BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF H«nirg M, Sage 1891 6v3o&^^fe %o]'^h 3777 PN 45.M92 "^" ""'""=">' "■'""•T 3 1924 026 939 698 The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026939698 THE MODERN STUDY OF LITERATURE THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AgmtB THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON AND KDINBUSQH THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA TOKYO, OSAKA, KIOTO EARL W. HIERSEMANN LEIPZIG THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY NEW XOBE THE MODERN STUDY OF LITERATURE AN INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY THEORY AND INTERPRETATION By RICHARD GREEN MOULTO^ Professor of Literary Theory and Interpretation in the University of Chicago THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS £,V. l\.l>oZ3i(t. COPVEIGHT igis By The University op Chicago All Rights Reserved Published September igis Composed and Printed By The University of Chicago PresF Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. TO JOSEPH JACOBS university chum of my earlier years and literary comrade in my working lite This Book Is Inscribed in admiration of his versatile scholarship and uterary brightness, and in grateful acknowl- edgment of much help derived from his counsels PREFACE To write a book, it seems to me, is sometimes a less diflScult task than to hit upon the right title by which the book may be announced. The difficulty is aggravated by the author's con- sciousness that out of the imlimited niunber of readers who, conceivably, might be interested in the book, the vast majority will never get any farther than the title. In the present case, what I most desire my book to accomphsh is that which is expressed by the sub-title — I desire it to be an introduction to literary theory and interpretation. But if I think so to annoimce it, I am met by the reflection that in the present generation of readers only a very small number — quite a negh- gible quantity — ^have any interest whatever in literary theory, nor do they think of literature in general as a thing to which interpretation apphes. There is perhaps more of appeal in the suggestion of a wide disparity between the traditional study of literature and the high standard set by other modem studies. But if I elect to lay emphasis upon this, I am in danger of giving to what I say a polemic color, which is the last thing I should desire. And if— as I have done — I seek to imite the two sug- gestions, I forego at once the brevity which is the soul of more things than wit; and I place myself in the predicament of those who try to sit upon two stools, with a disconcerting prospect of falling between them. For a period now of over forty years my life has been wholly occupied with the teaching of literature; partly in university classes, partly ia the attractive sphere of university extension, where one encounters students who are both receptive and mature. It has always been my ambition to make some con- tribution toward the shaping of this study of literature, which by tradition is so miscellaneous and unorganized. Previous works of mine have been preliminary studies; discussion of viii Preface particular principles in application to special literary fields. The most obvious defect of the study is the absence of any instinct for inductive observation, such as must be the basis for criticism of any other kind. My first book was an attempt to illustrate such scientific criticism in the most deUghtful of all Uterary provinces, the plays of Shakespeare. This Shake- speare as a Dramatic Artist was, at a later period, supplemented by Shakespeare as a Dramatic Thinker, which discussed the philosophy of life vmderlying the dramatic stories, and illus- trated the general principle that fiction is the experimental side of human philosophy. Again: the traditional study, while rightly recognizing the Greek and Latin classics as a foundation for literary culture, has in practice sacrificed the literary for the linguistic element in these classics. My second book sought to introduce The Ancient Classical Drama to the English reader, and to use this as a study of literary evolution. But there is another defect in our traditional study of Uterature which is appalling in its gravity — the omission of the Bible. It is not only the spiritual loss to academic education; the literary forms of the Hebrew classics, rich in themselves, and the natural corrective to the piurely Greek criticism founded by Aristotle, have been entirely effaced under the mediaeval arrangement of the Bible in chapters and verses which is still retained in cur- rent version's. My third work was on The Literary Study of the Bible: An Account of the Literary Forms Represented in the Sacred Writings; and, following this, twelve years of my life were occupied with editing The Modern Reader's Bible, and the investigation of Uterary structure which this involved. My last work was an attempt to grasp the whole field of literature, not as an aggregation of particular literatures, but in the con- ception of World Literature as seen in perspective from the English point of view. In succession to these separate studies the present book seeks to arrive at a S3mthetic view of the theory and interpretation of hterature. Preface ix I have gone into these details in order to make clear the design and use of the book which follows. An eminent teacher of literature was accustomed to impress upon his students that " a general principle is as gas in the mouth of him that knows not the particulars." This touches what is the perpetual problem for the art of exposition — the question exactly how far to go in discussion of individual literary works, which have an interest of their own, in offering these as elucidation of Uterary theory. It would be possible to write a work which would be whoUy theoretic; but this would not only make a dull book, it would further be a sin against the foundation principle that our first duty to literature is to love it. On the other hand, if in so large a field one surrenders freely to disquisition on literary master- pieces, the connected thread of philosophical theory is lost in the particulars. For philosophy is only a fine word for seeing things in their true perspective. The natural solution seems to be the plan here adopted: a single work devoted to literary theory, discussion of particular works being reduced to what is essential, supplemented by other works in which special portions of Uterature are followed out in detail. In the foot- notes to this book I make references to other works of mine by which study of particular points can be carried farther. Very occasionally I have incorporated in this work tabular or other matter from my other books; for, while it may seem question- able taste for an author to quote from himself, yet it seems a pity to seek out a second best illustration when a better is available. It is natural to ask, for what readers this book is intended. The choice is usually between academic circles and the general reader. But in the case of literature I doubt if this distinction applies. The machinery of scholastic teaching seems favorable to method and thoroughness, but this is countervailed by the academic bias toward specialization; the general reader retains his breadth of view, and, while voluntary study is under X Preface temptation to be discxirsive, it is open to each individual to cor- rect this by self-direction. Our universities seem to be tending more and more to become professional schools. On the other hand, there are many signs of the times which are favorable to general culture. It is an age of Public Libraries: and every library is a university in posse. The enterprise of leading pub- lishers is doing excellent service in making the whole world's literature accessible; and it is a special note of the present time that the highest scholarship will devote itself to transplanting hterary masterpieces from one language to another in trans- lations which are themselves Uterature. In writing this book I have steadily kept before me the purpose of making it service- able in imiversity and school classrooms. I have also tried to make it interesting to the general reader. And the readers I should most wish to serve are those who have recognized their college graduation, not as the goal, but the starting-point of a culture with which the leisure time of their whole Uves may be ftUed. Richard Green Moulton July, 191S TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Introduction: Dominant Ideas of Modern Study: Unity, Induction, Evolution i Book I: Literary Morphology: Varieties of Literature and Their Underlying Principles 9 CHAPTER I. The Elements of Literary Form . . n II. The Fusion of Literary Elements . . 42 III. Literary Form the Key to Literary Interpretation 64 Book II: The Field and Scope of Literary Study 75 CHAPTER IV. The Unity of the Literary Field and the Concep- tion of World Literature .... 77 V. The Outer and the Inner Study of Literature . 93 Book III: Literary Evolution as Reflected in the His- tory of World Literature 117 CHAPTER VI. The Differentiation of Poetry and Prose . . . 119 VII. Evolution in Epic Poetry 132 Vni. Evolution in Drama 162 IX. Evolution in Lyric Poetry 197 Book IV: Literary Criticism: The Traditional Confu- sion and the Modern Reconstruction . . . . 219 CHAPTES X. Types of Literary Criticism and Their Traditional Confusion 221 XI. Speculative Criticism. — The Fundamental Con- ception and Function of Poetry 230 XII . Speculative Criticism. — ^The Evolutionary Theory of Taste 256 xi xii Table of Contents CHATTEa XIII. Inductive Criticism: or the Criticism of Inter- pretation 270 XIV. The History of Critical Opinion 303 XV. Judicial Criticism: or Criticism in Restraint of Production ■• • • 317 XVI. Subjective Criticism: or Criticism Accepted as Literature 325 XVII. The Place of Criticism in the Study of Literature 329 Book V: Literature as a Mode of Philosophy .... 333 CHAPTEK XVIII. Story as a Mode of Thinking 335 XIX. Literature as the Criticism of Life . . . .356 XX. Literature as a Higher Interpretation of Life and Nature 364 XXI. The Subject-Matter of Literature as Important as Literary Art 370 Book VI: Literature AS A Mode OF Art 375 CHAPTER XXII. The Grammar of Literary Art 377 XXIII. Plot as Poetic Architecture and Artistic Provi- dence 380 XXIV. Poetic Ornament: Theory of Imagery and Sym- bolism 403 XXV. Literary Echoing: The Conception of Literature as a Second Nature 445 XXVI. Language as a Factor in Literary Art 456 Conclusion: The Traditional and the Modern Studv or Literature 487 Syllabus 495 Works of the Author 510 General Index 511 INTRODUCTION DOMINANT IDEAS OF MODERN STUDY INTRODUCTION DOMINANT IDEAS OF MODERN STUDY The purpose of this work is to discuss the study of literature: what it must become, if it is to maintain its place in the fore- most rank of modem studies. Some measure of review is necessary of what by tradition the study of literature is at present: the spirit of this work, however, is expository, not polemic. Such discussion involves the whole theory or phi- losophy of literature, which at one time was deemed important, but which has of late years fallen strangely into neglect. As it appears to me, there are three fundamental points in which the study of literature has fallen behind the general spirit of modem thought. The first of these is the failure to recognize the unity of all literature. The present conception of the study is a tradition dating from the Renaissance. This was a very special epoch, which may almost be looked upon as an accident of history. The rising literatures of Europe, stiU in an inchoate stage, had been confronted with the mature and splendid literatures of Greece and Rome, suddenly recovered in their fulness. For a generation Greece was the schoolmaster of Europe. No classics of front rank were available except in Latin and Greek; the one literature which might have rivaled these, the Bible, was potent as to its matter and spirit, but could not influence literary form on account of the mediaeval setting in which it appeared. It was a great scheme of education and culture which thus united the linguistic discipline of the dead lan- guages with the vital masterpieces of ancient literature. But in course of time other literatures rose to high rank, and claimed attention, though they were studied only from the classical . 3 4 Introduction point of view. Other studies, distinct from that of literature, multiplied, and invaded the educational curriculum: reducing the portion of the whole that could be allotted to classical lit- erature, reducing in the main the literary element of classical study, which begins only when the difficult languages have been mastered. The situation could be met only by specialization; and hence arose the departmental scheme of study which still obtains — the arrangement by which different students in differ- ent classrooms are engaged with Greek, Latin, Oriental, Romance, German, English literatures, studying these in con- nection with the respective languages, and with much else that is important but is not literature. It is clear that a study of literature so divided cannot, even under the best circumstances, rise above the provincial; for a large proportion of those who enter into it it becomes little beyond a study of language. Such breaking up of the' whole field into independent depart- ments would not be tolerated for a moment in a study of phi- losophy, or a study of history. Specialization of the same kind belongs to the pursuit of the natural sciences. But here the ever minuter subdivision of the field, essential for the investi- gator, is balanced by an ever growing sense that the Nature which is being examined from so many points of view is one and the same. There is no such catholic grasp of literature: no tendency to correlate one literature with another, modem with ancient; no instinct of perspective which seeks to view particular questions as they arise in the light of the study as a whole. Literary study remains a coimtry without a map. Hence the unity of literature becomes the first postulate for sound literary study. In addition to this consideration, there are two master ideas of modern thought which wiU be found to have only slightly affected the study of literature as it obtains at present. These are inductive observation, and evolution. As to each of these some explanation is necessary. Introduction 5 The attempt is sometimes made to depreciate the impor- tance of inductive method as a characteristic of modem thought. It is claimed that modem observers do not in fact proceed on the system formulated for them by Bacon; that logical pro- cesses which are the converse of inductive have a large space in lie field of modem science. But such objections seem to be beside the mark. The question is not one of logic, which is concerned with the possible modes of thinking, but with the . habits of thought which, at particular times, are found to pre- vail. The modern observer does not think in the scheme of Bacon or Mill, just as the deductive philosopher does not think in syllogisms. Thinking, alike for the thinker and his reader, is an instinctive process, unconscious of its steps; it makes no matter how the successive steps have been reached — whether by system, or by intuition, or by happy chance — so long as they meet acceptance. The criterion comes when some step in the process is challenged: then it is that the deductive reasoner falls back upon his syllogisms, the inductive thinker verifies by observation of the matter in hand. In modern philosophy, induction does not supersede other modes of thought; but it serves as a standard to which, ultimately, they are referred. Deductive mathematics may be the most fitting mode of arriving at a system of moving bodies; but a leading use of that system when it is attained is to confront it with positive observation of actual moving bodies. Large portions of modem speculative thought will be in regions in which observation and verification are impracticable; such specu- lations will remain the least certain and convincing parts of philosophy; while, if they touch any point where observa- tion becomes possible, by such verification they will stand or fall. Now, of all studies, that of literature is the one in which there least appears this instinct of verification by observation of the subject-matter. A modem review will be effective by 6 Introduction reason of the literary skill with which it is presented; by the literary interest which the reading of it evokes. If the reader were to turn from the review to the work treated, in order to see how far this has been elucidated by what he has just read, no one would be more surprised than the reviewer. Discus- ' sions of literary theory proceed for the most part on trains of a priori reasoning: if particular pieces of literature do not harmonize with the reasoning, so much the worse for the liter- ature. If we seek the principles on which the reasoning rests, often these have been constructed on the spur of the moment; or they are a mere tradition from the past; or they have the authority of a great name; or there is begging of the question by dogmatic pronouncements as to what good taste requires. A theory of Hamlet will be welcomed because it is new; or because it is extremely interesting; or because it falls in with some favorite ethical principle. No doubt it will be supported by quotations from the play — quotations that teU in its favor: if objection be made that the theory leaves large parts of the poem without significance, this can be met by the suggestion that Shakespeare was an irregular genius, who did not frame his play to please the critics of the future. The same Shake- speare is handled by those whose interest is philology, or textual criticism: it is instructive to contrast the care with which the philologist or textual critic will marshal his authorities, weigh evidence, show conscientious desire to account for apparent exceptions, with the broad generalizations of the purely literary critic, who is secure in his confidence that the theory will not be confronted with the poem it is advanced to explain. Thus, even at this late date, we have to plead — as if it were a novelty — that literary questions are questions to be decided upon evidence. Of course, in this as in other studies there is abun- dant room for a priori reasoning. But any study is open to «, suspicion, as long as it evades the verification of theory by appeal to the subject-matter. Introduction 7 The second of the important ideas is evolution. Of course, evolution is not a modem, but one of the most ancient of all conceptions. Not only the early philosophy of Plato, but the poetry which preceded philosophy, is full of evolution. Hesi- odic poetry starts with the evolution of gods and universe. The Prometheus of Aeschylus is a study in evolution: the long dis- quisition of Prometheus on his benefits to mankind is simply the evolution of human civilization, with a startling climax in the art of divination. Not to be behindhand, Aristophanic comedy presents the Chorus of Birds singing the evolution of all things out of an embryonic 'wind-egg.' What modem thought has done is to give greater definiteness to the conception 1 of evolution, seeing in it the differentiation by gradual process of specific varieties out of what was more general, and the reunion of species in new combinations. For our present pur- pose the important thing is to distinguish two mental attitudes: what may be called the static and the evolutionary attitude of mind. The static thinker is possessed by fixed ideas, or fixed standards, usually drawn from the state of things he sees around him: these he, half-unconsciously, brings to bear upon regions of thought the most remote, from his own. An eighteenth- century thinker was conscious of living in a world in which individuality played a great part, yet not without some con- cession to social claims: with this consciousness he sxirveys the origin of society, and finds it in some social contract by which the individual surrenders part of his individual liberty in return for the advantages of social protection. It has not occurred to him that this individuality he was taking for granted was, historically, the late product, evolved slowly out of the social ideals he was trying to explain. A literary critic has been bom into an age of books and original authors, to whom plagiarism is a sin. With such prepossessions he inquires whether David or some other person 'wrote' a particular psalm, whether Homer is the 'author' of the Iliad. It does not occur 8 Introduction to him that writing and books and authors make a partioilar stage of literature; that originality had to be invented, while what corresponds to plagiarism was the conventionality from which originality was an off-shoot. Whole studies have been revolutionized by turning from static principles, taken for granted as universal, to the interrogation of history for the developing principles by which its successive stages are inter- preted. The static thinker will speak freely of evolution: but to him evolution means the advance up to his fixed standards, and again degeneration from them. In the other habit of mind the bias is toward the idea of process, rather than the idea of fixity: the variety appearing in things it seeks to express, not in distinctions fortified by limiting definitions, but as so many terms in a process that interprets them all. The study of literature has been traditionally static. To approach liter- ature with the evolutionary mental attitude will bring solu- tion for most of the controversies by which literary study has been distracted. In what follows I propose to speak of Literary Morphology, Literary Evolution, Literary Criticism, and again to review the Philosophic and the Artistic aspects of literature. In the treat- ment of these subjects the foundation principles will be inductive observation of literature as it actually is, and emphasis on evolutionary processes. And the field of view from which the literature treated is to be drawn will be determined by the con- ception of literature as a unity. BOOK I LITERARY MORPHOLOGY VARIETIES OF LITERATURE AND THEIR UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I: The Elements of Litesaky Form CHAPTER II: The Fusion of Literaey Elements CHAPTER ni: Liteeaey Form the Key to Literaey Interpretation CHAPTER I THE ELEMENTS OF LITERARY FORM The primary element of literary form is the ballad dance. This is the union of verse with musical accompaniment and dancing; the dancing being, not exactly what the word suggests to modem ears, but the imitative and suggestive action of which an orator's gestures are the nearest survival. Literature, -where it first appears spontaneously, takes this form: a theme or story is at once versified, accompanied with music, and suggested in action. When the Israelites triumphed at the Red Sea, Miriam "took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and dances." This was a ballad dance; it was a more elaborate example of the same when David, at the inauguration of Jerusalem, " danced before the Lord with all his might." And writers who deal with literary origins ofier abundant illustrations of folk dances among the most diverse peoples in an early stage of civilization. The ballad dance is thus the common germ of what are now the three separate arts of poetry, music, dance. While these three arts are gradually differentiating from their common point of origin, their mutual influence is seen. In poetry, the bodily movements serve for a long time as a sort of scaffolding, assisting rhythm until the mental sense of rhythm is strong enough to stand alone. In fully developed poetry the action drops out, the music has been absorbed into verbal rhythm. In the art of music, the half of it represented by songs and cantatas retains verse; the other half, orchestral music, drops both verse and action — unless the action may be considered to have left a trace in the bodily movements of the conductor. 12 Literary Morphology Bodily movement makes the whole of the third art, although music may be added as accessory and accompaniment. Such a ballad dance may be extremely short and simple. The triumph at the Red Sea consisted, apparently, of the words — Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: The horse arid his rider hath he thrown into the sea. Reiteration of these words, with timbrel music and dance movements, constituted the whole performance. No doubt a ballad dance, without ceasing to be such, can be much more elaborate than this. But the natural course of things is that poetry as it develops should differentiate into a variety of forms. The ballad dance remains as literary protoplasm: the primitive form up to which all other forms of literature, ultimately, may be traced. At this point must be introduced another of the funda- mental ideas in literary morphology. The four cardinal points of literary form are description and presentation, poetry and prose. The first of these two antitheses presents no difficulty. We readily understand that a story can be conveyed to us by the method of narrative description: it is a narrator who is speaking throughout, and the incidents are conceived to be over and past before the narration commences. On the other hand, in such literature as drama the speakers are, not any author or narrator, but the imaginary persons of the story that is being dramatized; and the incidents, instead of belonging to the past, are presented as happening before our eyes. A story-teller can deal with the different parts of a past story in any order he pleases. But the action of a drama can never go back in time; its parts must appear successively as they happen from beginning to end. The words 'description,' 'presenta- tion,' ought to be carefully used. It is a common mistake to say that Shakespeare 'describes' Hamlet as vacillating in The Elements of Literary Form 13 character. But Shakespeare has not told us anything whatever about Hamlet: had he done so we might have been spared many wearisome commentaries. What he has done is to contrive that Hamlet's own speeches and actions should present him to us, as vadUating or otherwise. The distinction is an elementary one in literary art. The other antithesis of poetry and prose introduces us into a region of literary discussion full of difficulties, and needing great caution. The utmost confusion is found to prevail in critical discussion of these terms. The source of this con- fusion is very simple. In the exigencies of language the word 'prose' has had to do double duty: there is the 'prose' that is antithetic to 'verse,' and there is the 'prose' that is anti- thetic to 'poetry.' This has had the effect of identifying 'poetry' and 'verse' even in the most cultured minds. The readiest way to free ourselves from this confusion is to open a volume of Shakespeare and turn over the pages. The reader's eye teUs him that there is in these plays as much prose as verse: yet no one supposes that Shakespeare ceases to be a poet when — ^perhaps in the middle of a scene — ^he passes from verse to prose. The ordinary usage of the terms has gone so perplexingly astray that it seems almost hopeless to recover correctness. Yet the very founder of literary criticism, Aristotle, with his usual sagacity, has uttered a warning against this very confusion. An historian and a poet do not difier from each other because the one writes in verse and the other in prose; for the history of Herodotus might be written in verse, and yet it would be no less a history with metre, than without metre. But they diSer in this, that the one speaks of things which have happened, and the other of such as might have happened.' The discrimination between the two meanings of 'prose,' and the traditional confusion of 'poetry' with 'verse,' are points of vital importance to literary theory. ^Poetics, chap. ix. 14 Literary Morphology The distinction of prose and verse touches oiily the surface of literature. It is a distinction of rhythm. All literary lan- guage is rhythmic, but there is a difiference: the rhythms of verse are recurrent rhythms, and force themselves on the atten- tion; the rhythm of prose, on the contrary, is oei^ei r/j^/^Aw. The rhythms that go to make verse may be determined by rhyme and ' number of syllables, as in English; or by syllabic quantity, as 1- in Latin and Greek; or by parallelism of clauses, as in Biblical ^ and other literatures; or by alliteration, as in Early English: but in all cases there is recurrence of the determining factor which makes the rhythm unmistakable. When verse is writ- ten, or printed, the eye assists the ear: there is division into lines of verse, which indicate the recurring rhythms on the principle that similar lines are similarly indented. The word 'prose,' on the contrary, has the et3miological meaning of 'straightforward': there is no break in the straightforward writing of the passage to indicate anything about rhythm. The trained ear catches a rhythm in prose, the beauty of which is that it is never obtrusive. It should be added, that the rhyth- mic difference of verse and prose is a difference of degree: the two can approach one another until they almost meet. Though the verse of Martin Tupper and Walt Whitman is printed in lines, yet there is a freedom of movement in the separate lines which brings the effect of the whole near to that of prose. On the other hand, passages of highly rhetorical prose, such as what is called 'euphuism,' show a recurrence of parallel clauses which comes close to the rhythm of verse, and readily lends itself to printing in lines. Although Iron the more it is used the brighter it is, yet Silver with much wearing doth waste to nothing: The Elements of Literary Form 15 Though the Cammock the more it is bowed the better it serveth, yet the Bow the more it is bent and occupied the weaker it waxeth; Though the CamomUe the more it is trodden and pressed down the more it spreadeth, yet the Violet the oftener it is handled and touched the sooner it withereth and decayeth. To the distinction of prose and verse the sister art of music shows a close parallel in its distinction between recitative and time bars. Bars divide music as lines divide verse, the rhythm of successive bars being recurrent. In recitative there are no dividing bars; yet the quantity of the notes — as minims, crotchets, quavers — imply a rhythm that is real, though not obtrusive. The distinction of prose and poetry, on the other hand, goes down to the essential meaning and matter of literature. 'Poet' is a Greek word which signifies one who makes or creates something; the English poets used to be called 'makers.' A certain verse in the Epistle to the Ephesians (2 : 10) is trans- lated in our Bibles, "We are God's workmanship"; the Greek original gives it, "We are God's poem." As God is the supreme Maker and Creator of the universe, and we are what God has created and made, so the poet is the creator of an imaginary universe, which he fills with imagined personages and incidents. Shakespeare is a poet by virtue of the fact that he has created a Hamlet, a Julius Caesar, a Battle of Agincourt; the Homeric poems create an Achilles, a Trojan War. There may have been an historical Achilles, as there certainly was an historic Julius Caesar: but the Shakespearean Julius Caesar, the Homeric 1 6 Literary Morphology Achilles, are independent creations, which may or may not agree with the historic counterparts. Poetry thus adds to the sum of existences; the world is the richer by so many personalities and incidents when the poets have completed their work. In precisely the same way Dickens creates a Micawber and a Pick- wick; our novels add to the sum of existences by the imagined life they create. Modern novels, just as much as the Iliad and Odyssey, are in the fullest sense poetry. In opposition to this, the literature to be called prose shows no such act of creation; prose is limited to the discussion of what already exists. If a philosopher or historian, in his work of discussing the world of actualities, should indicate a single detail as exist- ing which in fact had no existence, he would so far have ceased to be historian or philosopher, and would have passed into thfe domain of poetic creation. If, however, this fundamental conception of poetry and prose is to be held firm amid the confusion which has beset the usage of the terms, the reader will do well to fix in his mind this simple fact of literary history. The great bulk of ancient poetry is in verse. The great bulk of modern poetry is in prose. When the criticism which had fallen into the confusion between poetry and verse encountered the clear fact that the same act of creation belongs to novels in prose and to epic poems, it sought to meet the difficulty by using a different word — 'fiction' — to express creation in prose. 'Fiction' is simply the Latin counterpart to the Greek word 'poetry.' But this is an evasion of the issue. It breaks down at once: obviously, it does not meet the case of Shake^eare and other authors whose creative works pass backward and forward from prose to verse and verse to prose. Moreover, it ignores a fundamental fact of literary history. It is not disputed that literature at a cer- tain stage tends to express everything — science as well as The Elements of Literary Form 17 imaginative creation — ^in verse; at another stage its tendency is to express everything — imaginative creation as well as science — more commonly in prose than in verse. It is, of course, quite a separate question whether, when poetry is expressed in verse, the verse may not react on the creation, and modify it in some way. If this be so, then we must seek some modifying terms to indicate two different types of poetry. We are none the more excused from bringing our usage of terms into conformity with the literary facts; if the same act of creative imagination goes to make the novel and the epic or drama of antiquity, the whole must be recognized as poetry.' These four things, description and presentation, poetry and prose, are the four cardinal points of literary form. They are not to be conceived as four kinds of literature; but, like the cardinal points of the compass, they represent four necessary directions iii which literary activity can move. Literature, developing from its starting-point in the ballad dance, finds its movement boimded in these four directions. The result of the movement so bounded gives us the six elements of literary form. The mutual relation of these elements is indicated by Chart I on page 18, to which the reader is now referred. Litera- ture developing from the ballad dance moves in a certain direction and produces epic: its position in our chart indicates how this is creative poetry, in which the creation is conveyed by the mode of narration and description. Epic includes, as we have seen, alike the ancient verse narrative and the modem novel. Of the three constituents that made the ballad dance only speech is essential to epic: the earlier epic recitations ' On this important and tangled question a valuable discussion will be found in Professor Gummere's Beginnings of Poetry (Crowell), chapter ii. Mr. Gummere comes to a different conclusion from mine. But I would point out that his discussion seems in the main to be concerned with the usage of the term 'poetry': as to this, no doubt, the majority of authorities is on his side. I am concerned with the principles of literary theory; and I think a firm stand should be made against the traditional error. I return to this subject below, pp. 232-34. CHART I ■9°" \^ Cieativel/f EPIC Description (Speech preponderates) LYRIC Reflection (Music preponderates) DRAMA Presentation (Action preponderates) Ballad Dance Speech Music Action Primitive literary form HISTORY Description (of Nature and Events) ORATORY Presentation PHILOSOPHY Reflection '■■'^a asojd i8 The Elements of Literary Form 19 retained something of music and imitative action, but these soon dropped away. By a movement in a contrary direction we get drama: here the creative story is presenting itself, instead of being told from the outside as a "thing of the past. The imitative action of the original ballad dance has here become dominant: drama is acted poetry. If the music per- sists, it makes the modification of drama we call opera. The third element of the ballad dance, speech, is not absolutely essential to drama, as we see from the puppet-play. Moving in yet a third direction from the starting-point literature becomes lyric: here music has become dominant over speech, and the element of action may die out. As narration belongs to epic, and presentation to drama, so lyric produces its effect by less defined modes such as suggest reflection, contemplation, celebration. On the side of prose, the discussion of existing things that does not create, we have three elements of literary form, exact counterparts to the three forms of poetry. History, by its position in our chart, is seen to have relations with prose and with description: natural history is the description of existing things, history without any qualifying adjective is narration of actual events. Philosophy, like lyric, is reflection; but, as prose, it is reflection on things as they are. The third form of prose literature may be termed oratory, but the word must be understood to include the whole literature of address. Whether in the form of a speech or a letter, it involves an audience or addressee: it is thus, like drama, presentation. The famous sajring of the orator Demosthenes, that the first thing in oratory. is action, the second and third things action also, has been ingeniously interpreted to mean, that the first duty of an orator is to be an actor; the second, to be an actor; the third, again to be an actor. The passage of Quintilian that is the authority for the dictum' hardly ' Quintilian, Book xi, chap. 3. ao Literary Morphology supports the interpretation: yet it may serve to illustrate the close relation of oratory to drama. These, then, are the six elements of literary form: epic, lyric, drama; history, philosophy, oratory. But at this point care must be taken to avoid a misunderstanding which goes down to the foundation of literary morphology. The six elements of literary form are not to he understood as so many classes of literature to which particular literary works may be assigned. They are like the elements of chemistry: in actual literature they will be found, sometimes singly, more often in combination. Chemistry has its seventy elements: occasionally we find in nature pure oxygen, pure sulphur, pure gold; more frequently the things of nature analyze into combinations of several ele- ments. It is so with the productions of literature: , in any one literary work we must be prepared to find the elements of literary form in combination, though we may find but a single form. A play of Moliere may be pure drama: the plays of Euripides, though they are for convenience called dramas, upon analysis are found to combine lyric with drama, and to show traces of epic and oratory. I am here only touching — ^by way of caution — upon an important principle, the full consideration of which belongs to the succeeding chapter. II The further consideration of these elements of form brings us to another of the foundation ideas in literary theory. It is a matter of common observation that, where literature is devel- oping spontaneously, a long period of Oral Poetry precedes the literature of Writing and Books. The exact antithesis, how- ever, is not between Oral and Written, but between Floating and Fixed. The stages of literary advance as regards Floating and Fixed Literature are suggested by Chart II, on page 21. CHART n FLOATING AND FIXED LITERATURE Floating (Oral) Liteia- tuie I. Floating: free to vary with each repetition i. Audience: the whole Public 3. Collective Authorship 4. Interest of conven- tional echoing Fixed (Book) Litera- ture 1. Fixed by writing: change involves new 'edition' 2. A Reading Class 3. Individual Au- thorship and Property in Lit- erature 4. Interest of Origi- nality Floating (Periodical) Lit- erature I. Expansion of Print- ing. Floating: each issue nullifies the pre- ceding 3. Reading universal: adjunct to Commerce and Public Life 3. Irresponsible Anony- mity — Collective Copyright 4. News: Interest of the 'ephemeral' When Floating Literature touches an^ age of Fixed Literature ^Part becomes material of Fked Lit- erature - Part dies out ^Part is accidentally preserved as 'Fos- sil Poetry' 22 Literary Morphology The readers of this work, and their ancestors before them for many centuries, have lived wholly in the age of books; it takes some mental effort to realize what entirely different con- ditions affected the literature that was uncommitted to writing. It will be understood that the question here is not the invention of writing, which would carry us back to elementary stages of civilization. Writing is in full use for records, for laws, for inscriptions, and many other purposes, long before it becomes natural to apply it to literature. The earlier literature came direct from the lips of the poet to the ears of the public; it was preserved by verbal tradition from poet to poet. Such oral poetry was floating literature, in the sense that it was free to vary with each successive repetition. Writing, on the other hand, fixes literature: to make a change in a book involves nothing less than a new 'edition.' A second characteristic of oral poetry is that the poet has for audience the whole public. However varied may be the gradations of social rank, the serf is as near as his lord to the minstrel, the sole source of literature: all classes of society have equal literary opportunities. When literature is committed to writing there comes a gulf between the reading and the non-reading classes; with the advent of books a large part of society is, in a literary sense, disfranchised. Again, books imply individual authorship; the world is usually more interested in the authors than in the literature. And the individual author comes to have a property in the literature he produces, a copyright protected by law. So far can this be carried that our own times have witnessed attempts to protect thoughts, and to claim property in dramatic situations. In oral poetry the only authorship is the collective authorship of a whole profession: the profession of minstrels, by whatever particular name — bards, scalds, priests, singers — the poetic profession may be styled. In the absence of writing there is nothing to connect a particular poet with a particular poem: the minstrel profession have the whole poetry in common, each Floating and Fixed Literature 23 minstrel using what others produce, either repeating it or vary- ing from it at will; and he does this without any sense of bor- rowing, because there is no sense of literary ownership. This is, of course, only one phase of a wider law of property. To us it appears an elementary idea that a particular person should own a particular piece of land; but we know from history that originally ownership of land rested ia the community, the indi- vidual could have only rights of use. Once more, prominence of individual authorship leads to emphasis on the literary interest of originality; to be accused of plagiarism is to be ac- cused of dishonesty. In the age of oral poetry originality has not yet been invented. The dominant interest ia poetry is the opposite of this, which we call conventionality; ancient poems seek to reiterate the same stories, the same thoughts and modes of expression. What is new in oral poetry becomes beautiful in proportion as it echoes what is old. It is a rare thing, but deeply interesting to the student of evolution, to detect an institution in the very process of de- veloping. A transformation of this kind seems to have been preserved for us in the thirty-sixth chapter of the Book of Jere- miah. The chapter teUs how the prophet is "shut up": he is either imprisoned or forced to hide himself. Under these circumstances a prophetic inspiration is vouchsafed to him. Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words I have spoken imto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day that I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. The narrative tells how accordingly Jeremiah dictated to Baruch, and how Baruch took the roll of the book and read it to audience after audience of the people and the court. Most graphically the chapter brings out the spreading of a panic through successive circles of those who listen, until the reading encoimters the callous indifference of the king, who — amid 24 Literary Morphology protests from those around him — dips with a penknife the por- tions of the roE that overhang the reader's desk as the reading progresses, and flings the fragments into the fire. It is clear that there is some novelty in what is happening: what seems to us such a matter of course has more than once to be explained by Baruch. Tell us now, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth ? .... He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book. What is the novelty here, and what is the source of the panic? The reader might at first be inclined to connect the growing excitement with the subject-matter of the prophetic denun- ciations. But this cannot be the cause: it is expressly indicated that what is written is the same matter of prophecy which Jeremiah has been regularly pouring forth for years, the very denunciations on account of which he was "shut up." Is the novelty the novelty of a book? By no means: it is an age of books, and part of the action takes place in the chamber of scribes. What is novel is that one mighty form of literature, prophecy, is just passing from the spoken to the written stage. An age perfectly familiar with books of history, and books of law, had conceived of prophecy as inseparably connected with the presence of the prophet, an utterance as spontaneous as the delirium of a sick man; if the prophet becomes troublesome he can be "shut up. " It now appears that prophetic utterance can take the form of a book: that the daily ministerings of a long course of years can be at once condensed and intensified into a piece of literature short enough to be read at a single sitting. We see a particular branch of literature in the act of transforming itself from spoken to written. But the book is not the final term in the particular evolution we are tracing. Writing gives place to printing; printing ex- pands indefinitely its powers of multiplication and distribution. Floating and Fixed Literature 25 There arises at last a new kind of floating literature — ^Journal- ism: this word being used to express the whole of periodical literature, from the daily newspaper to the magazine and quar- terly review. This is floating literature in the sense that it is periodical; as in the floating literature of oral poetry each repetition might be a new edition, so here each issue of a peri- odical nullifies preceding issues; when today's newspaper has come out, yesterday's paper ceases to be news. Confinement of Uterature to books had excluded the non-reading classes: with journalism reading is made universal. It is not only that the cheapness of the newspaper renders it universally accessible. Literatmre through this channel is forced upon the community as a whole: the advertisements are an adjunct to its commerce, the body of the paper is the organ of its public life. Author- ship is affected. The collective authorship of oral poetry changed, with books, to individual authorship; the rise of joumaUsm brings a change in a backward direction, and author- ship becomes anonjrmous, with corresponding loss of responsi- bility. And what there is of copyright is the collective copyright of the journal. Once more : the advance of Uterary in- terest from conventionality to origiuaUty is carried a stage farther, and the dominant interest of the later floating literature becomes 'news.' It is now things 'ephemeral,' precisely because they are ephemeral, that make the characteristic matter of journalism. We have now to apply this distinction of Floating and Fixed literature to what we saw as the six elements of literary form. This is suggested by Chart III on page 26. In reading this chart it will be natural to take the direction from left to right of the page as indicating progression in time. We thus have a literary progression from a floating literature which is oral, at the begiiming, to a floating literature which is periodical, at the end. The middle part of the chart provides for the fixed literature of books: but neither in the chart nor in reahty can Floating (Periodical) Literature JOURHALISM g 4) Hi ^ ■I o a o 3 u o <0 si 0> o ms^ldoioi j XjBJ3?n aoHva avaiva smvBisin (l^JO) 3ni;B0ia ?6 Floating and Fixed Literature 27 we draw any line of separation between the two, floating and fixed literature move on side by side. The first stage of litera- ture is constituted wholly by the ballad dance: this protoplas- mic form contains all other literary forms in embryo. The second stage of literature is reached as the ballad dance throws off the three forms of poetry: the creative description of Epic, the creative reflection of Lyric, the creative presentation of Drama. A further stage is seen when prose, the literature of discussion, has difierentiated itself from creative poetry; its three forms — descriptive History, reflective Philosophy, Ora- tory with its function of presentation — counterparts to the three forms of poetry. The movement is now toward the floating literature of periodical writings. AU the six forms of literature are attracted toward this periodical literature: each as it is absorbed into journalism undergoes a modification such as the floating character of the medium demands. Epic passes into journalism in the form of the serial story: any story of large dimensions can adapt itself to periodical literature only by reaching completeness in successive instalments. Lyric readily adapts itself to journalism: the oldest newspapers had their 'Poet's Corner'; modem newspapers have devised the most whimsical headings — 'Alternating Currents,' 'A Line- o'-Type or Two,' and the like — under which the passing reflec- tions of the day can attain creative form. History enters journalism with the ^special correspondent. Wherever impor- tant events are happening, or threatening to happen, news- paper enterprise sends special correspondents to the spot. Their function is the function of history: but, unlike the his- torian of prose literature, the special correspondent may not wait for events to attain completeness; what special correspond- ence gives us is history in the process of making. Philosophy appears in journalism in the form of editorials: the philosopher of prose may reflect on the sum of things, leading articles of periodical literature bring the philosophic outlook to bear upon 28 Literary Morphology passing questions as they arise. Oratory passes into journalism as letters to the editor. The correspondent formally addresses the editor, as the orator formally addresses the chairman of the meeting: in both cases the real address is, not to chairman or editor, but to the whole meeting, or the hundreds of thousands who can be reached only by the editor's permission. -In refer- ence to the remaining one of the six forms, it might have been supposed, a priori, that it would be impossible for drama to become periodical. Quite in our own time this has been realized, in the cartoons that figure so prominently in present-day news- papers. Such cartoons, it is hardly necessary to explain, are entirely distinct from illustrations or pictures of scenes. A cartoon is a dramatic situation of public life presented to the eye; dialogue often accompanies it, but if not, it is, like the puppet-play, drama without words. The periodic character of the medium in which it appears makes a cartoon, not the complete drama, but the dramatic situation. The cartoons in Punch relating to Gladstone and to Disraeli, spread over a long course of years, have been collected and published separately: as we sweep through either collection we seem to catch the Gladstone drama, the Disraeli drama, of English history. This transition from the floating literature of the ballad dance to the very different floating literature of journalism, with the intervening forms of fijced literature, seems to give us a progressive movement that has attained its completeness. What Chart III on page 26 reflects is, so to speak, a life history of literary form. Ill Out of the preceding discussion of the elements of literary form particular topics arise that are of general literary interest. I. One of the starting-points for the more modem treatment of literature is that which has conie to be known as the Homeric Question. Criticism arose for the Greeks, and was continued by their modern successors, in an age of books: it was not unnatural The Homeric Process 29 that conditions belonging to written literature should, tacitly and half unconsciously, be assumed as appl3ring to widely differ- ent ages. Thus the Homeric poems suggested a Homer who was an individual poet, and who 'wrote' the Iliad and the Odyssey, just as Euripides or Chaucer might write their poems. Later on, a study of the very difEerent conditions attaching to early Uterature brought the suggestion that the Homeric poems were the result of an evolutionary process; that 'Homer' signified, not a poet, but a state of poetry. The suggestion was at first received with contemptuous incredulity; this was partly on account of its novelty, and in part because the new hj^othesis was at first not very clearly conceived. The Iliad and Odyssey are, artistically, among the most perfect poems in existence: how, it was asked, could this artistic perfection be attained by the mere process of 'growing together'? The mystery disappears when the relative position of floating and fitxed literature is clearly grasped. In a long tradition of rhapsodic recitations a vast mass of heroic ballads is accumulating and reaching perfection of detail; two particular series of these ballads cluster around the heroic personalities of Achilles and Odysseus; these two 'heroic cycles' are, of course, not poems, but ag- gregations of poems more or less articulated together.' These heroic cycles of oral poetry pass into the age of written literature and individual authorship. It now becomes possible for some individual poet — ^whose name may or may not have been Homer — to take the discordant mass of Achilles stories and harmonize them into the consistent plot of the Iliad; for the same or another poet to harmonize the Odysseus stories into the Odyssey. "^ ' These heroic cycles of floating, poetry must not be confused with another use of the term: prose compilations of the Second Century B.C. Compare Gilbert Murray's History of Ancient Greek Literature (in Gosse's "Literatures of the World," published by Appleton), page 9. ' It must be understood that it is quite a separate question how far our texts of the Iliad and Odyssey may have admitted changes of detail since 30 Literary Morphology The full strength of both floating and fixed literature has been concentrated on the poems: from the long tradition of oral poetry has come the richness of detail; without the architec- tonic mind of an individual poet the harmony of consistent plot would be impossible. Moreover, what at first presented itself as exceptional and unique has, by further study of the world's literature, been seen to be a regular thing. Floating ballads are taken down from the lips of Gaelic reciters by Mac- pherson, and articulated into the poems of Ossian: Macpherson is the Homer of the Ossianic poetry, although (it must be con- fessed) a Homer whose work has been much less perfectly exe- cuted. The objections against Ossian that come from Dr. Samuel Johnson and his school show ignorance of the conditions of floating literature, inability to conceive any type of litera- ture different from that of their own times. What Dr. Johnson stolidly rejected, the genius of Goethe and aU Europe eagerly welcomed. Again, the Norse traditions that had grown into saga form pass through the architectonic mind of WiUiam Mor- ris, and emerge as the great epic of Sigurd the Volsung: WiUiam Morris becomes the Homer that interprets Norse poetry to the mind of modern England. Instead of being conceived as a thing exceptional and strange, the "Homeric process" may be recognized as a regular phenomenon wherever floating literature and fixed literature come together. 2. The distinction between floating and fixed literature has a bearing upon questions of genuineness, authenticity, and the main text was established. A convenient discussion of the whole sub- ject will be found in Professor G. Murray's History of Ancient Greek Litera- ture (Appleton), pages 1-53- Discussions of textual correctness are for experts in the subject. But a great factor in such discussions is the 'har- mony' or 'inconsistencies' of the plot. I venture the remark that the purely literary question of what constitutes plot has had slight considera- tion in traditional study. According to conceptions of plot followed in this work (or in my World Literature, chapter ii) the plots of the IHad and Odyssey are much more harmonious and perfect than they are usually supposed to be. Genuineness, Authenticity and Date 31 date. The Book of Job has profoundly impressed the whole literary world; and it seems natural to make the inquiry, What is the date of this wonderful book ? It has often been claimed that the Book of Job is the oldest book in the world. Modern Hebrew scholarship inclines to the view that Job is a late book, of about the time of the Exile. Neither of these positions is correct; both have a measure of truth in them. Like so much of the world's greatest poetry, the Book of Job has passed over from the age of oral poetry to the age of written literature. Many of its details seem to reflect primitive life, such as would carry the first form of the poem to a past that is indefinitely far. Considerations of internal evidence favor the view that the poem attained the precise form it has in our Bibles only at a period as late as the ExUe. But the true answer to the ques- tion is to recognize that the word 'date' has no meaning in application to floating poetry; or, if it has a meaning, the date becomes the relatively unimportant period when the oral development was fixed by writing. What applies to questions of date applies equally to questions of genuineness. Many critics of Job have maintained that the speeches of Elihu must come from a different source than that of the dialogue with the Friends, and are therefore not genuine. The fact of the argument may be correct, but the inference will not fol- low. The word 'genuineness' has no meaning except in con- nection with individual authorship; where a poem has drawn its richness from the inspiration of successive poets, the fact that part of it comes from one source and part from another makes neither part more or less ' genuine ' than the other. More than one scholar has undertaken, by a process of critical analy- sis, to detect the successive accretions to this poem of Job, and to get back to what they call the original 'nucleus.' If we suppose that this critical analysis has been executed with absolute correctness — and this is supposing a great deal — stiU the alleged nucleus comes to us with no greater literary authority 32 Literary Morphology than the later or final forms of the poem. Genuineness and date are considerations of authorship, not considerations of Uterature. 3. The literary processes we have been studying open up the question of Fossil Poetry. The reader is referred again to Chart III on page 26. When a particular mass of floating literature passes into an age of writing and books, what will become of it ? There are three possibilities. Part of the oral literature, as we have seen, becomes worked over by individual poets, and is material of the poetry that is written and fixed. Part of it remains in the hands of minstrel reciters; gradually minstrel recitation is eliminated by the advance of book litera- ture, and such portions of the oral poetry die out. But there is a third possibility. While particular poems are still in the stage of recitation, and so are free to change with each delivery, some particular delivery of the poem is taken down in writing and made permanent. This may be called fossil poetry. A notable illustration of it is the ballads of Bishop Percy's col- lection, which helped to bring about a revolution in the public taste for poetry. Objection has been taken to the description of these as fossil poems, on the ground, that they are in fact not poems of any great antiquity, but have come from the debris of longer epics belonging to the preceding age. How far this is correct must be decided for each case on its merits. But this will not affect the question of fossil poetry. It is true that geology has led us to associate the word 'fossil' with a paleon to- logical past: but remote antiquity is not essential to the idea of fossil. What exactly are the fossils of geology? In super- ficial appearance they are pieces of stone; but the geologist can show that, unlike stone in general, the fossils represent former organic life. Now, organic life is a thing of flux and constant change: while the creature lives, its life is a process of change from moment to moment, and when it dies the change continues Fossil Poetry 33 as decomposition. What has happened in a fossil is that one single moment in this ceaseless change has been touched by the petrifyiag processes of nature and been made perpetual. It is the same with such poems as the Percy ballads. In strict- ness, to speak of writing down a ballad is a contradiction in terms; for a ballad, as floating poetry, may vary with each repe- tition. What is meant is that one particular repetition of the changing ballad has been arrested by the fixing process of writ- ing: in the strictest sense it has become a literary fossil. 4. Our consideration of successive stages in literary evo- lution has raised another topic of interest: the relation' of journal- ism to the rest of literature. On this subject there are opposing opinions. Many will not admit the literary character of the newspaper, and insist on a sharp antithesis between journalism and literature. Others, more especially the present generation of readers, show by their practice that they look to the news- paper and the magazine as a foremost source of literary enter- tainment. They can support their view by pointing to the long list of writers of first order who are contributors to journal- ism, and the considerable number of literary masterpieces which have first appeared in periodical form. In this contro- verted question four remarks may be ofifered. In the first place, we have seen that periodical literature comes as a natural stage in the evolution of literary form. Oral , poetry, passing into books, gives floating literature a share in the development of the world's greatest literary achievements. The progression so commenced continues, and in a perfectly natural way leads on to a floating literature that is periodical; each of the main literary forms shows affinity for this periodical medium. If it be true that certain great literatures, such as that of ancient Greece, show nothing of this kind, it is because these literatures were prematurely arrested, and did not last long enough to attain their complete evolution. 34 Literary Morphology More than this, journalism is the universalization of litera- ture. The original oral poetry, we have seen, was addressed to the public as a whole; the passage from oral to written limits literature to a reading class, with a correspondent narrowing of interest, since literature must reflect the interest of the audi- ence to which it appeals. With periodical literature the ap- peal and the breadth of interest are again made universal. And this universalization of literature by journalism is not potential, but actual; periodical literature is bound up with every detail of commercial activity and public life. Of course, the theory has been that, if the advent of books was a limitation of literary interest to a reading class, this was a temporary thing, to be overcome by education. But when we turn from theory to practice, we find that education has signally failed to bring about what is required; it has concerned itself with development of faculty only, not with stimulation of motive and interest. Public schools can easily make reading universal in the sense of giving the faculty to read: but have they given motives for reading or impulse toward literature? Where education has failed, journalism has succeeded: the newspaper has made literature a universal interest. Over against this must be set a consideration of an opposite kind: if journalism increases enormously the number of readers, it is at the same time undermining the power to read. This particular effect may be described as the dissipation of the attention. Newspapers and magazines are not for reading in the sense in which we use that word of books. The use of newspapers and magazines develops a special mental habit: a power of sweeping swiftly over vast areas of print, with the attention held in leash ready to be slipped upon a few widely scattered things of interest. The mental habit once formed is turned upon other kinds of literature. But the reading of books requires sustained and concentrated attention. "Music as well consists in the ear as in the player": the great literary Position of Journalism in Literature 35 classics depend almost as much upon what the reader brings as upon what the author has provided. The story-telling of antiquity is potent by what it leaves out. He who would tell a story to the most modern reader will need to see that every ^effect he desires is put in, unmistakably in, or it will be lost. I think those who have had experience in the literary training of the present generation will recognize this blunting of the in- stinct of appreciation where there is ample intelligence for appreciating what is pointed out. Thus there never was a time when the intensive study of literature was more needed than at the present. The reader who is anxious to be up to date is apt to find magazines and reviews more alive than formal literature. What is really happening is that, unconsciously, his magazine habit is filching from him his power of recognizing Uterary vitality when he sees it. But the most serious characteristic of journalism is its effect upon authorship. With the passage from the book to periodical literature authorship tends to become anonymous, and with anonymity comes the almost total loss of responsibility. For a great part of a newspaper no individual can be made responsible; what some newspapers print no decent man would put his name to. Thus by the rise of journalism a place is found in literature for what is morally outrageous; more serious still is the removal of every barrier against looseness of statement and unverified information. Worst of all is the consideration that by periodical literature a pecuniary premium is put upon unreliability and insinuation; it is the sensational heading that sells the extra, the spicy rumor that gives the society journal its vogue. And this seems to be a public wrong without a remedy. It is a very small part of the evils of life that can be corrected by the ma- chinery of justice. We need more spiritual and subtle re- straints: among these one of the most potent is professional spirit. It is obvious that, for example, the practice of law and medicine offers scope for much that is evil; but here professional 36 Literary Morphology feeling operates as a powerful force against malpractice. Is there anything corresponding to this in the profession of journal- ism ? Allowance must be made for the newness of the insti- tution. Otherwise, if journalists are to be seen uniting in co-operative efforts only for the promotion of newspaper enter- prise, and not for effort toward restraint of abuses, journaUsm would seem to be a profession without a professional conscience. 5. Our discussion has touched the fringe of a large subject: \yhat may be called the Evolution of Originality.' It can only be sketched here: fuller consideration would lead us beyond the scope of the present work to the study of literary origins — a thing best kept distinct from the study of literature. The leading points are indicated by Chart IV on page 37. The literature we read today, and the traditional ideas we bring to bear upon it, are alike the product of the age of books and individual authorship. Thus the word 'original' seems to us to require no explanation: it is difficult to think away from it. In reality, what it indicates is a matter of slow growth, an evolution of which the three terms may be expressed by the words communal, conventional, original. The starting-point is Communal or Folk Poetry. The bal- lad dance is performed by the whole community, by all who are present at the time; the performers and the audience are iden- tical. The community is also the author, so far as the idea of authorship can apply in such a case; poetry is a popular game, and what variations arise are spontaneous from within, not im- posed from without. Reflections of such a primitive stage of ' In this section of my work I wish to express my obligation to Professor Gummere's Beginnings of Poetry (Crowell), chapter iv. For the detailed evolution of literature in its early stages, the reader is referred to this work, or to such works as The Evolution of Literature hy A. G.Mackenzie (Crowell), or Posnett's Comparative Liter atwe (Kegan Paul). What we are here con- cerned with is the bearing of this early evolution upon the general theory of literature. CHART IV Evolution of Originality Communal or Folk Poetry: Poetiy as a popular Game surviving in Popular Refrains Incrementals and Countings Out Songs of Labor frhe Refrain adopted in fully developed poetry as a device for maintaining the prominence of the unity over the surface details] Composition in the hands of a class: the Minstrels of Floating Poetry. Collective Authorship applied to Communal Material — ^thus dominant literary interest of Convention- ality Individual Authorship and dominant mterest of Origi- nality. Sentiment as Individualized Feeling Transition Stage: Drama: Individualizing of Character — Realism of Incident Climax: The Sonnet: The most individualized sentiment neutralized by restraint of form Reaction: Humor: The recoil from exces- sive sentiment Permanent Influences on fully developed Poetry: The Antithesis of Conventional and Original — of Ideal and Real 37 38 Literary Morphology poetry may be seen in the songs of labor, each kind of labor with its characteristic song; still more in the recurring refrains of the earlier ballads, it being understood that the refrain repre- sents what originally was the whole performance. Advance is made from this by extemporized effusions of individuals, either interrupting the dance or running concurrently with it: these grow into what becomes the ballad apart from its refrain. The poetry of the Bible in parts carries us far back in this develop- ment of poetry. The frequent recurrence of the verse O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: For his mercy endureth for ever: points to this as originally a sacred folk song. In the hundred and thirty-sixth psalm one-half of that verse sung as a refrain — For his mercy endureth forever — alternates throughout with single lines bringing matter for praise. It is significant that these lines of recitation can be grammatically continuous, independent of the parenthetic refrain. To him which led his people through the wilderness; (For his mercy endureth for ever) To him which smote great kings, (For his mercy endureth for ever) And slew famous kings, (For his mercy endureth for ever) Sihon king of the Amorites, (For his mercy endureth for ever) And Og king of Bashan; (For his mercy endureth for ever) And gave their land for an heritage, (For his mercy endureth for^ever) Even an heritage unto Israel his servant: (For his mercy endureth for ever). Evolution of Originality 39 This seems to carry us back to the point where the accretional matter can be concurrent with the dance. And the whole pro- cess seems to be reflected in the fifteenth chapter of Exodus. Verses 20-21 of that chapter, as remarked before, seem to give us the original ballad dance, with its reiteration of the verse — Sing ye unto the Lokd, for he hath triumphed gloriously; The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. Or, if we interpret the phrase, "And Miriam answered them," to mean that she as leader uttered the first line of the couplet while the dancers would respond with the second line, then we have the first form of accretional interruption. This would grow as more and more of matter for praise comes to be inter- jected between reiterations of the refrain. The first eighteen verses of the chapter are made by a majestic hymn, in its matter obviously late, inserted by the historian, and representing in the fulness of poetry the product of these gradual accretions. It is to be noted that the recurring refrain has been adopted by fully developed l3Tric poetry, as a device for maintaining the prominence of the unity over the surface details. It acts like ■ the instrumental accompaniment which is heard suggestively through the stanzas of a song, and fills up the intervals between them. Marching along, fifty-score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. This refrain makes the whole burden of Browning's "Cavalier Song," to which the successive stanzas — with their girdings at Hampden and Ps^n, and longing for the fray at Nottingham — are only accessory. The middle stage of the process is represented by what we have already seen as the floating poetry of the minstrels. The audience and the performers are now distinct: poetic compo- sition is in the hands of a class. Yet the community as a whole has not entirely abdicated from its poetic function: what the 40 Literary Morphology minstrels invent must be adapted to the expectant attitude of the community. This is the literary interest of conventionality, with its recurring thoughts and expressions, and craving after reiteration of the familiar. When poetry is fixed by writing, connection becomes possible between particular poems and particular poets. Individual authorship has come in, and the idea of individual property in poetic thought, which is simply another name for originality. Perhaps the word which most deeply reflects this new trend in the evolution of poetry is the word 'sentiment.' Earlier poetry ministered to the sympathies of the community: sentiment is individualized feeling. The set of poetic progress is in the direction of sentiment, though various phases of the movement may be distinguished. We can see how the drama makes a transition stage. The essential function of drama is to present - an objective story: the story is all in all in the puppet-play, where the personages are dolls ; it is a step from this to the masks worn by actqrs in Greek drama, which were a limitation on varia- tions of character. Ultimately all such limitations are tran- scended; freedom of dialogue leads steadily toward complete ^individualization of character, and toward the realism which is individualization of incident. The climax of the movement toward individualization of thought is seen in the sonnet; this has been humorously called an "apartment for a single gentle- man in verse." The familiar lines of Wordsworth are in point: Happy the feeling from the bosom thrown In perfect shape .... best likened to a stone Of the sea-beach, when, polished with nice care, Veins it discovers exquisite and rare, Which for the loss of that moist gleam atone That tempted first to gathef it. The sonnet becomes an accepted medium for the most par- ticularized bosom-thinking of the individual, largely because Evolution of Originality 41 its severe restraint of form acts as a corrective. Finally, with all this set of the poetic current in the direction of sentiment, there is a reaction that appears in himior: humor is the recoil ' from excess of sentiment. It is seen in things great and small. The sway toward sentiment in Euripides at once calls up an Aristophanes; the almost mawkish sentimentality of Richard- son is answered by the open-air freshnesss of Fielding's parodies. The author of the Seasons wrote a rather sentimental tragedy, Sophonisba, which contained one unfortunate line: Sophonisba! Sophonisba O! Coffee-house wit caught the false note and reiterated — O Jemmy Thomson ! Jemmy Thomson ! ! ! In this particular function of humor we see the starting-point and the end of the evolution brought together: humor is the last pull of the 'common sense' against the individual thinking that is getting out of range. The gradual evolution of originality has left permanent in- fluences behind it. Fully developed poetry retains this an- tithesis of conventional and original. Here we have the tides of the literary ocean: the conventional poetry of Pope and its poetic diction lead inevitably to the reaction under Wordsworth, with its fresh and individual study of nature and insistence upon spontaneous style; so when the "demonic" poetry of Byron has spent its first impulse, it becomes an easily imitated and wearying convention, that is preparing acceptance for the subtle individualized thinldng of Browniag. And this antithesis of original and conventional has at least some measure of re- lation with a more fundamental conception in poetry — the antithesis of ideal and real. Ideal seems to suggest the rare atmosphere in which only the most individualized flight can sustain itself; realism brings us down to the objective, and therefore the common world. CHAPTER II THE FUSION OF LITERARY ELEMENTS In the preceding chapter we considered the six elements of literary form: how, in the ballad dance, as literary protoplasm, the elements are held together in embryo; how, rising out of this ballad dance, poetry crystallizes into the distinct forms of epic narrative, dramatic presentation, and lyric meditation; how by a later stage of evolution prose, with its limitation to discussion of what actually exists, gradually differentiates it- self from the poetry that admits creation; how, in time, the three elements of prose — ^history, philosophy, oratory — stand as counterparts to the three elements of poetry. In the present chapter we are to trace how, side by side with this differentia- tion of literary elements, a counter movement is to be recog- nized, by which the elements tend to re-enter into union with one another. They can combine, in the sense that two or more elements can coexist in the same literary work. They can enter into the still closer union of fusion, by which one element can admit the function of another. Something of a parallel to all this is exhibited in the study of language. The 'parts of speech' recognized by grammatical analysis make a counter- part to the elements of literary form. When a language has largely lost inflections, there is nothing to prevent particular words serving now for one and now for another part of speech on different occasions. This belongs to ordinary usage; but in vigorous and highly idiomatic speech there is the further possibility that different parts of speech may combine their functions in the same word. 'Proud' comes to us with all the 42 The Fusion of Literary Elements 43 associations of an adjective; yet in the irate language of old Capulet it gets the vigorous life of both a noun and a verb: Proud me no prouds, But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next, To go with Paris to St. Peter's Church. In the sentence, "He theed and thoued me like a Quaker," pro- nouns can be elevated to verbs without ceasing to be pronouns. Purely relational parts of speech, like conjunctions and prepo- sitions, seem far removed from the highly presentive verb and noun; yet in vigorous dialogue the fusion can be effected: "But me no buts" — "Unstable of character amid exciting events he kept toing and frdng like a caged tiger. " Take the sentence: "I picked up a gold pin on the Carnegie Library Reception Hall anteroom window siU edge." Here eight un- mistakable nouns stand in succession; by a grammatical effect akin to apposition seven of the eight are made to serve as ad- jectives; substitute for these seven actual adjectives, and the color of the sentence is changed. Yet the essential differences of the parts of speech are not in any way impaired by their power of idiomatic fusion. Let us first note how the different elements of literary form, in their essential character, seem adapted for fusion. In our Table of Elements (Chart I, page 18) epic and drama appear on opposite sides of the table as antithetic to one another. Both imply a story. In epic, the story is narrated: the possi- bility of narration implies that the events are in the past, and the narrator is interposed between the incidents and the audi- ence. In drama, the incidents are moving forward in the present, and the audience is in immediate contact with these incidents without any intervening narrator. To make pure epic the narration must be the absolute narration of the poet. A step toward fusion of epic and drama is taken when the narrator 44 Literary Morphology is one of the personages of the story. Here there is immedi- ate contact with the content of the story, though it is contact at only one point, that of the particular person of the story who narrates; and the fact of narration implies that the events are in the past. More complete fusion is obtained where a novel, as in the novels of Richardson, is conveyed wholly in exchange of letters between the characters portrayed. Such exchange of letters is an extension of dialogue: there is no speiaker but the personages of the story, and the movement is movement in the present. Yet the epic function is implicitly retained; as is well illustrated in such a case as the Redgauntlet of Sir Walter Scott, in which, after the first half of the action has been conveyed wholly in letters, the author's narration appears, and assists in conveying the later part of the movement. Lyric has a close aflSnity for both epic and drama: its posi- tion in the chart presents it — so to speak— as sitting on the fence between the two, so that at any moment, without ceas- ing to be lyric, it can dip on one side and become narrative, and dip on the other side into the monologue of dramatic presenta- tion.' A ballad like Chevy Chase is epic narration of a story; yet it is unmistakably lyric, and in many such ballads the refrain appears and emphasizes the tone of Ijrric celebration. The choral odes of Greek tragedy are highly lyrical; yet many of these odes are narrative odes' — of legends called up by the prog- ress of the dramatic movement. The eighteenth psalm is a magnificent lyric. Its opening is rapturous celebration of the delivering God; at verse 4 it settles down into a long drawn epic narration of a past deliverance — ^how the speaker was in dire extremity, how he made his appeal, how all nature was convulsed as the God of nature descended to the rescue of the sufferer. Then the tone of lyric celebration is recovered, with ■ Compare below, pages 197 fE. ' Compare my Ancient Classical Drama, pages 80-81. The Fusion of Literary Elements 45 emphasis on the triumph of the cause of righteousness, and faith for the future; the whole ends with a return to the first tone of rapturous celebration. The affinity of lyric for drama is well illustrated in the psalms of the Bible. The first psalm is pure lyric: the poet is meditating on the course of the righteous and the wicked. But numerous psalms are monodies: here the speaker is the personage imagined to be undergoing the experience which is being celebrated: this is one element of presentation. How much farther the approach to drama can go is seen in such a psahn as the fifty-seventh. Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me; For my soul taketh refuge in thee: Yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I take refuge, Until these calamities be overpast. I will cry imto God Most High, Unto God who performeth all things for me; He shall send from heaven, and save me, when he that would swallow me up reproacheth; God shall send forth his mercy and his truth. My soul is among lions; I lie among them that are set on fire. Even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows. And their tongue a sharp sword. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; Let thy glory be above all the earth. They have prepared a net for my steps; My soul is bowed down: They have digged a pit before me — They are fallen into the midst thereof themselvesi My heart is fixed, God, my heart is fixed: I will sing, yea, I will sing praises. Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself wUl awake right early. 46 Literary Morphology I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among the peoples: I will sing praises unto thee among the nations. For thy mercy is great unto the heavens, And thy truth unto the skies. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; Let thy glory be above all the earth. Here, in lyric song emphasized by a refrain, an imagined per- sonage is undergoing a present experience of affliction, detailed in all its circumstances. When the climax has been reached — .They have digged a pit before me — the line that follows — They are fallen into the midst thereof themselves! brings out how the external situation has suddenly changed: circumstances of depression have been transformed into cir- cumstances of triumph, and all that follows is exultation. All the conditions that make presentation are fulfilled: the psalm is a miniature drama, type of the many dramatic monologues of the Bible.' As lyric has a central position among the forms of poetry, so its counterpart philosophy has the same central position among the forms of prose. Philosophy is essentially reflection, but it can advance in the direction of description: the descrip- tive sciences are included in philosophy, although they can exist apart from it. Similarly, philosophy can move in the direction of presentation and become exposition. The exposition of some scientific theme would vary greatly according as it might be addressed to a class of Freshmen or a learned society of experts: this determining influence of the audience upon the exposition is the essential point of oratory as a form of prose. And it is obvious that history, in the same way, can adapt its exposition to a particular audience, and so fuse with oratory. " Compare my Lilerary Study of the Bible, pages 185-96; or, Modern Reader's Bible, notes to Ps. 3 and Pss. g-io. The Fusion of Literary Elements 47 I proceed to the question of fusion between the elements of poetry and the elements of prose. Lyric and philosophy appear at opposite extremities of our table of forms. Yet they can overlap: philosophy is meditation limited to meditation on things as they actually exist; Ijrric is not so limited, but can take in creation. This is not a mere academic distinction. A famous ode of Wordsworth suggests certain characteristics of the child mind as associated with half-memories of a pre- vious existence. Suppose the objection to be made that such association is not founded on fact, that the characteristics of the child mind so indicated can be sufficiently explained by psychology as due to other causes. Such an objection (if sound) might militate against our consideration of the ode as pure philosophy: it would not affect it as lyric poetry, since the association once indicated might retain its fuU validity as a fancy, with its appeal to the sense of the beautiful. Drama and oratory have entered into complete fusion in the great Book of Deuteronomy.' This presents itself as the farewell of Moses to Israel: in the main it is a series of orations, while the fifteen chapters containing the Book of the Covenant make a document ^ead as appendix to one of the orations. The whole supposes an underljdng dramatic situation, which has fascinated the minds of Uterary readers — the situation of Moses as the one man who realizes the Promised Land, and yet the one man of all present on the occasion who is never to enter it. In this situation we follow, first, an oration in which Moses annoimces the secret of his own deposition; then, the oration on the delivery of the Book of the Covenant to the Levites and Elders who are to succeed him. A third oration connects it- self with a rehearsal of the dread ceremonial of the Blessing and the Curse, and is the masterpiece of aU literature for the rhetoric of denimciation. A fourth oration culminates in • Compare in Modern Reader's Bible, Introduction to Deuteronomy and text as there arranged (or chapter xii in my Literary Study of the Bible). 48 Literary Morphology the retirement of Moses and the installation of Joshua. With a change natural in Hebrew literature, or3.tory gives place to song. The finale presents the passing away of the hero, scat- tering blessings as he goes, and rising to his old physical vigor as his parting words glorify the mission of Israel for all time. The briefest narrative — like an extended stage direction — tells of the retirement into solitude and death. A great dramatic movement binds all parts of the book into a unity, while oratorical monologue has taken the place of dramatic dialogue. More complex questions arise as to the fusion of epic and history. There is the same overlapping that we noted in the case of lyric and philosophy: history, in fully developed prose, limits itself by existing facts, epic extends to take in the creative. A work like Carlyle's French Revolution is surely a work of history: yet it includes conceptions of personality and realiza- tions of incident as truly creative as those of epic poetry. The question of the fusion is more fully raised if we compare the Shakespearean drama of Henry the Eighth with the treatment of the same topic by modern historians. In the age of Shake- speare the differentiation of history from story had not yet taken place. Verification of historic material, which is the starting- point of history in fuUy developed prose, did not exist for the Elizabethan age; to say nothing of the vast body of historic evidence that has come to light only in our own time. Hence > the Shakespearean conception of Henry is pure poetry. In modern times the problem of this historic personality must be investigated in the spirit of pure prose. But what are we to say as to an historian like Froude ? It is freely objected against such historical writers as Froude and Carlyle that they have not limited their conceptions to what can be covered by veri- fied facts. Assume the objection to be well founded; yet this does not necessarily exclude their results from the domain of history. In thus allowing imagination to color their concep- The Fusion of Literary Elements 49 tions they are ofifering what may be called creative hypotheses, which will stand or fall as they are confronted with the ever- growing body of evidence. Such creative hjrpotheses make an important point in the fusion of epic and history. Possibly an objection may here be raised, especially by those who are versed in traditional literary theories, that this free interchangeability of literary elements destroys the value of the original definitions. Such an objection rests upon con- fusion between the static and the evolutionary attitude of mind. We must be on our guard against mistaking between static distinctions and evolutionary diferentiations: between- differences that formulate themselves in limiting definitions, and differentiations which are a process of becoming gradually more and more separate. The whole course of literature is an evolution: the elements of literary form rise out of the em- bryonic ballad dance, in which they are all united; they draw apart with differences of function; they draw together again as the functions can coalesce. The failure to recognize literature as a thing of evolution was the fimdamental error of the literary theory that dates from the Renaissance, when Greek literature, so admirably formulated by Aristotle, was understood to be a limiting model for aU time; if Homer was epic poetry, then nothing could be epic poetry that did not constitute itself ac- cording to Homer. Hence arose the fallacy of kinds,^ which Mr. Saintsbury's History of Criticism shows to have so often worked havoc in literary history: the idea that there existed some abstract forms or kinds of literature which, by some mys- terious external force, limited creation to conformity with them. Reliance upon theory of this order was a contest against nature, and broke down at every crisis in literary history. It was a confusion between the two meanings of the word 'law': laws in the scientific sense, the formulation of particular practice, and laws in the other sense, by which a sovereign authority binds ' Compare below, page 306, note 3. so Literary Morphology those who recognize it.' It is literature in its natural evolution that, from time to time, determines particular kinds of literary composition, not the kinds that determine the literature. Are there then, it will be asked, no particular kinds, or types, of literature, no literary genres, to use a word much in vogue at the present time ? The classification of literary genres is possible and valuable: but such classes or types are not to be confused with the elements of literary form. There is such a thing as satire. But satire is not a literary element: it is a literary motive, working through drama in Ben Jonson, through episto- lary address in Horace, through epic in Hudibras. We may recognize didactic poetry and pastoral poetry, the idyl and the essay. Classifications of this sort are made from particular points of view; they are often of temporary, partial, relative significance. The discussion of such classifications belongs to the literary history of particular peoples, or particular epochs. The elements of literary form are of universal significance. And in the classification of literary genres no small factor will be found in their relation to the fundamental elements of form, and the fusion of these elements in new combinations. II I proceed to consider notable illustrations of poetry resting upon the combination and fusion of literary forms. The most obvious example is Greek tragedy. This is dis- tinguished from other dramatic types as choral tragedy: the name implies imion of drama and lyric, dramatic scenes by actors on a stage alternating with lyric odes performed by a Chorus in the orchestra. A later chapter" will review in detail the evolution of this interesting form of literature. At the be- ginning of the process we have the Chorus as a body of singers ' Compare below, page 299. ' Chapter viii, pages 163-75. The subject is discussed at length in my Ancient Classical Drama, chapters ii-iii. Greek Tragedy and the Biblical Rhapsody 51 and dancers who perform a ballad dance before an audience; when the evolution is complete the Chorus has become a drama- tization of the audience itself, which — through the Chorus as its representatives — is given a place in the performance, and made poetically to express the alternations of feeling called forth by the movement of events. The odes which the Chorus sing by themselves they sing in dramatic characterization fitted to the story; and this dramatic characterization extends to the episodes, in which the Chorus, as by-standers in the scenes, may approach to the verge of becoming actors, yet always stop short. The dramatic episodes feel the attraction of the lyric element: at any suitable point dramatic dialogue rises to lyric monologue or dialogue, performed with musical accessories. The whole is thus an interchange of opera and drama, and the change from one to the other has always dra- matic significance.' Nor is this all. At one point Greek tragedy is seen to have absorbed an element of epic: this is the 'Messenger's Speech,' conveying to us some incident of the plot in a mode that is dramatic at the start, but changes as the speech proceeds to the long drawn particularity of epic nar- ration. And the later tragedies show how the element of oratory has also been absorbed. The strange proclivity of the Athenians for their law courts has found a place in impassioned dramas for 'rheses,' elaborate disquisitions on moral topics; and for the 'forsensic contest,' in which, for a single scene, the two sides of the story are balanced as evenly as the pleas of a plaintiff and defendant. Four out of the six elements of liter- ary form have been brought together to constitute Greek tragedy. From the other of our two ancestral literatures comes another example of literary fusion. This is the prophetic rhapsody' ' This important point is discussed fully below, chapter xxvi, pages 479-86. ' For the prophetic rhapsody compare Introduction to Isaiah in Modern Reader's Bible (or, Literary Study of the Bible, chapters xviii-xx). 