more musical than 
 Waller ever wrote : — 
 
 ' I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, 
 Of April, May, of June, and July flowers. 
 I sing of maypoles, hock carts, wassails, wakes, 
 Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes. 
 
 * « « « « 
 
 I sing of dewes and rains, and, piece by piece. 
 Of balm, of oil, of spice and ambergreece. 
 I sing of times trans-shifting ; and I write 
 How roses first came red, and lilies white.' 
 
 And distichs as finished as these are to be found by hundreds 
 in Herrick's poems. After this, our readers will probably not 
 be surprised to hear, on Mr. Gosse's authority, that ' the dactylic 
 and anapaestic movement was, curiously enough, entirely unknown 
 to the Elizabethans ' (p. 10). It would, however, be interesting 
 to know how he scans such verses as Tusser's : — 
 
 ' God sendeth and giveth both mouth and the meat. 
 And blesseth us all with his benefits great. 
 Then serve we the God who so richly doth give. 
 Shew love to our neighbours, and lay for to live,' &c. 
 
 And such verses abound in Tusser. 
 Or Haywood's : — 
 
 ' Now woe with the willow and woe with the wight. 
 That windeth willow, willow garland to dight; 
 That dole dealt in allmesse is all amiss quite. 
 Where lovers are beggars for allmesse in sight,' &o. 
 
 Or Jonson's : — 
 
 ' My masters and friends and good people draw near, 
 . And look to your purses for that I do say,' &c. 
 
 Or the song attributed to Lyly : — 
 
 ' Bound about, round about in a fine ring-a. 
 Thus we dance, thus we dance and thus we sing-a. 
 Trip and go, to and fro, over this green-a, 
 All about, in and out, for our brave Queen-a.' 
 Vol. 163.— iVo. 326. X Or 
 
306 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 Or Fletcher's : — 
 
 ' Come, Fortune's a jade, I care not who tell her. 
 Would offer to strangle a page of the cellar ; 
 But thus she does still, when she pleases to palter, 
 Instead of his wages she gives him a halter.' 
 
 The truth of course is, that the dactylic and anapjEstie 
 rhythm, though rarely used in serious poetry, was habitually 
 used by the Elizabethan writers in semi-serious and comic 
 poetry. 
 
 On page 165 we find the following amazing statement. 
 Speaking of Dryden's employment of the heroic quatrain in 
 the Annus Mirabilis (1667), Mr. Gosse goes on to inform us,, 
 that the heroic quatrain ' was not again employed all through 
 the Restoration or the Augustan age, nor again until, in 1743,. 
 the Earl of Chesterfield brought out the posthumous Elegies 
 of his young cousin Hammond.' The heroic quatrain was- 
 employed habitually by poets between 1667 and 1743. It was 
 employed by Aphra Behn ; it was employed by Blackmore ; it 
 was employed by Wycherley, by Sheffield, by Walsh, by Garth,, 
 by Prior, by Swift, by Hughes, by Rowe, by Gay, not reckoning 
 the continuation of Gondibertj which is probably not genuine ^ 
 it was employed by Pope, by Parnell, by Savage, by Aaron 
 Hill. 
 
 But this is nothing to what follows. Our readers will pro- 
 bably believe us to be jesting when we inform them that 
 Mr. Gosse deliberately asserts, that between 1660 and * about 
 1 760 ' Milton and Roscommon were the only poets who employed 
 blank verse : — '- 
 
 ' From 1660 onwards to about 1760 the exact opposite was the- 
 case (that is, that the couplet superseded blank verse). A poet- 
 of decent abilities was sure of readers if he would write in the 
 couplet.' Then, in a note, he adds : ' Milton would stand absolutely- 
 alone in his preference of another form if Eoscommon, also in 1684,, 
 in emulation of " Paradise Lost," had not chosen to throw off what he 
 calls the restraint of Kime in his Art of Poetry.' 
 
 Has Mr. Gosse ever inspected the All for Love and the- 
 Don Sebastian of Dryden ; the Mourning Bride of Congreve ;. 
 the Julius Caesar of Sheffield ; the blank verse tragedies of 
 Crowne ; the later dramas of Davenant ; the tragedies of Otway^ 
 Lee, Southern, Rowe, Lillo, and Thomson ; Addison's tragedy 
 of Cato ; Smith's tragedy of Hippolytus ; Hughes's Siege of 
 Damascus ; Johnson's Irene ? Has he ever read Roscommon's 
 own parody of Milton, inserted in the Essay on Translated 
 Verse; or Addison's Ovidian translation in Miltonic verse; 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 307 
 
 or Lady Winchelsea's Fanscomb Barn ; or Philips's Splendid 
 Shilling, Blenheim, and Cyder ; or Aaron Hill's Cleon to 
 Lycidas ? Can he be unaware that within those years were 
 published Thomson's Seasons and Liberty ; Dyer's Ruins 
 of Rome, and Fjeece ; Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination ; 
 Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health; Somerville's Chace, and 
 Hobbinol ; Glover's Leonidas, Mallet's Excursion, Blair's 
 Grave, Young's Night Thoughts, not to speak of innumerable 
 other poems less celebrated ? 
 
 Nor is Mr. Gosse more to be depended on when he favours us 
 with remarks on Italian literature. We give one specimen : — 
 
 ' A sort of classical revival was attempted at the close of the six- 
 teenth century by Chiabrera, who, in disdaining the folly of 
 Marinists and in trying to recall his countrymen to a Greek simplicity, 
 attained a position somewhat analogous to that of Cowley. But he 
 stood alone until Filicaja came.' — Page 15. 
 
 The impression which such statements as these must produce 
 on a reader who knows anything of the poetry of Chiabrera and 
 his contemporaries and successors, it would be difficult to 
 describe. No mere enumeration of positive blunders could 
 convey any idea of its absurdity. It may, however, be suffi- 
 cient to say, that two-thirds of Chiabrera's most characteristic 
 poems were published before Marini had given a line to the 
 world ; that, so far from Chiabrera standing alone, he Was the 
 master of a flourishing school of disciples and imitators, and 
 of such disciples and imitators as Fulvio Testi, Virginio Cesa- 
 rini, and Giovanni Ciampoli ; and that, so far from recalling 
 his countrymen to ' Greek simplicity ' — whatever that may 
 mean — he was not only an imitator of Pindar, but out-Pin- 
 dared Pindar in the elaborate pomp, and studied artificiality of 
 his diction. 
 
 But the recklessness with which Mr. Gosse displays his 
 ignorance of the very elements of literature is, if possible, 
 exceeded by the recklessness with which he displays his igno- 
 rance of the commonest facts of history and biography. We 
 will give one or two examples. In the life of Waller, Mr. 
 Gosse finds this sentence: 'Mr. Saville used to say that no 
 man in England should keep him company without drinking 
 but Ned Waller.' This becomes, in Mr. Gosse's narrative, 
 ' George Savile, Lord Halifax, the famous viveur, and a pupil of 
 Waller's, in verse, said,' &c. (p. 236). It would be difficult 
 to match this. Nearly every word is a blunder. Indeed, we 
 will boldly say that, if our own or any other literature were 
 ransacked, it would be ransacked in vain for a sentence which 
 
 X 2 condenses 
 
308 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 condenses so many errors and so much of that crassa negligeniia, 
 which is as reprehensible in writers as it is in lawyers and 
 doctors. George Savile, Lord Halifax, who is apparently known 
 only to Mr. Gosse as ' the famous viveur^ was, as we need 
 scarcely say, one of the most distinguished statesmen of the 
 seventeenth century. He was in no sense of the word a viveur. 
 He was not a pupil of Waller. He never, so far as is recorded, 
 wrote a line of verse in his life. But there was another Lord 
 Halifax, who might perhaps be known to Mr. Gosse only in 
 connection with his convivial habits and his bad poetry, but 
 who is known to everyone else as the Originator of the National 
 Debt, as the Founder of the Bank of England, and as the most 
 eminent financier in English history. It is this Lord Halifax 
 who might, as the author of a copy of verses on the death of 
 Charles IL, be described as a pupil of Waller. And it is of 
 this Lord Halifax that Mr. Gosse is probably thinking. But 
 the name of this Lord Halifax was, unfortunately for Mr. Gosse, 
 Charles Montague. The ' Mr. Savile ' alluded to, was in truth 
 neither George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, nor Charles Mon- 
 tague, Earl of Halifax, but Henry Savile a younger son of Sir 
 William Savile, and a younger brother of the Marquis. 
 
 ' When the Queen fled from Exeter,' says Mr. Gosse, ' with 
 the new-born Princess of Wales in July 1644 ' (p. 113). If 
 Mr. Gosse had consulted his ' eminent friend,' Professor Gar- 
 diner, he would have learned that the younger daughters of 
 English Kings are not Princesses of Wales ; and as he appears 
 to be fond of picturesque touches, he might, had he pushed 
 his enquiries, have ascertained that to this particular child a 
 peculiar interest is attached. If too, when writing the lines 
 which follow, he had taken the trouble to turn to the Bio- 
 graphia Britannica, he would have discovered that ' the young 
 Duke of Newcastle,' who ' fled from defeat at Marston Moor,' 
 was in his fifty-third year, and that he was, moreover, not a 
 Duke, but a Marquis. 
 
 We proceed to something much more serious. To the his- 
 torian of Literature nothing should be so sacred as the reputa- 
 tion of the Dead, and on no point is he bound in honour to be 
 more sensitively scrupulous than when he is called upon to 
 discuss anything which may reflect unfavourably on that repu- 
 tation. Now on the same page (p. 113), we find a statement 
 which, unless Mr. Gosse is prepared to produce his authority for 
 it, we do not scruple to designate a gross and shameful libel on 
 the memory of as worthy a man as ever lived, '■ James Shirley, 
 who had left a starving wife and children behind him, was in 
 attendance (at Paris) upon his Royal Mistress.' This is repeated 
 
English Literature at tlie Universities. 309 
 
 on pp. 117, 118. Speaking of the 'balls, comedies and prome- 
 nades,' with which • the English exiles were regaled at Fontaine- 
 bleau,' in 1646 and 1647, Mr. Gosse says that Shirley was 
 ' certainly ' present at them. Waller and Hobbes probably, but 
 Shirley ' certainly.' Now our only authority for the life of Shir- 
 ley is Anthony Wood, and what Wood says is this : — ' When 
 the rebellion broke out Shirley was invited by his patron, New- 
 castle, to attend him in the war.' This Shirley appears to have 
 done. But after the King's cause declined — we give Wood's 
 own words — ' he, following his old trade of teaching, not only 
 gained a comfortable subsistence, but educated many ingenious 
 youths, who afterwards proved most eminent in divers faculties.' 
 In this honourable drudgery, undertaken for the support of his 
 wife and children, all Shirley's life between about 1644 and 
 1660, appears to have been passed, and his conduct has elicited 
 just praise from his biographers. If Mr. Gosse is in possession 
 of documents hitherto unknown, it was his duty to have specified 
 them, and it is his duty to produce them. Till he does so we shall 
 continue to believe that this is only one of his many other loose 
 and random assertions, and to protest against such unwarrantable 
 liberties being taken with the biographies of eminent men. 
 
 We have by no means exhausted the list of Mr. Gosse's 
 
 blunders, but we have, we fear, exhausted the patience of our 
 
 readers. What further remarks, therefore, we have to make 
 
 shall be brief. We have given a few specimens of Mr. Gosse's 
 
 method of dealing with facts ; we will now give a few specimens 
 
 of his criticism. That excellent man, Mr. Pecksniff, was, we 
 
 are told, in the habit of using any word that occurred to him as 
 
 having a fine sound, and rounding a sentence well, without 
 
 much care for its meaning, ' and this,' says his biographer, 
 
 ' he did so boldly and in such an imposing manner, that he 
 
 would sometimes stagger the wisest people, and make them 
 
 gasp again.' This is precisely Mr. Gosse's method. About 
 
 the propriety of his epithets, so long as they sound well, 
 
 he never troubles himself ; sometimes they are so vague as 
 
 to mean anything, sometimes they have no meaning at all, 
 
 as often they are inconsistent with each other. What is 
 
 predicated of a work in one place is directly contradicted in 
 
 another. Thus (p. 34), Drayton's Barons' Wars is described as 
 
 ' a serene and lovely poem ;' on the very next page we are told 
 
 that a ' passionate music runs through it ; ' and on page 75 this 
 
 same ' serene and lovely poem ' is described as ' possessing 
 
 various brilliant and touching qualities, irregular force, and 
 
 sudden brilliance of style.' Thus, on page 158, Davenant's 
 
 Gondibert, coupled with Southey's Epics, is compared to ' a 
 
 vasi 
 
310 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 vast sapless trunk, one of the largest trees in girth and height, 
 but the deadest of them all, with scarcely a cluster of green 
 buds here and there ;' at the bottom of the same page we are 
 told that it owed its popularity ' to its gorgeous and exotic 
 imagery.' On page 121, the versification of Dryden is dis- 
 tinguished by its ' sullen majesty ;' Denham's lines on the 
 Thames are ' marvellous ;' Horace's Ars Poetica is a ' wonderful 
 prelude.' Milton and Crashaw ' sanctified the rainbow fancies 
 of the Marinist School by hallowing them to sacred uses' 
 (p. 172). Fulke Greville, whose cramped, condensed and 
 elliptic style has, as we need scarcely say, passed into a proverb, 
 possesses ' the old Sidneian sweetness.' Pope's Dunciad is 
 ' admirable for its facility of construction.' On page 71, a 
 battle between the islanders of Bermuda 'and two spermaceti 
 whales that had got stranded in a shallow bay,' is ' a sort of 
 pseudo-Homeric subject.' Mr. Gosse's observations are, it may- 
 be added, never so amusing as when he touches on points of 
 classical learning, and the extraordinary self-complacency with 
 which they are enunciated, adds to their absurdity. ' When 
 a young fellow,' he says, ' prefers Moschus to Homer, and 
 Ausonius to Virgil, we know how to class him.' Whether such 
 a young fellow has ever existed, or if he does exist, whether he 
 is worth classing at all, is probably a reflection which will 
 occur to most people. But when a young fellow, or an old 
 fellow, talks of ' the grace of Latinity ' (p. 11), or tells us that 
 it was the property of hellebore to produce forgetfulness (p. 46), 
 or informs us that Aristotle and Horace have left rules for the 
 composition of a ' straightforward prosaic poetry ' (p. 38), it is 
 not, we apprehend, very difficult to class him.* 
 
 Mr. Gosse, in paying an obscure dramatist the compliment 
 of quoting him, teJls us that he felt as though the ghost of the 
 poet whom he had thus honoured ' might be breathing hard by 
 his side at the excitement of resuscitation.' We are inclined to 
 think that if the ghosts of Macaulay and Spedding could have 
 rambled into the old beloved Hall during the delivery of these 
 lectures, Mr. Gosse might have heard them also ' breathing 
 hard,' not ' at the excitement of resuscitation,' but in excitement, 
 having its origin from a very different cause. 
 
 If we turn from the matter of Mr. Gosse's volume to the style 
 
 * It is a great misfortune to Mr. Gosse that his work cannot be estimated by 
 the Index, which, to do him justice, is a model of its kind. But it is a very 
 Barmecide Feast. Under the heading, for example, of Aristotle, we find ' Aris- 
 totle's rules for composition,' but on referring to the page indicated — page 38 — 
 for those rules, we are concerned to see them dwindling down to the insignificant 
 proportions of the short clause we have just quoted. 
 
 and 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 311 
 
 and the diction, it is equally surprising that any University 
 could have sanctioned its publication. How even the reader 
 for the press could have allowed such words as ' preciosity,' 
 * recrudescence,' ' solidarity,' ' rejuvenescence,' ' alembicated,' or 
 such phrases as ' the lively actuality of a newsletter,' ' a personal 
 sympathy with vegetation,' ' the excitement of resuscitation,' and 
 the like, to pass unchallenged, is to us inexplicable. Was there 
 no one who could save Mr. Gosse from making himself ridicu- 
 lous by such eloquence as this : ' We who can see this Orpheus- 
 like Charles torn to pieces by the outraged liberties of England, 
 and that comely head floating down the Hebrus of the Revolu- 
 tion ' ? — (p. 81). Could the Delegates of the Cambridge Press 
 have been blind to the ludicrous impropriety of permitting what 
 was intended to be a serious treatise on English Literature to be 
 prefaced by a copy of silly verses, in which the author — an 
 official of the University — assures his readers that he is — 
 
 ' Less than bird or shell, 
 More volatile, more fragile far than these.' 
 
 Nor does the bad taste — to call it by no harsher name — which 
 is conspicuous throughout the book, less jar on us. Speaking, 
 for example, of Waller's Battle of the Summer Islands, 
 Mr. Gosse observes, ' My own belief is that the astute Waller, 
 having property on the Islands, wrote his heroic poem and 
 circulated it among wealthy and noble friends as an advertise- 
 ment.' Can Mr. Gosse possibly be ignorant that Waller was a 
 gentleman ? So again, when he talks of the ' tattling monkey- 
 tongue ' of Pope, we have an example of one of the most 
 detestable fashions of modern times — we mean the pert irre- 
 verence with which very little men are in the habit of speaking 
 of great men. 
 
 And now we bring to a conclusion one of the most disagree- 
 able tasks which it has ever been our lot to undertake. Our 
 motives for undertaking it have already been explained. 
 Had Mr. Gosse's volume been published in the ordinary way, 
 we need scarcely say that we should not have noticed it. Had 
 its errors and deficiencies been pointed out in the literary 
 journals, we should probably have comforted ourselves with the 
 thought, that what had been done once need not be done again. 
 But when we saw that it came forth, carrying all the authority 
 of a work published by a great University, and under the 
 auspices of the most distinguished community in that Univer- 
 sity, and that so far from the literary journals estimating it at 
 its true value, and placing students on their guard against its 
 errors, Review vied with Review in fulsome and indiscrimi- 
 
 nating 
 
312 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 nating eulogy,* we felt we had no choice. It was simply our 
 duty, our imperative duty, in the interests of literature and in 
 the interests of education, to speak out. That duty we have 
 endeavoured to perform temperately and candidly. We have 
 perverted nothing. We have coloured nothing. Had it been 
 our object to make game of the book, it would not, we can 
 assure Mr. Gosse, have been very difficult. Though we have, 
 we own, been strongly tempted to comment as severely on his- 
 delinquencies as they certainly deserve, we have deliberately 
 forborne. We have even refrained from discussing matters 
 of opinion. We have confined ourselves entirely to matters 
 of fact— to gross and palpable blunders, to unfounded and 
 reckless assertions, to such absurdities in criticism and such 
 vices of style as will in the eyes of discerning readers carry 
 with them their own condemnation. When we consider the 
 circulation secured to this volume from the mere fact of its 
 having issued from so famous a press, and under such dis- 
 tinguished patronage, it is melancholy to think of the errors to 
 which it will give currency. We only hope that our exposure 
 of them will have the effect of serving in some degree to 
 counteract the mischief. 
 
 Now the Universities must know, or ought to know, that this 
 kind of thing will not do. If they are resolved to encourage 
 the study of English Literature, it is their duty to see that it is 
 studied properly. If it is not studied properly, the sooner they 
 cease to profess to study it the better. No good can possibly 
 come from Dilettantism. No good can possibly come from 
 unskilled teaching. To tolerate either is to defeat the purposes- 
 for which the Universities are designed, is to initiate corrup- 
 tion which will inevitably spread, is to establish precedents 
 which time will confirm. We have already pointed out the 
 responsibility which rests with the centres of education in days 
 like these, and it is, therefore, with just alarm that we find them, 
 countenancing, in any subject represented by them, such' work 
 as the work on which we have been animadverting. 
 