52 Literary Morphology of Biblical literature. Here the different literary elements have blended as prismatic colors merge in white light. The general impression of a prophetic rhapsody is unquestionably the presentation of a dramatic movement: yet it is a dramatic movement such as no stage could compass, for it is the move- ment of divine Providence — in Biblical phrase, divine judg- ment — in the theater of a whole universe, unbounded by time or place. All literary forms can, in this spiritual atmosphere, co-operate to bring home this dramatic movement to our minds. We have dialogue: not the formal dialogue that could be fitted to a' list of dramatis personae, but mystic dialogue. We hear liie voice of Deity; the voice of Prophecy; the voices of Israel, of the divers Nations; voices of the Saved and the Doomed; voices from the ends of the earth; cries of mystic Watchmen, cries from the North, from the hills of Ephraim or Dan; im- personal cries; songs also, impersonal like the chorales of our oratorios. Even Silence can seem to be a speaker in this rhap- sodic dialogue, as appeal after appeal remains unanswered until the sudden awakening takes place. Involved with this mystic dialogue is not less mystic scenery — the scenery of the spiritual world: sudden changes of scene brought out by exclamations of the prophetic spectator; bursts of vision lyrically realized; waves of successive visions alternating with the interpreting voices of Deity or the prophet. Or, the pall of universal de- steuction will suddenly rend to let the Mountain of Salvation stand clear; rocking earthquake and darkness will give place to the Holy Mountain flowing with milk and honey. In presen- tation so purely spiritual, it becomes possible at times for simple narration to convey a single stage of the action, before dialogue and vision resume. And all these vivid modes of presentation can rise out of the even tenor of discourse, and sink into dis- course again, as clearly as if a curtain had been suddenly lifted, and as suddenly dropped. The prophetic rhapsody is the su- preme contribution of Hebraic literature to poetic form. Un- The Poetry of Robert Browning 53 fortunately, the formless printing of our Bibles — as later on we shall have to note — hides this vivid presentation from the ordinary reader, who must receive the rhapsodies of prophecy in a succession of numbered verses, broken by chapter divisions without literary significance. In modem literature the works of Robert Browning make an excellent field for the study of literary morphology. Browning's handling of his themes, and sometimes the very titles of the poems, seem directly to challenge conceptions of poetic form; and, in particular, they illustrate the interchangeabihty and fusion of literary elements. Many of his songs, of course, are pure Ijrrics. Christmas Eve and Easter Day are l3nrics that can take in epic vision. Again, poems like Strafford, or A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, are full stage dramas. In other cases, we have epic narration by the poet: notably in Sordello, the opening and closing lines emphasize that we have "Sordello's story told." More frequently in Browning the whole drift of a poem seems to rest upon the dash of literary elements. Epic narration and dramatic presentation are antithetic to one another: in an important group of Browning's poems the two contraries are brought together. The Inn Album may be considered a superb drama of situation. To a large extent the mutual relations of the personages have been determined by the situation with which the poem opens: the action develops this situation to the most tragic of climaxes. Yet there is an element in this poem that is other than dramatic. We may say, in general terms, that the written text of any drama may involve a modicum of epic description: this is the stage direc- tions. In such plays as Shakespeare's these are too brief to be noticed; other dramatists, like Victor Hugo and Ibsen, make their stage directions elaborately descriptive. But it is only in the text that this descriptive element appears: when the play is acted, it merges in the presentation of the whole. Where a S4 Literary Morphology drama is dissodated from the stage, there is room for the ex- pansion of this epic description. Thus, in the Book of Job, the narration of the prologue is carried forward into the dramatic body of the poem in phrases like these: "Then Job opened his mouth and cursed his day"; or, "Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite and said." And a description several lines in length introduces Elihu. Formal as this may seem, it has had important consequences, and the whole Book of Job has fre- quently been designated as an epic. In The Inn Album, the main part of the poem consists of highly dramatic dialogue — indicated in the text by quotation marks — ^which takes place in specific scenes, such as the Inn, the Railway Station. But where the quotation marks cease, the poet's narration will appear: So they ring bell, give orders, pay, depart Amid profuse acknowledgments from host Who well knows what may bring the younger back. Morphologically considered, the whole poem is a drama with its stage directions epicaUy expanded. Two other poems depend to a notable degree upon bringmg together narration and presentation. Balaustion's Adventure contains the whole Alcestis of Euripides, not however presented, but conveyed in narrative form by Balaustion. This narration takes place in a highly dramatic situation: the audience to which Balaustion is speaking has just rescued her from cap- tivity in their enthusiasm for this very Euripides. The whole becomes drama absorbed into dramatic epic. In Aristophanes' Apology, we have an elaborate incident — the clash between Balaustion and Aristophanes — in narrative form. But the narration is dramatic narration: it comes from one of the per- sonages of the incident, Balaustion, and in surroundings pre- sented as the natural sequel to that which is the point of the debate: for Balaustion is sailing into exile from an Athens The Poetry of Robert Browning 55 ruined by the same spirit which has led Aristophanes and Athens to reject Euripides. To make the mixture of elements the greater, the poem includes another drama of Euripides, in this case not converted into narrative, but given in its full presentative form. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau is, in superficial appearance, epic narrative: a narrated autobiography of the Prince as "Saviour of Society." Upon closer inspection it is seen to be, not narration at all, but autobiographical 'reverie*: not the story of a life that is closed, but suggestion how this life, when it shall have been completed, may be interpreted from its own point of view. Such reverie is clearly presentation. This reverie, moreover, goes on in an imagined dramatic situation: the Prince is fancying himself at the end of his days an exile in London, expounding to a fair female admirer, who pours out tea for him, and is asleep before the exposition is half done. This imagined situation reveals itself only gradually as the poem proceeds; similarly, its interpretation of the life is put forward tentatively, in successive phases, any phase as soon as it is stated being subject to doubts how far it represents the truth. Here lie the dozen volumes of my life. (Did I say "lie" ? the pregnant word will serve.) Only at the very end does the situation stand fully revealed, and it appears that aU this reverie has been started by the necessity of sending a reply to a letter from a hard-headed Cousin-Duke. Which reply, as the reverie concludes, shall now go. — "Or, stay?" — The tone of presentation is retained to the last. A tour-de-force of combination between the drama and epic is afforded by Browning's most elaborate poem. The Ring and the Book. It must be remembered that in this we have two different poetic movements, which in analysis must be kept distinct. One is the story of low life and high life entangled 56 Literary Morphology together, which cukninates in the triple murder. The other movement is made by the review of this story, when in succes- sion it is subjected to comment by the different tribunals of Rome and by the tribunal of public opinion. The first of these movements — the story of Count Guido and Pompilia and Caponsacchi— is epically treated. But it is not the regular epic in which an author narrates a story once for all. If such an expression might be permitted, it is an epic with a kaleido- scopic plot: the story is told over and over again by different speakers from different points of view; the same constituent elements enter into the story in each case, in each case — after the fashion of a kaleidoscope — they resolve themselves into a different plot or interpretative design. But these successive narrations are making a new movement, as they follow one another in dramatic progression. We have the first flush of rumor, bandying the facts from side to side — from the side of One Half-Rome, of the Other Half-Rome, or the superfine "Tertium Quid." We have next the case of each person in- volved in the tragedy, standing in turn before the judges. Then we have the materials so collected as they are digested by counsel for either side. We have the final review by the Pope, who ap- pears as a lonely personality isolated from the world for which he is spiritually responsible. We then see the changed aspect of the whole story in the mind of the hero-villain after he knows his fate. Finally, we watch the story die away through vague rumor into oblivion. If the tj^e of the whole poem must be formulated, it appears as a kaleidoscopic epic absorbed into a drama with a rising and falling action. Fifine at the Fair is a curiosity of literary form. Morphology, like misfortune, can make strange bed-fellows: this quaint poem may, structurally, be exactly paralleled with the Book of Job. In each, the dramatic body of the poem is framed in a non-dramatic prologue and epilogue. The Hebrew masterpiece is a solemn discussion of a sublime mystery — the interpretation The Poetry of Robert Browmng 57 of divine Providence in its dealings with the righteous and the wicked. The discussion is also a dramatic movement, through conflicts of passionate remonstrance to a climax when the divine Voice is heard amid the convulsion of all nature. But this dra- matic part of Job stands between a prologue and epilogue in epic narrative; these are on a different plane from the rest of the work, and offer an explanation in the mysteries of heaven for the problem found insoluble on earth. The body of Brown- ing's poem is a whimsical discussion of levity and constancy in love. It is made dramatic in Browning's favorite mode — of monologue that becomes dialogue by taking up and inter- preting the silent gestures of an auditor, who in this case is the pure wife. This dramatic movement is just reaching a climax of the hero declaring finally for constancy, when the pressure of a billet-doux in the hand he is holding behind him sends him back for another plunge in dissipation. But all this is to be read in the light of the prologue and epilogue to the poem — in this case a lyric prologue and epilogue. The prologue is a lovely bit of symbolism: the butterfly is a creature of heaven descending so far toward earth as to be floating in air; the man has so far transcended his earth as to be swimming in ocean; there is a hovering attraction binding the two together, but they belong to different spheres, and can never be wholly united. In the epilogue, we have the glorified wife descending from her heaven to comfort the inconstant husband in his lonely house amid the weariness of a disenchanted life. Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone: Dreary, weary with the long day's work: Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone: Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk; When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry. Hah a pang and all a rapture, there again were we! — "What, and it is reaUy you again ?" quoth I: "I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She. S? Literary Morphology Rough ballad meter and jingling rhythm are bringing down the spiritual tone of such a visitation more nearly to a level with the rest of the poem. "Ah, if you but knew how time has dragged, days, nights! All the neighbour-talk with man and maid — such men! All the fuss and trouble of street-sounds, window-sights: All the worry of flapping door and echoing roof; and then, All the fancies .... Who were they had leave, dared try Darker arts that almost struck despair in me ? If you knew but how I dwelt down here!" quoth I: "And was I so better ofi up there ?" quoth She. Whimsical to the last, the husband insists upon the conventional epitaph before he can quit the empty life and join his ghost love. "Help and get it over! Reunited to his wife (How draw up the paper lets the parish-people know ?) Lies M., or N., departed from this life, Day the this or that, month and year the so and so. What i' the way of final flourish? Prose, verse ? Try! Affliction sore long time he bore, or, what is it to be ? Till God did please to grant him ease. Do end!" quoth I: "I end with — Love is all and Death is nought!" quoth She. When we come to the shorter poems of Browning, it is noticeable that a considerable number of these appear under the headings, "Dramatic Lyrics," "Dramatic Romances." If this were the arrangement of an editor, we should be justified in inquiring how far the classification was correct; coming from the poet himself the titles must be considered as part of the creation, and must enter into the interpretation of the poems. In the volume of "Dramatic Lyrics" Browning has given us an explanatory note: Such poems as the majority in this volume might also come properly enough, I suppose, under the head of "Dramatic Pieces"; The Poetry of Robert Browning 59 being, though often Lyric in expression, always Dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine. The full meaning of the word ' dramatic ' as a term of morphology would involve more than this: they must be utterances, not merely of imaginary persons, but of persons belonging to the story implied in the poem. With Browning's modified use of the word it becomes easy to see the dramatic character of the lyrics, and recognize a speaker other than the poet. Occasion- ally this consideration becomes a factor in the interpretation. Commentators on The Lost Leader are fond of insisting upon a veiled reference to the well-known change of front on the part of the poet Wordsworth. If we were dealing with a pure lyric, the suggestion would become absurd: a man of the caliber of Browning could not say, as to a man of the caliber of Wordsworth — Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat. But this is precisely what the rank and file of a party are likely to say of great men. What this lyric presents is, not a fallen poet, but a disappointed party. So the little gem, My Star, implies as speaker one who sees in his love what other persons fail to see. Any Wife to Any Husband must be spoken by a wife about to survive her husband. The great lyric poem. Women and Roses, is not a general lyric celebration of its theme: it presents the dramatic situation of a lover distracted equally between the three essential t3rpes of womanhood, and losing all through being unable to make choice. In the title "Dramatic Romances," Browning clearly uses the word 'Romance' as simply meaning 'Narrative': none of the other significations of this many-sided word will fit the case. Thus the title implies the union of drama with epic. In this sense the designation is easily understood: in almost all cases 6o Literary Morphology we find some pronoun, or other detail, making clear that the narration is coming from a personage of the story that is being told, if it be but a bystander. "You know, we French stormed Ratisbon." "This story of both do our townsmen tell." In Count Gismond, the story is told by the heroine, and told in a dramatic situation constituted by her care to prevent the modest husband from hearing her passionate admiration of his heroism. The narrator in The Glove is a poetic spectator of the incident, who has been in a position to see two sides of a dramatic situation where the public has seen only one. The Pied Piper of Hamelin might seem like the absolute narration of the pure epic, until the nonsense rhymes of the final stanza remind us of the child audience, presentation to which makes the poem dramatic. In Holy-Cross Day, the narration is that of the in- troductory note (itself, of course, part of the creation): what follows is from the speakers in the situation so introduced. An extreme case is The Heretic's Tragedy. Here we have not an iota of narration: all is lyric triumph in a dramatic situation. Yet the art of the poem is such that the story of the faithful martyr seems to tell itself, as if per contra from the self-righteous gloatings of the persecutors who cannot fathom his faith. From the morphological point of view two of these dramatic romances involve problems of interpretation. The Boy and the Angel is from beginning to end absolute narration; there is no possibility of connecting this narration with any speaker other than the poet. The romance'is made ' dramatic' by what is one of the secondary, not the primary, features of drama. It is natural for what is dramatic to fall into 'acts.' The acts of a drama are altogether different from the successive books or cantos of an epic. The fall and rise of the curtain imply a break in the action; and presentation is greatly assisted when The Poetry of Robert Browning 6i the movement is not continuous, but appears in a succession of separated phases. To illustrate from a bit of modem folk- lore: Boy Gun Joy Fun Gun Bust Boy Dust This is a tragedy in two acts; tell the thing continuously, and the humor is gone. Now, Browning's poem — though there is nothing in the text to indicate it — ^really presents itself as a drama in five acts. I. The boy in the simple service of his trade. (Five couplets.) II. The mistaken monk disturbs the serenity of this simple service by introducing the idea of the grand service of the Pope. (Five couplets.) III. Theocritus in the service of the church — Gabriel supplying his place at the lowly trade. (Nine couplets.) IV. Gabriel has discovered his mistake: he meets the newly made Pope Theocritus and dismisses him to his old service, taking his place as Pope. (Eighteen couplets.) V. Theocritus at his trade: Gabriel as Pope: both pass away at the same moment. (Two couplets.) What we have here is, not the narrated story of a whole career, but the narrative presentation of five luminous points in that career, the five points standing out all the clearer because what comes between is a blank. The other is- the extraordinary poem entitled Mesmerism. This is dramatic enough, with the hero as speaker: but where 62 Literary Morphology is the story narration that will justify the title of romance? Accepted interpretations of this poem get over the difficulty by understanding the hero to be narrating how, with his mes- meric power, he had drawn his love helpless into his presence, and then refrained from taking further advantage of this situa- tion. To me this seems an impossible interpretation: what is implied is, that the girl does not come, because the mesmeric force is not exercised on her. The opening stanza strikes the keynote of a power the speaker believes himself to possess: All I believed is true! I am able yet All I want to get By a method as strange as new: Dare I trust the same to you ? And as this thought is expanded at length, in the middle comes the parenthetic line — Then I reach, I must believe — to remind us that all this is the possible, not the actual, exer- cise of mesmeric force. The crux of the interpretation is the grammatical structure of the poem. A hypothetical sentence consists naturally of two parts: the protasis, or //-clause, and the apodosis, or Then^claMse. In the present case we have a protasis extended over twenty-four stanzas, or one hundred and twenty lines: where the apodosis would naturally begin, the structure is broken off, and there is substituted a prayer for restraint. AU the twenty-four stanzas rest upon the reiterated //; it is the long-drawn mental realization, in all its detail, of a mesmeric attraction only imagined, until this has reached — always in imagination — complete success. Then the speaker breaks off to pray against the temptation ever to use so dan- gerous a power. The narration implied in the title is hypo- thetical narration, in the historic present of realization. The Poetry of Robert Browning 63 A whole commentary might be written on Browning's works from the morphological point of view. The genius of Brown- ing is pre-eminently dramatic. Yet only a small part of his poetic output consists of stage dramas; and these, placed be- side the greatest dramas of the stage, are perhaps not con- spicuously successful. The significance of this is, not deficiency in the poetry, but elasticity of the dramatic medium.' Shake- speare and Ibsen have revealed how great stage dramas can be. To Browning it has been given to show how greatly the drama transcends the stage: how, retaining its fuU dramatic force, it can yet enter into fusion with all the other elements of literary form. CHAPTER ni LITERARY FORM THE KEY TO LITERARY INTERPRETATION The preceding chapters have been occupied with technicali- ties of literary form. All the world is interested in literature; but the number is not small of those who take the position that what interests them is the matter and spirit of literatxire, while questions of literary form they would leave to dilettantes and experts. It thus becomes desirable to lay down as a funda- mental principle in the study of literature that form is the key to interpretation. A clear grasp of the external form is essential for entering into the matter and spirit of all literature. The technicalities of epic, lyric, drama, and other literary forms, have the same bearing upon literary appreciation that the technicalities of grammar have upon the understanding of language. Of the two things literary form is the more impor- tant: a granmiatical misconception would probably affect only a detail, whereas a misconception of its literary form might lead us astray as to a whole poem. It is clear that if a man was engaged in reading a drama, and — per impossibile — he supposed himself to be reading an essay, he would be plunged in confusion. If he were reading a satire, and had taken it for a serious argument, he would go grievously astray: this is said to have happened when Defoe wrote his Shortest Way with Dissenters, and was thanked by church digni- taries for his valuable contribution to ecclesiastical controversy. We have seen in the preceding chapter' how readers of Brown- ing, making the technical confusion between pure lyric and ' Above, page 59. 64 Form the Key to Interpretation 65 dramatic lyric, have insisted upon understanding as sentiments of Browning what, by the poet's own definition, must be senti- ments of "some imaginary person, not myself." But these may seem to be trifling or far-fetched instances of what is put forward as a universal principle. If the law of form as the key to interpretation does not immediately commend itself to the reader's mind, this is because, in modern books, care is taken to present to the eye literature in a form that is unmis- takable, so that the principle operates upon the reader uncon- sciously, like the law of gravitation. We may recur to the analogy of grammar. Most of us, though we may be impeccable in our grammar, would nevertheless be greatly embarrassed if what we read were presented to us without any marks of punc- tuation, or wrongly punctuated. Punctuation is a device for making grammatical structure unmistakable to the eye: in the same way the technique of the printed page makes literary form and structure automatically self-evident. Let helps of this kind be withheld, and the reader would soon realize how close is the connection between form and interpretation. Now, there is an important region of literature in which this structural presentation of what is read is traditionally lacking. This is the literature we call the Bible. I am here entering upon a subject of the highest importance to literary study, yet one which until recent years seems to have been almost totally neglected. I refer to the morphological confusion in which BibUcal literature has become involved during its transmission through the Middle Ages. The Bible, like any other great literature, is made up of epic poems, Ijrrics, dramas, and almost all varieties of literary form. Yet in the Bibles commonly ac- cepted among us nothing of this kind appears: what these present to the eye is a imiformity of numbered chapters and verses, under which all distinction of literary form has disap- peared. The cause of this extraordinary phenomenon is con- nected with the nature of ancient manuscripts. Until about 66 Literary Morphology the first or second century of the Christian era manuscripts were entirely destitute of literary form: a page of an ancient manuscript shows alphabetical letters covering the whole, with- out divisions into words, still less divisions into sentences with punctuation; there is no discrimination of verse and prose, still less discrimination between different kinds of verse; dramatic passages have no names of speakers or division of speeches. In manuscripts of this kind all forms of literature — dramatic dialogue or straightforward narration — ^will look exactly alike. This much applies to all literature:' the distinction of the Bible from the rest lies in this special fact. The other poetry of antiquity was in the hands of literary men, who — ^in spite of the manuscripts — ^were keenly sensitive to poetic form; when the advance in the art of writing made it possible they gave to such poetry its appropriate outer form. But between ourselves and the authors of Old Testament literature there is interposed a long era of commentators: those in charge of the Bible preserved its words faithfully, but had no interest in its form. On the contrary, they looked upon the sacred Scripture as materials for commenting, and were ready to make long comments upon every clause. When the advance in the art of writing reached them, it was natural that the form they gave to this Bible was that of texts numbered for comment,. and as numbered texts and chapters it has come down to us. From the literary point of view this means a double perversion of the original: the true forms have disappeared, and another form — of chapters and verses — ^has been imposed upon biblical litera- ture for which there is no warrant. Let us take a passage of the Bible (Isa. 40:3-8) which in its full literary setting would appear as follows. Proclamation ' Early manuscripts of Euripides have recently been discovered which show separation of verse lines, though without separation of words, or names of speakers. Copyists were paid by the verse. Form the Key to Interpretation 67 has been heard from God of comfort for Jerusalem, and voices are carrying on the word of comfort across the desert to the holy land. A Voice of One Crying Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, And every mountahi and hiU shall be made low: And the crooked shall be made straight. And the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, And aU flesh shall see it together: For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. A Second Voice, [in the distance) Cry! A Despairing Voice What shall I cry? All flesh is grass. And all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, The flower fadeth. Because the breath of the Lord bloweth upon it: Surely the people is grass! The Second Voice The grass withereth. The flower fadeth: But the word of our God shall stand for ever. Now, in an ancient manuscript (the language being changed to English) such a passage would present an appearance like this. THEVOICEOFHIMTHATCRIETHINTHEWILDE RNESSPREPAREYETHEWAYOFTHELORDMAK ESTRAIGHTINTHEDESERTAHIGHWAYrOROU RGODEVERYVALLEYSHALLBEEXALTEDAND 68 Literary Morphology The mediaeval commentators, and our translators who followed them, broke up the general mass of this into lengths — or 'texts' — arranged for convenience of commentary; accordingly the form this passage assmnes in ordinary Bibles will be this: I Matt. 3 ■■ 3 Mark 1 : 3 Luke 3 : 4 John 1 : 23 m Mai. 3 : i « Ps. 68 : 4 p Ch. 45 : 2 9 Or. a straight place c Job 14 : 2 I Pet. 1 ! 24 4 Or « plain place e John 12:34 3. 'The voice of him that crieth in the wUdemess, "Pre- pare ye the way of the Lord, "make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: *and the crooked shall be made 'straight, and the rough places^ plain: 5. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. 6. The voice said. Cry. And he said. What shall I cry ? 'All flesh is grass, and aU the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: 7. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. 8. Thegrass withereth, the flower fadeth: «but the word of our God shall stand for ever. The recovery from this mediaeval transformation of Biblical literature has been a slow process. The elementary distinction between prose and verse in Hebrew was not discovered until more than a century after King James's Bible was issued. In the Revised Version of our own time the step has been taken of separating what is obviously prose and what is obviously verse. But it has been left to the present generation to take up the problem of fully restoring to Holy Scripture its literary form. Thus the Modern Reader^s Bible,^ accepting for translation the Revised Version, has made the attempt — from internal evidence and considerations of comparative literature — to ascertain the correct literary form of every part of the Bible, and to present ' Published by Macmillan: see list of my works at the end of this volume. Form the Key to Interpretation 69 this to the eye with the same technical correctness of printing that, as a matter of course, is accorded to all other literature without exception. It is structural presentation of this kitid which brings home to the reader how deeply literary form is bound up with literary interpretation. To take the most obvious of illustrations. A simple Chris- tian sits down to read a chapter of the Bible as a devotional exercise. Accustomed to read by chapters, he has not noticed that what he has before him on this occasion is part of a speech of Eliphaz, or Bildad, or Zophar — the three Friends of Job, who, in the last chapter of the book, are rebuked by God for not having said of him the thing that is right. The reader has thus been seeking to bring home as divine message to his soul the words of a speaker whom God has expressly repudiated. The devotional exercise has gone wrong — devotionally wrong — ^for want of attention to a point of literary form: the dramatic character of the Book of Job, and the clear principle that the words of a drama do not give the meaning of the book, or of the author, but simply sentiments suitable to the particular speaker represented as speaking them. In antithesis to this let us take the case of a learned man — whose scholarship is historical but not literary — dealing with such a portion of Scripture as the Book of Micah. Reading in what appears as the last two chapters of the book, he comes suddenly upon a startling change of spirit: up to a particular point all has been trouble and confusion, from that point there is elation and confidence. Intent only upon historical con- siderations, he pronounces that this latter part must be an interpolation from literature of a subsequent age; that — ^in the phrase of Wellhausen — ^between verses 6 and 7 [of chapter 7] "there yawns a century." Attention to literary form would have made clear that what yawns between the verses is simply a change of speakers ia a dialogue. It is no question of con- iecture: this portion of Micah is introduced with a title- verse 7© Literary Morphology (6:9) announcing a dialogue in which "the voice of the Lord crieth to the city " and " the Man of Wisdom " will hear. What follows conforms to this: divine denunciation of the city, the city's panic-stricken lament, and — ^at the point in question — the speech of the Man of Wisdom, whose exulting cry is a recognition that God is on his side. Thus, the historian can go wrong in his history, as the devotional reader went wrong in his devotion, by the same error of ignoring the dramatic form of what is being read. The form which is the key to interpretation is not confined to broad differences, like that between drama and other hterary types, but extends to the most minute points of poetic structure. Let the reader refer again to the passage cited on page 67. What he sees is a struggle between contrasting voices: one, a voice of glad tidings; the other, a despairing voice that resists the message. Now, in a well-known musical setting of this passage,' the author sees correctly that there are two voices, but divides the speeches wrongly. Thus the bass is made to say 'Cry,' to which the soprano answers 'What shall I cry?' The bass says, 'All flesh is grass,' and the soprano obediently repeats, 'All flesh is grass'; the bass continues, 'And aU the goodliness thereof as the flower of grass,' and the soprano re- peats the words. Instead of opposing voices, the one voice is made to echo the other: that is to say, the drift of the whole passage is exactly reversed, through a minute error of structural division. The principle applies similarly to the finer shades of meaning, which count for so much in literary beauty. The Lord's Prayer is traditionally printed, and therefore declaimed, as a series of separate petitions: Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done in earth as it is in heaven. ' By G. M. Garrett, "The Voice of One Crying" (Novello). Form the Key to Interpretation 71 This portion of the Prayer, in reality, is what is technically called the Envelope Figure: the first line is echoed in the last, and what comes between is to be read in the light of both: Our Father which art ia heaven: Hallowed be thy Name, Thy Kingdom come. Thy WiU be done, In earth as it is in heaven. In the common rendering, the words "in earth as it is in heaven" attach themselves only to the petition, "Thy will be done." What the true form suggests is: Hallowed be thy Name in earth as it is in heaven; Thy Kingdom come ia earth as it is in heaven; Thy Will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Few readers will think this a trifling difference. Or, let the question be one of authorship. It is well known that there is controversy over the authorship of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Tradition has ascribed this book to King Solo- mon: and this becomes more than a mere question of author- ship, for the unwholesome personality of Solomon has colored the whole spirit of the book for most readers. Historical scholarship can give good reasons for assigning to Ecclesiastes a date later by many centuries than the time of Solomon: but this is resisted on the plausible ground that the book itself claims Solomon as its author. I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. A critical deadlock seems thus to arise: internal evidence pointing one way, and the claim of the book itself pointing in a dififerent direction. What the principle under discussion sug- gests is that the first step is to fix exactly the literary form of Ecclesiastes. In the Modern Reader's Bible the book is pre- sented as a series of five essays, the intervals between the essays (as is common in wisdom literature) filled up with miscellaneous 72 Literary Morphology maxims and other sayings, the whole being bound into a unity by a prologue and epilogue. Assuming this to be the correct form of Ecclesiastes, let us put the question, Does this book claim, or does it not, the authorship of the historical Solomon ? We turn first to the prologue and epilogue, as the natural places in which to obtain light on the question of authorship: we find not a word suggesting Solomon or any other individual as author. Next, we take the miscellaneous sayings: again there is not a word as to Solomon, but on the contrary, the sayings suggest one who looks upon life from below, rather than a king who looks down on life from above. We turn to the five essays: ia four out of the five there is no suggestion of Solomon or any other author. All association with the historical Solomon is confined to the first essay. This first essay, upon examination, is seen to stand apart from the rest of the book: it is all in the first person, and describes an experiment — an imaginary experi- ment — ^by which the different types of lives that men lead are tested, one after another, to see if any one wiU yield 'wisdom.' This experiment is naturally put into the mouth of the one personage of history who was most fitted to undertake it. The subject of this imaginary experiment once finished, the first person is dropped, and there is no more of Solomon in the book. When the book is read in its correct literary form, what appears is, aiot that Solomon is made the author of the book, but that he is made the hero of one part of it. There is nothing to set against the internal evidence that points to a late date, and the whole controversy falls to the ground.' Let one more illustration be permitted. In the case of the poem entitled The Song of Songs, the technical literary form is a matter of dispute. What is certain is that we have dialogue, with a story underlying the dialogue. The majority of com- mentators take the idea of drama as the most obvious literary ' A fuller discussion of the question will be found in the Introduction to Ecclesiastes in the Modern Reader's Bible. Form the Key w Interpretation 73 form combining dialogue with story. But there is another literary type which conforms to these requirements; in the Modern Reader's Bible the poem is presented as a series of lyric idyls. There is no need to discuss at length the technical differ- ences between these two forms of literature:' how in a drama the movement can never go back, whereas in a lyric setting the different parts of the action can appear in any order; how a drama must present every word as spoken by a particular personage in a particular scene, whereas lyric poetry provides for passages which are impersonal. It is enough to note that those who have pronounced the poem a drama are in sub- stantial agreement as to the story this drama presents: the story of contest between King Solomon and a humble Shepherd for the love of a fair Shulammite maiden, with the issue that the King at last gives way, and the Shepherd and the Shulam- mite are united. On the other hand, if the poem be assumed to be lyriC; and read on this basis, then it appears that King Solomon is himself the Shepherd wooer. The story now be- comes this: that Solomon and his court, visiting the royal vineyards on Mount Lebanon, come by surprise on the fair Shulammite, who flees in affright. Solomon, smitten by the sight of her, wooes her in disguise as one of her own rank, and wins her heart; then he appears in his royal state and claims her as his queen; the two are being wedded ia the royal palace as the poem opens. The point is not, which of these two inter- pretations is correct. What bears upon the present argument is that the whole story of the poem comes out quite differently, as the poem is read in the form of a drama or the form of a l5rric idyl. It would be difficult to find a more conclusive test of the principle that external literary form is the key to interpretation of the matter and spirit of Uterature. ' A full discussion in the Introduction to the Song of Songs in the Modern Reader's Bible. (In the small-volume edition of the Modern Reader's Bible the Song of Songs is contained in the volume entitled "Biblical Idyls.") 74 Literary Morphology The subject of this First Book has been Literary Morphology : varieties of literary form and their underlying principles. These varieties of form, we have just seen, are a leading factor in interpretation. The traditional treatment of the subject -has often conceived these literary forms to be static: as if the dead hand of a classical past had fixed once for all certain types, to which subsequent writers must conform. This is the Fallacy of Kinds, which again and again has emerged in the history of criticism, and has again and again been overthrown. Form in literature is a thing of evolution: as literature progresses new forms unfold, and older forms modify themselves. The six elements of form — epic, lyric, drama, history, philosophy, oratory — are not so many classes of literature, mutually exclu- sive, to which particular works are to be referred; like the elements of chemistry they can combine in particular works, and the fusion of these elements becomes a source of literary effect. The attitude of a reader to what he reads is that of an interpreter. He must first, in the light of the literature before hiTTi and of literature in general, seek to interpret the imderlying form. He will then find that the form helps to interpret the meaning. BOOK n THE FIELD AND SCOPE OF LITERARY STUDY CHAPTER rV: The Unity or the Literary Feeuo and the Concep- tion OF World Literature CHAPTER V: The Outer and the Inner Sttjdy of Literature CHAPTER IV THE XJNITY OF THE LITERARY FIELD AND THE CON- CEPTION OF WORLD LITERATURE The subject of this work is, not precisely Literature, but the Study of Literature. We cannot proceed beyond the ele- ments of literary form without being confronted with impor- tant considerations as to the field and scope of literary study. The existing tradition of the study — as Chart V on page 78 suggests — follows the departmental form taken by the Hu- manity studies in our universities and schools, and in the pri- vate reading which is affected by this. What we find is that one set of students, in one department, is occupied with oriental Kteratures, in connection with oriental languages, oriental history, oriental philosophy, and oriental art. Another set of students, in another department, is occupied with Greek litera- ture, in connection with Greek language and history and philoso- phy and art. Similarly, in separate departments, Latin, Ro- mance, Germanic, English Uteratures are taken, always in association with the respective languages, histories, philoso- phies, arts. Now, whatever may be the advantages of this arrangement on other grounds, such a state of things cannot possibly be called a study of literature. It is a study of nation- alities: each separate nationality being observed from the points of view of language, literature, history, philosophy, and art. And yet, except so far as hterature is concerned, the study of the Humanities has long since emancipated itself from depart- mental narrowing. If we treat Chart V as if it were a sum in algebra, we may add up the first column, and see how the sepa- rate languages have grown together into the great study of 77 78 The Field and Scope of Literary Study philology. Similarly, the separate histories have coalesced, the separate philosophies and arts, into independent studies of history, philosophy, art. It is strange that there should be so CHART V Departmental Tradition of Literary Study Oriental Languages + Literatures + History + Philosophy + Art + etc. Greek Language + Literature + History + Philosophy + Art + etc. Latin Language + Literature + History + Philosophy + Art + etc. Romance Languages + Literatures + History + Philosophy + Art + etc. Germanic Languages + Literatures + History + Philosophy + Art + etc. English Language + Literature + History + Philosophy + Art + etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Philology Literature History Philosophy Art long a delay before we can see the particular literatures tran- scending departmental limitations and rising into a study of literature. At this point care must be taken to avoid a misunderstanding into which it is easy to fall. < Aggregation of literatures — ^Universal Literature Unity of Literature — World Literature. It is not a mere aggregation of separate literatures, but the unity of Uterature, that is the essential point. To have read sepa- rately works of philosophy in Greek, German, English, and other languages, would not be sufficient to make philosophy. His- tories of various countries, if taken separately without their mutual connection, would make a poor study of history. Nay — were such a thing within the bounds of hiunan faculties — a man The Conception of World Literature 79 might have acquired all the languages spoken on earth and yet not be a philologist. We must distinguish between universal literature, a mere name for the totality of all existing Uteratures, and what may be called world literature. This is universal Uter^ture seen in perspective from a given point of view — presiunably, the point of view of the reader's national civiliza- tion. I have, in a separate work, presented in fuU detail the conception of world literature as the true field for literary study: I may be permitted to quote from this work' its definition of the term. Universal Literature can only mean the sum total of aU literatures. World Literature, as I use the term, is this Universal Literature seen in perspective from a given point of view, presiunably the national standpoint of the observer. The difference of the two may be illus- trated by the different ways in which the science of Geography and the art of Landscape might deal with the same physical particulars. We have to do with a mountain ten thousand feet high, a tree-fringed pond not a quarter of an acre in extent, a sloping meadow rising per- haps to a himdred feet, a lake some four hundred miles m length. So far as Geography would take cognizance of these physical f eatiures, they must be taken all in their exact dimensions. But Landscape would begin by fixing a point of view: from that point the elements of the landscape would be seen to modify their relative proportions. The distant moimtaia would diminish to a point of snow; the pond would become the prominent center, every tree distinct; the meadow would have some softening of remoteness; on the other side the huge lake would appear a silver streak upon the horizon. By a similar kind of perspective, World Literature will be a different thing to the Englishman and the Japanese: the Shakespeare who bulks so large to the Englishman will be a small detail to the Japanese, while the Chinese literature which makes the foreground in the one literary landscape may be hardly descemible in the other. World Literature will be a different thing even to the Englishman and the Frenchman; only in this case the similar history of the two peoples wiU make the ' World Literature (MacmiUan). The passage quoted is on page 6. 