 But whatever be the faults of Mr. Gosse's book, it will not, 
 we hope, be without its use. If it illustrates comprehensively 
 the manner in which English literature should not be taught^ 
 it may, on the ' lucus a non lucendo ' principle, direct attention 
 to the manner in which it should be taught, and on that subject 
 
 * One of our leading literary journals terminated a review which, though 
 extending to six columns, did not point out a single error, with these words : 
 ' It is a volume not to be glanced over and thrown aside, and we recommend the 
 student of English Poetry to read it twice and consult it often.' Such is some- 
 times the value of ' review ' advertisements. 
 
 we 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 313 
 
 we propose to make a few remarks. The first fact which the 
 Universities ought to recognize is, that a literature, which is 
 represented by such poets as Shakespeare and Milton, as Pope 
 and Wordsworth, and by such prose writers as Bacon and 
 Hooker, as Gibbon and Burke, is a very serious thing, much 
 too serious a thing to be abandoned either to unskilled teachers 
 or to philologists ; that it is a literature not inferior in intrinsic 
 merit to the literatures of the Ancient World, that it is, there- 
 fore, from an historical point of view, worthy of minute, of 
 patient, of systematic study ; and that, regarded as an instru- 
 ment of culture, it is — if studied in a liberal and enlightened 
 spirit — of the utmost value and importance. But of this, to 
 judge from such books as Mr. Gosse's on the one hand, and by 
 such editions of the English classics as the Clarendon Press 
 provides on the other hand, the Universities appear at present 
 to have no conception. We are very far from wishing to 
 speak disrespectfully of the Clarendon Press publications, for 
 they are, so far as they go, sound and thorough — the work, 
 as a rule, of accurate and painstaking scholars. But their 
 radical defect lies in the fact, that they do not sufficiently 
 distinguish between philology and literature. Instead of 
 regarding a great poem or a great drama as the expression of 
 genius and art, they appear to regard it merely as a monument 
 of language. They dwell with tedious and unnecessary 
 minuteness on points which can interest none but grammarians 
 and philologists, and out of this narrow sphere they seldom or 
 never travel, unless perhaps to explain some historical allusion, 
 to discuss some problem in antiquities, or to accumulate wholly 
 superfluous parallel passages. In the Clarendon Press edition 
 of Milton, for example, nothing is so common as to find a 
 quarter of a page of notes, of which the following is a sample : 
 
 '1. 619. Cp. Ovid, 'Metamorphoses,' xi. 419; 'Faery Queen,' 1, 
 
 xi. 4. 
 1. 624. Op. Ovid, ' Metamorphoses,' ix. 6. 
 1. 63a. Cp. Horace, ' Odes,' iii. 2, 17. 
 
 1. 633. Cp. 'Paradise Lost,' ii. 692; v. 710 ; vi. 156; Eev. 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. Cf. v. 869 ; 
 
 ix. 11 ; xii. 78. 
 1. 659. 'Hiad.'i. 140. 
 1. 660. peace is despair'd, a Latinism. So ' despair thy charm,' 
 
 Macbeth, v. 7. 
 
 No one could say of the author of notes like these that he 
 displays either want of industry or want of learning, but such 
 
 notes 
 
•314 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 notes are, from an educational point of view, all but useless ; 
 they are even worse ; they render what should be an agreeable 
 and profitable study, simply repulsive. They serve no end; 
 they satisfy no need. It is on this ground, therefore, that we 
 think the Clarendon Press series unsatisfactory. They err not 
 on the side of superficiality or on the side of crude and im- 
 perfect learning, but on the side of too narrow a conception of 
 the scope and method of interpreting literature ; they err, in 
 short, as Pope taunted Kuster and Burmann with erring : 
 
 * The critic eye, that microscope of wit, 
 Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit,' 
 
 'but fails to see 
 
 ' How parts relate to parts, or they to whole, 
 The body's harmony, the beaming soul.' 
 
 That pedantry is, when allied with learning, a far less evil 
 than dilettantism, no one would dispute. Such a study of the 
 English Classics as the Clarendon Press editors prescribe, is 
 not, indeed, calculated either to enlarge a youth's mind or to 
 refine his taste ; it is still less calculated to awaken rational 
 •curiosity, or to inspire a love of literature for its own sake ; but, 
 regarded as a mode of discipline, it may possibly, in some 
 cases, be of service in forming and confirming habits of accuracy, 
 and, within certain limits, habits of thoroughness, and in 
 training and strengthening the memory. But this cannot be 
 pleaded in favour of dilettantism. Of all the pests that beset 
 and impede culture, dilettantism is by far the most mischievous. 
 It is to real learning precisely what the phantom sent by Juno 
 to deceive Turnus was to the real jEneas. It assumes its form ; 
 it brandishes what seem to be its weapons ; it mimics its gait ; 
 it simulates its speech. But it is a mockery and a fraud. It 
 serves only to delude and mislead. Nor is this all. It is not 
 simply an intellectual, but a m.oral evil. It encourages those 
 lazy and desultory habits into which young students are 
 •especially prone to fall. It tends to render them indifferent to 
 the distinction between accuracy and inaccuracy, between truth 
 and falsehood. It emasculates, it corrupts, it strikes at the 
 very root of that conscientiousness and honesty, that absolute 
 ■sincerity, which is, or ought to be, the first article in the creed 
 •of every scholar and of every teacher. 
 
 But the time will, we trust, come when Oxford and 
 •Cambridge will see the necessity of raising the study of our 
 national literature to its proper level in education, and when 
 neither dilettantism nor pedantry will be permitted to stand 
 in the way of that study. But before that can be done, they 
 
 must 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 315 
 
 must recognize the distinction between philology and literature, 
 between the significance of the ' Literae Humaniores ' as in- 
 terpreted by verbal critics, and their significance as interpreted 
 by such critics as Lessing and Coleridge. They must think 
 less of the letter and more of the spirit. They must cease to 
 dwell solely on what is accidental, and see the necessity for 
 penetrating to the essence which is the life. Philological 
 ■criticism is to criticism, in the proper sense of the term, what 
 anatomy is to psychology. Each has its importance, each 
 is in a manner related, and each should be studied, but who 
 would dream of confounding them ? The scalpel, which lays 
 bare every nerve and every artery in the mechanism of the body, 
 reveals nothing further. The Agamemnon and Macbeth are 
 as little likely to yield up the secret of their life to the verbal 
 scholar. 
 
 Much has recently been talked about the continuity of history, 
 and the erroneous views which must necessarily result from 
 studying it piecemeal. The continuity of literature is a fact 
 of even more importance, and the persistency with which that 
 fact has been ignored has not only led to errors infinitely 
 more serious than any which can be imputed to historical 
 teachers, but has rendered our whole system of dealing with 
 literature, whether historically, in tracing its development, or 
 critically, in analysing its phenomena, as inadequate as it is 
 unsound. One of the most remarkable illustrations of this is 
 the fact, that the study of our own literature is, in all our schools 
 and colleges, separated on principle from the study of the 
 literatures of Greece and Rome. Its teachers are, as a rule, 
 men who make no pretension to classical learning, or, if they 
 possess it, never dream of applying it to the interpretation 
 of English. Not long ago an eminent London publisher 
 announced a series of annotated English Classics, one of the 
 ■chief attractions of which was that it was to be edited by ' none 
 but men who had made a special study of their mother tongue,' 
 as * the belief that a knowledge of Greek and Latin was a 
 ■qualification for editing English authors was,' so ran the 
 prospectus — ' a belief which the projectors of the series did not 
 share.' Now the literatures of Greece, Rome, and England, 
 are radically and essentially connected. What the literature of 
 •Greece is to that of Rome, the literatures of Greece and Rome 
 are to that of England. A scholar would at once see the absurdity 
 of separating the study of Roman literature from the study of 
 Greek literature, for the simple reason, that without a knowledge 
 oi the latter the former is unintelligible. We wonder what 
 would be thought of a man who should profess to interpret the 
 
 iEneid 
 
316 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 ^neid without possessing an adequate acquaintance with the 
 Homeric Poems, with the Attic Drama, with the poetry of 
 Alexandria; or of a man who set up to expound the Odes of 
 Horace, or to comment on the style of Sallust and Tacitus, who 
 was ignorant of Greek lyric poetry and of Thucydides. We 
 wonder what would be the fate of an editor of the Georgics 
 who knew nothing of the Works and Days ; of an editor of the 
 Bucolics, who knew nothing of the Sicilian Idylls; or of an 
 editor of Terence, who knew nothing of the New Comedy. 
 
 The absurdity of separating the study of our own classics 
 from the study of the classics of Greece and Rome is equally 
 great. Not only have most of our poets and all our best prose 
 writers, as well in the present age as in former ages, been 
 nourished on the literature of Greece and Rome ; not only have 
 the forms of at least two-thirds of our best poetry and of our best 
 prose derived their distinctive features from those literatures ; 
 not only has the influence of those literatures, alternately modi- 
 fying and moulding our own, determined its course and its 
 characteristics ; but a large portion of what is most valuable in 
 our poetry is as historically unintelligible, apart from the Greek 
 and Roman Classics, as the Epic and Lyric Poetry of Rome 
 would be apart from the Epic and Lyric Poetry of Greece, 
 Take, for example, the poetry of Milton. It would not be tod 
 much to say, that the literature of antiquity was to Milton's 
 genius what soil and light are to a plant. It nourished, it 
 coloured, it developed it. It determined not merely his cha- 
 racter as an artist, but it exercised an influence on his intellect 
 and temper scarcely less powerful than hereditary instincts and 
 contemporary history. It at once animated and chastened his 
 imagination ; it modified his fancy ; it furnished him with his 
 models. On it his taste was formed ; on it his style was 
 moulded. From it his diction and his method derived their 
 peculiarities. It transformed what would in all probability 
 have been the mere counterpart of Csedmon's Paraphrase or 
 Langland's Vision into Paradise Lost ; and what would have 
 been the mere counterpart of Corydon's Doleful Knell, and the 
 satire of the Three Estates, into Lycidas and Comus. ' The 
 poetry of Gray, again, can only be fully appreciated, can only, in 
 the proper sense of the term, be understood by those who are 
 familiar with the literatures from which its characteristics and 
 its inspiration are derived. And what is true of the poetry of 
 Milton and Gray is true of the poetry of innumerable others. 
 There is much in the very essence of Spenser's poetry, there is 
 much in the very essence of Wordsworth's poetry, which must 
 be absolutely without meaning to readers ignorant of the 
 
 Platonic 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 317 
 
 Platonic philosophy, to readers ignorant of the Phaedrus and 
 the Phaedo. Indeed the whole history of our early literature is 
 little less than the history of the modification of Teutonic and 
 Celtic elements by classical influences, as the history of the 
 later development of that literature is the history of the alter- 
 nate predominance of Classicism and Romanticism, It was the 
 Roman drama, slightlj' modified by the Italian playwrights of 
 the Renaissance, which determined the form of our Romantic 
 drama. On the epics of Greece and Rome are modelled our own 
 epics. Almost all our didactic poetry is professedly modelled 
 on the didactic poetry of Rome. One important branch of 
 our lyric poetry springs directly from Pindar; another im- 
 portant branch directly from Horace ; another again directly 
 from the Choral Odes of the Attic dramatists and Seneca. 
 Our heroic satire, from Hall to Byron, is simply the counterpart, 
 often indeed a mere imitation, of Roman satire. . The Epistles 
 which fill so large a space in the poetical literature of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries derived their origin from 
 those of Horace. To the Heroides of Ovid we owe a whole 
 series of important poems. From them ' Chaucer borrowed tbe 
 jnaterial for the most delightful of his minor works ; on them 
 Drayton modelled his Heroical Epistles, and Pope his Eloisa 
 to Abelard. The tone, the style, the method, of such narratives 
 as Beaumont's Bosworth Field and Addison's Campaign, 
 themselves the subject of numberless imitations, are borrowed 
 unmistakably from Lucan. Martial and the Anthology have 
 furnished the archetypes of our epigrams and our epitaphs, 
 and Theocritus and Virgil the archetypes of our Pastorals. 
 Of our Elegiac poetry, to employ the term in its conventional 
 sense, one portion is largely indebted to Theocritus, Moschus, 
 and Virgil, and another portion still more largely indebted to 
 Catullus and Ovid, to Tibullus and Propertius. Indeed it 
 would be no exaggeration to say, that if the influence indi- 
 vidually exercised by each of the Greek and Latin poets, we 
 do not say of the first but of the second order, on our own 
 poets were fully traced, each would afford ample matter for a 
 bulky treatise. 
 
 But if this is the case with our poetry, how much more 
 strikingly is it the case with our prose ! No one can appreciate 
 more than we do the sweetness, the simplicity, the grace of such 
 prose as Maundeville's, as Malory's, as Bunyan's ; and that our 
 language would, had it pursued its course unmodified by 
 classical influences, have been fully equal to the production of 
 such prose, is all but certain. But Maundeville, Malory, and 
 Bunyan, are not the names which rise to our lips when we speak 
 
 of 
 
318 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 of the masters of prose expression. The history of English 
 eloquence commences from the moment when the Roman 
 Classics moulded and coloured our style — when periodic prose 
 modelled itself on Cicero and Livy, when analytic prose- 
 modelled itself on Sallust and Tacitus. From Hooker to 
 Milton, from Milton to Bolinghroke, and from Bolingbroke to 
 Burke, this has been the case. The structure of their periods — 
 allowing, 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. It is commonly supposed that when, during the latter 
 half of the seventeenth century, the long sentence began to be 
 broken up, and the style which Addison and his school subse- 
 quently perfected became fashionable, the change is to be 
 attributed to the influence of French writers. Nothing could be 
 more erroneous. The style of Hobbes, Sprat, and Cowley, the 
 style subsequently of Dryden and Temple, is as Latin as that 
 of Hooker and Milton ; but with a difference. Instead of going 
 to the diction of Livy and to the rhetorical works of Cicero for 
 their models, they went to Quintilian, to the Younger Pliny, 
 and to Cicero's colloquial and epistolary writings. And what 
 is true of them is true of Addison. The serious style of 
 Addison is modelled, as closely as any style could be, on that 
 of the De Senectute and the De Amicitia.* 
 
 * This is an interesting question, and as our opinion may appear paradoxical, 
 ■we will place side by side what will be allowed to be a typical sample of Cicero's 
 literary style, and what will be allowed to be a typical sample of Addison's style^ 
 And the truth of what we have asserted will, we think, be at once apparent. 
 
 ' Equidem non video cur quid ipse sentiam de morte non audeam vobis dicere ^ 
 quod eo melius mihi cernere videor quo ab ea proprius absum. Ego vestros 
 patres, P. Soipio, tuque C. LsdH, viros clarissimos mihique amicissimos, vivere 
 arbitror, et earn quidem vitam, quae est sola vita nominanda. Nam dum sumus- 
 in his inclusi compa gibus corporis munere quodam necessitatis et gravi opere 
 perfungimur. Est enim animus ccelestis ex altissimo domicilio depressus et 
 quasi demersus in terram, locum divinas naturse seternitatique contrarium. Sed 
 credo Deos immortales sparsisse animos in corpora humana, ut essent qui terras- 
 tuerentur quique coelestinm ordinem contemplantes imitarentur eum vitae modo 
 atque constant] a. Neo me solum ratio ac disputatio impulit ut ita crederem, sed 
 nobilitas etiam summorum philosophorum et auctoiitas.' — ' De Senectute,' xxi. 
 
 ' I know but one way of fortifying myself against these gloomy presages and 
 terrors of mind, and that is by securing to myself the friendship and protection of 
 that Being who is the disposer of events and governs futurity. He sees at one 
 view the whole thread of my existence, not only that part which T have already 
 passed through, but that which runs forward into all the depths of eternity.. 
 When I lay me down to sleep, I recommend myself to His care ; when I awake, I 
 give myself up to His direction. Amidst all the evUs which surround me, I will 
 look up to Him for help and question, not that He will either avert them or turn 
 them to my advantage. Though I know neither the time nor the manner of the 
 death I am to die, I am not at all solicitous about it, because I am sure that He 
 knows them both, and that He will not fail to comfort and support me undei- 
 them.' — ' Spectator,' p. 7. 
 
 It 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 319" 
 
 It was the influence partly perhaps of Machiavelli and 
 Guicciardini, but it was the influence mainly of Thucydides 
 and Sallust, of Livy and Tacitus, which revolutionized our 
 historical composition, which gave us Bacon for Capgrave, and 
 KnoUes and Herbert for Fabyan, and which was to determine- 
 the form, tone, arid style of the great works which are the glory 
 of our historic literature — of the great work of Clarendon in 
 the seventeenth century ; of the great works of Robertson^ 
 Hume, and Gibbon in the eighteenth century ; of the great 
 work of Macaulay in the nineteenth century. It was on the- 
 Orations of Cicero that Wyatt modelled the speech which is the 
 earliest example in our language of oratorical eloquence ; and, 
 from that day to this, the speeches to which, if we wished to 
 vindicate our fame in oratory, we should point, are the speeches 
 which have followed most closely the same noble models. No 
 names stand so high on the roll of our Parliamentary orators as 
 the names of Bolingbroke, Pulteney, Chesterfield, the two- 
 Pitts, Burke and Fox ; and no names stand higher on the roll 
 of forensic orators than those of Somers, Mansfield, and 
 Erskine. It is notorious that they all gloried in their fami- 
 liarity with the ancient masterpieces-r-the masterpieces of 
 Demosthenes and Cicero — and have all left testimonies of their 
 obligations to them. And what has moulded our"^ecular oratory 
 has moulded our sacred oratory. On no part of our prose 
 literature can we look with greater pride than on the sermons of 
 our Classical Divines ; and assuredly no part of our literature 
 owes more to the influence of Greece and Rome. The dawn of 
 the Renaissance found our pulpit oratory represented by a few 
 rude and jejune homilies, scarcely rising above the level of 
 the Sawles Warde or the Ayenbite of Inwyt ; its close left us 
 enriched with the Sermons of Hall and Donne, of Taylor and 
 South, of Barrow and Tillotson. If this marvellous transforma- 
 tion is to be explained partly by the progress which secular 
 literature had made, and partly by the influence of the writings 
 of the Fathers, it is to be explained mainly by the influence — 
 the direct influence — of those writers, to which the Fathers 
 themselves were so greatly indebted. Hall and Donne, for 
 example, are in style and diction close imitators of Seneca ; and 
 to Seneca, as the author of the Consolatio ad Marciam and the 
 Consolatio ad Helviam, belongs, it may be added, the honour 
 of having furnished models for the Oraisons Funebres of the 
 French, and for what corresponds to the Oraisons Funebres 
 in our own language. From Plato, Taylor learned the secret 
 of his involved harmonies, and on Plato and Chrysostom he 
 fashioned his diffuse and splendid eloquence. What South 
 
 would 
 
320 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 would have been apart from the influence of the ancient masters 
 maj be easily seen by comparing the passages in which he 
 gives the rein to the coarse vigour of his native genius, and the 
 passages on which his fame rests. The inexhaustible fertility 
 of Barrow's intellect is to be attributed as unmistakably to the 
 assimilative thoroughness with which he had studied the Greek 
 and Roman Classics, as the pregnant energy of his expression 
 bears the impress of Thucydides and Aristotle. What style is 
 more purely Ciceronian than the style of Tillotson, than the 
 style of Sherlock, than the style of Atterbury ? 
 
 But no portion of our literature is rooted more deeply in the 
 literature of antiquity than our criticism. Dryden has some- 
 where remarked that — 
 
 ' One poet is another's plagiary, 
 And he a third's till they all end iu Homer.' 
 
 Till the end of the last century, it may be said with literal 
 truth that from the publication of Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, 
 in 1553, it would be difficult to mention a sing le theo ry on the 
 principles of composition, a sing le impor tant critical canon, 
 with the exception of the doctrine ol the unities of time and 
 [Tplace, which are not to be traced originally to the ancient critics. 
 It is a great mistake to suppose, as it almost always is supposed, 
 that we derived our principles of criticism from France. Our 
 own criticism and French criticism sprang from a common 
 source. It was derived directly from Aristotle and Longinus, 
 from Cicero, from Horace, from Quintilian, and from the 
 author of the Dialogus de Oratoribus, all of whom had been 
 studied in England long before they had been translated into 
 French. We have only to open the treatises of Wilson, Elyot, 
 Ascham, Sidney, Webbe, Gascoigne, Puttenham, and others, in 
 the reign of the Tudors, and such a work as Jonson's Dis- 
 coveries, in the reign of James I., to see how closely the fathers 
 of English criticism followed in the footsteps of the ancients. 
 It was so with Hobbes, it was so with Cowley, it was so even 
 with Dryden. That Dryden and his contemporaries read 
 Aristotle in a French version, and with the light of French 
 commentaries, is undoubtedly true. And it is true also that 
 they were acquainted with contemporary French criticism. 
 But Aristotle in a French dress is Aristotle still, and as con- 
 temporary French criticism was itself so largely indebted to 
 Greece and Rome, we must not confound the influence of Rapin 
 and Bossu with the influence of those writings on which Rapin 
 and Bossu themselves drew so largely. For one reference in 
 Dryden's Prefaces to a French critic, we find a dozen to an 
 
 ancient. 
 