8o The Field and Scope of Literary Study constituent elements of the two landscapes much the same, and the difference will be mainly in the distribution of the parts. More than this, World Literature may be different for different individuals of the same nation: obviously, one man will have a wider outlook, taking in more of universal literature; or it may be that the indi- viduality of the student, or of some teacher who has influenced him, has served as a lens focussing the multiplex particulars of the whole in 'its own individual arrangement. In each case the World Litera- ture is a real unity; and it is a unity which is the reflection of the unity of all literature. I am persuaded that the conception of world literature in this sense is essential for realizing the unity of literature in practical study. It both satisfies the desiderata of literary culture, and it presents literature in adequate voliune for the study of its underlying principles. The present work, naturally, is written from the viewpoint of the English-speaking civilization. But the results would be the same in substance, with variations only of detail, if the point of view were French, or German, or other European civilization. The first step, upon which all the rest depends, is to seize with accuracy our point of view: that is, to understand the civilization of which we are a part in its relation with the other civilizations of the world, and with the literatures in which these civilizations are reflected. On page 8i I take from the work of mine already mentioned its Table of the Literary Pedigree of the English-speaking Civilization (Chart VI). In interpret- ing this chart the central point is that our English civilization —as also that of the great European nations — is the product of two factors, the union of which has made us what we are. These are represented by the names Hellenic and Hebraic: Hellenic, the civilization of the Hellenic peoples, reflected in Greek and Latin literature; Hebraic, that part of Hebrew civilization which stands reflected in the literature we call the Bible. Our science, philosophy, political systems, are made > u a o I SS « m bO a 0) I" 0^ gig in iz; o d S .s «! '§ ►j o< > VH u 5 J 1 u ...--- » -- H..- S 3 HO I en I § ^ £" ff fc " J3 CO bo n 8i 82 The Field and Scope of Literary Study by the continuation of processes commenced for us by the ancient Greeks. But when we come to our spiritual nature, in this we have nothing in common with the Greeks: this spiritual nature is the outcome of Hebraic ideas repre- sented in literature by the Bible. The Hellenic and the Hebraic are our parent civilizations: Classical and Bibhcal literature must combine to make the foundation of our literary study. The union of Hellenic and Hebraic civilizations was not a single event, but a long process; or rather y there were three distinct fusions of Hellenic with Hebraic culture. The first took place when, three centuries before Christ, the conquests of Alexander the Great forced Hellenic culture upon the whole civilized world, and so upon the unwilling Jews; in spite of obstinate resistance, Palestine was permeated with Greek cul- ture, and the new city of Alexandria became a center of Jewish life hardly second to Palestine. Here we have Hellenism invad- ing Hebraism: there ensues a type of culture such as made St. Paul a mediator between Christianity and the gentile world. The second fusion of the two came about when the Roman Empire, the final form of Hellenic civilization, was Christianized: here Hebraism invades Hellenism. But it is an historic fact — upon which I will presently enlarge — ^that in this case it was a very attenuated Hellenism and a very attenuated Hebraism that thus intermingled, leading to the unmature culture and confused social changes of the Dark and Middle Ages. At last we have the Renaissance, in which complete Hellenism and complete Hebraism are fused together; this Renaissance is the starting-point of modern life. It is the second of these three revolutions, and the Mediaeval- ism it introduces, that immediately concerns us. It becomes desirable to recall the historic framework of the Middle Ages; and on page 83 I have, in very rough diagram (Chart VII), / CHART VII Stages of Mediaeval History \%^ Roman Empire i Jews In % 5, la a Mediterranean 1 Arabs Roman Empire Holy Roman Empire Meditebi^anean i Arabs Holy Roman Empire CHRISTEITDOM centering round Latin language Mediterranean centering round Arabic language ISLAM Modern European Nations Modem times Renaissance Middle Ages Dark Ages I w// R l Interplay o( Ro- s ^ man and Local a "b Languages 83 84 The Field and Scope of Literary Study endeavored, to indicate tlie leading stages of mediaeval history.' Our starting-point is the Mediterranean Sea, indicated by its name as the center of the then civilized world. Round its shores is the highly organized Roman Empire. On the north and west of this lies the dark region of barbarism, from which will come the vital forces of the future. On the east we have remnants of earlier civilizations — Indian, Persian, Greek. Two items must be added, of importance for their future: these are — if the expression may be permitted — the highly explosive civilizations of the Jews and the Arabs; insignificant in appear- ance, but capable of sudden change into forces of world-wide domination. The first advance is seen when Judaism, most exclusive of civilizations, develops Christianity, that claims the whole world for its sphere. The Roman Empire receives these Christianiz- ing influences at just the period when it is gradually absorbing into itself the barbarian nations. Centuries ensue of life-and- death conflict between the Roman Empire and the barbarian peoples: this is "the Dark Ages," in which the Hellenic culture inherited by the Roman Empire becomes dissipated. But the very Hebraism that Christianity was introducing into Roman society was itself attenuated. It is true that the Dark Ages constituted the period when, as regards ecclesiastical and theological system, Christianity was dominant. But the liter- ary basis of Christianity, the Bible, was at this time thrown into the background: even at the end of the Middle Ages we find a Martin Luther discovering by accident that the Bible is a whole literature in itself, and not merely the select passages ' It is hardly within the function of this work to indicate books on medi- aeval history. Gibbon's DecUne and Fall of the Roman Empire and Lord Bryce's Holy Roman Empire are the most important. A sketch somewhat fuller than that in the text will be found in my World Literature (Macmillan) , pages 27-53- The Conception of World Literature 85 with which he had been familiar in the services of the church; and Carlstadt tells us how he was professor of theology in his university before ever he had read the Bible. The total result of this first epoch is that the Roman Empire has changed into the Holy Roman Empire. We must exclude from our minds the modem idea of Europe as a mixture of nations. Mediaeval Europe was a unity. Politically, its or- ganization was that of the feudal system: almost every castle is the center of some local government; these feudal units are forever shifting, and all enter into a chain of subordinate and superior authority, the whole culminating in the emperor, who represents the majesty of imperial Rome. At the same time Europe is a spiritual unit: the Pope of Rome is the brain; the clergy, as a ramifying nerve system, connects the papal authority with every corner of Europe. The consciousness of the time' recognizes this union of state and church: they are the body and soul of Europe, and neither can exist without the other. The second revolution comes when Arabic civilization be- comes explosive, and is suddenly transformed into the world- conquering religion of Mahomet. This spreads like wildfire through the whole of the East, and through the Roman Empire south of the Mediterranean. The earlier civilizations — Indian, Persian, and even Greek — are swept into the advancing current of Mohammedanism. Thus at last we see, on opposite sides of the Mediterranean, Christendom and Islam confronting one another. Each is of the nature of a world-empire; each pre- sents the combination of church and state. There is a further parallel which it is important to notice. Throughout Christen- dom, Latin or Roman language is the official language of religion and of the clerical or educated class. In different localities this Roman language is being corrupted by local speech. Here we have the foundation of the languages, and so of the separate ' As represented in Dante's De Monarchii. 86 The Field and Scope of Literary Study nationalities, which make up the Europe of the future. Where in this language-formation the Roman element is stronger than the local elements, we get what are still called the Romance languages of French, Italian, Spanish. In other cases, such as English or German, the local language proves more powerful than the Roman: these stand distinct from the so-caUed Romance languages, yet they share the common process of interaction between Roman and native speech. Language plays an important, but a different, part in the Mohammedan world. Arabic is the official and religious language of Islam, as Latin was of Christendom: but the important point in this case is that constituent civilizations — Indian, Greek — must translate their literature into Arabic in order to give it new currency. Arabic literature has thus in the Middle Ages the carrying trade- in ideas; but it is only the vehicle of communication, and apart from poetry Arabic civilization has added nothing of its own to the common stock. It is an inevitable further stage that between this Christen- dom and this Islam there should be clash and intermingling. Mohammedanism invades Europe: but the great Battle of Tours (a.d. 732) gives it its final defeat. Centuries later, in the movements known as Crusades, Europe as one man ad- vances to the conquest of the Mohammedan world, but utterly fails to effect it. Meanwhile, Arabic culture interpenetrates Christendom: Europe of the Middle Ages has for one of its distinguishing features Arabic medicine, Arabic philosophy, Arabic science. But these are Arabic only in appearance: they give us Greek science, medicine, philosophy, in Arabic translations or commentaries. The Middle Ages make an important epoch in the history of the world. But in dealing with this it is important to dis- tinguish between what belongs to the period itself and what has significance in its bearing upon the future. Mediaevalism was The Conception of World Literature 87 itself a rich and varied culture,' with its magnificent Gothic art, its ecclesiastical hyna.nology and literature, its scholastic philosophy, its epic of mediaeval legend, its religious drama. In the Middle Ages, again, are to be traced the roots of the in- dependent literatures of the modern European nations. But what is most important for our present purpose is the creative poetry of mediaevalism which in universal literature stands under the designation of Romance, and makes one of the domi- nant factors in our literary pedigree. As the dotted lines in Chart VI on page 81 suggest, Europe of the Middle Ages is the meeting-ground for coalescence between streams of imaginative poetry coming from the most varied sources. There is the inter- mingling of folk-lores of the European races — Norse, Celtic, Germanic; Hellenic imagination has been inherited from the past; with the influence of the Church come Hebraic story and ecclesiastical legends; the presence of the Arabs makes a link with oriental poetry of Arabia, India, and Persia. All these freely combine: and the combination is accentuated by two forces, one positive and one negative. On the one hand mediaeval life — with its chivalry, its magic, its interest in travel and wonderland— is a perpetual stimulus to poetic creation. The negative force is the total quiescence in mediaevalism of critical restraint. A notable feature of ancient Greek litera- ture is the fact that the splendor of its first outburst — in Homer and tragedy — generated an attitude of conservative criticism in the public mind, which resented any departure from the earliest forms, and even additions to the traditional matter of poetry. More and more Greek and Roman poetry became a reiteration of the same forms, an echoing of traditional story, until at last it degenerated into mechanical and sterile imita- tion. In contrast with this, mediaevalism presents a free field for all in poetry that is fresh, original, surprising, exuberant, ' Compare my World Literature (Macmillan), pages 35-53. 88 The Field and Scope of Literary Study and even wild. The aggregation of this 'Romantic' poetry makes a body of literature of sufficient volume and weight to hold its own even against the splendid Classical poetry that was presently to be recovered. We now reach the Renaissance, the revolution which is the transition from mediaeval to modern. The capture of Con- stantinople by the Turks in a.d. 1453 is one of several forces which brought the manuscripts of Greek literature, with Greek scholars who could interpret them, to Western Europe. Hel- lenic literature and art in its completeness is now the possession of Europe: and this makes the first phase of the Renaissance. But among these manuscripts are the manuscripts of the Bible, both Hebrew and Greek: Hebraic culture in its fulness has reached the European world, and the Renaissance develops into the Reformation. The modem world appears in a new thought, new religion, new art, and new poetry. The new thought means the resumption of Greek philosophy and science interrupted by the Dark Ages; but it is a resumption with the important additions of two novelties — scientific experiment and the diffusive power of printing. To the Catholic religion of the past are added Protestant and rationalizing systems: but the newness of the new reUgion is found in the fact that all systems — alike religions of authority and religions of free thought — depend upon voluntary acceptance by the individual mind, and cannot be jenforced by the magistrate. There is a new art, in the addition of Gothic art to Classic art, and in the rise of modem music. What is most important for our purpose is the new poetry, that rests upon the harmony of Classic and Romantic. Classic poetry emphasizes accepted forms, and echoes of the poetry that has preceded: this is, so to speak, the centripetal force of imagination. Romantic is the centrifugal force of novelty, surprise, and freedom. The balance of Classic and Romantic makes the sanity of modern poetry. The Conception of World Literature 89 II We are now in a position to realize in its full significance the conception of world literature. It is not to be supposed that such world literature can be comprehended in the hundred or more " best books. " Each student must make his own selection : it is the province of literary study to give him the philosophy of literature that will be behind the "best books." The pedigree of our civilization furnishes, as it were, a map of all literature to aid the process of selecting. We recognize certain literature as ancestral: Classical and Biblical literatures have the first daim on us. As regards the third of the dominant factors in our pedigree, Romance, we must distinguish: the important point here is not the actual literature of the Middle Ages — which, with the single exception of Dante, is not of supreme excellence — ^but the Romantic ideal which mediaevalism has enthroned side by side with the ideal of the Classical. A second division of literature appears to hold to us a less close affinity: Indian, Persian, Norse, Celtic, the branches of Semitic and Aryan other than Hellenic and Hebraic, all this stands to us as collateral world literature. Other literature is to be deemed extraneous. Yet here, as always, intrinsic literary importance can countervail questions of affinity. No poetry can be more remote from us than the poetry of Finland: yet such a poem as the Kalevala, by its intrinsic charm, and by the way it has preserved stages of imaginative evolution otherwise lost, can be brought from the outer extremity of our literary field into the heart of our world literature. When we come to modem poetry, the important point to recognize is that the whole of Europe, with the European element in all parts of the world, constitutes a single reading circle. The various nations have gradually difierentiated from the unity of mediaeval Eiurope in which they grew together: yet in our broad outlook we see here a single literature. Usage limits the word 'dialectic' to lin- guistic significance: otherwise we might say that the English 90 The Field and Scope, of Literary Study and European literatures were dialectic variations of one great literature. These literatures have a common evolutionary history: descent from a common ancestral stock, with the same modifying force of mediaevalism. Of course, national idio- syncrasies, individual genius of authors, the various accidents of history, come in as disturbing forces. The recognition of this unity was never so clear as at the present moment, when — the main literary interests being drama and fiction — ^we turn indifferently to the Norwegian Ibsen, the Swedish Strindberg, the Russian Turgenieff and Tolstoi and Dostoyevsky, the Polish Sienkiewicz, the Austrian Grillparzer and Hauptmann, the Spanish Echegaray, the Italian D'Annunzio; while the German Goethe and the French Balzac and Victor Hugo have always maintained themselves as the giants of modem creative litera- ture. It belongs to perspective that, other things being equal, the English reader naturally selects what is English, the French reader what is French: but this is so only when other things are equal. World literature understood in this sense is the proper field for literary culture, whether that culture be elementary or ad- vanced. The more limited a man's opportunities for reading, the more important it becomes that he should start with a true perspective. For all of us, older or younger. Homer and the Bible are more important than Chaucer or Dryden; Greek tragedy is a prerequisite for intelligent appreciation of Shake- speare. What we have to resist is a position often taken as if it were a dictate of common sense, but which is really founded upon misapprehension: it is said. We cannot know all litera- ture, let us make sure of our own. But this begs the question as to what constitutes "our own literature." For an English reader "our own literature" is, not what English authors have composed in the English language, but what the English- speaking civilization has absorbed from the other civilizations pf the world in addition to what it has itself produced. We The Conception of World Literature 91 should deem it a narrow historic view that would lead (say) an Englishman to express his patriotism by stud3rLag carefuUy the history of Britain and refusing to take any interest in the British empire. The British empire is the greatest fact in the history of Britain. Yet even the British empire is a narrow thing in comparison with the English-speaking civilization. And the English civilization — like the French, the German, the Italian civilization — is perpetually being enriched by what it can absorb of national cultures other than its own. Particular national literatures are the reflection of particular national histories: in world literature stands reflected the history of civilization. But it belongs to the other work of mine to which I have referred to deal with the bearing of world literature upon general literary culture. The subject of the present work is the formal study of literature: and for this the only adequate field is world literature. It is an historic blunder to look for the roots of our English literature to the literature written in Anglo- Saxon and Old English. The forces which have inspired our great masters are revealed only in the broad field suggested by oiu: Table of Literary Pedigree' (Chart VI, page 81): in that field the writers of Anglo-Saxon and Old English constitute a very small corner. World literature presents the literary material as an historic unity. The main stream is the Classical literature, which has had the prerogative voice in determining our hterary conceptions. From the first century of the Chris- tian era this main stream receives the sister stream of Biblical literature, potent from the first as to matter and spirit, yet still waiting for its fuU recognition in its bearing on literary form. The literary stream continues to receive tributaries as it passes through ages of mediaevalism, and of the separate modern " It is one of the merits of Mr. Courthope's great History of English Poetry (MacmiUan) that it is based on recognition of this fact. The first two volumes are specially important. 02 The Field and Scope of Literary Study literatures moving under common conditions side by side. The palpable errors of traditional theory and criticism have arisen mainly from the narrowness of outlook which led to them. Only world literature — ^literature studied apart from distinc- tions between particular languages — gives a body of literary material from which it is safe to make generalizations; only in world literature can the life history of literature be fully revealed. CHAPTER V THE OUTER AND THE INNER STUDY OF LITERATURE It is clear that the study of literature, by its inherent char- acter, and in the nature of things, is one which must bring us in contact with many other distinct studies. On page 94 I have endeavored to indicate in tabular form (Chart VIII) this affiliation of literary with other studies. For a working definition, we may consider literature as a function of thought, which is the matter of literature, and language, which is its medium. But this is not sufficient: there are obviously many things beside literature — such things as a lawyer's bill, an act of parliament, a post-office Guide — which are expressions of thought in language. The differentia which marks off literature from other expressions of thought in language seems to be the element of art which runs through all literary expression. We may consider the three elements of literature separately. The thought which constitutes the matter of literature is, in the first place, the productive thought of authors; when we follow this out we are brought at length to the study of biogra- phy. Something more than authors, however, is necessary to make literature. A lunatic may write a book, and, if he can command funds, may get his book duly published and catalogued; but it requires some degree of acceptance of books — ^by a larger or smaller public, acceptance at the time or in some future age — in order to constitute books literature. Thus literature must reflect, not only the thinking of authors, but also the sentiment of readers who have given the particular books their currency. Successive phases of a national litera- ture reflect successive phases of the nation's history. And thus 93 B m •a o -M si u o m xa < I 0) •a The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 95 the study of literature marches with the study of history. Again, creative literature, such as Homer, in addition to the particular story, reflects also the general civilization of the age in which the story is cast: accordingly, the study of literature has relations with the whole interest of archaeology. We may note next how the matter of literature, apart from the other elements, may become in itself an independent in- terest: this will draw the boundaries of our study in the direction of many other distinct pursuits. In the great religions of the world we find divine revelation taking literary form: this con- nects the study of literature with the specific science of her- meneutics — the formal interpretation of sacred lore — and also with the broader study of theology. In primitive antiquity poetic myths seem to voice speculations upon nature and other interests which in a later age take the form of science; study of this mythologic poetry leads to the science of mythology, and the somewhat broader interest of folk-lore. Again: when philosophic thinking is fully developed, particular sciences have arisen which may be considered to stand outside what is strictly called literature: but there will always be a large amount of philosophic thought which has not been specialized in sciences, and this constitutes a part of literature. And for the subject of human life, in the broad sense, no formal science is adequate: the belles lettres, and fiction, have been recognized as the real "criticism of life." Such criticism of human life will have close relations with the study of sociology. And all the particular studies enumerated in this paragraph draw together in the general study of philosophy. If we now start from the idea of art as a basis of literature, we. see at once how literary study merges in the general science of aesthetics. And this science of aesthetics is inextricably interwoven with the master science of psychology. Again: putting together the matter of literature and the artistic forms in which it manifests itself, we get a body of material of 96 The Field and Scope of Literary Study sufficient scope to illustrate processes of evolution. And the conception of evolution, in its many-sided applications, makes a complete study in itself. Or, turning to the other side of our chart, we may take in combination the medium of literature — language — and the element of art. We are thus led to the con- ception of language as one of the fine arts; and this gives us two studies— poetics and rhetoric — either one of which, apart from all else there is in literature, might serve as a specialty for a life work. As we saw the matter of literature, apart from the other elements, becoming an independent interest, so is it with the medium of literature, which is language.' This leads us to the great science of philology, as the term is understood in English: the phenomena and principles of language, as abstracted from the comparative study of particular languages. But this is purely a study of language: the philologist, as such, has no concern with the matter of literature or with literary art. Nor is this all. We may make a distinction between written and spoken language. Study of the language of literature as written introduces the two sciences of paleography and bibli- ography. The first is concerned with ancient modes of writing; bibliography treats of the language of literature as embodied in books. While of course bibliographic iaformation enters into ordinary literary study, yet it is clear that the science of bibli- ography goes beyond this, and makes a separate interest. It deals with the materials of books, with their typography, binding, and particulars of manufacture; with minute differ- ences of editions; with machinery of collection and distribution, and library economics. It is quite possible to find a great collector of books who is an expert in bibliographic knowledge, and yet has Uttle or no interest in the contents of his books, or the artistic side of literary expression. ' This must be understood with the reservation discussed below, in chapter xi, pages 238-39. The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 97 We may proceed a step farther. Study of the language of literature, when carried into detail, will take the form of exegesis, with its leading instruments of commentary and annotation. Put together exegesis and bibliography and we reach the science of textual criticism. It is when exegetical insight is combined with expert knowledge of bibliographical apparatus that it becomes possible to restore the literary text that has fallen into decay. Lastly, if we take the language of literature as spoken, and bring to bear upon this the aesthetic element, we are led to the art of elocution. And the application of elocution to one leading branch of literature, the drama, introduces questions of the theater, and stage art makes an expert study by itself. Thus the review of literature, on the lines suggested by our chart, has for its net result that the study of literature in its natural development touches some twenty other studies, dis- tinct and independent. It is obvious that questions of de- markation will arise between the boundaries of these studies and what may be considered the intrinsic study of literature itself. What is thus suggested by the theoretic consideration of lit- erature is abundantly confirmed by the history and traditions of the study. As appeared in the preceding chapter, the aca- demic treatment of literature is limited by the departmental idea: in separate departments of Greek, English, German, literary study is inextricably interwoven with study of language, of history, and philosophy and art; so inextricably interwoven with study of language that the typical scholar can hardly con- ceive of Greek literature apart from Greek. It has usually happened that expositors of literature — whether scholastic instructors or writers of books — ^have been experts in other studies. Accordingly, one understands the study of literature as the study of authors, with copious biographic detail and dis- cussion of historic surroundings. Another has an aesthetic 98 The Field and Scope of Literary Study bias: outsiders often deride literary study as so much " raving about Shelley." A third has done good service in editing lit- erary texts: but in his exposition of literary works the thread is lost by intrusion of apparatus criticus and discussion of al- ternative readings. Another is all for points of language. It is among my recollections of my undergraduate days that the only course in English literature I had the opportunity of at- tending was a course of lectures "on Shakespeare," given by a scholar of international reputation: in actual fact, the course treated only three acts of a single play, and the lectures discussed nothing but etymologies of words, an occasional question as to the meaning of a passage being resented by the professor. The leading instruments of literary study have been commentary and annotation: we have been assisted to the literature of the Bible by commentaries in sis folio volumes, and the annotation to a play of Shakespeare far exceeds in bulk the play itself. But commentary means a surrender to the miscellaneous; it is a happy hunting-ground for undigested erudition. Commen- taries of course have a place among books of reference, and stand in the same category as dictionaries; but it seems hard when a dictionary is offered as a guidebook. To all of which it must be added, that literature, like music, is a popular pastime: its study must encounter as disturbing forces all the complex interests of public life— amusement, gossip and fashion, burning questions of social morals; above all, the curiosity as to the ending of a story which masks as novel reading, but betrays itself in the fact that its votaries can never read the same story twice. Universal suffrage has established itself in the field of literature: every reader claims his right to an opinion, with no sense of responsibility for study preceding pronouncement. In view of all these things it is not strange that the study of literature, as it actually exists, is found to be a chaos of mis- cellaneous interests; a conglomerate of bits from other pursuits in which it is difficult to trace the individuality of a great study. The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 99 The true way to meet such a situation, in my judgment, is to insist upon the recognition, as a fundamental principle, of a distinction between an Inner Study of literature and an Outer Study of literature. Something of analogy is presented by the accepted distinction between pure mathematics and applied — or, as it is sometimes called, mixed — ^mathematics. But math- ematics has the advantage that pure mathematics came first: literature is in the difficult position that the multifarious appli- cations have first established themselves, and the pure study has, with difficulty, to be disentangled from them. When we review the variety of interests which we have seen as distracting literary study, of not one of them can we say that it has no bearing whatever upon literature. On the other hand, if we give these disturbing interests full scope, the pure and intrinsic study of literature is completely swamped. The distinction between the Inner and the Outer Study of literature is not one that can be formulated ; the boundary line is a fluctuating boundary, which must be drawn by each student for himself. Yet it is a clear gain if the distinction be recognized. For it is not the least of our difficulties that the dissipation of literary study into so many questionable channels arises, to a large extent, from a desire for thoroughness. And who dares impeach a claim for thoroughness in matters of study? Yet, in the spirit of the familiar apostrophe to Liberty, one is tempted to exclaim: Thoroughness, how much of looseness has crept in under thy name ! Thoroughness apart from perspective may mean thorough misleading: when the traveler, for want of a map, has taken a wrong turning, the thoroughness he puts into his walking leads him all the farther from his destination. This absence of per- spective in literary study makes its weakness in comparison with other branches of culture. One who takes up physiology or history can hardly escape learning something of these sciences. But of those who — in schools, or universities, or in private reading — understand themselves to be engaged in the study of loo The Field and Scope of Literary Study literature, I believe that the great majority never reach it, but remain stranded in what are its outskirts. n In what remains of this chapter I propose to indicate some detailed distinctions that may illustrate the general separatirai between the Outer and the Inner Study of literature. < Literary Biography (Outer Study) Literary Organs of Personality: Essays and Lyrics (Inner Study) The greatest disturbing force to the pure study of literature is biography. And I would extend the term to cover the vast mass of gossip about writers and the production of their works, which is to the formal biography what the taE of a cortiet is to the nucleus. Many so-called histories of literature prove in fact only accounts of authors and their achievements. Indeed, according to received usage, it seems hardly possible to discuss a literary work without being expected to begin with a sketch of the author: his extraction and personal history, with examina- tion of his genius, and of the circumstances under which he came to write what he has written. There is no such presupposition in other studies. We should think it strange if a mathematical treatise, having occasion to refer to Euler's law, or Demoivre's theorem, should turn aside to give a personal sketch of Euler and Demoivre, and an estimate of their mathematical genius. It will be objected, however, that authors stand in a closer relation to their literary productions than mathematicians to science. There is some truth in this: but it is necessary to dis- criminate between different kinds of literature. If the question be of creative literature — such as a drama or story — ^what con- cerns literary study is the creative product, which stands for examination whoever its author might be. The believer in the "Baconian theory," and the orthodox Shakespearean scholar. The Outer and the Inner Literary Study loi are in exactly the same position when the question is of the con- tent and analysis of the plays. But there are other kinds of literature in which the personality of the author is the main interest; indeed, one great use of literature is to keep us in the company of the highest minds. In these cases the error is to seek for the personality of the author in biographies and anno- tations written of him by others. There are certain literary forms' specially devoted to self-revelation of the writer. One such form is the essay — such essays as those of Bacon, of Mon- taigne, of Addison, or Lamb : the essential point of these essays is to display an interesting personality turned on to a variety of topics. In the same way certain kinds of lyrics, of which the sonnet is the chief, give us the crystallization of a poet's senti- ment, or a passing situation. Here then personality is self- revealed, and revealed in literary form: such essays and lyrics belong to the inmost study of literature. Biography is some- thing external, and more closely allied to history than to litera- ture. No doubt, information about authors, appealing as it does to the most desultory reader, is an interest much more widely diffused than is appreciation of literature, which demands sustained attention. If a man prefers biography to literature, he is free to follow his choice; but in the interests of pure literary culture this biographic matter must be relegated to the Outer Study. < Literary Study (Inner) Linguistic Studies (Outer) The particular language in which a piece of literature is written is a factor in literary study. But it is only a single factor among many others; and adequate translation reduces to a minimum the loss of the original language.^ It is obvious " Compare chapter viii of my World Literature, in which these forms are fully discussed. ' On this general subject compare World Literature, pages 3-6. 102 The Field and Scope of Literary Study that without translation no connected and philosophic study of literature is possible. The old prejudice against the use of translated literature, which at one time went so far as to forbid the Bible in the vulgar tongue, is now all but obsolete. As we have come nearer to recognizing the unity of aU literature, in the same proportion the ideal and the art of translation have devel- oped; at the present time the greatest poets and the greatest scholars alike are seen to devote themselves to the art of trans- planting masterpieces from one literary field to another. There is a real "debatable land" between the studies of language and of Uterature: of this I shall speak later on, in a chapter on "Language as a Factor in Literary Art."' But the Idng eclipse of literary by linguistic study has left behind it some confusion as to the boundaries of the two pursuits which is of suflScient importance to be noted here. y Interpretation of Exegesis or Annotation: the unit 3. Distinguish^ a word (Language — Outer Study) ^Interpretation of Perspective: the unit a whole poem (Literature — Inner Study) Tn all subjects exegesis, or what corresponds to it, must play a part. But the long tradition of studying literature in foreign languages, and the use of commentaries, have in literary study given undue emphasis to exegesis. In interpretation of this kind the unit is a single word or phrase; the idea is to bring light from all sources to bear upon each successive detail, with the underlying assumption that when all the details have been explained the whole has been interpreted. But this assump- tion is a delusion. In works of art, the whole is a different thing from the sum of the parts: it is quite possible to have mastered all the details and yet to have missed the spirit of the whole. The true literary study seeks the interpretation of perspective; which may be popularly expressed by the phrase, "A book at a ' Below, chanter xxvi. The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 103 single view." Its attitude is ever to keep in view the work as a whole: to lay emphasis on the general drift — the Zusammen- hang, or structure, or interrelation of parts; if the details are obscure, to sweep over the ground a second and a third time — or it may be a tenth and a twentieth time — and see the obscurity of the details vanish in the light of the whole. Exegesis of particular passages will be valuable as a supplement to this; the mistake is to think that exegesis by itself could interpret an3iiiing. A simple illustration of the two treatments is found in the difference between seeing a play presented on the stage and reading the same play in an annotated edition. The stage, con- sidered as an interpreter, may work under every disadvantage: actors and managers are constituted by histrionic powers, not by literary insight; the aim may be to follow merely traditional interpretation, or to seek other interpretation because it is novel. Yet it is hardly possible to see a stage interpretation, however imperfect, without catching a vivid impression of the play, although it may be an impression that needs correction. In the case of the commentary, although the scholarship may be of the best, yet the chances are that the impression given of the play as a whole is loose and vague. What is left at the end is a sense of copious explaining — often exegetical explanation of difficulties which the process of exegesis has itself raised; but the concentration on the details has dissipated the connection of the whole and the end of the exposition has forgotten the beginning. We can hardly emphasize too strongly the literary principle that the general structure of a work of art, rather than the ac- cumulation -of its details, is the key to its interpretation. To many readers it might seem a dry technicality to insist that the line of movement for a particular poem was the regular arch. Yet this conception of an arch movement, besides being beauti- ful in itself, is full of interpretative suggestiveness. An arch implies a turning-point in the center; this turning-point is also I04 The Field and Scope of Literary Study the foundation of the whole, for in its keystone lies the stability of the arch; again, the principle of symmetry comes in, and for every point on the one side of the keystone we look for some- thing corresponding to it on the other side. Let us apply this, say, to the Prophecy of Joel.' (The arch scheme [Chart IX] appears on page 105.)' The poem is a series of seven visions: the fourth or central vision makes the keystone. The first vision is a starting-point which presents the Land of Judah desolate and mourning: successive choruses of Old Men, Revelers, Priests, Husbandmen, lament particular aspects of the desolation, and then all draw together in a national picture of distress. With the second vision — ^higher up the ascending half of the movement — the trouble has intensified: judgment is advancing to a crisis. The sound of the trumpet seemed to announce a day of judgment; mysterious forces of destruction are advancing — The land is as the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; they are now among the houses of the city, and amid rocking earthquake is heard a Voice that must be the Voice of Jehovah. Higher still in the ascending movement, the third vision com- mences with a great surprise: the Voice of Jehovah is a voice calling to repentance — Rend your hearts and not your garments — and in the Chorus of the Whole People there is a stirring of re- sponse — Who knoweth whether he will not turn and repent, and leave a blessing behind him ? ■ The prophecy should be read in the text of the Modern Reader's Bible, which brings out the Uterary structure. ' For other illustrations of the arch form of movement compare below, pages 191-93, 393; or corresponding parts of my other works on Shake- speare (Thinker, pages 331 ff.; Artist, see Index under word "Arch"). o •a o a Q t> o u < « tHJ5 lOS io6 The Field and Scope of Literary Study The Chorus of the Whole People, led by the Priests, appeal for mercy. So we reach the keystone of the arch with the words — Then was the Lord jealous for his land, and had pity on his people. It is a transformation of the desolate scene, for what Jehovah speaks realizes itself instantly to the imagination. But the poem cannot end here. There is a further stage — beginning the descending half of the arch— a stage of sanctification poured from above upon high and low, young and old; if signs of judgment appear, it is now judgment on behalf of Judah and against the nations her foes. The descending movement brings a sixth vision — this new judgment advancing to a crisis: voices summon the nations of the earth, voices summon the heavenly hosts, to the "valley of the Lord's decision"; the prophetic spectator has a glimpse of "multitudes, multitudes in the valley of the Lord's decision. " All is swallowed up in darkness and earthquake: these pass, and the seventh vision is of the Holy Mountain and Eternal Peace. What the arch structure has symbolized is a clear progression, boimd into still clearer unity by effects of s)Timietry. The seventh vision of the Holy Mountain stands opposed to the opening vision of a land desolate and mourning; if the second vision is of judgment on Judah advancing to a crisis, the sixth vision gives us judgment for Judah advancing to the valley of Jehovah's decision; the third stage of repentance at the last moment is balanced by the fifth stage of an "afterward" of sanctification; and the center of the whole is turning from judgment to mercy. Structural interpretation has given us a conception as artistically beautiful as it is spiritually convincing. And there is still room for the interpretation of exegesis to deal with particular details: with the riddling suggestions of a locust plague that might possibly shadow an occasion for the poem; or with the much- discussed apostrophe to Tyre and Zidon — expanded out of The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 107 proportion to its place ia the scheme — and the recognized doubt whether this is a later interpolation. Interpreting a poem resolves itself, ultimately, into grasping its unity. In the case of complex works, like the plays of Shakespeare, this unity will often be a harmony of separate elements, each complete in itself; but such harmony is itself a form of unity. In the shortest and simplest Ijrrics, it is quite possible to have read with intelligence, and even enjo3niient, and yet to have failed to catch the interpretative unity. I am tempted to offer a rather extreme illustration which has fallen within my own experience. I once heard a cultured lady — re- ferring to the popular hymn, "Nearer, My God, to Thee" — at one moment remark that this was her favorite hymn, and the next moment express delighted surprise at a reference to the connection of the h5Tnn with the incident of Jacob's Dream. This seemed to me so