English Literdture at the Universities. 321 
 
 ancient. Longinus, indeed, owed his popularity to Boileau, but 
 he had been translated into our language long before Boileau's 
 version appeared, and had, as early as the first quarter of the 
 seventeenth century, begun to affect critical opinion in England. 
 Between the death of Dryden and the death of Johnson our 
 critical literature passed still more completely under the yoke 
 of the ancients. Every precept in the Essay on Criticism is 
 drawn or deducted from the Ars Poetica, from the Institutes, 
 or from the De Sublimitate. The Treatise on the Bathos 
 is a parody of the Treatise on the Sublime. The literary 
 papers of Addison, and of Addison's coadjutors, follow implicitly 
 the same guides. The literary essays of Hume betray in every 
 page their indebtedness to the ancient critics. Horace and 
 Quintilian furnish Johnson with his canons and his standards. 
 No one can read the critiques in the Lives of the Poets 
 without being struck with their similarity to the critiques in 
 the tenth book of the Institutes. The terse and epigrammatic 
 judgments, at once narrowly discriminating and superficially 
 just, which Quintilian passes on the Greek and Roman writers, 
 are the exact counterparts, as well, in spirit and matter as in 
 expression, to Johnson's judgments on our own poets. If we 
 pass from Johnson to Hurd, who was, of our own countrymen, 
 incomparably the subtlest literary critic of the eighteenth 
 century, and who, by his practice of habitually referring phe- 
 nomena to principles, and of distinguishing between accidents 
 and essence, may be regarded as the forerunner of modern 
 philosophical criticism, we simply pass from a student of 
 Horace and Quintilian to a student of Aristotle and Longinus. 
 With what care, with what sympathy, to what great advantage, 
 Hurd had studied both the Poetics and the De Sublimitate, 
 will be apparent to any one who will compare his Notes on 
 the Ars Poetica, the earliest of his works, with his Disser- 
 tations on the Idea of Universal Poetry, on the Provinces of 
 the Drama, and on Poetical Imitation, discourses which by 
 no means deserve the oblivion into which they appear to have 
 fallen. But we must not pursue this subject further. We have 
 said enough to show, that no account of the history of criticism 
 in England can be other than miserably inadequate which does 
 not trace it to its source, and that to trace it to its source is to 
 trace it to the classics of the old world. 
 
 We contend, therefore, that the history of English Literature 
 can never be studied properly unless it be studied in connec- 
 tion with the literatures of Greece and Rome, and that to 
 study it without reference to those literatures is as absurd as it 
 would be to study the history of ethics and metaphysics, or the 
 
 Vol. 163.— iVb. 326. Y history 
 
322 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 history of sculpture and architecture, without reference to the 
 ancient schools. It may perhaps be urged that^ as Celtic and 
 Teutonic elements enter so largely into the composition of the 
 English temper and the English genius, and that as the litera- 
 tures of modern Italy, of France, and of Germany have succes- 
 sively affected our own, it is, from an historical point of view, 
 as necessary to take them into consideration as it is the older 
 literatures. This is partly true, but this is not practical. In 
 no school of literature could a student be expected to read, in 
 addition to Greek and Latin, half-a-dozen other languages, and 
 among those languages Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and German. 
 And even if this were practicable, comparatively little would 
 be gained. Neither Caedmon's Paraphrase nor the Tain Bo 
 would throw much light on the genesis of Paradise Lost, nor 
 would the Ayenbite of Inwyt throw much light on the genesis 
 of the Sermons of Taylor and Barrow. The only modern 
 literature which has materially affected us is the Italian. But 
 it is useless to discuss impossibilities. The question simply 
 resolves itself into this, whether, if English Literature is to be 
 seriously studied, it should be studied in connection with the 
 literatures of the modern world, as is, we believe, now being 
 proposed at Oxford ; or whether, on the other hand, it should 
 be connected with the study of the Classics. In what way that 
 question should be answered we have endeavoured to point 
 out. 
 
 But if in tracing the development of our literature it is 
 necessary at every step to refer to the ancients in studying the 
 literature itself, in regarding it, that is to say, in its spiritual, 
 its ethical, its aesthetic aspects, in considering its structure and 
 its style, how greatly do we gain by comparing its masterpieces 
 with the masterpieces of Greece and Rome. To go no further 
 than the tragedies of Shakspeare : what could be more interest- 
 ing, what more profitable, than to compare them with the 
 tragedies of the Attic stage, to compare them, f or examp le, with 
 the tragedies of Sophocles ; to note how the same truths, the 
 same passions, the same sentiments, find utterance in both ; to 
 observe how similarly each deals with the great problem of 
 destiny and free-will, with the doctrine of the mean, with the 
 doctrine of retribution, with the relations of the State to the 
 individual and of the individual to the State ; to mark how 
 subtly in each the real and the ideal are blended ; to compare 
 their use of irony, to watch the same art working in obedience 
 to the same eternal and unchanging laws directing them in the 
 mechanism of their expression, and the same inspired wisdom 
 guiding them in their interpretation of life. How much, 
 
 for 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 323 
 
 for instancp. would a comparative study of Macbeth and the 
 Agamemnon, of Henry V. and the Pe^SBe reveal. What better 
 commentary is to be found on those marvellous fictions which, in 
 the phrase of their creator, hold the mirror up to human nature, 
 than the writings of the subtlest analyst of human nature who 
 has ever lived, tlie author of the Ethics and of the third book of 
 the Rhetoric ? Indeed, if some scholar would illustrate the dramas 
 of Shakspeare by pertinent references to Aristotle's treatises, he 
 would add greatly to the interest of both, for it would be seen 
 with what exactness each of these students of human nature, 
 though separated by nearly two thousand years, has arrived 
 independently at the same truths, and c orroborat e each other. 
 We contend then that Aristotle contribuies to the elucidation 
 of Shakspeare, as Shakspeare contributes to the elucidation 
 of Aristotle.* That such poems as Lycidas and the Progress 
 of Poesy have been the delight of thousands, who have never 
 opened a Greek or Roman classic, is no doubt true, but it would 
 be absurd to pretend that their pleasure would not have been 
 ncreased tenfold had they been scholars ; it would be absurd to 
 pretend that the full significance, the race, so to speak, and 
 riavour of either the one poem or the other could have been 
 appreciated by them. A reader who knows nothing of Sophocles 
 and Virgil may feel the charm of such a diction as the Laureate's, 
 of such a diction as the diction of In Memoriam, or the 
 diction of the Princess ; but how much will he miss, how many 
 of the 
 
 (OKea ySeXij 
 (juavavTa (rweroicriv 
 must fall flat on him. 
 
 But apart from particular reasons for associating the study of 
 English Literature with that of the Literature of Antiquity, — 
 apart from considerations of historical development and the 
 interpretation of this author or that author, there remains the 
 great fact, that by the universal consent of civilized mankind 
 the ancients have in almost every department of the Literae 
 Humaniores approached most nearly to perfection. Out of 
 their very names have been coined synonyms for the excellencies 
 which severally distinguish them. What they have wrought has 
 become archetypal. They stand, indeed, in the same relation 
 to polite letters as the Old Masters stand to painting. It is 
 possible, no doubt, for a painter, whose eyes have never rested 
 on a Dutch or an Italian masterpiece, to produce work of a very 
 
 ' There is not, of course, the smallest reason for supposing that Shakspeare 
 ever read a line of Aristotle, either in the original or in a translation. 
 
 Y 2 high 
 
324 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 high, order, and it is certainly possible for a poet who has never 
 read Homer or Horace, to write poetry which Homer apd Horace- 
 would not have been ashamed to own. But what applies to an 
 artist will not apply to a critic. A man, who set up as a judge- 
 of pictures without being familiar with the chief works of the 
 Great Age, or if he knew them, knew them only by copies,, 
 might pass for a connoisseur with the crowd, but would find his 
 opinions little appreciated by experts. It is the same, or should 
 be the same with the critic, with the student of Literature. The- 
 Homeric Poems, the .ffineid and Georgics, the Attic Tragedies,, 
 the Lyrics of Pindar and Horace, the best of the Platonic- 
 Dialogues, the best Orations of Demosthenes and Cicero — these 
 are his Michael Angelos, his Da Vincis, his Raphaels. These 
 are his standards, these are his touchstones. We are no bigoted 
 admirers of the ancients. We believe that the great tragedies of 
 Shakspeare are, considered merely as works of art, at least equal 
 to the CEdipus Rex, and that if they be estimated by the powers- 
 of mind displayed in them they would, in sheer weight of in- 
 tellectual bullion, make the dramas of JEschylus, Sophocles, 
 Euripides, and Aristophanes, massed together, kick the beam. 
 No discerning judge would hesitate to say that the comedies of 
 Moliere are incomparably superior to the comedies of Terence. 
 W e should be quite prepared to prove categorically that Burke's- 
 speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts and on conciliation with 
 America are greater oratorical feats than the Verrines or the 
 Antonian Philippics. We rank Burns with Catullus, we rank. 
 Dryden above Juvenal. We think Walpole and Gray wrote 
 better letters than the younger Pliny, and we should pronounce 
 the History of the Decline and Fall to be a more impressive 
 monument of human genius and of human skill than the Historj 
 of the Peloponnesian War. But this does not prove, as is often 
 absurdly asserted, that familiarity with the works of modern 
 writers would, in the education of a student of literature, be an 
 equivalent for familiarity with the works of the ancients. 
 By none indeed has this been more emphatically pointed out 
 than by those who have themselves been the most distinguished 
 ornaments of our vernacular literature. ' Let persons of limited 
 conception,' says Burke, in a passage which educational legis- 
 lators would do well to remember, ' think what they will of 
 classical learning, it has ever been and ever must be the first 
 principle of a taste, not only in the Arts, but in life and morals. 
 If we have any priority over our neighbours, it is in no small 
 measure owing to the early care we take with respect to a clas- 
 sical education which cannot be supplied by the cultivation of 
 
 any 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 325 
 
 -any other branch of learning.' * But it is useless to discuss a 
 question about which, among competent judges, there never 
 'have been and there never can be two opinions. 
 
 On all grounds, then, on historical, on critical, on general, 
 the necessity of associating the study of classical literature with 
 that of our own, if our own is to be studied properly, is obvious, 
 and it is equally obvious that if this is to be done, it can be 
 done only with the aid of the Universities. Why Oxford and 
 Cambridge should not deem the interpretation of our national 
 literature as worthy of their serious attention as the study of 
 our national history — how it has come to pass that, while the 
 most liberal and enlightened views prevail with regard to 
 the teaching of history, the teaching of literature is either 
 •neglected altogether, or abandoned contemptuously to dilet- 
 tants and philologists — is a problem which we at least are 
 quite unable to solve. But it points, we think, to the great 
 -defect, to the only serious defect in our University system. 
 From the days of Pope, Oxford and Cambridge have been com- 
 monly taunted, and we fear justly, with attaching too much 
 importance to philology, with regarding the works of great 
 poets and of great orators, not as the expression of genius and 
 art, but as mere material for. verbal criticism, as mere monu- 
 ments of language. Until lately, the literary and aesthetic 
 value of the Greek and Roman classics has undoubtedly 
 ■been too little considered, the method of interpreting them 
 being almost exclusively the method of the technical scholar, 
 a method which cannot be too highly appreciated when 
 regarded as a means to an end, or too strongly condemned 
 when regarded as an end in itself. We have, however, 
 recently observed with pleasure that, on the subject of classical 
 ■exegesis, more liberal views are beginning to prevail. We wish 
 we could discern the same promising symptoms in the case of 
 our own Literature, but here unhappily the dominion of philo- 
 logy is absolute. How obstinately indeed University legislators, 
 or at all events an important section of them, appear to be 
 'bent on discountenancing any other than a philological inter- 
 pretation of that Literature has recently received a memorable 
 illustration. About three years ago, a party at Oxford, who 
 were strongly in favour of an intelligent study of our national 
 classics being encouraged in the University, and who were 
 
 * ' Letter to Parr.' Parr's Works, Johnstone's edit., vol. i. p. 200. ' It is with 
 the deepest regret,' writes Scott, referring to his neglect of classical studies, 
 ' that I recollect in my manhood the opportunities of learning which I neglected 
 in my youth, and through every part of my literary career I have been pinched 
 and hampered by my ignorance; it is a loss never to be repaired.' — Auto- 
 Mography. 
 
326 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 anxious to raise English Literature to its proper level in 
 education, so far prevailed as to obtain the consent of Convo- 
 cation to the foundation of an English Chair. A Chair of 
 English Literature was accordingly founded and liberally en- 
 dowed. A Board of Electors was appointed. As there was 
 already a Chair of Celtic, a Chair of Anglo-Saxon, a Chair of 
 Comparative Philology, and as therefore the philological study 
 of English had been amply provided for, it was confidently 
 expected that the choice of the electors would fall on the sort 
 of teacher contemplated by the originators of the movement. 
 But Philology triumphed. The Board discovering, that though 
 the language of Caedmon and the language of Oisin had re- 
 ceived the attention they deserved, the dialect of Robert of 
 Gloucester and William of Shoreham had not, determined to 
 seize this opportunity to remedy the defect. Availing them- 
 selves of a quibble on the word ' language ' — for the Statute 
 authorizing the foundation of the Chair happened, by a mere 
 accident, to couple the word ' language ' with ' literature ' — they 
 succeeded in ignoring the object for which the Chair was 
 founded, and proceeded to elect, at a permanent salary of about 
 900Z., a Professor for the interpretation of Middle English. 
 Such was the fate of a movement which might, and probably 
 would, have formed an era of incalculable importance in edu- 
 cation. It is indeed half-painful, half-ludicrous, to reflect that 
 at the present moment, in Oxford alone, upwards of 3000Z. a 
 year are expended on the interpretation of writings which are 
 confessedly of no literary value, and of interest only as monu- 
 ments of language, while not one farthing a year is spent on 
 the interpretation of works which are the glory of our country. 
 
 We have, however, little doubt that an anomaly so extra- 
 ordinary and so disgraceful will not to be tolerated much 
 longer. We feel confident that English Literature, in the 
 proper sense of the term, will sooner or later receive the recog- 
 nition to which at the centres of culture it is assuredly entitled. 
 Our only fear is either that it may be considered too exclusively 
 with reference to itself, or that it may be assigned a place in 
 some other part of the curriculum than that part to which, as 
 we have endeavoured to show, it properly belongs. It would, 
 we submit, be a great mistake to make it form a portion, as 
 some propose to do, of the curriculum of a School of Modern 
 Literature, and to treat it only in connection with Modern 
 Literature. It would be a still greater mistake to attach it 
 collaterally, as others propose, to the curriculum of the Modern 
 History School, and to consider it mainly in its relations to 
 Modern History. To prescribe, on the other hand, an inde- 
 pendent 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 327 
 
 pendent and uncomparative studj of it, to deal with it, that is 
 to say, as a subject bounded by and complete in itself, would 
 be equally objectionable because equally insufficient. Its 
 proper place is the place which we have indicated — with the 
 literatures which are at the head of all literatures, with the 
 literatures which nourished it, which moulded it, which best 
 illustrate it. 
 
 What is needed, and we venture to add imperatively needed, 
 is the institution of a school which shall stand in the same 
 relation to pure literature, to poetry, oratory, and criticism, as 
 the present school of history stands to history, and as the 
 present school of Literse Humaniores stands to philosophy. In 
 both these schools, in the former as it is about to be consti- 
 tuted, in the latter as it always has been constituted, the histo- 
 rical and philosophical classics of the old world are most 
 properly associated with those of the new. No hard-and-fast 
 line is drawn between philosophers and historians who write in 
 Greek or Latin, and philosophers and historians who' write 
 in English. Both are studied not for the light which they may 
 happen to throw collaterally on the structure and history of 
 language, but for the light which they throw on the subjects 
 which are severally treated by them. Herodotus and Thu- 
 cydides are accordingly included in the same curriculum as 
 Clarendon and Gibbon. The Republic and the Ethics 
 are read side by side with the essay on the Human Under- 
 standing and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of 
 Morals. Thus not only are the masterpieces of ancient and 
 modern philosophy brought home to the student, but their 
 relations to each other are rendered intelligible. ' The work,' 
 says the Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, ' which 
 I have come to do is to point out that the work of Kleisthenes, 
 of Licinius, of Simon of Montfort, are parts of one living whole, 
 a whole of which every stage needs to be grasped by the same 
 faculties, to be studied by the same methods.' Why, we would 
 ask, should not the same view be taken of the work of Sophocles 
 and Shakspeare, of Cicero and Burke ? Are they not also ' parts 
 of one living whole '? Is not poetry, poetry ; oratory, oratory ; 
 criticism, criticism in whatever language they may be ex- 
 pressed ? And is not the study of literature the study of its 
 development generally, and of its masterpieces particularly? 
 Why the works of a philosopher or a historian who writes in a 
 classical language should be studied as illustrating philosophy 
 and history, while the works of a poet or of an orator who 
 writes in a classical language should be regarded as mere 
 material for construing, — why University men should be ex- 
 pected 
 
328 English Literature at the Universities. 
 
 pected to know in what way modern metaphysics have been 
 affected by Plato and modern ethics by Aristotle, and should 
 not be expected to know in what way modern poetry has been 
 affected by Homer and Horace, and modern oratory by Demos- 
 thenes and Cicero — we cannot understand. But of one thing 
 we are quite sure, that it is high time, both in the interests of 
 classical literature and of our own literature, to take this ques- 
 tion into serious consideration, and to see whether the institu- 
 tion of such a school, or of some school similar to such a school 
 as we have suggested, be indeed practicable. What the nation 
 has a right to expect from the Universities is, that they should 
 provide as adequately for the dissemination of literary culture 
 as they have provided for other branches of education. And 
 this we contend they can never do if, on the one hand, for 
 the study of the two leading and master literatures of the 
 world, the literatures which are and must always be the basis 
 of the education of which we are speaking, they substitute 
 the study of what certain educational theorists are pleased to 
 call modern equivalents ; and if, on the other hand, they con- 
 tinue to exclude our own literature from their curriculum. 
 
 Of the necessity of the Universities directing their attention to 
 this important subject, no further proof is required than the coii- 
 trast between the high standard of classical, historical, and scien- 
 tific teaching throughout the kingdom and the deplorably low 
 standard, all but universal, in the teaching of English literature. 
 In many places it is degraded into mere cram-work, into pre- 
 scribing so many pages of a primer or manual to be . got by 
 heart. In other places it goes no further than the purely philo- 
 logical study of single works. If a more enlightened exegesis 
 is anywhere employed, it is the result of simple accident. And 
 what is true of the standard of teaching is true of the standard 
 of production. A work analogous to the work which stands at 
 the head of this article would, we believe, in any other depart- 
 ment of learning and culture, be impossible. One tithe of 
 its blunders and absurdities would have ruined instantly a 
 book treating of Greek or Roman poetry, or discussing some 
 point in modern history. No one indeed can compare an 
 average review or magazine article on a classical, a historical, 
 or a scientific subject, with an average article dealing with a 
 purely literary subject, without being struck with the immense 
 superiority of the former to the latter. The first we feel to 
 be the work of a man who has had an efficient training, who 
 is master of his subject, who is possessed with his subject, and 
 who is conscious that he is addressing readers who will meet 
 him halfway. In the second, we are fortunate if we do not 
 
 find 
 
English Literature at the Universities. 329 
 
 find all the indications of half-knowledge and of gross ignorance, 
 and of half -knowledge and gross ignorance conscious of being 
 able to assume without detection the garb and semblance of 
 intelligence and learning. An editor of a scientific or historical 
 Review has not the least difficulty in finding contributors who are 
 able to write up to the high level required in such subjects. It is 
 notorious that editors of literary Reviews are constantly under 
 the necessity of accepting articles, the inferiority of which they 
 are themselves the first to admit. For the existence of this 
 extraordinary anomaly, the Universities, and the Universities 
 only, are responsible. We owe it to them — and it is to their 
 honour — that the standard is so high, and those who maintain 
 it so numerous in the one case. We owe it to them — and it 
 is not to their credit, that the standard is so low, and those 
 anxious to raise it so few, in the other case. And till they are 
 prepared to take active measures, and to extend to the study of 
 literature, and especially to the study of our vernacular litera- 
 ture, the protection they have extended to other branches of 
 education — so long will this state of things continue ; so long 
 will mediocrity, sciolism, and ignorance prevail ; so long will 
 our presses continue to pour forth such books as the book on 
 which we have been animadverting, and so long will our leading 
 literary journals continue to pronounce them 'volumes not to 
 be glanced over and thrown aside, but to be read twice and 
 consulted often.' 
 