extraordinary that I have had the curi- osity to use this lyric as a touchstone in somewhat extensive testings. Incredible as it wiU appear to some of my readers, I am satisfied in my own mind that the greater part even of educated people who know that hjmm have never seen how it is founded on the well-known incident of Scripture; people of taste, and people prominent in the religious world, have ad- mitted as much to me — I have my suspicions of a certain bishop! Yet, surely, without that guiding clue the famous hymn becomes a mere hubbub of pious phrases. The signifi- cance has been lost, not from lack of taste or intelligence, but because unity and connection were not the things looked for. 1 Similar considerations would apply to the Psalms of the Bible, which have come down to us broken up into verses. If we note the reading or chanting of the Psalms in church — ^perhaps with suggestive accompaniment from an accomplished organ- ist — it will almost always appear that what is attracting at- tention is particular phrases, or single verses; there will rarely be found any indication that the general movement of the io8 The Field and Scope of Literary Study poem — its rapid changes of drift, or working to climaxes — has been caught.' Of course, in many lyrics the author's title marks the significance of the whole. Where this is lacking, merely to feel after the unity, even though we may not be able to formulate it in a title, puts us into the right interpretative attitude. The very soul of a poem is its unity. One encoun- ters a man lying asleep on a bench: all the separate parts tiiat make up the man — ^his various limbs and features — are seen, but without any binding consciousness. Let the sleeper be awakened by the sound of a trumpet: at once he springs into an attitude of alertness, his muscles all in mutual co-operation, the features of the face in the unity we call expression. Like the change from sleep to waking is the interpretative beauty that comes into a poem when its unity has been grasped. ^Literary History Particular Products of Indi- (Outer Study) viduals (Literary Biography) of Nations (National Literatures the Reflection of National His- tories) 4. Distinguish^ o^ Larger Units (Comparative Literature) [Emphasized in the Depart- mental Study of Literature! The Processes Literary Forms and Species (Literary Morphology) Modifications in the Spirit and and Functions of Literature [Emphasized in the Study of World Literature] 'The late Bishop B. F. Westcott's Paragraph Psalter (Macmillan) was specially designed to assist in this matter; but, so far as I have been able to observe, its adoption in the musical services of churches has been very rare. A musical application of Bishop Westcott's principles to Ps. 78 has been composed hy the late Dr, J. S. Naylor, organist of York Minster (Novello). \ Literary Evolution (Inner Study) The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 109 History implies observation and record; as applied to past events in the usual meaning of the word, or as applied to things when we speak of natural history. It is thus the basis upon which all other studies are founded. This applies to the study of literature, as well as to the rest. But here we may make one more distinction between the Outer and the Inner Study of literature. Literary history, as seen in the ordinary usage of the term, belongs in the main to the Outer Study. It concerns itself with particular productions of literature: productions of individuals, the history of which becomes literary biography; and productions of nations, the national literatures being the reflection of the national histories. Comparative literature, as determined by usage, deals with units larger than the unit of the nation. It will, for example, take up from the literary side the whole of Europe during the Renaissance or other special epoch; it is not usually extended to comprehend the relation of modem with ancient literature, or to the analysis of literature as a whole. All this is emphasized in the departmental study of literature. When history comes to be applied to literature in general, or to that modification of it- which in this work is called world literature, such literary history tends largely to take the form of literary evolution. Evolution is concerned with the processes underlying the production of literature rather than with the particular products. It deals with the forms and species that make up literary morphology; or with modifications in the spirit and functions of literature, which it is the province of literary criticism to consider. Such evo- lutionary analysis constitutes the innermost part of the study of literature. Distinctions analogous to this are to be found in other regions of the field of philosophy. We may hear from a statistician that so many millions of carnation flowers pass in a single year through the market of a particular city. This fact may be important to the science of geography, which includes the question of floral distribution; it is of no import no The Field and Scope of Literary Study whatever to the study of botany. The structure of a carnation, and its affiliations with near or distant species of the floral kingdom, are the concern of botanic science, and these remain the same whether the number of particular carnation flowers be reckoned by tens or by millions in any geographical region. There is a geographical — or national — side to the study of literature, which may differ widely from the science of litera- ture in general. There is nothing in what is here said derogatory to literary history. Perhaps there is no field in which so large an amount of excellent scholarship is at work as in the investigation of literary origins. What I deprecate is the offering of this as if it were the study of literature itself. In the pure study of literature questions of literary origin are a means to an end: they are the end itself in the study of history. The distinction thus suggested must, however, be regarded as a distinction only of emphasis. The two things overlap. Literary evolution makes itself felt in the literature of a par- ticular country, or even in the productions of an individual author. And literary history enters into the inner study of literature, as furnishing the literary material on which evolu- tion can work; the very idea of world literature rests upon an historic survey. What is to be resisted is the common idea that the history of literature — literature being conceived as a unity — is to be found in the aggregation of histories of par- ticular literatures. To study general literature in aggregations of particular literatures is to miss the most important point — the interconnection of different literatures, and their mutual influence. Moreover, the perspective is different in the differ- ent studies: Spenser will be one thing in a survey of Elizabethan literature, another thing in the history of English literature, yet another thing in a comprehensive view of world Uterature. Literary history, as we generally understand the term, comes nearer to the study of history than to the study of literature. The Outer and the Inner Literary Study iii If a man reads — say in Mr. Gosse's excellent series' — the liistory of Greek, of German, of Italian literature, lie must feel that what he is following is much more the history of ancient Greece, of Germany, of Italy, than the history of literature. Literary history, as traditionally treated, constitutes the literary side of history, not the historic aspect of literature. yLiterary Structure: Analysis of a work as it stands 5. Distinguish^ from the viewpoint of Literary Unity (Inner Study) ^Historic (or Genetic) Structure: Accidental traces impressed upon a work by the circumstances of its Origin (Outer Study) In the general revival of the Humanities under the influence of modem ideas the study of history had a long priority over the study of literature. As a result, there has been consider- able confusion and misunderstanding as to the boundaries of the two studies. This affects the analysis of structure in a given work of literature: and we have to distinguish between analysis of the work as it is — ^which belongs to literature and its Inner Study — and another kind of structure — belonging to the Outer Study of literary history — which represents, not what the work is, but how it has become what it is. The modem study of Shakespeare in its earlier phases repre- sented the historic element. It was deemed important to ascertain the dates of particular plays, both with reference to the biographical question of development in Shakespeare's artistic powers, and also to the place of the plays in the history of English literature.^ Often there would be external evidence on such points. But also internal evidence was sought: tests I Literatures of the World, edited by Edmund Gosse (Appleton). ' Dr. Fumival's Introduction to the Leopold Shakespeare (Cassell), or to Bunnett's translation of Gervinus' Commentaries (Smith, Elder & Co., 1877), or F. E. Fleay's Shakespeare Manual (Macmillan), illustrate this branch of scholarship. 112 The Field and Scope of Literary Study of rhyme and verse-endings, and other matters of technique, were invented, by aid of which plays could be chronologically grouped. Nor was this all. In view of the well-known fact that dramatists of the period were accustomed to work in collaboration, the same tests were applied to questions of joint authorship: it was found possible to discriminate between the work of collaborators. All this is in place as an element in literary history: but it has no bearing whatever on the analysis of the plays as they stand considered as literary units. The question whether a play has one or several authors cannot affect the purely literary analysis of the play: its plot and movement, the character development, the thought and dic- tion, and the philosophic ideas underlying it.' An interesting illustration of the historic method is its application to the play of Henry the Eighth, which, with considerable agreement, textual critics have determined to be the work of Shakespeare in collaboration with Fletcher. It is claimed that the respective contributions of the two authors can be precisely distinguished; and as a result passages traditionally assumed to be the most Shakespearean of Shakespearean quotations — such as the speeches of Wolsey on his fall — ^have to be attributed to Fletcher.^ But this makes no difference to literary analysis of the poem. We should think it strange if , in a performance of Henry the Eighth, complaint was made that the actors gave no sign when, in the middle of a scene, they were passing from the poetry of Shakespeare to the poetry of Fletcher. There is a yet more important region of literature in which this confusion between historical structure and purely literary analysis has been found to prevail. Everyone is awate that the keenest historical analysis has been applied to the litera- ' I have applied the same argument to Biblical works in the Introduction to Deuteronomy in The Modern Reader's Bible. ' Compare Mr. GoUancz' Introduction to the play in the Temple Shakespeare (Dent). The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 113 ture we call the Bible. Such historic criticism has determined that the earlier books are constituted by the combination of ancient records, such as a record emanating from priestly sources, another distinguished by the name Elohim, another by the name Jehovah. It is claimed that the component ele- ments can, by internal evidence, be accurately discriminated.' Analysis of a similar kind has been applied to the prophetic and poetic books: here (it is claimed) in what on the surface appears continuous it is possible to detect, and to date, com- ponent elements coming from different sources; and that in tliis way the Bible can be chronologically reconstructed. Now, it is evident that whatever validity such historic criticism has is validity in the field of history, and that it has no bearing on the purely literary analysis of Scripture. So here again we have to distinguish between literary and historic structure. The purely literary study of the Bible is the analysis of the Bible as it is, analysis by literary methods and from the view- point of literary unity. It is illustrated in the Modern Reader's Bible.'' What this essays to do is to examine the Bible as it stands; to separate — by internal evidence — the books or other literary units which successively compose it, to determine their literary form — as epic and dramatic, verse, prose, and the like — and (as is done with all other literature) present these to the eye in a mode that reflects the actual literary structure. Historical structure traced in the same material is illustrated by the Poly- chrome Biblefl which ingeniously uses colors, like the coloring of maps, to warn the reader where in his reading he is passing from a passage that has its origin (for example) in the priestly tradition to a passage that originally emanated from a difierent 'The most convenient authority for this type of study is the late S. R. Driver's Introduction to Old Testament Literature (Clark). » Published by MacmiUan. Compare above, page 68. ' Published by Dodd, Mead & Co., New York; James Clarke & Co., London. 114 The Field and Scope of Literary Study source. The two analyses are clearly independent things: one belongs to literary history and so to the Outer Study, the other is a purely literary analysis. To take a specific example. In the much-discussed Book of Deuteronomy, if we adopt the ordinary symbols for the different sources — P, J, E, JE, D — the historic structure of the book comes out something like this: chap. 1—27:4 D 27:5—27:7 (0) JE 27:7 (*)— 31:13 D 31:14-22 JE 31:23-30 D 32: 1-44 JE 32:45-47 D 32:48-52 P etc. Literary analysis determines this Book of Deuteronomy to be a succession of orations and songs, with connecting matter, in such sequence as to present a dramatic situation developed to an impressive Climax. The literary structure comes out like this: chap. 1:1-2 Title-page 1:3-5 Preface to Oration I 1:6 — ^4:40 Oration I 4:41-43 Note to Oration I 4:44—5:1 Preface to Oration II 5:1 — chap. 11 Oration II ;haps. 12-26 The Book of the Covenant re ferred to in the previous Ora tion chap. 27 Preface to Oration III 28 Oration III etc. It is perfectly clear that these two structures are difierent in kind, and have no bearing the one on the other. Yet in the The Outer and the Inner Literary Study 115 general study of the Bible the historic and the literary analysis are constantly confused: the critical analysis, which deals with the question how our Bible originated, and therefore belongs to the Outer Study of literary history, is somehow understood to be an interpretation of what the Bible is. It becomes necessary to lay down as a principle: The literary structure of a work can- not possibly be afected by any theory as to its origin. We are familiar with many theories as to the historic origin of Deuter- onomy: (i) that it was written by Moses; (2) that it is an imaginative work composed in the reign of Josiah; (3) that traditions of the farewell of Moses to Israel, such as appear in Leviticus, were worked up into the form of our Deuteronomy at a much later date; (4) that the 'Book of the Law' discovered in the reign of Josiah was substantially our Deuteronomy, but received many later additions or corrections. Assume any one of these views to be true: how can it aSect the question whether the Deuteronomy we have is or is not correctly analyzed as a succession of orations and songs with their connecting matter? AU this makes one more reason for insisting upon that which is the subject of the present chapter, the necessity of recognizing a distinction between the Outer and the Inner literary study. By a long tradition literature has been studied only in entangle- ment with other studies — of biography, language, history. The boundary line between literature and the rest has been obscured. AU that here is assigned to the Outer literary study has, no doubt, relevance to the subject of literature, yet is dis- tinct from the essential study itself. The Outer Study has responsibility for the total output of particular authors or nations or epochs: the Inner Study recognizes only what part of this discloses features of literary evolution, or in some other way has significance in the conception of literature as a whole. What is especially to be resisted is the common idea that such biographic, linguistic, historic adjunct to literary study is a prerequisite without which the study of literature cannot be ii6 The Field and Scope of Literary Study sound. On the contrary, there is a pure study of literature which is entirely independent, and which has a field, a method, a scholarship of its own. No doubt, one who would be expert in any subject will do well to acquaint himself with many ad- joining fields of study. But one who is attracted to the pure study of literature as literature need not think that he must first exhaust the subsidiary and external provinces. He need not keep himself forever in the region of knowing about litera- ture instead of setting himself to know the literature as it is. BOOK III LITERARY EVOLUTION AS REFLECTED IN THE HISTORY OF WORLD LITERATURE CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER DC The Diffehentiation of Poetry and Pkose Evolution in Epic Poetry EvoLxmoN IN Drama Evolution in Lyric Poetry CHAPTER VI THE DIFFERENTIATION OF POETRY AND PROSE The evolution of our world literature, as we have seen, takes form as a continuous movement. Its first stage is the ancient Classical literature of Greece and Rome: in this we are able to trace the earliest steps of literary development from the em- bryonic literature of the ballad dance. There comes a point when the Hellenic literature mingles with other factors of our world literature, drawn in as tributaries into a river. The Christianization of the Roman Empire brings in Hebraic literature; in the course of the Middle Ages are added those types of literature we sum up as Romantic. The movement continues in our modem world, and we see ^e later stages of literary evolution up to the floating literature of the periodical. In this continuous movement one of the most conspicuous of literary phenomena is the gradual differentiation of poetry and prose. The reader will remember that the question is not of verse and prose: poetry is creative literature, however expressed, and is adding to the sum of existences; prose has the function of discussing what is already in existence. But poetry and prose are not two classes of literature, mutually exclusive. The dis- tinction between them is expressed by the characteristic term of evolution — differentiation; the rise of a newer form out of an older form, with a tendency to become gradually more and more separate. It is a branching out: the branch had a potential existence in the trunk, and, while becoming ever farther sepa- rated, yet is always influenced by its connection of origin with trunk and root. So, at one end of the process we are observing we have poetry as universal literature, creation lending itself to the function of discussion which has no other organ through which to express itself; at the other end we have a pure prose, 119 I20 Literary Evolution which — ^as in the discussional literature of modern science — rejects everything creative. There are intervening stages in which the functions of creation and discussion have become entangled. The gradual differentiation of poetry and prose is the subject of the present chapter: subsequent chapters will deal with the evolution of poetry in its main forms. Chart X on pages 122-23 is intended to suggest the leading features of this fundamental and long-extended process of evolution, the differentiation of poetry and prose. Poetry, as the universal literature of primitive life, must, among other functions, perform the function of philosophy. This embryonic philosophy must admit creative treatment, there being as yet no literary medium of prose to emphasize the separation of discussion from creation. Thus a large element in early poetry is mythology: creative story is the form taken by the speculative thought of the early world. Again: the Homeric poems give us elaborate catalogues of national con- tingents making up the Grecian and Trojan forces; similarly, their later imitations give us catalogues of allies (in Virgil), and of Argonauts (in Apollonius); aU these are contributions to the dawning interest in ethnology. The long-drawn wanderings of lo in the Prometheus of Aeschylus indicate geographical interest entering into poietry. The Hesiodic Works and Days is a manual of farming life in the form of epic poetry. In such embryonic philosophy may be included the whole literature of gnomic sayings, traditional proverbs, and riddles. The construction of the primitive riddle — for example, the Riddle of the Sphiux — is dearly creation. And in the sayings of the Wise Men — even if they be as brief as "Know thyself," or "Nothing in excess" — the epigrammatic point seems to be the counterpart of creative form; and this epigrammatic form may explain how these say- ings have been able to maintain themselves in ages of oral litera- ture without the aid of verse. The Differentiation of Poetry and Prose 121 In time there arises a great literature of prose: of history, philosophy, oratory. The idea of discussion as a function dis- tinct from creation is now fuUy established; and it is not sur- prising to find the sense of separateness reflecting itseK in a distinction of rhythm as great as that between verse and prose. In the great masters of early Greek prose we can see symptoms of the transition. Herodotus is justly called the Father of History : his work gives us volumes of epic anecdote — delightful out- pourings of travel talk, but not demanded by the general course of his work — ^before he settles down to the main topic of the Persian War. When history is more fully established in Thu- cydides, we still find, side by side with subtle historic analysis, the creative element of imagined speeches. The transitional stage is even clearer in philosophy. Aristotle, second of the great masters, may read whoUy like modem philosophy; but it is otherwise with Plato. As regards philosophic matter, Plato may represent philosophy as the modem world conceives it. In manner of putting, Plato's philosophy is creative: not abso- lute discussion, but dialogue; and this highly dramatic dialogue, involving full characterization of speakers and movement of plot. In the greater part of Plato's works, the dominant in- terest seems to be, not systematization of the truth, but delight in the instrument of inquiry. Plato dramatizes philosophic processes of thinking.' Whenever a type of literature has once established itself, it remains as a model which may, in future and very different ages, beget imitations, the type thus maintaining itself as a literary species. The poetic philosophy of which we have been speaking survives by imitation in the period of fully developed prose. In a late age of Roman literature we thus have Lucre- tius: in his great poem, what reads like modem chemical science is made to harmonize with apostrophes to mythological per- sonages, epic pictures of incidents like the sacrifice of Iphigenia, ' Compare World Literature, pages 19, 409-10. CHART X Differentiation of Poetry and Prose Ancient Classical Literature Poetry as primitive universal literature Mythology as primitive speculative thought Poetry as embryonic philos- ophy before the rise of prose Compare Homeric catalogues — such works as Hesiod's Works and Days Traditional gnomes, proverbs, riddles Rise of prose literature: of history, philosophy, oratory Symptoms of the transitional stage Survival (by imitation) of poetic philosophy in peri- ods of fully developed prose Herodotus: wavering between epic anecdotes of travel talk and formal history of the Persian War — the imagined speeches in Thucydides Plato: dramatization of philosophic processes of thought Compare Lucretius — Virgil's Georgics and Ovid's FasH In the modem wotld such a curiosity of litera- ture as Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry: artificial revival of primi- tive gnomic wisdom n. The Tuming-Point in the history of thought is the New Thought of the Renaissance, based on supremacy of Inductive treatment (Observation and Verification) (Not induction as a term of logic, but as a habit of thought — ^not that induction supersedes other thought processes, but that it becomes the stand- ard to which results are ultimately referred) with its three characteristic features Wide extension of the field of inquiry Co-operation and increasing division of labor or specialization Value of fragmentary and tentative thinking as material for future systematization This involves a literary medium of pure prose from which creation is wholly excluded CHART X— Continued ni. Thought as it specializes tends to pass out of general literature into Technical literature The sciences (including philosophy as a science correlating other sciences) The practical arts Legal and statistical writing Commentary and the literature of scholarship The treatise, manual, and the like Records and documents Commentaries or annotations Books of reference Papers and proceedings of societies Scientific journalism differentiated from general prose by specialties of technical style with characteristic literary forms IV. Modem Prose Literature of Thought Not Specialized — with literary style as a concomitant interest, and readily admitting creative modifications includes Modem philosophy: in contrast with Biblical Wisdom, on the one side, and philosophic science on the other side Writers such as Fiske or William James in contrast with Herbert Spencer Historians like Froude or Macaulay in contrast with Hallam or Freeman — Carlyle's history highly creative V. Literature (Poetry and Prose) as Specialized Thought: miscellaneous litera- ture the oiJy organ for the Science and Practical Art of LuE (in the full sense of the word, as distinguished from sciences treating particular aspects of life, like biology, psychology, ethics, sociology, etc.) includes Biblical Wisdom as archetsTie of philosophy which is the contemplation, not the analysis, of life Oriental Wisdom (Indian, Chinese, Persian, Arabian) readily assimilates with our world Uterature at this point Classical Wisdom, including Cicero [Friendship and Old Age] —Seneca's philosophy — Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Modern Wisdom (compare In Memoriam — large part of works of Wordsworth, Browning, etc. — Martin Tupper — ^Walt Whitman) The Kterature of personality [mcluding biography, lyrics, essays (verse and prose)] Satire, ancient and modem Fiction as the experimental side of human science The popular magazine: the floating literature of current life 123 124 Literary Evolution scornful remonstrances of a personified Nature with an imagi- nary individual shrinking from death. Virgil's Georgics is in the main a practical art of agriculture; but this is not found incompatible with story digressions and picturesque descrip- tions. The creative element that makes poetry does not con- sist merely in imagined personages and incidents: it extends to epithets and descriptive touches inspired rather by delight in beauty than adequacy to facts. The general atmosphere of the Georgics is in the highest degree poetic. And these poems are imitations of originals going back to the age of poetic phi- losophy. As late as the Elizabethan age we find — as a curiosity of literature — ^honest Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry^ This has not the smallest resemblance to the Georgics of Virgil. Neither can it be dismissed as a mere verse mnemonic, like — Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November — where there is nothing creative. In all its monthly husbandries, and abstracts of the monthly husbandries in short lines, in its acrostics, and "linked verses," its sonnets, its creed and de- votional musings, we find as much poetic architecture as goes to make a literary sonnet sequence. Its matter seems to con- stitute it a Whole Duty of Husbandmen. If its style suggests doggerel, it also suggests that doggerel may be lifted into litera- ture. Morphologically considered, it seems an artificial revival of primitive gnomic poetry and wisdom. In the history of thought that underlies the evolution we are tracing, the turning-point is the New Thought of the Renais- sance, based upon the supremacy of inductive treatment. As has been remarked in the Introduction to the present work,^ ' Contained in Southey's British Poets. ' Above, page 5. The Differentiation of Poetry and Prose 125 this does not mean the supersession of one logical system by another; what it means is that results, however obtained, will ultimately be tested by positive observation. And this becomes the characteristic habit of thought for the modern world. It may be said, speaking generally, that three different habits of thinking have distinguished three great ages. Ancient philosophy was accustomed to think from the Whole to the Details; mediaeval philosophy, from Details to Details; modem philosophy, from Details toward the Whole through Grouping. An ancient philosopher, or school of philosophy, commenced with some view of the universe as a whole, and proceeded to elucidate this in detail. Thales laid down that the varieties of things were so many modifications of water; HeracUtus, that the one constant thing in the universe was change. It was the same with moral philosophy. Each system would start with some fundamental conception of morals as a whole — as, for example, the complete subordination of the individual to the state: the Republic of Plato carries out this assumption to the smallest details, incidentally abolishing marriage and family life, in order that all individuals, undistracted by other ties, may be at the disposal of the governing class. Such systems are often intricate and subtle to a high degree; but in each case the ancient philosopher assumes that he must interpret life or the imiverse as whole; and if some different interpretation gains currency, the earlier system is wholly overthrown. The Scholas- ticism of the Middle Ages was a strange union between philoso- phy and ecclesiastical dogma:' here questions that can be considered as 'wholes' have been settled authoritatively; the scope of philosophy is in the details of contingencies. To take the satiric examples of Erasmus: the church gives the dogma of the Trinity, but philosophy may debate whether it is conceiv- able that the First Person in the Trinity might have hated the Second; the church lays down the fact of the Incarnation, but ' Compare World Literature, pages 37-40. 126 Literary Evolution philosophy may inquire in what other conceivable ways the Deity might have been manifested. Thus, in the Middle Ages, not only has the field of philosophy changed from natural and moral .to theological, but further, synthetic interpretation has become subordinate to disputation, with its mere wandering from detail to detail. In the luminous words of Bacon, the schoolmen's "method of handling a knowledge" was "upon every particular position or assertion to frame objections, and to those objections, solutions; which solutions were for the most part not confutations, but distinctions." In contrast with all this, it is the characteristic of modem philosophy to com- mence with observation of positive details which can be verified; to group such observations into a suggestion of principles; to proceed to larger and larger groupings, with more and more com- prehensive principles; to be ever moving in the direction of some final grouping — attainable in some far future — ^by which en- larging principles will resolve into an interpretation of the whole. The universe may be conceived as a tangled skein of silk, which it is the business of philosophy to imravel. The ancient philoso- pher had an intuition that this apparent tangle was in reality a form of 'cat's cradle,' and that, if he could only get in his finger sat the right points, one pull would resolve the whole into a single loop. But while successive schools of philosophy were trying different points, the skein remained in entanglement. The mediaeval philosopher failed to disentangle the skein for an excellent reason — that his hands were tied behind his back: but, so long as he did not touch, his mind was free to imagine the course of a thread as it disappeared in a knot, and speculate as to its meanderings that were out of sight. The modern philosopher begins with the knot that is closest to his finger, and with patience can untie it, and proceed to the knot that stands next; he does not expect himself to disentangle the skein, but he will leave it with §o many fewer knots to his successors. The Differentiation of Poetry and Prose 127 It is obvious that such New Thought, with positive observa- tion as its supreme standard, demands for its medium of literary expression a pure prose, from which creative thinking is wholly excluded. But the modification of the medium goes farther than this. There are three characteristic features of the New Thought. One is the wide extension of the field of inquiry. No dignity of philosophy may Umit itself to worthy topics: the whole surface of things to its remotest comer is to be observed. Science in our own day is mainly occupied with observing things too remote to be seen with the naked eye. A characteristic interest of the present moment is the ransacking the rubbish heaps and waste-paper baskets of early centuries for material that is revolutionizing the scholar's conception of New Testa- ment Greek. Again : the New Thought has involved the infinite division of labor. We have seen it as a limitation upon the ancient philosopher that he felt obliged to solve the whole uni- verse himself; modern philosophy is a co-operation of all man- kind throughout all ages in the search for universal truth. Such co-operation implies ever-increasing specialization. In the third place, a value attaches to fragmentary and tentative thinking as material for future systematization. Ancient philosophy, where it failed at all, failed altogether. The smallest result of inductive observation — with printed records to preserve it — remains to enter into the science of the futxure. If a patient investigation has obtained only negative results, it has at aU events flagged off a region from detaining the in- vestigators of the future. Thought as it thus specializes tends to pass out of general literature into a different field of extraneous literature, that is perhaps best summed up under the name 'technical.' To this belong the separate sciences, the practical arts, the various types of legal and statistical writings. To literature itself is added the commentary on literature; there is a distinct field of scholarship, with its appeal from scholars to other scholars. 128 Literary Evolution Technical literature has its own characteristic literary forms: the treatise and manual; records and documents; commentaries and annotations; books of reference of all kinds; papers and proceedings of societies; literary journalism. The whole mass of this is differentiated from prose literature in general by its specialization of style and expression; and each separate art has its own technical phraseology. It is the coming in of private property in language, like the private property in land seen side by side with the public domain. A nomenclature more Greek than English; the coalescence of words into accepted formulas; the constant recurrence of particular idioms; to say 'potency' rather than 'power'; the free use of 'function' as a verb; to get the words 'concept' and 'cognition' as many times as possible upon a page: things like these are so many warning posts to literary readers not to trespass upon technical ground. Such technical terms are the short- hand of language; they are a literary algebra, that replaces literary words — glowing with vitality and polarized with associations — by newly coined expressions as lifeless as X, y, 2. There remains a modem prose literature of thought not specialized; a criterion of this is that with interest of expo- sition literary style is a concomitant interest. We distinguish such a modem philosophy, on the one side from wisdom litera- ture, that is the contemplation of life rather than its analysis; and on the other side from the philosophic science which is impelled to express itself in technical phraseology. We feel a difference between writers like John Fiske or William James and writers like Herbert Spencer; historians like Froude or Macaulay and historians like Hallam or Freeman. This me- dium of literary prose can to a certain extent admit of creative modifications. A Greek historian had no difficulty in intro- ducing an imaginary speech. Macaulay cannot do that; but the carefully ascertained drift of polemic opinion in a political The Differentiation oj Poetry and Prose 129 crisis he can present as if the personified parties were speaking.' The Henry the Eighth of Froude (as we have seen') is not a free creation like the Henry the Eighth of Shakespeare; neither is it the residuary minimum of what can be positively asserted of that original English monarch. It is a creative personality offered as a scientific hjrpothesis for explaining the perplexing facts of record. Like the use of historical novels as an adjunct to the study of history, such devices bring in the imagination as an ally to the analytic faculty. And with such an historian as Carlyle the creative element can go much farther, and we have a blend of history and epic. But the differentiation of poetry and prose is not yet com- plete. So far, the suggestion is that the observation which is the foundation of modern thought must be extended over the whole field of what there is to be observed, and that as it is extended it will map itself out in several provinces, each with its own medium of technical expression. But there is one province of thought — ^perhaps the most important of all — which steadily refuses to be specialized. Where is there to be found the special science or art of human life ? Many sciences touch life, but they deal only with particular aspects of it: biology treats the physical basis of life, sociology treats human life in aggregations, psychology and ethics are concerned with only single elements of life. The question is of Life as a con- crete whole, of what we mean when we speak of "seeing life." It is literature — in the most miscellaneous sense of the word, alike poetry and prose — that stands as the only organ for the science and practical art of Lite; in this one case general literature has to perform the function of specialized thought. And this is ' Compare his History of England, chapter ix (passage on changing Tory opinion under James U). ' Above, pages 48-49. 130 Literary Evolution the meaning of Matthew Arnold, when he uses his favorite word and tells us that literature is the 'criticism of life." To literature of this type belongs," in the first place, the wisdom literature of the Bible, archetype of the philosophy that is the contemplation rather than the analysis of life; in such philosophy there is no distinction of poetry and prose. Of the same spirit is the wisdom of the Orient: so far as it is wis- dom, and not formal philosophy, it is readily assimilated by the western mind. Classical literature has its wisdom: particularly in the philosophy of Seneca, and the sayings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. There is, again, a modern wisdom literature. Perhaps the most characteristic example of it is the lyric poem In Memoriam; and it will include the largest part of the poetry of Wordsworth and Browning. The poems of Martin Tupper — as much undervalued now as they were overestimated at one time — are an obvious revival of Biblical wisdom. And the vitality of wisdom in modem literature was shown when the original genius of Walt Whitman began an entirely new de- parture, under new inspirations. There is, again, the whole literature of personality — a master-interest to modem thought — and this takes in various kinds of biography, lyrics, essays — alike essays in prose, and the verse essays of Pope or of Young's Night Thoughts. Satire, both ancient and modern, comes into the same category: though the satirist may attack individual personages or incidents, the appeal is always to the bearing of these on our conceptions of life. The vast literature which the modern world calls fiction has its affiliations with this science and art of human life: a later chapter^ of this work will claim that fiction is simply the experimental side of the science of humanity. The popular magazine, though it may serve many ' Compare Matthew Arnold's Introduction to Ward's English Poets (Macmillan), page xix. ' A fuller treatment of this is given below, chapter xix. 3 Chapter xviii, pages 342 ff. The Differentiation of Poetry and Prose 131 purposes, yet obtains its vogue largely because it is the floating literature of current life. The Fifth Book of the present work will deal more in detail with this special function of literature as the philosophy of life. Meanwhile, we may sum up the present chapter by remarking how the evolution we have been tracing reaches a culmination which is in correspondence with its starting-point. At the beginning of literature poetry includes science. As discussion becomes important enough to stand distinct from creation, the medium of prose is revealed. As discussion specializes, it throws oS distinct sciences, with a medium of literary expression as different from other prose as prose is different from poetry. Finally, we reach a single special science which demands a universal medium of expression: in the criticism of Lite poetry and prose are as one. CHAPTER Vlt EVOLUTION IN EPIC POETRY Epic poetry, as the term is used in this work, covers the whole of creative literature that takes a narrative form, from Homer to the latest novel. The more limited conceptions of epic, that have hardly yet ceased to be orthodox, belong really to the criti- cal confusion whicli, at the Renaissance, received works of Greek poets, not as revealing masterpieces, but as limiting definitions of literary types: the same spirit of criticism felt that Shake- speare's plays could not be dramas because they did not conform to the unities of Attic tragedy. We are not to mistake between one important type of epic poetry and epic poetry itself. Of course, the distinction is not to be ignored between narration in verse and narration in prose and a third mode of narration which, with William Morris,' alternates between prose and verse: but, whatever may be the value of this distinction, it cannot override the fundamental conception of epic as narrative creation. If for a moment, before descending to particulars, we survey our epic poetry as a whole, four considerations stand promi- nently out. 1. The foundation of epic in our world literature is, of course. Homer: and from the morphological point of view the Homeric poems (we shall see) are the evolution of the organic epic out of floating epic material. This Homeric principle, if it may be so called, maintains itself as a leading interest of epic poetry through its whole course. 2. The Middle Ages — not to speak of the later ages of Greek literature — bring a vast amount of epic material, of all kinds and from all sources, and this follows largely the Homeric prin- ' In his Roots of the Mountains, House of the Wolfmgs, and other novels. 132 Homer as the Organic Epic 133 ciple of cxystallization. Thus a second interest of literary evolution is to observe the aggregation of accumulating epic material into organic plot, and the types of plot form that thus arise. 3. Meanwhile, differentiation — the most elementary form taken by evolution — is at work here as ever3^where: a third subject of interest is to watch, side by side with aggregation into organic plot, epic differentiation into free variety of types. 4. The later part of our world literature brings a new point of departure for epic poetry. It feels the influence of — or, if an astronomical phrase may be permitted, suffers perturbation from — the literature of prose. Prose, as the organ of discussion, has developed a literary medium of prose rhythni that can stand on equal terms with the medium of verse. And the prog- ress of thought underlying all kinds of literature has tended to lay special emphasis upon the observation of human life. Thus we get the modem Epic of Life, in which the distinguishing accent is laid not on plot but on subject-matter, and which is free to express itself in verse or prose, with a tendency to prefer prose. In the morphological evolution of epic poetry the modem novel bulks as large at the end as Homer at the beginning. Our first topic has to a large extent been anticipated in a previous chapter.' On page 134 the Evolution of the Organic Epic is summarized in tabular form (Chart XI). It involves the transition from the floating poetry of minstrel recitation, in a state of constant change, to the age of fixed or book poetry, that brings with it individual authorship. We begin with the ' Chapter i, pages 28-30. A fuller discussion of the matter of this first section, including plot analysis of the Iliad and Odyssey, will be found in chapter ii of World Literature. CHART XI Evolution of the Organic Epic Floating (Oral) Poetry (Minstrel Recitation) Unit Stories Story Fusion Heroic Cycles (such as the Achilles Cycle, the Cycle of Thebes, the Robin Hood Cycle)^Such a cycle is not a poem but a state of poetry. Fixed (Book) Poetry (Individual Authorship) THE ORGANIC EPIC: Amalgamation of many stories in a common plot (as in the Iliad and Odyssey). 134 Homer as the Organic Epic 13S unit story; in the free variations of floating poetry we readily understand the fusion of many stories together. In time there arise certain heroic names, or other topics, which become centers around which there is an ever-increasing aggregation of stories; stories originally (it may be) told of other heroes, but now brought into association with a popular name. We get an Achilles cyde of warrior stories, an Odysseus cyde of wandering adventures, a cyde of Thebes; in a different field a Robin Hood cyde of outlaw life. Such an heroic cyde' is, of course, not a poem, but a state of things in poetry: a mass of incidents hav- ing no necessary connection with one another, yet attributed to a common hero. Then we pass over the boundary into the age of written literature and individual authorship: it becomes possible for an individual poet to take the indiscriminate in- cidents of the Achilles cyde and organize the whole into the harmonious plot of the Iliad; the same or a similar Homer organizes the Odysseus cycle into the harmonious plot of the Odyssey. The product is an Organic Epic: from the unit cell of the single story we have a development of complex literary organism with its parts in perfect co-ordination. All the gen- erations of floating minstrelsy were required to accumulate the richness of material; until such material could pass through a single organizing mind no perfect co-ordination of plot could be possible. This architectonic work of co-ordinating tra- ditional material into a harmony is of course poetic creation of the highest order. And what has enabled the Iliad and the Odyssey to supersede the epic poetry of their own times, and to remain dominant types for all ages, is just that which is expressed by the term Organic Epic: the conquest of abounding matter by perfect form, the amalgamation of many stories in a common harmony of plot. It is interesting to compare the Iliad with the Odyssey: the latter seems to stand farther down the line of evolution ' Compare page 29, note x. 136 Literary Evolution we have been tracing, and the control of plot over matter has further advanced. The plot of the Iliad can be simply formulated. Plot of the Iliad Main Story: Quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles: developed at length: within the Enveloping Action: TheGraeco-TrojanWar: involving numerous Secondary Stories. No language can be dearer or more emphatic than the opening lines of the Iliad which make its theme the wrath of Achilles — the famous quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. This theme is fully and harmoniously developed through the course of the poem, in a movement which exhibits the artistic effect of introversion — the latter half of the movement reversing the order of the first half. Movement of the Iliad: Introversion A. Origin: The Quarrel B. First Day's War: The Rampart: Agamemnon's Repentance C. Second Day's War: The Bivouac: Aga- menmon's Apology Rejected Interlude of Adventure: Nocturnal Spying CC. Third Day's War: Achilles' bosom friend Patroclus Lost BB. Return of Achilles: Patroclus Avenged and Hector Slain AA. General Pacification: Burial of Patroclus and Hector By a fine stroke of detail, the nocturnal spying expedition of the Tenth Book — the spirit of adventure relieving the main interest of war — separates the two halves of the movement. In the first half, the set of the action is wholly against Agamem- Homer as the Organic Epic 137 non. The building of. the rampart — token that the Greeks are driven to the defensive— brings Agamemnon to repentance; in the further stage, when the enemy bivouacs in the open air in expectation of a nocturnal flight of the Greeks, Aga- memnon makes fuU surrender to AchiUes and is rejected. Then the action turns. Though the Trojans have actually stormed the rampart, yet the loss in its defense of his bosom friend Patroclus is the nemesis of fate upon Achilles; in the next stage he fuUy surrenders his wrath, and avenges Patroclus by slaying Hector. The somber mourning of the final stage is the natural counterpart to the fierce quarrel of the opening book. Nothing could be more perfect. Yet it is clear that we could eliminate three-quarters of the matter actually contained in the Iliad and still have sufficient for the working out of this main theme. The matter eliminated belongs to the En- veloping Action of the Trojan War. An enveloping action' is not the same thing as a story. It has no unity, no beginning or middle or end; the Trojan War has been in operation for years before the poem opens, and continues after the action has dosed. The enveloping action is a state of things: in this case a highly complex state of things, combining many poetic motives. As main motive there is the overpowering interest of war: of war in all its aspects — dash of armies, individual struggles, alternations of advance and retreat. There is again the control of this war by what we should call overruling Provi- dence—the personal control of Zeus as an incarnation of Des- tiny, whose balance of fate weighs events from time to time, and determines that they shall go exactly so far and no farther. We have moreover the strange poetic motive of sudden changes • The matter of the enveloping action of the Iliad is fully analyzed in chapter ii of World Literature: see pages 116-34. (For enveloping action in drama compare Shakespeare as Artist, pages 361-65, and see Index under " Enveloping Action.") 138 Literary Evolution from earth to the life of the gods in Olympus: scenes of divine life clearly used as a caricature of human life, and making the comic element in the lUad.^ At times we find, by way of relief, delightful pictures of home scenes on earth, or the grace of hospitality; with exquisite sketches of nature, chiefly in similes. The two interests of the main story and the enveloping action move side by side through the poem, inextricably interwoven: in mass, the enveloping action is far greater than the main story. Secondary stories are added. These are separate stories related in the course of the poem: often they are narrated by the personages of the story; or, if part of the poet's narration, they are clearly independent stories, which could be cut out without the rest being affected. Every reader will remember the garrulous old age of Nestor and Phoenix, and the intermin- able tales they tell of old times. > There are again pedigree stories: of warriors when they first appear, or pedigrees for the horses of Tros, the scepter of Agamemnon, and the like. As I read the poem, I reckon about eighty of such secondary stories; but no exact estimate can be made, since diSerence of opinion will often arise as to some bit of narrative, whether it is an in- dependent story or a necessary detail. It is enough to say that secondary stories in the aggregate make a considerable element in the plot of the Iliad. And this is significant of the organic epic. Every one of these secondary stories may well have had independent existence in floating poetry; whether this be so or not, the large amount of such secondary matter in the Iliad illustrates the spirit of this type of poetry, and the tendency to sweep all available matter into the current of the plot. It is different with the Odyssey:' what this yields to analysis is perhaps the most perfectly balanced plot in all poetry. ' Compare World Literature, pages 124-30. » A fuller treatment of the Odyssey in World Literature, pages 134-47. Homer as the Organic Epic 139 Plot of the Odyssey Main Story: Odysseus and his Wanderings Complication: Wonders (nine episodes) : swayed by Poseidon Resolution: Adventures (nine episodes) : swayed by Athene Underplot: of Domestic Life The Faithful Six (Wife— Son— Father— Nurse— Swineherd- Neatherd) The Hostile Three (Goatherd — Melantho and the Maids — Crowd of Suitors) Secondary Satellite Stories Six Historic Feats of Odysseus (The Beggar — Strife with Ajax— The Wooden Horse— The Boar Scar— The Bow— The Bridal Bed) Three Parallels (Menelaus to Odysseus— Orestes to Tele- machus — ^Theoclymenus to Telemachus) Faint Enveloping Action in the far background: The Trojan War The Trojan War, instead of being an absorbing interest, lies in the far past: a faint enveloping action in the background, on which nevertheless the whole poem reaUy rests. The main story is that of Odysseus and his wanderings, with its balanced 'complication and resolution.' The complicating train of cir- cumstances takes Odysseus farther and farther away to the very ends of the earth; the resolving train of circumstances brings him safe back home. The complication is a series of wonder incidents tinged with the marvelous; the resolution, a series of incidents of adventure. Passages of the poem' dis- tinctly state — ^what otherwise is clear enough — that the com- plicating half of the action is wholly swayed by the god Poseidon, the resolving half by the goddess Athene. When we follow the movement of the poem (see the scheme in Chart XII, page 140), we see that the whole of the direct action of the Odyssey is devoted to the resolution — the return of the hero. It falls into nine well-marked stages; the central one of the nine — • Book Xni (Unes 314, 341 of William Morris' translation). a •3 u u ,3 •o ■0 a •a ^ / \ g i o I (II i ^ S u fl Ta (U ^ H H o I 4 I asnxNaAciv so saaosiaa ^ni^ ;Noiiaiosia 140 Homer as the Organic Epic 141 the visit to the Phaeacians — gives us Odysseus relating his story to his hosts, and in the indirect narration of this hero's story the whole complication of the action is contained. Its nine incidents are all wonder stories:' accordingly, the Phaea- cian land in which we hear these marvels is itself pictured as a wonderland. The door of this Phaeacian wonderland is forever closed to the world when Poseidon, as a final token of hostility to Odysseus, turns the ship that rescued him into the rock that will block the Phaeacian harbor, so that they will ferry men back to the ordinary world no more. To the main plot is attached an underplot: the domestic life of the hero's home. We have the faithful six and the hostile three: the significance of this statement is that each of the nine personages (or groups) is the center of a story, which could be taken out of the poem and stand alone. The story of each of the faithful six passes through the complicating trouble of Odysseus' absence and enters into the resolution and joy of the return; each of the other three has its period of insolent triumph followed by tragic nemesis. The Odyssey, like the Iliad, has secondary stories, but with a difiference. Instead of wholly miscellaneous matter, we have narrated in the course of the poem six historic feats of the hero — the story of Odysseus as a beggar, the strife with Ajax, the story of the wooden horse, of the boar hunt, of Odysseus' bow, of the bridal bed — all developed with epic particularity, and all assist- ing the main conception of Odysseus as the 'man of resource.' In addition to these, there are three independent phases of the general narration which present parallels to personages of the poerd." Menelaus is clearly made a minor counterpart of Odysseus: he announces himself as a man of wanderings; his detention in Egypt is made parallel to Odysseus' detention in Circe's isle; both Menelaus and Odysseus are to end their troubled lives in mystic regions of eternal peace. Much is made ' Compare World Literature, pages 141-47. 'Ibid., 137-38. 142 Literary Evolution of Orestes: he has no natural connection with the action, but he is made a parallel to Telemadius, and it is by the model of Orestes avenging his father's fate that the son of Odysseus is roused to action. And Theoclymenus — otherwise a perfect stranger — first introduces himself to Telemachus as his counter- part; he is received into fellowship, and comes to have a share in the action of the poem. Thus the secondary stories of the Odyssey are all satellite stories, circling around some personage of the story as he moves through the action. The most ex- traneous matter is brought within control of the plot. In the Iliad, then, the emphasis is on the copiousness of matter: only in the freedom of the enveloping action and the secondary stories can this be drawn within the plot. In the Odyssey, it is the plot itself that is the dominant interest, to which all the matter is made directly contributory. Let me, however, speak a word of caution against the misunderstanding so common in discussions of this kind: there is no suggestion of conscious plan or scheme on the part of the poet. Terms like 'purpose,' 'plan,' belong wholly to the process of analysis.' The poet, and the reader as he follows him, is conscious only of creative beauty and a sense of story form; it is when we apply analysis to this sense of form, as evidenced by the product, that we can trace plan and purpose. Purpose, in this sense, is purpose actually served by some element of the whole; plan is the analytic obverse of what is instinctively appreciated as symmetry.. Such analysis applied to the poetry under con- sideration reveals the spirit of the organic epic as delight in thp amalgamation of diverse stories in an harmonious plot. We are naturally struck with the contrast thus suggested between Greek epic and Greek drama. We can see that it was connec- tion with the lyric chorus, and limitations of the primitive stage, that led Attic tragedy in the opposite direction of the most con- centrated unity. The current of epic and of drama in our ' Compare below, pages 293-96, 402. Plot Forms in the Organic Epic 143 world literature has been in reverse directions. The organic epic of Homer has tended to yield to the modem short story; in tragedy, the movement has been from the unities of the Attic stage to the complex plots of Shakespeare. II The organic epic, of which the Homeric poems are such a conspicuous example, establishes itself as a stock form for aU literature. Our next task is to note how wealth of epic material crystallizes into this poetic type, and the plot forms that thus arise.' For such a purpose there is no need to separate between Classical poetry, and the mass of Romantic literature intro- duced by the Middle Agesj and whatever other poetry may from various sources have been drawn into our world Uterature. On page 144 (Chart XIII) I have made a tabular digest of forms of plot such as arise out of the aggregation of epic material into organic epics. The first of our plot forms may be called agglutination: a succession of independent stories uni&ed by a common hero. Here the organic epic approaches nearest to the heroic cycle of floating poetry. In comparison with more elaborate modes of co-ordination, this agglutination almost suggests the seg- mented structure of certain lower animals, as a result of which they can be cut in two and yet the separate parts can live. An obvious illustration is Tennyson's Idylls of the King. It is a note of epic story in the Bible' that each individual story is introduced into the historic framework at the point to which it belongs; but there are exceptions in the Samson and the Elisha stories, which are in continuous cycles. Where agglutina- tion is the sole form, plot becomes identical with movement: the ' For this section in general compare below, Complex Hot, chapter xxiii, pages 398 flE. " For this general subject compare chapter ix in my Literary Study of the Bible (and Appendix, pages 516-17). CHART XIII Aggregation of Epic Material into Organic Epics: Plot Forms I. Agglutination succession of stories uni- fied by a common hero Idylls of the King — ^The Samson or Elisha stories of tlie Bible — Ossian A eneid — Kalevdla 2. Envelopment Enveloping action Common purpose Frame story (Conspicuous in Scott, Dickens, and in the plays of Shakespeare) Trojan War for Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid The Crusades for Scott's Talisman, Be- trothed, Ivanhoe War of Charlemagne and the Moors for Ariosto's Orlando Ovid's Metamorphoses — the Gesta Ro- manorum Decameron — Canterbury Tales- Paradise -Earthly 3. Involution I The Arabian Nights story sphered within story | Episodic Expansion parts expanded and made an independent interest Paradise Lost — A eneid — A rgonauUca — Lusiad- Malory's Uorte d' Arthur Co-ordination multiplication of stories with mutual rela- tion Dependence Plot and under- plot Parallelism General co-ordina- tion Odyssey — Tasso's Jerusalem — Don Quixote The Faerie Queene Odyssey — Aeneid — Sigurd the Volsung 6. Multiple Unity complete and independent epics interrelated in a higher and looser unity — as equivalent of a Grand Epic Sir Walter Scott (verse and prose stories) : Romantic epic Sienkiewicz: Polish romance Balzac: Comtdie humaine Victor Hugo: Tragldie humaine Dumas: Epic of courtly adventure 144 Plot Forms in the Organic Epic 145 unity of the component stories lies in their succession. But agglutination can combine with other forms of plot. Thus the plot of the Aeneid^ is highly complex. Main Action: Oracular Action of Roman Destiny working through the agency of Pious Aeneas Complicating Action: Hostility of Juno Resolving Action: Protection of Venus Episodic Underplot of Love: Dido and Aeneas Faint Enveloping Action in the Background: Trojan War But the movement of the poem is markedly agglutinative. First Half: Epic Action of Adventure: Exploring a Site for Rome: echoing the Odyssey Second Half: Epic Action of War: Conflict of Tumus and Aeneas: echoing the Iliad There is consciousness in the poem itself of this break in the action — a new invocation of the Muses as adventure gives place to the higher theme of war: A loftier task the bard essays: The horizon broadens on his gaze. Envelopment is the second mode of story aggregation, and this takes several different forms. The enveloping action, already noted, is one of these. The Trojan War is enveloping action for the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. The Cru- sades make enveloping action for three of the Waverley Novels: the Talisman is occupied with those who have gone on the crusade, the Betrothed and Ivanhoe with those who have remained at home. The war of Charlemagne against the Moors is the enveloping action in Ariosto's Orlando. In another form of en- velopment the bond between the stories of a collection is made by their common purpose. One of the most brilliant epics of classical literature is Ovid's Metamorphoses: here we have ' Fully discussed in World Literature, pages 152-62. 146 Literary Evolution drawn into a unity an immense number of stories that would have no connection with one another but for the single link that each is a story of metamorphosis. Another example is the most popular book of the Middle Ages, the Gesta Romanorum. This is the great epic of anecdote: a massing together of anec- dotes that are as miscellaneous as miscellaneous can be. But a bond of connection is artificially forged for them in two ways. The title presents itself as a link: the regular recurrence of the phrase in gestis Romanorum gives the title a binding suggestive- ness, as if the stories were so many parts of Roman history. The other link is the moralizing appended to each anecdote. The moral purpose does not inhere in the matter; its addition is a triumph of artificial ingenuity. To take an illustration which is in no way exceptional. We are told how St. Bernard riding through a forest meets a wicked gambler, who insists on the saint's gambling with him, the stakes being the saint's horse and the gambler's soul. The gambler's throw of the dice comes within one of the possible total; but the saint throws the total itself, and wins the gambler's soul. Here is story enough: but it is considered necessary to add a moral, the chief point of which is that the three dice symbolize the Holy Trinity! The stories are what they may be; but the common moral purpose is supposed to justify the whole collection. To this head may be referred the frame story, which has been so marked a feature of epic poetry since the Renaissance: an initial story introducing the personages who will be the narrators of the stories that are to follow, these other stories being thus contained in the first story as a picture is contained in its frame. The frame story of the Decameron gives us the company of ladies and gentlemen fleeing from plague-stricken Florence to their country villas, where they are to pass the time in story-telling. In the introduction to Chaucer's masterpiece we have described for us the many-sorted pilgrims riding with mine host to Canterbury. The Earthly Paradise elaborates Plot Forms in theOrganic Epic 147 the mystic story of the Wanderers who, in the evening of their ruined career, light upon a haven of peace in the stationary life of the Island: hosts and guests agree to meet twice in each month, in scenes of natural beauty, and thus exchange the tales they have gathered in their long experience. In this type, the link of story connection has itself become a story; the frame story will often be the most elaborate and impressive of the whole collection. It seems only a step from this to involution, a third type of story linking: here each story of a series may be a frame for those that follow, story being sphered within story to any de- gree of complexity. This seems to be specially a characteristic of oriental epic; we are familiar with it in The Arabian Nights Entertainment. How complex and yet beautiful this mode of epic connection may be made, is best seen in illustrations: I subjoin a plot scheme from The Arabian Nights.^ Frame Story of Scheherazade Story of the Hunchback, and the Four inplicated in his death Story (i) of the Christian Merchant — containing Story of the Handless Man Story (2) of the Mussulman Purveyor — containing Story of the Thumbless Man Story (3) of the Jewish Physician — containing Story of the Mutilated Patient Story (4) of the Tailor— containing Story of the Lame Guest Story of the Chattering Barber Of the Barber's first brother (hunchback) Of the Barber's second brother (toothless) Of the Barber's third brother (blind) Of the Barber's fourth brother (one-eyed) Of the Barber's fifth brother (no ears) Of the Barber's sixth brother (harelipped) Story of the Barber concluded Story of the Tailor concluded Story of the Hunchback concluded Frame Story resmned ' More fully discussed in World Literature, pages 307-10. 148 Literary Evolution Here we have story involution carried to the fifth degree of remoteness from the starting-point — story within story within story within story within the frame story: all the dropped links are exactly picked up. As additional effect, the successive items have added to them whimsical points of anatomical cor- respondence. And this tour de force of structural ingenuity is an undercurrent of interest to what on the surface is a boisterous profusion of comic perplexity and adventure. A fourth type of plot may be termed episodic expansion: the general movement of the poem is simple, but particular parts of the movement are expanded until they become an independent interest. A typical case is the Paradise Lost. Its opening lines — as clearly as the opening of the Iliad — state the theme of the poem, man's fall and redemption, and the theme is developed regularly to the conclusion. But what are really details of the whole movement— -the War in Heaven and Fall of the Angels, the Creation of the World and Man, Adam's Life in Paradise before the Visit of the Warning 'Angel — these are elaborated into sustained stories that are poems in them- selves. At the close of the action, the working of the scheme of redemption through the course of human history — necessarily outside the unity of time — is disclosed in vision, and this stands as a final episode. Similarly, in the Aeneid the love of Dido and Aeneas makes an episode, during which the movement of the poem stands still, as its opposing forces, Juno and Venus, have for the moment become united. The Argonautica,^ from the nature of the subject, is a succession of adventurous incidents: several of these incidents seem expanded into episodes, such as the incident of the Lemnian Women, of Phineus, above all the Love of Jason and Medea. In this connection also we may note the Lusiad of Camoens. This great Portuguese epic has a simple movement — the adventurous voyage of Vasco di Gama: ' Translated by A. S. Way in the Temple Classics (Dent). Plot Forms in the Organic Epic 149 one detail of the return voyage is elaborated into the inde- pendent episode of the Joyous Life in the Isle of Venus.' We come to co-ordination in a more general sense: the multiplication of stories with mutual relation. Such general co-ordination has already appeared in the schemes of plot ofiered for the Odyssey and Aeneid. One phase of co-ordination is the interdependence of plot and underplot. Don Quixote furnishes a simple example: the chief structural interest of this epic lies in the juxtaposition throughout of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza; we have the interwoven threads of chivalrous sentiment gone mad in the master and farcical common-sense in the man. An elaborate illustration of the same form is the beautiful plot of Tasso's Jertisalem. Plot of Tasso's Jerusalem Main Action: War of the Crusaders against Jerusalem and its allies ot Egypt and Persia Underplots: 1. Attached to Rinaldo: Armida, the interest of love-intrigue and enchantment 2. Attached to Tancred: Double Underplot: fClarinda, interest of love and the female warrior \Ermina, chivalrous love To all the other complexity of this plot is added a further touch of complexity, when the two sides of the double underplot be- come intertwined through the device of Ermitia assmning the armor of Clarinda, and the confusion that this necessarily develops. Yet another phase of co-ordination is presented by 'This poem, it may be remarked, at all points echoes classical form. It opens, according to Horace's canon, in the middle of afEairs, while the earlier phase of the action is given in the hero's story — ^Vasco's narration to his host the King of Mehnd that fiUs cantos III to V. The supernatural machinery of Bacchus and Venus, opposing and protecting deity, echoes the Juno and Venus of the Aeneid and the Poseidon and Athene of the Odyssey. Velloso's story in the sixth canto stands as a secondary story. 15° Literary Evolution the parallelism of plot that is such a striking feature of the Faerie Queene. Each of its six books is devoted to celebration of a separate virtue: the allegorical development of each virtue is carried forward with a regularity of structure that only Spenser's genius could keep from becoming mechanical.' But our review of the plot forms arising out of the aggre- gation of epic material into organic epics must be carried a step farther. This organic epic, itself a harmony of stories, can enter into a higher and more complex unity. The first con- spicuous example of this is found in the work of Sir Walter Scott. A new interest is given to this if we read Scott's stories — alike the Waverley Novels and the verse poems^-in order: not order of composition — ^which would only be a matter of biogra- phy — but in the order of the phases of life they represent. We thus get a great epic of romantic life: extending from the Cru- sades of the tenth century to the fashionable life of the nine- teenth; the field stretching from the Constantinople of Count Robert to the Orkney and Shetland of the Pirate; the romance clothing itself in the most varied national dresses, and taking on special forms as it plunges into particular historic struggles or political ferments. Of course, each single work is an organic epic complete and independent; most of the Waverley Novels will analyze into a plot scheme as complex as that of the Odyssey. But the whole gives us the epic of multiple unity: complete and independent epics interrelated in what is a higher, if looser, unity. What applies to Scott applies to his nearest counterpart : we have a multiple epic in the Polish romance of Sienkiewicz, the great trilogy of With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, Pan- Michael. Novels of Alexander Dumas will aggregate into an epic of courtly adventure. In the case of Balzac, the coalescence ' It is a tradition of criticism to make light of the matter and structure of this poem. To myself it appears one of the most perfect, pieces of plot architecture in all literature. I hope some day to develop this idea in a separate work. Plot Forms in the Organic Epic 151 of his numerous novels into a unity is present to the conscious- ness of the author; he conceives his life work as a Comidie humaine — a catholic epitome of purely human life in contrast with the Divine Comedy of Dante. A similar consciousness may be seen in Victor Hugo: while I am not aware that he has used the phrase Tragidie humaine, yet this seems the underlying idea of his preface to his Toilers of the Sea. Religion, Society, and Nature, — these are the three struggles of man. These three struggles are his three needs. He has need of a faith, hence the Temple; hemust create, hence the city; he must live, hence the plough and the ship. But these three solutions comprise three conflicts. The mysterious difficulty of life results from aU three. Man strives with obstacles under the form of superstition, under the form of prejudice, and under the form of the elements. A triple avdyicrj (fate) weighs upon us, — the dvayxij of dogmas, the dvayxij of laws, the avdyK-q of things. In "Notre Dame de Paris" the author denounced the first; in "Les Miserables" he exemplified the second; in this book he indicates the third. With these three fatalities which environ man mingles that inward fatality, the supreme avdyxj;, the human heart. It is a symptom of such correlation that some of these writers introduce particular personages in more than one novel; a notable case is the Zagloba who unifies the great trilogy of Sienkiewicz; he is the one creative figure who stands comparison with Shakespeare's Falstaff. This practice seems to be extend- ing in modem fiction: it was a leading interest in the novels of Anthony TroUope, and it appears markedly in the work of Mr. Arnold Bennett, happily still incomplete. It seems to me that we do not get the full literary value out of the t3rpe of literature of which I am speaking unless we recognize this multiple unity, drawing together independent epics into a looser epic whole. It is natural to speak of the Iliad or the Odyssey as a Grand Epic: the 'Grand' denoting — not high excellence, however true that would be — but grandeur 152 Literary Evolution of scope. A whole civilization seems to be crystallized in the Iliad and Odyssey. But the life of the Homeric age is simple: our modern intricate and complex civilization would be dwarfed if compelled into the limits of a single novel, however elaborate. The freer unity of the multiple epic makes a medium elastic enough to fit the matter, ^nd the sense of story form is satis- fied by the combiriation between the perfect crystallization of plot in the component epics and the freer aggregation that draws them LQto a whole. Ill The third of our foiir features of epic morphology is so largely a matter of course that it needs only the briefest mention. Wherever there is vitality in literature there will be differentia- tion — the continued appearance of new and varied types. Be- sides the organic epic, as a generic term, we have already noted the grand epic. To this may be added the classical epic, such as William Morris's Life and Death of Jason, the note of which is the interest of retelling the stories already so familiar. Some narratives introduce themselves by the negative title of a 'tale.' The anecdote is the epic unit: its beauty will lie in reducing the narration to the lowest possible terms. We have heroic stories, stories of adventure, mischief stories or picaresque novels, love stories, mystic stories. Innumerable other genres are to be found, and the number of them will continue to mul- tiply; their classification belongs to literary history, and different principles of classification wiU appear with different historians and the special points of view from which they may write. Yet something of the nature of a climax to epic differen- tiation may be seen in the Short Story which is so typical of the present day. Professor Brander Matthews,' and others who diagnose this particular form of literature, are careful to point ' The Short Story (American Book Company). Epic Differentiation and the Short Story 153 out that the Short Story is not constituted simply by absence of length. In contrast with novelettes, fabliaux, and other nega- tively brief narrations, the Short Story is positively characterized by "unity, totality, and concentration on a single effect or sequence of effects." Mr. Matthews, by way of contrast, cites an interesting passage from the writings of Washington Irving: I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch the ma- terials; it is the play of thought, and sentiment, and language, the weaving in of characters, lightly, yet expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common life; ' and the half-concealed vein of humor that is often playing through the whole, — these are among what I aim at, and upon which I felicitate myself in proportion as I think I succeed. In direct antithesis to this, the Short Story is made by "the essential compression, the swift and straightforward movement, the unwillingness to linger by the way." It is in the literature of France and the United States that the impulse to this tjrpe of story is most observable, and perhaps Poe and Maupassant may be considered its great masters. Morphologically con- sidered, the Short Story seems a goal toward which epic differ- entiation has been moving: we have here got down to the epic imit — ^not the bare unit of the anecdote, but the epic unit artisti- cally emphasized in substitution for the elaboration of other forms. IV We have yet to deal with the new departure in epic poetry which belongs specially to the modern world. Literature in its first beginnings was all poetry: as time has gone on the balance of power has moved steadily in the direction of prose. This does not mean that creative force in literature has dimin- ished, but that it is less conspicuous; the energies of modem thought are divided between creation and discussion, and dis- cussion is the predominant partner. Originally the only me- dium of expression was verse; the rise of history and philosophy 154 Literary Evolution and oratory developed the rhythmic medium of prose. What exactly is the difference between verse and prose may be a complex question, but it is safe to say that prose is a freer medium than verse. Both prose and verse are at the service of modern creative thought. When once we escape the con- fusion" arising out of the two meanings of the word 'prose,' then it is easy to see that our novels simply exhibit epic poetry using its freedom to express itself in a medium of wider range. Nor is it simply a question of the medium of expression. All epic pictures life: but, in comparison with the simple life of antiquity, modern life is infinitely complex in its significance and its variety. All that ancient epic possessed in sheer creative power and elaboration of plot is open to the modern story-teller; but it is not surprising that in modern narrative literature the characterizing quality should be one of subject-matter rather than form. Modern novels collectively constitute the epic of life: a literary type which draws to itself our greatest creative thinking, and is as truly distinctive of the present time as Romantic drama was distinctive of the Elizabethan age or Homeric poetry of primitive Greece. Four distinct currents of literary influence seem to have com- bined in developing the modern novel as the epic of life. Chart XIV on page 155 suggests the connection of these with the evo- lution of the novel. The first of these has been anticipated in the previous chap- ters.^ With advance of thought comes specialization, and the rise of particular arts and sciences, each with its clearly defimed province and teclmical phraseology. All this simply empha- sizes the function of general literature as the specific art and science of life — of human life in that wholeness of view that revolts from specialization. Creative literature has its full share in this function. ■ Compare above, chapter i, pages 13 ff. ' Pages 127-31; compare below, chapter xix. CHART XIV Bvolution of Epic in Modem Literature Function of Litera- ture as the Specific Science and Art of Life Accentuated Inter- est of Personality in the Essay Especially, the Spectator with its Creative Frame Arrested Function of the Theater as the Popular Liter- ary Entertainment The Romantic Revolution — Espe- cially, Sir W. Scott and the Romantic THE MODERN HOVEL EPIC OF LIFE Special Tendencies Cosmopolitan: The Novel a Form of International Inter- course. (Especially, V. Hugo, Balzac, Dumas, Tur- genieS, Tolstoi, Bjomsen, etc.) Current Fiction: Tendency toward a Floating Epic of Transient Interests IS5 15^ Literary Evolution In the second place, it is interesting to watch the part played by the essay in the evolution of the novel. I have elsewhere dealt at some length with the evolution of the essay.' In the wisdom literature of Scripture, notably in the Book of Ecclesi- asticus, we can watch in aU its stages development from floating proverbs, through the proverb cluster, to the -polished literary essay. The tradition of Ecclesiasticus is taken up in modem literature by Bacon: and here we have the supreme master of this literary type. The essay stands fully revealed as the organ of the miscellaneous; we see as its characteristics the frag- mentariness and freedom of its treatment, and also how it re- veals a personal attitude toward questions of life. But so far the personality reflected is the personality of the author. As we proceed, two forces are brought to play upon the developing essay. With Plutarch — ^who becomes a 'European classic — we have the great interest of comparative personality. The essay enlarges to the treatment of individuality in general; we have the delicious character types of the Microcosmography, the analysis of what the Elizabethan stage called 'humors.' A second force is the wide influence of Montaigne. This gives further accentuation to the essay as reflecting the author's personality; mere flashes of momentary thinking find a literary organ of expression. The critical point in the development of the essay is the Spectator. Here the essays of a great master associate themselves with two other literary characteristics. The Spectator appears from day to day: here begins the line of change which more and more draws the great mass of essay writing into the periodical medium of the magazine and news- paper. More than this, the essays of Addison were made to rest upon something which resembles the frame story of fiction: there is the slight story of the Spectator's Club, with the deli- cate character-sketching of the Spectator himseK and the f ellow- ' Literary Study of the Bible, pages 298-306. With this paragraph as a whole compare chapter viii of World Literature, pages 381-401. The Novel as the Epic of Life 157 members of his Club. In such creative framework we have a direct link between the essay and the novel: the modern novel, in many types of it, appears as the fusion of essay with story. Perhaps this is seen most clearly in the novels of George EUot. The woman who wrote under that name had a profound grasp of human life, and a felicity of epigrammatic expression, such as might have made her a second Bacon for the essay. But she also had a power that Bacon wholly lacked — the power of creative story. In her works we can see side by side, in equal combination, the element of essay and the element of story: instead of a miscellaneous seri'es of essays on human Ufe, the essay-Uke reflection is brought into close contact with successive points of the creative picture. Creative literature and dis- cussional literature thus enter upon equal terms into the modern epic of life. A third current of historic influence on the novel comes from the drama. The theater has one great advantage over other literature of human life in its direct appeal to a present audience: the Latin for 'stage' is 'pulpit.' In the Elizabethan age the Romantic drama of Shakespeare was the leading literary organ for the treatment of life. Then came the Puritan schism: the serious and earnest half of the nation tabooed the theater, and left the drama to sink to the lowest point of frivolity and evil. Later on, the arrested function of the theater to handle questions of hmnan life was taken up by the rising novel. Those who in English literature trace the early differentiation of the modern novel from other novels which — as the poor of literature — ^we have always with us, agree in indicating, as primary points of departure, Robinson Cnisoe and the works of Richardson. This Robinson Crusoe, in superficial appearance a story of adventure, resembles in its general appeal a drama of situation: the situation of a solitary soul cut off from com- munion with his kind, having to learn all by himself the first steps of elementary civilization, and fight his spiritual struggles ^5^ Literary Evolution alone. Richardson throws his whole work into the form of letters exchanged between the personages of the story: there is no narration, and the author never speaks. But this ex- change of letters is presentation as distinguished from epic description; it is merely an extension of dramatic dialogue. Such dramatic characteristics, impressed upon the new form at its start, have leavened it with dramatic spirit in its maturity. In our novels description of incident does much : yet the most emphatic points of the action are likely to come to us in what seems close to the dialogue of the stage. A specific illustration may be in point. A leading effect in Daniel Deronda is the first meeting of the hero and the heroine. The ambitious society girl has at last been introduced, at an archery meeting, to the supreme aristocrat of the neighborhood. The shock of first meeting is described, and then dialogue sets in. "I used to think archery was a great bore," Grandcourt began. He spoke with a fine accent, but with a certain broken drawl, as of a distinguished personage with a distinguished cold on his chest. "Are you converted to-day?" said Gwendolen. (Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes of opinion about herself that might be entertained by Grandcourt.) "Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one gen- erally sees people missing and simpering. " "I suppose you are a first-rate shot with a rifle." (Pause, during which Gwendolen, having taken a rapid observa- tion of Grandcourt, made a brief graphic description of him to an indefinite hearer.) "I have left off shootmg." "Oh, then, you are a formidable person. People who have done things once and left them ofif make one feel very contemptible, as if one were using cast-off fashions. I hope you have not left off all follies, because I practice a great many. " (Pause, during which Gwendolen made several interpretations of her own speech.) "What do you call follies?" The Novel as the Epic of Life 159 "Well, in general, I think whatever is agreeable is called a folly. But you have not left off hunting, I hear. " (Pause, wherein Gwendolen recalled what she had heard about Grandcourt's position, and decided that he was the most aristocratic- looking man she had ever seen.) "One must do something." "And do you care about the turf? — or is that among the things you have left off ? " (Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extremely calm, cold manners might be less disagreeable as a husband than other men, and not likely to interfere with his wife's preferences.) "I run a horse now and then; but I do not go in for the thing as some men do. Are you fond of horses ?" "Yes, indeed: I never like my life so well as when I am on horse- back, having a great gallop. I think of nothing. I only feel myself strong and happy." (Pause, wherein Gwendolen wondered whether Grandcourt would like what she said, but assured herself that she was not going to dis- guise her tastes.) Now, all this is stage dialogue, and stage dialogue intensified: as if the presentative function of stage directions were being enlarged to cover unspoken thoughts and feelings. Dramatic presentation, then, unites with the discussional power of the essay to widen the literary range for this modem epic of life. We must not, among formative influences for the modern novel, pass over the Romantic revolution of the eighteenth century, especially after the leadership of this revolution had passed into the hands of Sir Walter Scott. The Romantic epic may be a distinct type, but it is one closely related to the epic of life. It had brought epic poetry once more to the front rank of literature; it had also vindicated the claims of prose to an equality, if not more than an equality, with verse as a medium for narrative creation. Under such widening influences as these has been developed the modem novel, as the great contribution of our own age to i6o Literary Evolution the epic poetry of the world. It takes the position in the fulness of our world literature that was occupied by the organic epic in earlier stages. Many of these novels are themselves organic epics. To take the first illustration that occurs: the plot scheme of Middlemarch obviously includes a number of inde- pendent stories. We have Dorothea and the tangled threads of her life; Celia and a picture of stationary bliss; Fred Vincy developed out of his rawness by force of attraction to a girl of simple good sense; Lydgate with his professional ambition wrecked by a shallow-hearted wife; Bulstrode and his spiritual tragedy. Each of these can be abstracted, as a separate story, with full plot and human interest: in the novel they are inter- twined by accidental links, and all merged in Middlemarch provincial society, with its characteristic provincial humors, and a faint suggestion of the struggle of the Reform BiU for enveloping action. But the accent is no longer laid upon interest of plot; it is the subject-matter which stands out, and makes the novel the epic of human life. Two special tendencies of the modern novel are worth noting as we conclude this part of our subject. One is the tendency of the novel to become cosmopolitan in its interest. In this form more than in any other we draw into our English world literature from abroad. The great English masters are not more to us than Victor Hugo, Balzac, Dimias, TurgeniefF, Tol- stoi, Dostoyevsky, Daudet, Bjornsen. The different peoples of Europe read one another's novels, if they read nothing else that is foreign. Novel-reading tends to become a form of international intercourse. A second tendency is suggested by the term 'current fiction.' We are constantly hearing this phrase, and are continually having thrust upon us astonishing statistics of circulating libraries and 'best sellers.' It is often made a reproach against particular novelists, whose literary skill is not disputed, that they hanker after a certain set of social problems, or cater to The Novel as the Epic of Life i6i certain tastes and fancies, simply because these have popularity at the moment; and it is freely prophesied that such novels as these will not live. The prophecy may prove true in fact: but all this complaint seems a misreading of a literary phe- nomenon. The point to which current fiction testifies is, not deficiency in the literature, but elasticity of the meditun. It is part of the vitality of fiction as a literary form that it tends to become a floating literature of transient human interests. We have seen the natural progression of literature toward floating in the sense of periodical literature; we are not to limit this idea of 'floating' by regular recurrence such as weekly or monthly. In all ages there are types of literature that deal with matters of temporary prominence, and so have a literary existence that flames up and dies away. Our party newspapers of the present time were preceded by party pamphleteering and this by party controversies in ponderous Latin folios. The novelist who can diagnose the social problem of the moment need not complain if his work shares the fate of Smectymnuus and Areopagitica. Epic poetry began for our world literature in spontaneous rhapsodizings of today's achievements at to- night's supper. It reaches a natural goal in a floating litera- ture of current fiction, that can bring the highest creative skill to give us kodak pictures of each folly, or piece of social wisdom, as it flies. CHAPTER VIII EVOLUTION IN DRAMA It may be well, following the course taken in the previous chapter, to make a comprehensive survey of the whole dra- matic field in our world literature before dealing in detail with particular parts. 1. Analogous to the position of Homer in epic poetry is the position held in our drama by Attic tragedy and comedy. This is remarkable, because, while Homer represents a natural course of evolution, Greek drama is a highly specialized type, the product of particular circxmistances and disturbing influences in the evolution of literature. Yet, so great is the genius of the four poets — Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes — and so firm is the position of Greek as ancestral literature, that the Classical drama has maintained a powerful influence through nearly the whole of our literary history, and its masterpieces have hardly been surpassed even by the plays of Shakespeare. 