 Aet. 
 
( 330 ) 
 
 Aet. II. — 1. Sport. By W. Bromley-Davenport. London, 
 1886. 
 
 2. The Badminton Library. Edited by the Duke of Beau- 
 fort, K.G. Fishing : by H. Cholmondeley-Pennell. London, 
 1886. 
 
 3. Salmon Problems. By Willis Bund. London, 1885. 
 
 4. Autumns on the Spey. By A. E. Knox, M. A., F.L.S. London, 
 1872. 
 
 5. Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Inspector of Fisheries 
 {England and Wales). 
 
 6. The Treaty se of Fysshynge with an An^le, attributed to Dame 
 Juliana Berners, reprinted from the Book of St. Albans. 
 London, 1827. 
 
 IN a highly critical age it is dangerous to affirm the author- 
 ship of even well-known works, and we are not disposed 
 to examine whether the quaint ' Treatyse of Fyshynge with an 
 Angle,' one of the earliest if not the earliest- of the many essays 
 on the subject extant in English, was or was not by Dame Juliana 
 Berners. It suffices us to point out the ever-growing support 
 attaching to the contention with which the quaint little work 
 opens. ' Which ben,' asks the author, ' the meanes and the 
 causes that enduce a man into a merry spyryte : Truly to my 
 beste dyscrecon it seemeth good dysportes and honest games in 
 whom a man Joyeth without ony repentannce after.' It would 
 be rash to assert that there are no sports and games of their 
 joy in which many have much repentance, but the popularity 
 of such of our national pastimes as need no ' sermons and soda- 
 water the day after ' is happily always on the increase. 
 
 For his or her preference of angling over other sports the 
 writer of the treatise we have quoted advances wisely grotesque 
 reasons : 
 
 ' Huntynge is toe laboryous, for the hunter must alwaye renne and 
 folowe his houndes: traueyllynge and swetynge full sore, and 
 blowynge tyll his lyppes blyster.' . . . ' Hawkynge is laboryous 
 and noyoase also as me seemyth.' 
 
 and 
 
 ' Fowlynge is greuous.' But the ' angler maye haue no colde nor 
 dysease nor angre but if he be causer hymself. For he may not lese 
 at the moost, but a lyne or an hoke . . . and other greyffes may he 
 not have, sauynge but yf ony fysshe breke away after that he is take 
 on the hoke, or elles that he catche nought . . . and yet atte the 
 leest he hath his holsom walk and mery at his ease, a swete ayre of 
 the swete sauoure of the meede floures. . . . Thus have I prouyed 
 
Salmon,' Fishing. 331 
 
 in myn entent that the dysporte and game of anglynge is the very 
 meane and cause that enduceth a man in a merry spyryte.' 
 
 The writer knows nought of fishing in its present develop- 
 ment. The angling discussed in the ' Treatise ' was the quiet 
 and contemplative art in which Izaak Walton delighted, rather 
 than the active and exciting pursuit which, in one at least 
 of the most popular of Scotch country houses, has made the 
 attractions of the forest and moor subordinate to those of the 
 river. And it is to considerations unsuspected in the ' Treatjse ' 
 that we are inclined to attribute the hold which salmon-fishing 
 has upon the affections of a generation sadly apt to suffer from 
 satiety. Two of these we may mention. Salmon-fishing will 
 never pall, because of its uncertainty. In all other sports the 
 possibility of forecasting the amount of success obtainable 
 under given conditions is greater than it is in salmon-fishing ; 
 and this adds a zest which will ever be attractive so long as 
 the sporting instincts of Englishmen are as wholesome and 
 as reasonable as they are now. Secondly, there can be no 
 coercion in salmon-fishing. Birds and beasts of all kinds are 
 taken by the force majeure of the hunter. Their means of 
 escape are limited to avoidance of attack. In salmon-fishing 
 (and of course under that head we do not include practices of 
 snatching or leistering, both of which are illegal), unless the 
 fish performs a substantive act of his own volitio*— to wit, 
 taking the bait — he is not captured. Herein is a cause which 
 frees salmon-fishing from the assaults of the most tender-hearted 
 and refined moralist. The salmon becomes a prey by the 
 performance of an act of depredation. 
 
 Kat u' etXe 0rjpS>v6' 7] "rvyrj 
 
 the successful fisher might say to him. He is the biter bit, the 
 ' desolator desolate, the victor overthrown.' Man is a beast of 
 prey, and unquestionably most of his favourite pursuits have for 
 their object the destruction of animal life. But of all such 
 pursuits, and of all such destroying of life, the least objection- 
 able, even from the ultra-humanitarian point of view, is the 
 capture of salmon by angling. 
 
 Of the first of these characteristics we find a thorough 
 appreciation in the lively and interesting volume which we 
 have placed at the head of the works referred to in this article. 
 The late Mr. Bromley-Davenport was a thorough sportsman in 
 every sense of the word. He was not one of those who 
 measured success by mere quantity. To him the value of an 
 achievement depended much upon the difficulties to be over- 
 come ; and in the four pleasant Essays upon Fox-hunting, 
 
 Salmon-fishing, 
 
332 Salmon-Fishing. 
 
 Salmon-fishing, Covert-shooting, and Deer-stalking, included 
 in the volume before us, he presents a picture of English sport 
 in the form in which it is most likely to maintain its hold 
 upon our national ideas, and to exercise a useful influence upon 
 our national character. 
 
 ' It is the unknown,' he tells us, ' which constitutes the main charm 
 and delight of every human creature's life. Uncertainty is the salt 
 of existence. . . . Whatever is reduced to a certainty ceases to 
 ■charm, and but for the element of risk or chance— uncertainty, in 
 short — ^not only every sport or amusement, but even every operation 
 and transaction of this world, would be tame and irksome. If we 
 foreknew the result we would seldom do anything, and would 
 eventually be reduced to the condition of the bald, toothless, toeless, 
 timid, sedentary, and in combative man of the future, foreshadowed 
 recently by a very advanced writer.' 
 
 Salmon-fishing has this charm in a very high degree, and 
 we are not sure that Mr. Bromley-Davenport was justified in 
 ranking fox-hunting above it. It is absolutely impossible to 
 predict what will be the result of any day's fishing. If a man 
 is not prepared to meet with disappointment he had better not 
 be a salmon-fisher. The causes which conduce to failure are in 
 themselves multitudinous. The river is too high or too low, 
 the water too thick or too clear ; the weather too stormy, or the 
 sunshine too bright ; the fish have been too long in the river, 
 or they are swimming up it ; the wind is in the wrong quarter, 
 or there is thunder about. These, and many other such, are 
 conditions which discourage hope. But more than this. There 
 are few salmon-fishers who have not had their spirits raised to 
 the highest pinnacle by the conditions of the day, to find them- 
 selves reduced ere evening to a state of blank despondency. 
 The conditions may have been perfect ; water, weather, and fish, 
 may all have been in such a state as to lead to the anticipation 
 of great success ; and yet the end of a hard day's fishing has 
 found the angler with nothing whatever to show in return for 
 his wearied shoulder and stiff back. On the other hand, success 
 comes when least expected. On the Tweed, on one occasion, an 
 experienced fisherman was waiting for a brother angler to go 
 with him to a distant pool. With him was a tyro who had 
 never thrown a fly, and who, with some persuasion, was induced 
 to try a few casts. With his first he produced web-like circles 
 of gut on the water ; his second sent the fly out fairly straight ; 
 with his third he hooked and killed one of the largest and best 
 salmon seen for several seasons on the Tweed. 
 
 ' Cuivis dolori remedium patientia,' must certainly be the 
 true angler's motto. Without patience, persistent and unfailing, 
 
Salmon-Fishing.. 333 
 
 no one can succeed as a salmon-fisher. He must be discouraged 
 by no failure however prolonged, crushed by no disaster how- 
 ever severe. How great may be an angler's trials Mr. Bromley- 
 Davenport graphically describes, when he tells us how after 
 a three hours' fight with ' an ideal monster of his dreams ' — we 
 may trust Mr. Bromley-Davenport, although the lost fish are 
 ever large — he brings him within easy reach of the gaffer, who, 
 demoralized and unnerved by the presence of the largest salmon 
 he has ever seen, misses him, once, twice, thrice, and then 
 
 ' a deadly sickness comes over me as the rod springs straight and the 
 fly dangles useless in the air. Is it possible ? Is it not a hideous 
 nightmare ? But two minutes ago blessed beyond the lot of angling 
 man — on the topmost pinnacle of angling fame. The practical 
 possessor of the largest salmon ever taken with a rod, and now, deeper 
 than ever plummet sounded, in the depths of dejection.' 
 
 Those who have had less trials can well understand how 
 his mind, already depressed, yielded ' to the influence of the 
 hour and went to zero ;' and how ' despondency — the hated 
 spirit — descended from her foggy cloud and was his inseparable 
 companion all the way home.' But those also who know of 
 how sterling an Englishman Mr. Bromley-Davenport's too 
 early death deprived his country and the world of sport, can 
 have no difficulty in asserting, that the hated spirit had no long 
 sway, but that ere another day had dawned hope once more 
 sprang eternal in the human breast, and the chances of success 
 were once more seen in a rosy light. 
 
 It is not in anglers to command success, and no amount of 
 preparation and care make sure of the huge bags which are 
 feasible enough in the case of pheasants, partridges, or even 
 grouse. But remarkable feats have been performed, and we are 
 able to give particulars of some of the most notable of these. 
 Seven years ago three Englishmen found themselves on the 
 banks of the grand Cascapedia river, in the Province of Quebec. 
 They fished steadily through June and July, after the 19th 
 of which month one of their number left. The other two 
 remained for a fortnight more of fishing. Between them they 
 killed 622 salmon, which together weighed 15,648 lbs., and of 
 which 128 were of 30 lbs. and upwards. Their two best days 
 deserve special record, as shown in the table on the next page. 
 
 The totals of the two days we have referred to, and the indi- 
 vidual performance of Mr. Ellis on the 18th of June, will stand 
 out pre-eminently whenever facts of angling are examined. We 
 doubt whether a like result has ever followed fair rod-fishing. 
 It must, however, be remembered that the river, which yielded 
 
 such 
 
334 
 
 Salmon-Fishing. 
 
 
 
 
 Total. 
 
 Weight. 
 
 1879 
 
 
 
 . y. . 
 
 
 June 16 .. 
 
 Hon. 0. Ellis 
 
 37, 28, 28, 28, 26, 
 26, 25, 25, 25,' 
 24, 24, 23, 22, 
 
 ' - 
 
 
 
 
 22 , 
 
 14. 
 
 363 
 
 • • 
 
 L. Iveson 
 
 37, 26, 25, 25, 24, 
 
 
 
 
 
 24, 22, 12, Id 
 
 . 9 
 
 205 
 
 „ 
 
 Captain G. A. Percy 
 
 32, 32, 31, 30, 29, 
 29, 29, 28, 26, 
 
 
 
 
 Hon. C. Ellis 
 
 25, 25, 9 .. 
 34, 32, 29, 28, -25, 
 
 .12 
 
 325 
 
 
 893 ' 
 
 July 11 . . 
 
 
 
 
 2,'), 24, 24, 24, 
 
 
 
 
 
 24, 24, 23, 22, 
 
 
 
 
 
 22, 22, 20, 13 
 
 17 
 
 415 
 
 •• 
 
 L. Iveson 
 
 36, 36, 31, 29, 26, 
 
 25, 25, 25, 24, 
 
 
 
 
 
 23, 22, 11, 10 
 
 13 
 
 323 
 
 )» •• 
 
 Captain G. A. Percy 
 
 31, 31, 28, 25, 25, 
 
 
 
 
 Hon. O.Ellis 
 
 24 
 
 38, 36, 36, 32, 32, 
 
 6 
 
 164 
 
 
 927 
 
 June 18 .. 
 
 
 
 
 32, 31, 30, 24, 
 
 
 
 
 
 24, 24, 22, 22, 
 
 
 
 
 
 21, 21, 20, 20 
 
 17 
 
 465 
 
 such extraordinary sport, had not been over-fished, and that the 
 skill and perseverance of the anglers had the advantage of com- 
 paratively virgin soil. The Cascapedia will probably always be 
 a productive river. This year the present Governor-General, 
 Lord Lansdowne, got four fish, averaging thirty-four pounds, in 
 a short evening. But it is not likely that the yield of 1879 
 will be equalled. At home the rivers in aU parts of the United 
 Kingdom are, even as regards the most closely-preserved waters, 
 sedulously fished, and similar results can hardly be expected. 
 For salmon, like other animals, learn by experience. ' Salmon,' 
 says Sir H. Davy in his ' Salmonia,' ' appear to me to learn, 
 when they have been some time in the river, that the artificial 
 fly is not food even without being touched by the hook.' The 
 fish in a river, where day after day flies of all patterns are 
 played in all fashions, become shy, and will not rise. And 
 a fish on his return to a well-fished river is, we imagine, more 
 easily brought to a state of shyness than when the waters he 
 frequents are not haunted by artificial lures. Nevertheless re- 
 markable sport has occasionally been yielded. On ' Sprouston 
 Dub,' on the Tweed, two rods, fishing alterna,te hours, killed on 
 October 29th, 1884, sixteen salmon and one grilse thus : — 
 
 First 
 

 Salmon-Fishinff. 
 
 
 First Bod. •■ 
 0. D. W. 
 
 1st hour 1 g 1^^- 
 
 
 Second- Bod:- 
 B.B. B. 
 
 ?1 1^"- I 2na hour. 
 
 3rd hour] ^ " 
 
 ■ 18 " 
 5th hour i 20 „ 
 
 [ 27 „ 
 7th hour 20 „ 
 
 ■ 9 Fish, 
 
 20 " \ 4thh6ur. 
 
 -Ig '^ . 6th hour. 
 
 18 " 1 
 
 24 „ 8th nour. 
 
 8 Fish 170 Ihs 
 
 U X JLOllf A. 1 \J XUo» 
 
 167 lbs;- ■ 
 
 335 
 
 Sprouston Dub is a favourite pool. In October 1873, a single 
 rod killed 13 salmon and 3 grilse, weighing 332 lbs. ; and next 
 month a still more successful angler, got 21 fish, weighing 
 370 lbs. , ,; 
 
 On the lower part of the Upper Merton water, also on the 
 Tweed, Mr. Farquhar got l8 fish on November 9;th, 1885. 
 Weights: 24, 21, 21, 20, 20, i'9, 19, 18, 17, 17, 16^. 16, 10, 10, 
 9,8, 7, 6 lbs. 
 
 November 10, Lord Brougham, 17 fish. - • 
 „ 11, Mr^Farquhar, 11 fish. . 
 „ 12,. Lord; Brougham, 12 fish. 
 „ 13, Mr. Farquhar, 10 fish. 
 „ 14, Lord Brougham, 4 fish. 
 
 Altogether in the whole week Mr. Farquhar got 51 fish, and 
 Lord Brougham 44. 
 
 On 28th of September, 1885, at Taymount on the Tay, the 
 Hon. and Rev. R. Lidd'ell Killed 6 salmon and 14 grilse. 
 
 But perhaps if the condition of the fish caught is considered, 
 as well as the sport th'ey afford, the best rod-fishing in the 
 United Kingdom is that in the lower portion of the Spey. The 
 Duke of Richmond and Gordon fishes about ten miles of water 
 above and below Gordon Castle ; and here, in the months of 
 September and October, a run of perfectly fresh fish, often of 
 great weight, occurs every year. In the first nine days of one 
 notable October, 210 fish were landed, the details of the best 
 day being as follows : — 
 
 ' 21, 18, 18, 11, 9 ; 9i ; 14, 15, 11 ; 20, 17, 14, 11 ; 27, 17^, 8^ ; 23 ; 
 29, 21, 14 ; 23, 10, 9, 9 ; 22, 18, 17, 17, 16, 15, 15, lOJ, 10, 10, 9 ; 21, 
 20, 20, 16 ; 19i, 18, 11, 9, 8 ; 17, 16 lbs. Total, 46 fish. 714^ lbs.' 
 
 In 1885 the results were, even better. On the 18th of Sep- 
 tember, 11-rods killed 34 fish, .the heaviest weighing -27 lbs. ; 
 
 ten 
 
336 Salmon-Fishing. 
 
 ten days afterwards, 11 rods killed 42 fish, the heaviest 28 lbs. ; 
 and on October 8th in the same year, 15 rods killed 54 fish, the 
 heaviest 31 lbs. These results are wonderfully good, even when 
 we bear in mind the fact that the anglers, among whom were 
 several ladies, were both experienced and skilful. 
 
 As regards size of individual fish, it is highly probable that 
 the largest fish of all are rarely captured by a rod. A few years 
 ago, however. Lord Ruthven killed on the Tay a fish of 52 lbs. 
 In 1885, as we learn from the recent Report of the Scotch 
 Fishery Board (4th Report, p. Ixxix), the largest fish taken by 
 the rod on the Tay was captured on the Stobhall water and 
 weighed 47 lbs. On the Forth the two largest captured 
 weighed 38 lbs. and 36 lbs. A great number of fine salmon 
 were taken on the Aberdeenshire Dee, which yielded the largest 
 fish of the season to the rod, weighing 57 lbs. It was captured 
 by the keeper on the Ardoe water. Occasionally there appears 
 in a newspaper an account of the capture of exceptionally large 
 fish, but we fear that fish are sadly apt to grow ;' and un- 
 authorized statements, even if uncontradicted, must be accepted 
 with caution. 
 
 As of other pursuits, so of fishing, the methods are many. 
 There are those who maintain that the sole pleasure worth 
 having consists in hooking the fish, and more than one angler 
 has been known who habitually handed his rod to his attendant, 
 from the feeling that the killing of the fish afforded no possible 
 enjoyment. On the other hand, there are some who delight in 
 having the fish hooked for them, and who only wield the rod 
 when there is a fish at the end of the line. Forced to choose 
 between the two, we should unquestionably adopt the former 
 practice. But there is happily no such compulsion. Keen 
 gratification can, we hold, be obtained from both the hooking 
 and the playing of a salmon, and if the river abounds in dangers, 
 it is difficult to say in which portion lies the truer pleasure. 
 Shall we see how the matter presented itself to an experienced 
 sportsman ? 
 
 On the 14th of October, 1868, Mr. Knox tells us, in the 
 last chapter of his ' Autumns on the Spey,' he was fishing ' the 
 Couperee,' one of the most extensive pools on the upper beat 
 of the lower part of the Spey : 
 
 ' I was preparing to land, but yielded to the temptation of taking 
 one more cast before doing so, throwing again, therefore, across stream. 
 I anxiously watched the fly as it swept round for the last time ; but 
 just as I was on the point of drawing it out, a sudden plunge a 
 few inches below it, followed by the apparition of a huge dorsal fin 
 above the surface, told that I had aroused the attention of a monster, 
 
 though 
 
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