2. With the passage to the Middle Ages drama undergoes a long eclipse. The Classical dramas are locked up in the monas- teries, accessible only to the clergy, and to few of these. For the general public — a cultured, but not a reading class — the theater gives place to the minstrel, and epic poetry becomes the main literary interest. 3. At the same time a new evolution of drama from first beginnings takes place, this mediaeval drama being developed out of Christian worship as Greek drama had been developed out of the worship of Bacchus. It progresses through several interesting dramatic types, until it seems on the verge of becom- ing a fuUy developed poetic literature, when this dramatic dawn is swallowed up in the full sunrise of the Renaissance. 162 Evolution in the Ancient Classical Drama 163 4. The revival of Classical drama that comes with the Renais- sance operates in two ways. The more immediate effect is that the recovered sense of dramatic form is brought to bear upon the mediaeval accumulation of romantic material: by this marriage of epic and drama we get the Romantic Drama of Shakespeare, the highest point to which the drama of our world literature has ever attained or is likely to attain. 5. Later on, and mainly by influence of French literature, there is a more direct revival of Classical drama by conscious imitation: this Modern Classical drama has for its great masters Racine and Moliere. 6. The differentiation of varied dramatic types has, naturally, been in evidence throughout our history: at last differentiation comes to have free course as the Classical and Romantic types lose their paramount position. In modern times no drama is placed at an advantage or a disadvantage by its admitting the influences we call Romantic and Classical. We have to consider first the evolution of Classical drama. In this portion of the literary field, more perhaps than elsewhere, evolutionary processes in literature are clearly revealed: the unfolding of stages, the disturbing forces, the traces of transition steps in the fully developed product. In a separate work' I have dealt at full length with this subject. Here we can note only prominent points in the whole process of evolution; and these are suggested in tabular form on page 166. It is well that the reader should have in his mind a clear con- ception of the ballad dance, the starting-point of all these changes. I cite from my work already mentioned' a specimen ballad dance; it is, of course, an imaginary reconstruction, ' The Ancient Classical Drama: A Study in Literary Evolution (Oxford University Press). ' Ancient Classical Drama, pages 18-20; compare pages 20-22. 164 Literary Evolution nothing else being possible, but it at least offers something ob- jective on which the imagination can work. The theme is the story of Lycurgus, one of the many stories of mortal resistance to the introduction of Bacchic worship, and the tragic results this brings. Nothing of the nature of a theater must be sup- posed; only a level orchestra, and a band of performers habited as Satyrs, who bring out the story somewhat in this way : With the solemn rhythm and stately gestures of choral ritual they lead ofiF to the praise of Bacchus. They sing his glorious birth from love and the lightning flash, his triumphant career through the world to establish his worship, before which all resistance went down, as Pentheus driven mad might testify, or Damascus flayed alive. With awe they meditate on the terrible thought of mortals resistiag the gods, most terrible of all when the resistance seems to be success- ful! So it was with Lycurgus: — and the music quickens and the gestures become animated as the Chorus describe a strange portent, a god fleeing before a mortal man ! In ever increasing crescendo they depict the scene, and how the mortal gains on the god; till at last the agitation becomes uncontrollable, and the Chorus break into two Semichoruses which toss from side to side of the orchestra the rapid dialogue: — ^What path is this he has taken? — Is it the path to the precipice ? — Can a god be other than omniscient ? — Can a mortal prevail against a deity ? — So the dance whirls on to a climax as the fugitive is pictured leaping from the precipice into the sea below. The Semichoruses close into a circle again, and with the smoothest rhythms and most flowing gestures the Chorus fancy the waVes part- ing to receive the god, softly lapping him round as a garment, and gently conveying him down to the deep; there the long train of Nereids meets him, and leads him in festal procession to the palaces of the sea: you can almost catch the sound of muffled revelry from the clear, cool, green depths. The music takes a. sterner tone as the Chorus go on to the thought that a god's power can act though he be absent; and in minor cadences, and ever drearier and drearier ges- tures, they paint a land smitten with barrenness, — no clouds to break the blinding heat, vegetation drooping, and men's hearts hardening. The dance quickens again as the theme changes to Lycurgus' futile Evolution in the Ancient Classical Drama 165 rage: friends interpose, but he turns his anger on them; clear omens are given, but he reads them amiss. More and more rapid become the evolutions, until in thrilling movements is painted the on-coming madness ; and when, in the midst of his mad fit, they realise Lycurgus meeting his son, again the agitation of the Chorus become uncon- trollable, and a second time they break into semichoric dialogue: — What means the drawn sword ? — ^What the wild talk of hewing down the vines of Bacchus ? — 1& it his son that he mistakes for a vine ? — Ah, too late. — The dance subsides with the caknaess that comes on the king when he awakes too late to his deed; and from this calmness it quickens to a final climax as it suggests the people inflamed by the god, the crowd of Bacchanals pouring in, the cries for vengeance on the king, the tearing by wild horses. Then, returning to their first strains, the Chorus repeat their reverence for the gods, whose might is irresistible. It will be seen that in such a ballad dance the story of Lycurgus is neither acted nor narrated: we have neither drama nor epic. All is well within the wandering meditation of lyric poetry, which (we have seen^ can at any point dip into narrative or dramatic presentation. In primitive Greece such ballad dances give spontaneous expression to every form of activity — ^worship, sport, military ex- ercise, social amenities. We need — as a glance at Chart XV (page 166) suggests — to fasten our attention upon two con- trasting types of ballad dance: the Chorus and the Comus. The Comus is boisterous in its mirth; it has the minimum of form — ^merely a joining of hands and rhythmic saunter around a whole country side. The Chorus is an example of restrained art: its evolutions are confined to an orchestra, and it favors the form of strophes answered by antistrophes. The funda- mental division in music between wind and strings applies here: the Comus is accompanied with the flute, the Chorus has the stringed accompaniment of the lyre. These two contrasting • Above, page 44. CHART XV Evolution of Classical Drama Pkimitive Ballad Dance Satiric Dance Comus Chorus (boisterous — wind (restrained — stringed accompaniment) accompaniment) Epic Recitals Primitive Comedy Satiric burlesque \ \ Lyric Tragedy of Bacchic worship Dialogue Recitals [hypocritae] develops semichoric dialogue 'S-JJ-ft^AS — then alternation of dra- matic and lyric Epic Actors [hypocritae] im- ported, involving bifurcation of Stage and Orchestra OLD ATTIC COMEDY Burlesque matter artificially molded to the structure of tragedy: A single situation dramatized, lyric and dra- matic interwoven — mixture of comic and [potentially] serious finally, the Chorus itself is \ dramatized as spectators and \ confidants \ I - ATTIC TRAGEDY tMid [through lost Middle Attic and New Attic Comedy — the ex- traneous Choral element gradually fading — burlesque rising to pure comic] ROMAN COMEDY Single situation dramatized — punctuation by musical rem- nants of Chorus into succes- sion of Acts — comic, with serious moralizings and bur- lesque relief A final situation dramatized, lyric and dramatic elements interwoven — Chorus as unity bond ROMAN TRAGEDY of Seneca Imitation of Attic Tragedy dissociated from the stage — the component elements rhe- torically accentuated i66 Evolution in the Ancient Classical Drama 167 types of ballad dance were brpught together by the Revolution of Arion (b.c. 600). He is said to have "made, the dithyramb choral": the dithyramb — or boisterous dance belonging to the worship of Bacchus — ^he turned into a Chorus. This gives us the "lyric tragedy" which is the earliest tragic form: the word tragedy is song of Tragi, that is, of Satyrs, followers of Bacchus. When the most exuberant matter is forced into the most re- strained of art forms, there are sure to ensue novel developments; in the succession of these modifications of the choral dithyramb is the path of literary tragedy. The imaginary illustration of a ballad dance given above applies to the choral dithyramb after it has taken the first of its forward developments. At two points the Chorus was made to express extreme excitement by break- ' ing up into Semichoruses which exchanged rapid dialogue: by this natural step dialogue has been brought into lyric tragedy, and dialogue is the essence of drama. Such use of semichoric dialogue as a vent for excitement appears constantly in fuUy developed Greek tragedy. Once introduced, the element of dia- logue in lyric tragedy rapidly extends, until the whole presents /Qie alternation of dramatic episodes and choral odes which is V the final form of Classical tragedy. The next step in the process of development comes by ex- ternal influence, and we have the Revolution of Thespis. Epic poetry had arisen out of the ballad dance, and soon dropped the musical accompaniment and dance movements. It made an approach toward drama by its device of dialogue recitals: where the matter admitted of it, an assistant joined the prin- cipal reciter — say, in description of a quarrel — and the alternate speeches of the two reciters had an effect resembling dialogue. The Revolution of Thespis (b.c. 535) imported these epic re- citers into the developing tragedy, for the purpose of performing the dramatic dialogue which before had been a minor function of the Chorus. An interesting trace of this stage is seen in the word hypocrites, which etymologically applies to the assistant i68 Literary Evolution reciter of epic poetry, but which is the regular Greek term for a dramatic actor, and in this way has contributed a metaphor to the English language — the idea of a 'hypocrite' as a man who acts a part. This revolutionary step involves the bifurcation , of stage and orchestra, the first for the actors, the second for the Chorus. Further development takes place in the separate ex- pansion of the dramatic and lyric elements of tragedy; the stage (for example) soon evolving scenery and accessories. The final step in the evolution is not noted by historians, but is im- plied in the final product. Up to this point the 'Chorus' has been a band of worshipers at the Bacchic feast who performed the tragedy. But at last the Chorus are themselves drawn into the dramatic story in the capacity of imaginary spectators or confidants. When the very performers of the lyric tragedy are themselves dramatized, tragedy has become wholly drama.' This Attic tragedy, the medium of the three great masters, stands among the species of world drama as choral tragedy.^ It presents the regular alternation of dramatic episodes on the ^tage and lyric odes in the orchestra. The dramatic and lyric elements are closely interwoven. The choral influence invades the dramatic episodes in what are known technically as 'stage lyrics' — the 'monody,' or lyric speech of an actor, and ' con- certo, '^ lyric dialogue between actors and Chorus. This is not merely a distinction of meter: when it is remembered that what appears in lyric meters was always sung in the performance, while the rest was merely spoken, it will be seen that such choral tragedy had the combined range of drama and opera, with the power at any moment of breaking from verse to music and returning from music to spoken verse. It emphasized for ' The evolution of Greek tragedy is more fully treated in my Ancient Classical Drama, chapter i. ' Compare Ancient Classical Drama, chapters ii-iii, for a fuller exposition of choral tragedy, with illustrations. 3 The Greek word is kommos. Evolution in the Ancient Classical Drama 169 subsequent poetry the device of metrical fluctuations for the expression of fluctuating emotions;' until Shakespearean drama carries this a stage farther in variations between verse and prose. The Chorus was the unity bond of the whole poem. As spec- tators the Chorus had a part, though a minor part, in every episode; between the ^isodes the Chorus — still in their char- acter as spectators — ^voiced lyrically the successive impressions made by successive steps of the movement. They served further as a unity bond in the fact that their continuous presence reduced the whole action to a single situation, without the breaks that would have admitted varying scenes and diversities of time. And the fact that the Chorus are attached as confidants to some leading personage of the plot forces a unity of interest: to multiply stories would, in such tragedy, involve multiplying Choruses." We now turn to comedy.' I would again refer the reader to the somewhat elaborate diagram on page 166. As tragedy had arisen from the intermarriage of the Comus with the Chorus, so comedy — the 'Song of the Comus' — -was made by the union of the Comus with the satiric dance. Its first form was that of a satiric burlesque. But the important stage in the evolution of comedy was that which followed after this: a stage which illustrates how the imitation of one literary form by another can be a disturbing force in literary evolution. A trace of this stage has been retained in a chance sentence of Aristotle, in which, when speaking of tragedy, he remarks parenthetically that "it was late before comedy obtained a Chorus from the magistrate." To "obtain a Chorus from the magistrate" was a technical expression which may be thus explained. Tragedies ' This general subject is treated below, chapter xxvi, pages 479-86. " Hence the famous "three unities" of Greek drama: the unity of time, of place, and of action (that is, story). 3 The evolution of ancient Greek comedy, and its analysis as a literary species, is fully treated in chapters vii-ix of my Ancient Classical Drama. 170 Literary Evolution were magnificently staged at public festivals; the expense of such stagings was met by voluntary subscription, which placed so many Choruses at the disposal of the authorities; for a tragic poet to obtain a Chorus meant the right to have his drama brought out at the public expense. The remarkable point in the sentence of Aristotle is the word Chorus: what had comedy to do with a Chorus — a body of performers expensively trained in an elaborate art which was the very reverse of what belonged to comedy? We must read between the lines of Aristotle's sentence. The poets of comedy — at that time a rough popular burlesque — naturally envied their tragic brethren's right of public production at city festivals; there would be no precedent for their demanding from the magistrate a Comus; they boldly made application in due form for a Chorus, and obtained it. They now had the right of elaborate staging for their drama: but they also had on their hands this Chorus, which they must utilize. A Chorus is incompatible with comedy: but incon- gruity is itself a comic effect. Such seems to be the origin of the "Old Attic Comedy," the splendid poetic medium tO/which Aristophanes made his contributions. It is burlesque matter artificially molded to the structure of tragedy, which it follows in all its details of episodes and choral odes, stage lyrics, and the like. Of course, the comic Chorus is burlesqued: instead of Theban Senators or Maidens of Argos we get a Chorus of Clouds, of Birds, of Frogs. But the continual presence of a body of choral experts is a constant invitation to the higher flights of lyric art. In actual fact, the lyrics of Aristophanes can reach a poetic elevation that has never been surpassed — in his glowing pictures of clouds and the landscapes on which the clouds look down, his humorous fancies of bird life, his rapturous procession of the Initiated through Hades to the Elysian Fields; to say nothing of the lyric technique that is utilized for purely comic effect.' The difficult first step has been taken by this Old ' Compare chapter ix (of Ancient Classical Drama), passim. Evolution in the Ancient Classical Drama 171 Comedy in bringing together the comic and the serious; the play as a whole is political satire of the most farcical kind, but there is always the power of rising to deUcate fancies, or in paren- thetic passages — technically called parabases — of seriously dis- cussing political questions. The mixture of tones effected by Aristophanic comedy remains an ideal for the whole of dra- matic history. The Classical drama which was a power at the Renaissance was Latin rather than Greek: we have yet to trace the pro- gression from Greek to Roman.' In tragedy, evolution stops suddenly short with Euripides: what foUows is imitation. We see another disturbing force in literary evolution: the conserva- tive influence of a critical audience. A single generation of Grecian history had witnessed the rise from primitive poetry to the magnificence of the three great masters of drama; more- over, it was a grand poetic tj^pe that was thus evolved, combin- ing the whole range of drama and lyric. It is perhaps not sur- prising that such a rapid development exercised a sort of spell upon the Athenian public;" contemporary criticism resented even the slight amount of innovation attempted by Euripides, while essential modifications of the model would be impossible. No change appears in tragedy until, late in Roman history, we have the drama of Seneca.' In superficial appearance this also is imitation of Attic tragedy, alike in subject-matter and form. In reality a deep-seated change has taken place — that the drama is dissociated from stage representation. It had been the visible ' This is discussed at length in chapters x and xi of Ancient Classical Drama. ' On this general subject compare World Literature, pages 16-20; and in the present work pages 87-88 of chapter iv, and again pages 305-7. 3 This is fully discussed in Ancient Classical Drartia, chapter v. Pro- fessor F. J. Miller's translation of the Seneca Tragedies (the University of Chicago Press), retains the metrical fluctuations, and in various ways excellently presents Seneca as an item of universal literature. 172 Literary Evolution presence of the Chorus that had made the unity bond of Greek tragedy, holding it to its restrictions of form. In the Seneca plays the Chorus tends to the function of lyric songs between dramatic episodes. The Chorus retain their characterization, and can still take part in the dialogue; but also they can be ignored in large part of the scenes. In the Octavia, while the text still gives a Chorus Romanorum, yet a study of the play shows that this name really covers two distinct Choruses, one sympathizing with Octavia and the other sympathizing with her rival. Moreover, tragedy has passed under the influence >of rhetoric, which was so dominant an influence in Latin litera- ture; the matter of the Seneca plays is largely made up of highly rhetorical descriptions, and exchanges of passionate utterance rhetorically accentiiated. This remark is not made in any disparaging sense: the rhetoric of Seneca is a noble rhet- oric. But plot as the determining element of drama has weakened, and the plots of these plays are modifications of the ^ Greek story mainly designed to multiply opportunities for rhetorical expansion. Dramatic development, arrested in tragedy, has in comedy free course. The long interval of time between Aristophanes and Plautus was one of great dramatic fertility, but the product is all lost. Contemporary historians give evidence of some eight hundred dramas that have thus perished; they distinguish two distinct dramatic t)^es, known as the Middle Attic comedy, V and the New Attic comedy of Menander, of which last Roman comedy' is the imitation. The main morphological changes during this period of rapid literary evolution are easy to trace. In the Old Comedy the Chorus was a purely extraneous element : it is not surprising to find in the sequel that it rapidly faded, until in Roman comedy poetry has become mere music, and there is nothing to represent the Chorus except at intervals musical performances without words. Originally, the visible ' Roman comedy is discussed in chapter xi of Ancient Classical Drama. Evolution in the Ancient Classical Drama 173- presence of the Chorus had bound the whole play into a unity; in Roman comedy the musical remnants of this Chorus have broken the whole into a succession of separate ' acts.' It is here that we have the first appearance of what was destined to be so characteristic of drama — the presentation of a story, not con- tinuously, but in successive phases of movement with breaks, and sometimes long intervals, between. Again: the matter of Aristophanic comedy had been political burlesque, with opportunities, through the Chorus, of serious reflections. In the course of development that followed we find the serious element steadily gaining upon the burlesque. In Roman comedy the burlesque gravitates toward the underplot, where it appears as caricature of stock social types, such as the saucy slave or the parasite. The main matter of the play is pure comedy: situations of intrigue and irony, mistaken identity ending with recognition, concealment and discovery, separation and reunion — all the various forms taken by the complication with its resolution which is the essence of comedy. But there is more than this. The Chorus, before it has entirely disap- peared, has imparted to the matter of the play a tendency toward moralizing, for which lyric poetry is so suitable a me- dium. A marked feature of Roman comedy is this moralizing tendency: not merely simple reflections arising naturally out of the circumstances, but sustained moralizing as a distinct motive, often conveyed in meters which, in comparison with the rest of the play, may be called lyric' The final type then of Classical comedy is a succession of acts embodying matter that is comic, with serious moralizings and burlesque relief. But, viewed from the standpoint of world literature, the most striking morphological feature of Classical drama is that it is, from first to last, drama of situation.' ' For this moralizing, and its connection with meter, compare Ancient Classical Drama, pages 383-87, 398, 401-9. ' Compare Ancient Classical Drama, pages 414-20. 174 Literary Evolution The presence of the Chorus in tragedy had limited the action to a single continuous scene; it must of course be the final phase of the story that is thus presented on the stage, previous phases being made known indirectly. In other words, interest of the story as a whole is subordinated to ^ emphasis on the final situation. Aristophanic comedy, and the tragedy of Seneca, are imitations of this drama of situa- tion. It is remarkable, however, that the same model holds sway in Roman comedy. It might have been expected that with the loss of the Chorus the limitation to a single scene would have gone: on the contrary, the conventional unity of scene is stronger than ever, and the same scene fits all Roman comedies — an open street containing the houses of the per- sonages of the story. This is all the more remarkable because, in Roman comedy, the natural evolutionary tendency toward increasing com- — plexity of matter shows itself; the plots of Plautus and Terence admit multiplicity of distinct actions, but all are compelled into this unity of scene and situation. To illustrate from the Phormio of Terence as a typical case. Four personages enter into the story, who may conveniently be indicated as the Father, the Son, the Uncle, and the Nephew. The action shows three entirely distinct intrigues at work, making the plot scheme some- thing like this. Intrigue of the Nephew: to raise money for purchase of a slave- girl with whom he has fallen in love. Intrigue of the Son: he has fallen in love with an orphan stranger, and contrives a mock law-suit to compel himself as next- of-kin to marry her. Intrigue of the Old Men : to marry the Son to a girl who is a daugh- ter of the Uncle by a bigamous marriage in a foreign country; thus making provision for the girl without revealing the liaison. Underplot of caricature: Designing Slave — Parasite. Evolution from Classical to Romantic 175 At the opening of the action all three intrigues are in mutual entanglement. The absence from home of the old men has made the intrigues of the Son and Nephew possible; their sudden return brings a crisis. The resolution is the sudden discovery that the orphan stranger whom the Son has tried to marry is the very daughter of the Uncle whom the old men desire to make his wife: but the discovery is not made before the contriving Slave has learned the old men's secret, and used this to extort the money with which the Nephew buys his slave. The whole movement of the play is thus a complex situation suddenly resolved. Whether simple or complex, then. Classical drama always emphasizes the single situation at the expense of the story as a whole. It needed the influence of the Middle Ages, and the free play of epic story, to overcome this convention, and make the Romantic drama possible. II On page 176 will be found a Uterary chart (Chart XVI) which traces the evolution from Classical to Romantic drama, and brings out the relation to this general movement of the special literary tj^Des with which we are concerned. The Dark Ages may be taken as a fresh starting-poiut for dramatic development. Roman civilization breaks up into chaos in the interminable wars with barbarian peoples. Three features of this period must be borne in mind. We have the Christianization of life, which makes the matter of Classical drama no longer possible; alike the matter of tragedy, which was leavened by the overpowering sense of destiny, and the corrupt life reflected in ancient comedy. Again, the so-called Dark Ages are, we have seen,' the period for vast accumulation of new poetic material, coming from a great variety of sources. ' Above, pages 87-88. 176 Evolution from Classical to Romantic 177 In the third place, it must be noted that the conservative force of a critical audience," which had operated so powerfully in the case of Attic tragedy, is quiescent during the Middle Ages; and here a free field is offered for rapid literary change. From our point of view the most marked literary feature of the Dark Ages is that the theater is entirely displaced by the minstrel as the source of popular entertainment. There is a separation between the clergy, as the educated class, and the rest of society; society in general is capable of literary culture, but not the cul- ture that comes froni reading. Classical drama becomes a dead literature, stored up in the monasteries, read — and added to in a slight degree — ^by the clergy; but awaiting a future time for active influence on literature. On the other hand. Christian worship itself has dramatic tendencies which will operate a little later. Meanwhile, in the foreground of the literary field epic poetry is predominant. The age of the minstrels is the age of story: of narrative story in which the interest of the story itself is paramount over any interest in form. It is worth while to note the bifurcation between sacred story and secular. The narratives of the Bible and the Lives of the Saints are a characteristic epic poetry of the Dark Ages; these naturally lend themselves to allegory, which becomes another important developing influence. On the other hand, we have the secular stories which make up the great literature of Ro- mance. How completely the theater has given way to the minstrel is illustrated in the fact that the words 'tragedy' and ' comedy ' are appropriated by the narrative stories of Romance. They are roughly distinguished as serious and comic: but toward the close of the Middle Ages a change comes into the use of these terms which has important consequences. A popular current of interest sets in — interest in fallen greatness. Lydgate's Fall of Princes, Boccaccio's De Casibus illustrium virorum, illustrate it; and in the Elizabethan period it culminates ' Compare above, pages 87-88. 178 Literary Evolution in the story-encyclopaedias entitled The Mirror for Magistrates, the component parts of which are stories of men who have been great and have fallen.' This popular interest leavened the meaning of the word 'tragedy,' which more and more came to suggest fallen greatness. Now, in proportion as the word 'tragedy' narrowed to this one type of serious story, in the same proportion the correlative term 'comedy' must widen, until it suggests story in general. This accounts for the remarkable fact that Dante names his epic The Divine Comedy: in his time the title suggests no more than the story of God's government of the world. And the distinction of tragedy as fallen greatness, and comedy as story in general, is found to underlie the Shake- spearean drama itself.^ Ill We may turn to the drama which is the special creation of the Middle Ages.^ It starts in the worship of the church, and develops steadily in the direction of modern drama. The liturgy of the mediaeval church was in many ways dramatic in spirit. It centers around the Mass: this was not the celebra- tion of an opus operatum, but rather the dramatization of a present miracle. The two great festivals of Christmas and Easter not only lent themselves to dramatic treatment, but were further the Christian counterparts of the nature festivals which, in heathen times, had been the occasion for Bacchic worship and for the first steps in the evolution of Greek drama. One form of mediaeval drama, the mystery, was early connected with the Easter rite known as Passio, Sepultura, Resurrectio — ■ Compare Henry Morley's First Sketch of English Literature (Cassell), pages 335-38. ' Compare chapters viii and ix of my Shakespeare as Thinker. ' Compare A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature (Mac- millan), and Professor J. M. Manly's Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama (Ginn). Evolution in Mediaeval Drama 179 as if a three-act drama. In another form, the miracle play, we see interest in sacred story uniting with the dramatic spirit of ecclesiastical liturgy: the miracle plays were acted sermons. How close they were in origin to the ceremonies of the church is illustrated in their stage directions, such as that at the close of the miracle play of Lazarus, which directs that Lazarus shall go on with the Te Deum. Once introduced, the miracle play shows change in two directions. Single incidents grow into the coEective miracle play, a grand historical drama covering the whole ground from the Creation to the Day of Judgment, and lasting in representation as much as three days. Again: the didactic purpose favors touches of realism for attraction of an unlettered audience. Thus, Noah — as a Biblical personage — may be treated with reserve, but Noah's family will be dragged in for parody of real life; the "Shepherds abiding in their fields by night" will be utilized for comic digression, until suddenly the singing of the Angels brings back the religious atmosphere. Growing realism is growing secularization of the sacred drama. And the advancing secularization is still more clear in mode of representation. The place of celebration changes from the in- side of the church to the church steps, and gradually to uncon- secrated ground; the actors, originally clerical,- become mixed with jugglers and other purveyors of public amusement; and finally the whole direction of miracle plays passes into the hands of the trading companies. During the centuries that precede the Renaissance these miracle plays fill a great place in public life; the interest in the dramatization of story is being steadily developed as direct preparation for the Romantic drama. But it is another type of mediaeval drama, the morality, which appears as the main field for morphological development. The morality' is a drama in which the plot is allegory: allegory ' For the general subject compare Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature (Macmillan), Volume I, pages SS-87. See in Index to that work the particular moralities cited below. i8o Literary Evolution is an unstable form of poetic action, passing readily into other forms. The plot of a morality is really latent in the list of dramatis personae: without reading these somewhat dreary poems the student may, by casting his eye over the lists of dramatis personae cited below, catch the developmental changes that are taking place. Two main lines of development may be traced: one connected with the personages, the other with the relief element of the morality. I. The abstract qualities or theological ideas which form the dramatis personae of a morality tend to concretize and approach characterization. Properly and originally, the personages of such a play are pure abstract oualities and allegorical or theological ideas. Castle of Perseverance. — World, Flesh, Devil — ^Human Race — FoUy, Pleasure, Backbiter — Avarice, Seven Deadly Sins, Luxury — Confession, Penance — Seven Cardinal Virtues — Garcio (The Rising Generation) — Death, Soul, Mercy, Good and Bad Angel — Peace, Justice, Truth — The Father sitting in judgment. Everyman. — God, Death, Fellowship, Kindred, Good Deeds, Knowledge, Confession, Strength, Discretion, Beauty, Five Wits. Sometimes, it is by some device of interpretation that the ab- stract quaUties pass into class types or individuals. RespuUica. — ^Prologue iaterprets Respublica as England, Nemesis as Mary, People as the English Nation, Suppression as the Reformation — ^followers of the last are Avarice, Insolence, Adulation — opponents are Justice, Peace, Truth, Mercy. New Custom. — Perverse Doctrine, an old Popish Priest — ^Ignorance, another but elder — ^Hipocrisie, an old woman — Cruelty and Avarice, two Rufflers — New Custom and Light of the Gospel, two Ministers — Edification, a Sage — ^Assurance, a Virtue — God's Felicitie. Evolution in Mediaeval Drama i8i Or, names of whole classes of society come to be admitted amongst abstract qualities and allegorical ideas. Nature of the Four Elements. ^Na,tuTa. Naturata — Studious Desiref, Sensual Appetite, Ignorance, Experience — Tavemer. Play of the Weather. — Phoebus, Aeolus, Saturn, Phoebe, Jupiter — Gentleman, Ranger, Water-Miller, Wind-Miller, Gentle- woman, Laundress, Boy — Merry Report. Again, we get qualities of character or of dramatic situation, summing up a whole character or situation in a single descriptive touch (like the characters of Bunyan). Magnificence. — Felicity, Liberty, Adversity, etc. — Coimterfeit Countenance, Crafty Conveyance, Cloked Allusion, Courtly Abusion. All for Money. — Money, Pleasure, Godly Admonition, etc. — ^All for Money, a Magistrate — ^Learning with Money, Learning without Money, Money without Learning, Neither Money nor Learning — (as suitors) Moneyless and Friendless, William with the Two Wives, Nichol never out of the Law. Play of Love. — ^Lover not Beloved, Woman Beloved not Loving, the Lover Beloved, Neither Loving nor Beloved. Such descriptive touches are sometimes naturalized as personal names. Hick Scorner. — Pity, Free WUl, Imagination, etc. — Hick Scomer. Like WUl to Like Quoth the Devil to the Collier. — ^The Devil, The Collier— Nichol Newfangle — Good-Fame, Security, etc. — Ralph Roister, Tom Tosspot, PhiUp Fleming, Piers Pick- purse, Cuthbert Cutpurse, Hankee Hangman. Names of this kind, it will be remembered, are quite common in the regular drama — Ralph Roister Bolster, Madge Mumble- Crust, Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby Belch. It is another form of the same t3rpe of dramatic change that, the morality being used to enforce political and historical truth, the history comes gradually to supersede the allegory. i§2 Literary Evolution Conflict of Conscience. — Hjrpocrisy, Tyranny, Avarice, Conscience, Sensual Suggestion, etc. — Philologus: interpreted in Pro-' logue as Francis Spiera (an Italian lawyer, driven by perse- cution to suicide). Albion Knight. — ^Albion, a Knight — Injury, and his mate Di- vision — ^Double Device, a Spy — Justice, Peace, Plenty — Temporality, Spirituality (also referred to as Lords Temporal and Spiritual), Commonalty, Sovereignty. King Johan. — ^Besides King Johan and Ynglond Vidua we have Verity, Nobility, Clergy, CivU Order, Imperial Majesty — four conspirators : Sedition, Dan Davy Dissimulation, Private Wealth, Usurped Power, who disguise themselves as Arch- bishop Langton, Raymundus, Cardinal Pandulphus, and the Pope, respectively. The history is at last strong enough to stand by itself, and this type of the morality is absorbed in the regular drama. 2. The second line of developmental change in the morality is connected with the relief element: this, at first extemporized, tends gradually to pass into the body of the play, assisting the mixture of tones; it then tends to break away from the play as a separate interlude. The heavy character of the morality as compared with the popular character of the audience necessitated (as in the case of the miracle plays) the introduction of comic and farcical ele- ments as relief. These farcical portions of the morality were at first extemporized, two stock characters being reserved for this purpose — the Devil and Vice. Their function — like that of the Clown in a pantomime — was, in general, that the Vice be- labors the Devil all through the action of the piece, but is car- ried off by the Devil at the end. Gradually these farcical characters pass into the body of the play. Mind, Will and Understanding: contains "Lucifer with a gallant's array over his Devil's." Evolution in Mediaeval Drama 183 Marriage of Wit and Science: Ignorance gets invested in a Fool's coat. The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art: Moros, the incor- rigible dunce, is presented with a sword (emblem of the Vice), and ends by preferring to go to the Devil rather than be edu- cated. They assume various names, and have a distinct part in the action. Sometimes this is the part of a mischief-maker — foundation of the Villain of the regular drama. In Like Will to Like, Nichol Newf angle, "tailor's apprentice to the Devil, " introduces to the Devil the various characters. — In All for Money, Sin is the wicked magistrate's servant. — Jack Juggler, in the morality of that name, dresses like a certain lackey, and with blows persuades him out of his iden- tity. — Common Conditions, in the play of that name, at first promotes and then hinders the progress of the love matches. — In a variety of other moralities. Vice appears under the names Injury, Iniquity, Idleness, Inclination, Subtle-shift, Ambi- dexter, Mischief. — In the Play of Love, the Vice is Neither Loving nor Beloved (compare above, page 181). Or, the part played by the farcical characters is general med- dling and folly — ^foundation for the role of Fool in the regular drama. In Appius and Virginia, we have Haphazard, a general meddler. — In Three Lords and Ladies of London, Simplicity is called a Clown — Play of the Weather contains Merry Report, a go- between or messenger to Jupiter.— In Goodly Queen Hester we have Hardy Dardy, servant to Aman, a jester in a Fool's coat. On the other hand, the farcical part tends to disconnect itself from the rest of the play. The morality thus splits into two parts. The didactic portion makes a form of drama called a dialogue, such as Heywood's Dialogue of Wit and Folly, between John and James, as to whether the wise man or the fool is hap- pier: this is settled by Jerome as moderator in favor of the wise 184 Literary Evolution man. The farcical part becomes a separate 'interlude.' This is a purely dramatic morceau, the equivalent of a single scene of a comedy, but complete in itself. The Pardoner, Friar, Curate, and Neighbor Pratt: amusing contest for a pulpit, intended as exposure of clerical vices, the layman showing as the most decent of the party. The Four P's: contest between the Pardoner, the Palmer, the 'Poticary and the Pedlar, as to which can tell the biggest lie; the 'Poticary winning by his assertion that he has never seen a woman out of patience. An interlude of this kind is a joke or anecdote dramatized, and may stand as the unit play of modern drama. It belongs to the literary history of particular countries to deal with these forms of mediaeval drama, and with others such as pageants and masks, and to show the relationship of these to later literature. In our general view of world literature the essential point is that mediaevalism created its own type of drama, and that this was moving by clear evolutionary stages in the direction of what is the drama of the modern world, when the new influences brought by the Renaissance — the union be- tween the recovered Classical drama and mediaeval Romance — created the splendid type of Romantic drama; into this what remained of the mediaeval drama was absorbed. IV The position in world literature of Shakespeare's plays is exactly given by the traditional title — the Romantic drama: the great marriage of drama and epic romance. It never seems to occur to Shakespeare and the poets of his school to invent matter. The material is all taken from the story books of romance ; and no poetic motive in the whole prod- uct is stronger than the desire to present the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story. The interest of the poets Evolution of Romantic Drama 185 is in the Classical drama newly recovered by the Renaissance; this Classical drama has (we have seen) the most highly concen- trated form of plot — the whole story forced suggestively into a single situation.' From separate sources have thus come the interest of drama and the interest of story: an influence to bring these two interests together was at hand in the popular audi- ences, trained for generations by the miracle plays in the drama- tization of familiar stories. The Romantic drama did for secular romance what for sacred literature had been accom- plished by mediaeval drama. Its main constituents, then, from the morphological point of view may be represented by the following formula: 'Its materials: Romance — ^pure in- terest of Story. Romantic Drama'^I Through the poets: Classical Drama — the most concentrated form of plot. -Through the audience: Popular interest in the dramatization of Story (Miracle Plays). Of course, other influences assisted. There is the individual genius of Shakespeare: incapable of analysis, yet the most potent factor of all. An influence of a negative kind is the absence of critical restraint. The limiting conventions of Classical poetry were revived in full force by the Renaissance, but those who accepted them became a school to themselves, contemptuously leaving the popular drama to its own freedom. Again, the wide diEEusion of Biblical literature provided for the new poetry an adequate philosophy of life: contrasting alike with the obsolete religious philosophy of the ancient world, and the narrowing outlook of Puritanism which was yet to come. From the freedom of mediaeval literature the Shakespearean ' Above, pages 173 £f. 1 86 Literary Evolution drama inherited the mixture of tones, that gave to it the widest range of emotions, and the power of intensifying emotions by contrast. From the same source it inherited its conceptions of dramatic types: of comedy, as complication and resolution — life in equilibrium; of tragedy, as equilibrium overthrown — j the interest of fallen greatness.' All these considerations count ' for much. But the main greatness of the Shakespearean drama rests on the union of epic and drama, each in its full strength. It had needed all the centuries of the Middle Ages, giving free course to narrative story, to break down the Classical limitation of story to situation: when at last it becomes possible to present a story as a whole, every part of it reaps the benefit of Classical concentration. The evolution from Classical to Romantic drama reflects itself in the plots of Shakespeare's plays." We have, first, the expansion from the single situation to the story as a whole. If we adopt as a convention the horizontal line to denote succession in time, and the vertical line to denote variety in place, then the symbol for a full story will be the rectangle, suggesting a succession of incidents happening in a variety of places. For the plot of a Classical drama we must modify this figure: only the final angle of the rectangle will represent the Classical plot, a single incident in a single scene: the rest of the ; story — as suggested by the dotted ; i lines in the figure — ^being left to i ^i_J inference and indirect suggestion. Of course, this indirect suggestion is itself an artistic effect, just as truly as direct 'These conceptions of comedy and tragedy are discussed in cliapters viii and ix of Shakespeare as Thinker. ' What follows is substantially identical with WorU Literature, chapter iii, pages 175-78. For the general subject of plot in Shakespeare compare Ap- pendix to Shakespeare as Thinker; or chapters xix, xx, oi Shakespeare as Artist. Evolution of Romantic Drama 187 representation on the stage. For the treatment of a story in the Romantic drama the full rectangle is required: with un- limited time, and unlimited change of scene, all of the story that has dramatic effectiveness is represented on the stage. Again: in the drama of a single situation plot be- comes identical with movement. Hence Greek criticism — which knew no type of drama but its own — lays its stress upon entanglement followed by catastrophe, in plays of the tragic type, and entanglement followed by resolution, in plays of the other type. The symbol for this is the inclined plane: move- ment in a certain direction to a turning-point and then rapid change. Where the full interest of the whole story is preserved, the line of movement becomes that of the regular arch, with a turning-point in the center. The play of Macbeth gives us the rise of Macbeth exactly balanced by his fall: the first half of the action is an unbroken series of successes; the second half is an unbroken succession of failures; the passage from the rise to the fall — ^in the middle of the middle act — is an incident in which success and failiu:e meet, the expedition to destroy Banquo and Fleance resulting in the death of Banquo and the escape of Fleance as his avenger. In such plays as Winter's Tale and Cymbeline, there is a falling action of growing entanglement through the first half of the play; the second half is an equally grad- ual restoration.' In Shakespeare's plots both lines of move- ment are maintained: the catastrophe or turning-point at » See chapter iv of Shakespeare as Thinker, in which both plays are fully discussed (compare plot schemes on pages 350-51)- The main points of Winter's Tale, and its plot scheme, are given below, pages 191 fit. 1 88 Litemry Evolution the end first catches the attention, but there is a logical turning-point in the center. Thus, in The Merchant of Venice, we naturally think of the turn of the movement in connection with the Trial scene, and Portia's happy solution of the en- tanglement of the bond. But in the middle of the middle act we have the successful choice of the casket which brings Portia and Bassanio together: but for this Portia would have had no interest in the fate of Bassanio's friend. It is the final catas- trophe which appeals to the audience in the theater; but to the eye of logical analysis the central turning-point is always clear in the technique of the Shakespearean drama.' But the richness of Shakespearean plot goes far beyond this: not only do we find a given story fully developed, but it is com- bined with others. ' The conception of plot is raised from the Classical ,' /unity of story to the Romantic / ''- harmony of many stories beautifully »' p interwoven in a common design. Its j-^ — graphic representation must be some \ such figure as that in the margin: \ this suggests combination of many '""^ stories, each developed in all the ful- ness its dramatic material admits; what is left to the artistic effect of indirect suggestion is — as the dotted circle suggests — the harmony of these stories with one another. A simple illustration is found in The Merchant of Venice. Plot of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice 1. Story of the Pound of Flesh: Antonio and Shylock 2. Story of the Caskets: Portia .and Bassanio 3. Story of the Betrothal Ring: Portia and Bassanio 4. Elopement of Jessica and Lorenzo ' For other examples compare Shakespeare as Artist, Index under "Turning-Points." D Evolution of Romantic Drama 189 Underplot. — Portia and Bassanio duplicated in Nerissa and Gratiano — Transference of Jessica from Jewish to Christian side of the story duplicated in similar transference of the servant Lancelot The interweaving of the first two stories is very simple: Bas- sanio, hero of the Caskets story, is the complicating force of the story of Antonio, for it is to raise money for Bassanio's visit to Portia that Antonio lets himself be entangled in the bond; it is the heroine of the Caskets story, Portia, who in the other story is the resolving force, making all right. The story of the Betrothal Ring is interwoven with the other two: the tension of the Trial scene is relieved by this escapade of the ring, and the balance of Portia's character is restored when it appears that the great lady who interposes in masculine disguise to save the state from a judicial murder is also a humorous girl with a fine eye for opportunities of mischief. All these three stories existed in books of romance, familiar to Shakespeare's audiences. The fourth story — of Jessica and Lorenzo — is used to fill up an interval of waiting in the other stories, the three months during which Shylock's bond is maturing. As if this were not enough to satisfy the romantic appetite for story multiplication, Shakespeare adds an underplot, in which two of the main stories are dupUcated in personages of inferior rank.' It is not the mere multiplication of stories, but also the sjon- metry of story with story, that enters into the Romantic idea of plot. In the play of King Lear, the main plot belongs to the royal family of Lear, the underplot to the family of the Earl of Gloster, the King's chamberlain. In the main plot, the action of Lear — ■ the effect of a moment's passion — upsets the carefuUy prepared plan of succession to the crown, and takes power from the faith- ful Cordelia to transfer it to her unworthy sisters. In the sequel, three lines of action moving side by side keep before us the triple consequences of Lear's rashness: we have the double ' The play is fully discussed in chapteis i to iii of Shakespeare as Artist. iQo Literary Evolution nemesis Upon Lear himself — ingratitude from the daughters exalted, tenderness from the child he had cast from him; we have again the suffering of the exiled Cordelia and her champion Kent; we have, in the third place, the spectacle of the power placed in the hands of the evil sisters used by them in adulterous intrigues which bring themselves and their lover Edmund to a cormnon doom. In the underplot another father — through -^J; ignorance rather than passion — does the same thing that Lear had done: takes power from the righteous son and transfers it to the son who is a villain. The sequel shows, side by side with the main plot, the same triple consequences— ^the double nemesis on the father, the sufferings of the innocent Edgar, and the spectacle of the elevation of Edmund leading him into the intrigues which seal his fate. The main plot is symmetrical with the underplot, each part to each; in the play itself Edgar hints at this symmetry when he says of Lear — He childed as I fathered! And we have only to state the case over again from the stand- point of the children, instead of the standpoint of the fathers, to find that the perfect synunetry has become an equally perfect contrast. In the main plot a daughter, who has been cast out by her father, who has seen her inheritance given to her guilty sisters, is nevertheless seeking to save the father who did her the injury, when she falls at the hands of the sisters who prof- ited by it. In the underplot a son, who has been unjustly advanced by his father, who has received the inheritance due to his innocent brother, is nevertheless seeking the death of the Evolution of Romantic Drama 191 father who did him the unjust kindness, when he falls at the hands of the brother who was wronged by it.' The full technique of a Shakespearean plot can hardly be appreciated without a tabular statement, such as that offered on page 192 (Chart XVII) for the play of Winter's Tale. The line of movement is that of the regular arch: the descending movement of Leontes' fall is balanced by the ascending move- ment of the restoration; the two halves of the movement are further bound together by the dramatic interest of an oracle and its fulfilment. The first half of the action, in tragic tone, presents the sundering of Sicilia and Bohemia through the jealous madness of Leontes; with the rising movement there is a change to the pastoral tone, in which we see the reuniting of Sicilia and Bohemia through the romantic love story of Florizel and Perdita. The fall reveals itself as a sixfold destruction: Leontes loses his wife, his royal friend, his son, his newborn babe, his minister Camillo, and his faithful servant Antigonus. In the rise each separate element of loss is in some way retrieved: Antigonus' widow is united to Camillo, Camillo is restored as minister, and the lost daughter is found; the lost son is replaced in the son-in-law who is the royal friend's son, this friend is reconciled, and the lost wife is restored as if from the grave. The central turning-point of the movement is an oracle, which for the first time reveals the fulness of the destruction, and also — in enigmatic phrases — gives hope of full restoration. The sixfold basis of the movement is reflected in the very clauses of this enigmatic response of the oracle. Hermione is chaste; Polixenes blameless; Camillo a true subject; Leontes a jealous t)Tant; His innocent babe truly begotten; And the king shall live without an heir, If that which is lost be not found. ' For a full discussion of this play compare Shakespeare as Artist, chap- ter X, and pages 367-69. CHART XVII Plot of Shakespeare's IVinter's Tale Plot: An ARCH PLOT o£ Fall and Restoration— bound together by ORACU- LAR INTEREST THE FALL: Tragic tone: Sundering of Sicilia and Bohemia through jealous madness of Leontes lost wife lost friend lost son lost babe lost minister (Camillo) lost servant (Antigonus) sixfold destruction revealed sixfold restoration shadowed Antigonus' widow united to Camillo minister restored lost daughter found son-in-law in son of old friend ' the friend restored ' the wife restored as from the grave ORACLE THE RISE: Pastoral tone: Reuniting of Sicilia and Bohemia by the romantic love of Florizel and Perdita Underplot of Relief: Atmosphere of rural simplicity (flavored with roguery) accompanying passage at center from complication to resolution 192 The Modern Classical Drama 193 Finally, the change of tone at the center from tragic to pastoral is accentuated by an underplot of relief, in which the humorous clown Autolycus plays his rustic tricks. Nothing can better illustrate romantic plot as the harmony of stories than this play. Let any single term of the loss, with the corresponding item of the restoration, be abstracted from the rest, and told independently: it makes a complete whole, with full interest of personality and plot. Six such stories are woven into a common design, by devices of dramatic movement, with play of dramatic tone. In the traditional study of Shakespeare there has been a long-continued eclipse of interest in plot. This has usually taken the form of a theory that Shakespeare was an " irregular genius," profound in his grasp of character and human life, but careless as to beauties of construction. The idea was assisted by the spirit of Renaissance criticism, which gratuitously as- sumed that Aristotle, who admirably analyzed the single type of drama he knew, had settled the form of dramatic poetry for all time. When the Shakespearean drama is examined by ideals of plot drawn inductively from the plays themselves, then it is abundantly evident that the added fulness of matter is balanced by adequate enlargement in conceptions of form. Shakespeare did not discard the Classical conception of plot, but absorbed its unity into a larger harmony. The plots of the Romantic drama are federations of Classical unit plots, with these units romantically expanded. If the first effect of the Renaissance was to bring Classicalism to bear upon Romance, at a later period we have, mainly under leadership of French literature, a more direct revival of Classical spirit — a Modern Classical drama. It has given us two poets of the highest rank — Moliere and Racine: the intrinsic literary 194 Literary Evolution excellence of this poetry, if nothing else, compels their recog- nition in our world literature. This is not the place to discuss at length the plays of Racine and Moliere: our only question is. How far these are to be con- sidered a revival of Classical drama. Our first reflection is that it was a conscious revival: its inspiration was not so much the ancient dramatists themselves, as the theorist Aristotle. There was no attempt to revive what was the most fundamental fea- ture of Greek tragedy — the Choral element: the Chorus oc- casionally used by Racine has no resemblance to the Greek Chorus, which was the unity bond of the whole drama, but is merely such lyric poetry as may enter into any variety of play. The point of imitation was rather the other leading feature of Classical art: the Modern Classical drama is drama of situa- tion. Yet the new type is alive to the profounder and more complex nature of modern life; it is a common remark as to both Racine and Moliere that in their plays the situations are sub- ordinated to interest of character. Again: although Racine was a Greek scholar, it was Roman rather than Greek drama which influenced the French poets, Seneca and Plautus rather than Sophocles and Aristophanes. Racine's plays have been described as sculpture galleries of all antiquity;' but the treat- ment is such as to give full scope for depicting passion — espe- cially the passion of love. The rhetoric of Seneca may be an inspiration, but it is rhetoric tempered by the French genius for simplicity; not the simplicity that comes from lack of arti- fice, but from its complete mastery. Moliere is above all things a master of the art of entertaiiunent; he writes to order, and is ready to bring in all diver tisements of dancing and music; he levies contributions on all types of drama — Spanish, Italian, the pieces of the commedia dell' arte, as well as the drama of Plautus and Terence. Where his plays come closest to the Latin originals, there is yet refreshing novelty in the modern ■ Compare Frederic Harrison's Choice of Books, pages S3~S4- Miscellaneous Dramatic Types 195 life that is fitted to the old molds. In his greatest dramas, such as Tartuffe and Le Misanthrope, the drama of situation becomes drama of character-situation: special types of personality sur- rounded by other personalities calculated to throw up the central figure. The enormous influence of Moliere on modern comedy is due in the main to his inexhaustible flow of hilarious hiunor, a humor always adequate to the situation that has been created. In a later age there seems to be some rapprochement between the two great types of world drama. Victor Hugo has the French attraction to the drama of situation; he also has a deep appreciation of Shakespeare, and the rich variety of life depicted in the Shakespearean plays. The result is a modification, which does not enlarge situation to story as a whole, but deepens the particular situations to admit more of human life in variety and depth. The plays of Victor Hugo may be considered as a Romantic Drama of Situation.' VI It remains to remark that the Classical and Romantic drama, and the Mediaeval drama of mystery, miracle play, and mo- rality, comprehend between them only a minor part of dramatic literature. Other types abound. There is notably the Spanish drama. The peculiar geographical position of Spain enables it to feel the various influences that agitate the rest of Europe, and yet to modify them in its own way. Spain has had a Romantic drama that was all its own: strongly leavened with lyric motives, and inspired by passionate chivalry, and what might almost be called passionate devoutness. Its two great masters, Lope de Vega and Calderon, have been poets of the ' I have developed this idea in my Introduction to J. D; Bniner's Victor Hugo's Dramatic Characters (Ginn) ; and Mr. Brunei's able analysis of the characters furnishes copious illustrations. 1 96 Literary Evolution highest genius and of ahnost incredible fertility. It is remarkable that the Romantic drama of Spain and the Romantic drama of England, while roughly contemporaneous, yet were in the main independent the one of the other. The influence of Spanish drama has been exerted on matter rather than on form: its sto- ries and situations have contributed largely to the 'romance' which English and French poets have dramatized. Italy has a drama of its own, and led other nations in opera and ballet, and in the pastoral type of drama which has run a course through other European literatures. German drama was late in its appearance; but in Lessing and SchUler and Goethe has been cosmopolitan in character. At various periods specialized types have been in evidence, such as the heroic tragedy of Dryden, the comic drama of the Restoration in England, comedies of intrigue and comedies of manners; the comedy of sentiment; the literary burlesque of which the Rehearsal is an example; the problem drama in vogue at the present time. The modern nations of Europe are dramatically active, with the drama of Ibsen in the lead. But this drama of Ibsen itself shows various types: possibly the social plays now so popular will in the future be less prominent than such plays as The Pretenders, Peer Gynt, and the greatest of historical dramas — the ten-act drama of Emperor and Galilean. The review of all these types belongs to literary history. In connection with the morphology of our world literature the important point is that differentiation of dramatic t37pes, which has always been in operation, is now free from any counteracting influences. The Mediaeval drama is of course obsolete. Classical and Romantic drama have spent their force: they remain as magnificent types, which can be imitated, but have no longer any dominating influence. The dramatic inspiration of our own times is free to mold its matter in any form that conduces to poetic effectiveness, without restraint from preconceptions of orthodox type. CHAPTER IX EVOLUTION IN LYRIC POETRY Lyric stands in a different position in our world literature from that of the other two branches of poetry. There is nothing in the field of lyric poetry corresponding to Homer in epic, or to Greek tragedy and comedy in drama. The morphological variations of lyric poetry seem natural; that is to say, they seem to arise from what is inherent in the nature of lyric poetry, without disturbing force from the paramount influence of some special t5rpe. The prominent points in the morphology of our lyric poetry are suggested in tabular form on page 198 (Chart XVni). I In the chapter on literary elements, we noted as a funda- mental property of lyric its power of mediating between the other two forms: how, without ceasing to be lyric, it could at any point take up epic narration, or pass into the presentative form of drama.' This flexibility of lyric form is likely to show itself in any elaborate poem. Take, for example, The Bard of Gray, which annoimces itself as a Pindaric ode. At the commencement the poem is in a degree dramatic, for its opening words are addressed by the outraged Bard on his inacessible clifi to the English King moving with his army on the slopes beneath: 'Ruin sieze thee, ruthless King! Confusion on thy banners wait.' A few lines farther on we have the simple epic narration of the poet : Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay. As down the steep of Snowdon's shaggy side He woimd with toilsome march his long array. • Above, pages 44 ff . 197 CHART XVIII Morphology of Lyric Poetry 1. Attraction to Epic and Drama Compare elaborate odes, such as Gray's Bard — narrative ballads — ^Amoebaean poems of The- ocritus Dramatic psalms of the Bible — ^Dramatic idyl of Solomon's Song Lyrical epics of Shelley, Southey, Byron — and especially DANTE Wisdom literature (Biblical, Classical, modem) where the lyrical element preponderates— typical: In Memoriam, Browning's Christmas Eve and Easier Day 3. Differentiation < Choral: Deborah's Song — Chorus in Greek tragedy Individual: the great mass of songs, odes, etc. 2. Attraction to Philosophy Objecrive: the mood prescribed from without Hymns and ritual — Incantations — Encomia — (modem) Elegies between ^ Occasional poems: PINDAR — Epithalamia, etc. Subjective: the crystallization of particular moods and sen- riments: Love songs — Horatian odes — 'Lyrics' par excel- lence miscellaneous differentiation into unlimited number of types: lyric form readily coalescing with other forms (e.g., in Browning) Inspiration of Technique Lyric Com- pounding Soimet Freer form of Biblical sonnet — or earlier Euro- pean (compare Hekatompothia) Specific form of Italian and English sonnet: Dante, Petrarch, Milton, Wordsworth [Compare 'forms of false wit' in Addison's Spectator, No. s8] Biblical epigrams and number sonnets Classical and modern epigrams — especially the Greek Anthology and Martial Sanskrit quatrains Japanese 'tanka' (syllabic form] The Rubaiyat of Omar Khajryam The Odes of Horace — Sanskrit centuries Biblical Hallels — The Songs of Ascents Biblical acrostic poems — especially Lamentations Especially: Soimet sequences (implying creative frame): DANTE, PETRARCH, SHAKESPEARE Brevities (miniature sonnets) 198 Morphology of Lyric Poetry 199 The dramatic execration of the Bard continues at length until a sudden change takes place. 'Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Dear, as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear, as the ruddy drops that warm my hfeart. Ye died amidst your dying country's cries — No more I weep. They do not sleep. On yonder clifis, a grisly band, I see them sit, they linger yet. Avengers of their native land; With me in dreadful harmony they join, And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy line.' The poem has enlarged the dramatic scene it presents: besides the single Bard and the English army we have the phantom host on the farther cliffs; these now unite with the Bard in a ghostly incantation, that works up to a climax. "Now, Brothers, bending o'er the accursed loom Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom. Edward, lo! to sudden fate (Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.) Half of thy heart we consecrate. (The web is wove. The work is done.)" 'Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn Leave me imblessed, unpitied, here to mourn; In yon bright track, that fires the western skies, They melt, they vanish from mine eyes. But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll ? Visions of glory, spare my aching sight. Ye unborn Ages, crowd not on my sold.' The disappearance of the phantom host on the one side is suc- ceeded by overpowering visions of future ages and the triumph 200 Literary Evolution of Wales on the other side: this second dramatic scene reaches a climax in the words of the Bard: 'Enough for me. With joy 1 see The different doom our Fates assign. Be thine Despair, and Sceptered Care, To triumph, and to die, are mine.' The concluding lines return to epic narrative: He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night. The play of epic and dramatic, all within the bounds of lyric, is the great feature of this poem. The coalescence of lyric with drama and epic is the source of varied and interesting poetic types. On the one hand, we have amoebaean poems, such as those of Theocritus and Virgil, which are an approach to drama; we have again the dramatic psalms of the Bible, already noticed,' and the more extended dramatic idyl of Solomon's Song." On the other hand, coales- cence of lyric with epic is seen, on a smaller scale, in the narra- tive ballads; on the larger scale it appears in the lyrical epics of Shelley, Southey, and Byron.' The tales of these three poets are elaborate epic poems; but they show a variation from ordinary epic in one important particular. The verse of epic poetry is usually in some continuous metrical form, a line or stanza which is sustained for many books together. This variety of epic is in lyrical meters, which shift with every line. ' Above, note to page 46. ' The text of this poem in the Modern Reader's Bible presents its structure as that of a lyric idyl. Other commentators arrange it as a drama. The question is fully discussed in Literary Study of the Bible, chapter viii (or in Introduction to the poem in Modern Reader's Bible). Compare also above pages 72-3. 3 1 would mention as specially important Southey's Curse of Kehama. Morphology of Lyric Poetry 201 And something of lyric spirit goes with the lyric form. Take the opening stanza of Southey's Thalaha: How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air, No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain. Breaks the serene of heaven: In full-orb 'd glory yonder Moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths; Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night! The meter of meditative poetry clothes a piece of meditative description; and it is this power of meditative narration which differentiates these lyrical epics from epic poetry in general. An extreme illustration of the lyrical epic is found in the Divine Comedy of Dante.' This is in the fullest sense epic poetry, the sustained narration of a past experience. But the poet who narrates is himself the traveler of the mystic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise: already we have an approach of narrative to meditation. When we examine the meter of the poem, we find its unit as the terza rima which is an element in the structure of l3Tic sonnets. The spirit that goes to the building up of a sonnet applies to Dante's poem — the limitation of matter by structure: exactly thirty- three cantos are assigned to each of the three divisions of the theme, with an introductory canto that brings the total to the perfect num- ber of one himdred. Not only is this true in fact, but further, "the poet draws attention to it in the text: If, Reader, I possessed a longer space For writing it, I yet would sing in part Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me: But inasmuch as full are all the leaves Made ready for this second canticle, The curb of art no farther lets me go.^ ' Compare World Literature, chapter iv. " Purgatory, dose of canto xxxiii. 202 Literary Evolution The 'curb of art' extends to the matter of the poem: what appears on the surface as free narrative is in reality a systema- tized digest of moral and religious speculation conveyed in narrated symbol. The Divine Comedy is the perfect marriage of lyric and epic. This flexibility of lyric poetry is perhaps its most important morphological characteristic' It has ingeniously been sug- gested that lyric poetry, as meditation, is poetry of the first person; drama, which implies an audience, is poetry of the second person; epic, in which a narrator is interposed between the reader and the events, is poetry of the third person. If this be so, it is clear that poetry of the first person can, by simply addressing itself to an imagined auditor, become presentation; again, the range of meditation covers meditative description, which is an approach to epic. The ballad dance, in which all forms of poetry are embryonically latent, appears on the surface as lyric poetry. II The Table of Literary Elements" brings out the relation of lyric poetry, not only to epic and drama, but also to philosophy. It is the poetic counterpart of philosophy: having the full philosophic function of meditation, but extending the range of this meditation into creative regions of fancy and imagination. Accordingly, the attraction toward philosophy distinguishes one main division of lyric poetry. Wisdom^ is the name for the philosophy that maintains its fulness of range, before it has committed itself to the strictness of analysis which fixes philoso- phy to prose literature, and even carries it into the region of technical discussion. Lyric, as an organ of meditation, has ' Compare above, chapter ii, passim. .' Above, page i8. 3 For wisdom literature in general compare below, chapter xix. For Biblical Wisdom, Book V in Literary Study of the Bible. Morphology of Lyric Poetry 203 more place in such wisdom literature than either epic or drama. Poems of the sonnet order figure largely in Biblical wisdom. In the modern counterpart of this, it is lyric poetry such as In Memoriam, or Browning's Christmas Eve and Easter Day, Rabbi Ben Ezra, and the like, that are specially characteristic. Ill The freedom from the domination of special types, and the power of freely coalescing with other forms, make lyric poetry a field of literature in which differentiation has the widest scope. The distinction between these varied and miscellaneous types belongs to literary history; but there are two notable difiFer- entiations that concern lyric poetry as a whole. One is the distinction between choral and individual lyrics. The great mass of songs, odes, and short poems of this kind are individual poetry; the most important lyric poetry of the Greeks was choral. The different use of the word ' chorus' in modern music must not make us forget that the Chorus" of ancient tragedy and comedy always retained its characterization: it was as Senators or Maidens, or as Clouds and Frogs, that the dramatic Chorus carried on its meditation. Pindar is one of the supreme names in lyric poetry; the poems of Pindar that have come down to us are all utterances of so many Choruses — ^bands of professional singers who, as a body of admirers of a hero, cele- brate victories. One of the most impressive examples of choral l5rrics comes from the Bible — Deborah's Song.^ This introduces itself as a Double Chorus, a Chorus of Men led by Barak and a Chorus of Women led by Deborah; and the char- acterization must be understood throughout. The Men and Women unite in common aspiration, or separate with snatches ' For the general subject of the Greek Chorus compare Ancient Classical Drama, chapter iii. " Judg.jChap. $'■ see the structure as presented in the Modern Reader's Bible. 204 Literary Evolution of song, or cheer one another on to the task of celebration. It is the Men who describe the fallen condition of the nation, the Women who break in with the appearance of Deborah to rouse the people against the foe; the Men describe the advance of the foe, the Women sing how the stars in their courses fought for Israel; the Men, as fighters, bring out the strain of battle, and the Women, as spectators, voice the disappointment at the failure of Meroz to come up in time; finally the Men gloat over the destruction of Sisera, the Women fancy his mother awaiting him at home. In contradistinction to all this, the other kind of lyric stands only for an individual speaker; or will often be 'absolute,' without any characterization whatever. A second important differentiation is that between objective and subjective. Objective lyrics are such as hymns, ritual poems, incantations, encomia, elegies (in the modern usage of that word'), occasional poems like the athletic celebrations of Pindar or the modern epithalamia. In all these types the mood of the poem is prescribed from without — by the occasion, or by the object of adoration or celebration, or by the nature of the ritual; what the particular lyric has to do is to invent matter to satisfy this mood. On the other hand, in odes of the type of Horace, in love or sentimental songs, the inspiration comes from within. The term 'lyrics' par excellence applies to the crystallization in brief poetic form of particular moods or sentiments. "In ancient Greek poetry what are called "elegies" are in the main patriotic or love poems: it is doubtful whether the term was ever applied to sad or funereal matter. By Ovid's time the term has come to describe a particular meter: the combination of hexameter and pentameter so beau- tifully characterized by Schiller: In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column, In the pentameter aye falling in melody back. In modem English the word always suggests a dirge: compare Lycidas or Adonais. Morphology oj Lyric Poetry 205 IV There is one highly specialized kind of literature which takes high rank in the field of lyrics, and emphasizes the separation of lyric from other poetry. This includes varieties of poems of which the sonnet' is the main type. It seems natural in litera- ture that form should always adapt itself to matter: what con- stitutes a poem of the sonnet order is, on the contrary, that form dominates matter. Particular structural types become current: into the mold of this accepted structural type the matter must pour itself, exactly filling it, but not overflowing. At the present time one single mold has become established for the sonnet of Italian and English literature: it must be a poem of exactly fourteen lines, neither more nor less. Within this limitation there are yet varieties of sonnet formation: sometimes the structural law has to do with delicate relations between the first octave and the sestette that follows; in other sonnets, like the sonnets of Shakespeare, the constituting principle is found in the way that the final couplet draws to a head the ideas that have been flowing with comparative freedom through the other lines. It is perhaps because l3n"ic retains more of the musical element than epic or drama that technical elaboration comes to have so great a place in it; for poems of the sonnet order the inspiration is the inspiration of technique. This is specially evident in such a work as Dante's Vita Nuova,' in which we have, not only a series of sonnets, but with each of them the poet's metrical commentary; this commentary strongly suggests how the conception of each separate poem is a structural idea which the poet has proceeded to execute. ' For the general subject compare C. Tomlinson's The Sonnet and Its Origin (Murray). For the application of the term to Biblical literature compare Literary Study of the Bible, pages 306-15, 521 (or in Modem Reader's Bible, Introduction to Proverbs). " Rossetti's translation, in Temple Classics (Dent). 2o6 Literary Evolution This notion of technical structure as inspiration receives emphasis from a class of compositions which carry us outside the bounds of recognized poetry, into what Addison in the Spectator calls the Forms of False Wit.' He begins with "short poems printed among the minor Greek poets, which resemble the figure of an egg, a pair of wings, an axe, a shepherd's pipe, and an altar." The pair of wings consist of twelve verses, or rather feathers, every verse decreasing gradually in its measure according to its situation in the wing. The subject of it (as in the rest of the poems which follow) bears some remote affinity with the figure, for it de- scribes a god of love, who is always painted with wings. He mentions as a modern example — that famous picture of King Charles the First, which has the whole book of psalms written in the lines of the face, and the hair of the head. When I was last at Oxford I perused one of the whiskers, and was reading the other, but could not go so far in it as I would have done, by reason of the impatience of my friends and fellow-travelers, who all of them pressed to see such a piece of curiosity. He mentions as another form the ancient 'lipogrammatists,' or letter-droppers, like Trypiodorus: He composed an Odyssey or epic poem on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of twenty-four books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called Alpha (as lucus a non lucendo) because there was not an Alpha in it. His second book was inscribed Beta for the same reason. The absurd exaggeration simply makes the principle of inspira- tion from technique more plain. The authorized version (so to speak) of the sonnet as a poem of fourteen lines is a mere accident of literary history, like the three unities as the defining form of Attic tragedy. The essence of sonnet morphology is the forcing of thought into structural • Spectator, Nos. 58-63. Morphology oj Lyric Poetry 207 molds: it makes no difference whether one or many such struc- tural molds be recognized. In earlier European sonnets the form could vary. Thomas Watson's Hekatompathia^ is an iEustration. The term 'sonnet' is applied by the poet to the several 'passions' of which the poem is made up; they consist regularly of eighteen lines, and in one of his prefatory notes he says: All, except three verses, which this Author hath necessarily added for perfecting the rnunber, which he hath determined to use in every one of these his passions [are from Petrarch]. The sonnet follows. I joy not peace, where yet no war is found; I fear, and hope; I burn, yet freeze withal; I mount to Heav'n, yet lie but on the ground; I compass nought, and yet I compass all: I live her bond, which neither is my foe, Nor friend; nor holds me fast, nor lets me go; Love will not that I live, nor lets me die: Nor locks me fast, nor suffers me to 'scape; I want both eyes and tongue, yet see and cry; I wish for death, yet after help I gape; I hate myself, yet love another wight; And feed on grief, in lieu of sweet delight; At selfsame time I both lament and joy; I stiU am pleased, and yet displeased stUl; Love sometimes seems a God, sometimes a Boy; Sometimes I sink, sometimes I swim at will; Twixt death and life, small difference I make; All this, dear Dame, befalls me for thy sake. The freest form of sonnet structure belongs to the wisdom literature of the Bible and Apocrypha. The parallelism which is the basis of Biblical verse is a parallelism of consecutive lines: but there is, especially in wisdom poetry, what may be termed ■ Edited in the Arber Reprints. 2o8 Literary Evolution a higher parallelism,' binding together portions of a poem that may be widely separated. The following poem is slight in itself, but by its very simplicity illustrates the more clearly the conception of its type." My son, if sinners entice thee, Consent thou not. If they say. Come with us. Let us lay wait for blood, Let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause; Let us swallow them up as Sheol, And whole, as those that go down into the pit; We shall find all precious substance. We shall fill our houses with spoil. Thou shalt cast thy lot among us; We will all have 6ne purse: My son, walk not thou in the way with them; Refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil. And they make haste to shed blood. For in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird: And these lay wait for their own blood, They lurk privily for their own lives. So are all the ways of every one that is greedy of gain ; It taketh away the life of the owners thereof. The technical form of this is i, i ; 9, 9: that is to say, a thought is advanced in the form of a protasis and apodosis, one line each; then follow two blocks of nine lines each; the first block is am- plification of the protasis, the second block amplification of the apodosis. A more elaborate example has the form 4, 3 ; 8, 6: a quatrain of apprehension answered by a triplet of prayer augments into a double quatrain of apprehension answered by a double triplet of prayer.' ' Literary Study of the Bible, chapter ii. ' Prov. 2:10-19 (^ arranged in Modern Reader's Bible). ' Ecclesiasticus 22:27 — 23:6 (as arranged in the Modern Reader's Bible). Morphology of Lyric Poetry 209 Who shall set a watch over my mouth, And a seal of shrewdness upon my lips, That I fall not from it, And that my tongue destroy me not ? O Lord, Father and Master of my life, Abandon me not to their counsel: Sufifer me not to fall by them. Who will set scourges over my thought, And a discipline of wisdom over my heart; That they spare me not for mine ignorances. And my heart pass not by their sins: That my ignorances be not multiplied. And my sins abound not; And I shall fall before mine adversaries, And mine enemy rejoice over me ? O Lord, Father and God of my life, Give me not a proud look. And turn away concupiscence from me. Let not greediness and chambering overtake me. And give me not over to a shameless mind. To generalize: in these sonnets of wisdom literature each poem may set its own mold, but the spirit of the sonnet is felt bring- ing matter exactly to fill and satisfy the particular structural form. In various literatures the same inspiration of technique ap- plies to compositions of a much briefer kind: under their various names they are all miniature sonnets. The clearest example is the number sonnet' which occurs so frequently in the wisdom literature of Scripture. Here the structural mold is clearly prescribed — in some nxmierical form — ^Ln the opening lines; and the rest of the poem carries it into execution. • Literary Study of the Bible, pages 308-10 (or Introduction to Proverbs in Modern Reader's Bible). 2IO Literary Evolution There be three things which are too wonderful for me, Yea, four which I know not: The way of an Eagle in the air; The way of a Serpent upon a rock; The way of a Ship in the midst of the sea; And the way of a Man with a Maid.' This numerical type of structure is occasionally carried into a longer poem. There be nine things which I have thought of. And in mine heart counted happy; And the tenth I will utter with my tongue: A man that hath joy of his children; A man that liveth and looketh upon the fall of his enemies; Happy is he that dwelleth with a wife of understanding; And he that hath not slipped with his tongue; And he that hath not served a man that is unworthy of him; Happy is he that hath found prudence; And he that discourseth in the ears of them that listen; How great is he that hath found wisdom! Yet there is none above him that feareth the Lord. The Love of the Lord passeth all things: He that holdeth it, to whom shall he be likened ?" Almost as strongly defined is the structure of the Biblical epi- gram. The proverb of Biblical literature is a couplet or triplet: a unit of thought in a unit of form. What constitutes a Biblical epigram' is a slight expansion of this in which the unit proverb ■ Prov. 30:18. ' Ecclesiasticus 25:7-11, as arranged in Modern Reader's Bible; see note for change of reading in the last line but one. 3 For BiblicEil epigrams see Literary Study of the Bible, page 294 (or in Modern Reader's Bible, Introduction to Proverbs). The illustrations are from Prov. 23:4-5 and 6-8. Morphology of Lyric Poetry 211 is preserved intact. Thus, the following could clearly stand alone as a proverb: Weary not thyself to be rich; For riches certainly make themselves wings. The actual epigram contains this amplified: Weary not thyself to be rich; Cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not ? For riches certainly make themselves wings, Like an eagle that flieth toward heaven. Similarly, in every such epigram two lines will be found (not necessarily consecutive) which could stand alone as a proverb: the rest is exegetical of these lines. This structural idea of germ proverb and expansion wiU be caught in a longer specimen. Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, Neither desire thou his dainties; For as one that reckoneth within himself, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee ; But his heart is not with thee. The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up. And lose thy sweet words. The two lines indented on the left could stand alone as a proverb, but the phrase "one that reckoneth within himself" is not obvious in meaning; if additional lines exegetical of this phrase are added to support the second line, the balance of the epigram requires another line to support the first. The epigram is a form that abounds in Classical and modern literatures, but it is not easy to define it. Etymologically the word means 'inscription,' and large part of the Greek and Latin epigrams are inscriptions on vases, statues, tombs, and the like. Such inscriptions call for something of form, but there seems nothing to determine the kind of form, except general neatness, and above all brevity and the sense of unity. The epigram 212 Literary Evolution may be considered the unit of lyrics, counterpart to the epic anecdote. The Greek epigrams of the Anthology are hard to translate: I give a few in Mr. Burgess's' prose version, which seems to bring out the essential point of the epigram better than the versified English adaptations. A blind man carried on his back a lame one, having lent feet and borrowed eyes. When old age is absent, every one prays for it; but if at any time it comes, every one finds fault with it. It is always better when it is a debt not paid. I am armed against Love with reason around my breast; nor shall he conquer when one is against one; and I a mortal will stand up with an immortal. But if he has Bacchus as an assistant, what can I do single-handed against two ? Of this last Mr. Burgess quotes Fawke's verse rendering: With love I war, and reason is my shield, Nor ever, match 'd thus equally, will yield: If Bacchus joins his aid, too great the odds; One mortal cannot combat two such gods. Illustrations may be added from Martial,^ as the great master of Latin epigram. Diaulus had been a surgeon, and is now an undertaker. He has begun to be useful to the sick in the only way that he could. "Quintus is in love with Thais."— What Thais?— "Thais with one eye." — Thais wants one eye; he wants two. Why do I not send you my books, PontUianus ? Lest you should send me yours, Pontilianus. ' In Bohn's series. " Translation in Bohn's series. Morphology of Lyric Poetry 213 A cunning thief may burst open your coffers, and steal your coin; an impious fire may lay waste your ancestral home; your debtor may refuse you both principal and interest; your corn-field may prove barren, and not repay the seed you have scattered upon it; a crafty mistress may rob your steward; the waves may ingulf your ships laden with merchandise. But what is bestowed on your friends is beyond the reach of fortune; the riches you give away are the only riches you will possess for ever. Modern epigrams hardly need illustration: nothing could con- vey the spirit of this form better than the well known epigram on Milton by Dryden. Three poets, in three distant ages bom, Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn. The one in loftiness of thought surpass 'd; The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of nature could no further go, To make a third, she joined the former two. The counterpart of the epigram in Sanskrit literature seems to be the quatrain, of which 'centuries' are composed by Indian poets. Mr. Macdonnell' in his history thus describes them: The main bulk of the lyrical creations of mediaeval India are not connected poems of considerable length, but consist of that miniature painting which, as with a few strokes, depicts an amatory situation and sentiment in a single stanza of four lines. These lyrics are in many respects cognate to the sententious poetry which the Indians cultivated with such eminent success Many of them are in matter and form gems of perfect beauty. Speaking of the difficulty of keeping up in translation the elaborate meters of the original, he oflEers specimens of which two may here be quoted. ' History of Sanskrit literature in Literatures of the World (Appleton), pages 339-44- 214 Literary Evolution Let not thy thoughts, O Wanderer, Roam in that forest, woman's form: For there a robber ever lurks. Ready to strike — the God of Love. Remembered she but causes pain; At sight of her my madness grows; When touched, she makes my senses reel: How, pray, can such an one be loved ? The most pronounced form of these brevities comes from Japanese literature, where we get down to a form measured, not by lines or even feet, but by syllables. Mr. Aston's his- tory of that literature' thus describes them. The best known meter constructed on this principle is what is known as "Tanka" or "short poems." When poetry is spoken of in Japan it is usually this kind of verse that is meant. It consists of five phrases or lines of s, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables — 31 syllables in all. Each of these stanzas constitutes an entire poem It may be thought that in the compass of 31 syllables, and with the other limitations to which the poet in Japan is subject, nothing of much value can be the result. This, however, is far from being the case. .... It is wonderful what felicity of phrase, melody of versifica- tion, and true sentiment can be compressed within these very narrow limits. In their way nothing can be more perfect than some of these little poems. They remind us of those tiny carvings known to us as Netsuke, in which exquisite skill of workmanship is displayed in fashioning figures of an inch or two in height, or of those sketches where the Japanese artist has managed to produce a truly admirable effect by a few dexterous strokes of the brush. Of course, for poems of such a nature translation can be little more than imitation. Of Mr. Aston's specimens these are perhaps the ones that most impress an English reader; the last of the three is a perfect gem. ■ In Literatures of the World (Appleton), pages 28-29, 42-48. Morphology of Lyric Poetry 215 In yearning love I have endured till night. But tomorrow's spring day With its rising mists, How shall I ever pass it ? My love is thick As the herbage in spring, It is manifold as the waves That heap themselves on the shore Of the great ocean. The sky is a sea Where the cloud-billows rise; And the moon is a bark; To the groves of the stars It is oaring its way. Lyrics being so commonly short compositions, it is natural that they should to a large extent appear in collections. A new interest of lyric poetry arises when the poems of a collection are not miscellaneous, but are compounded into a higher unity. In the Bible the Book of Psalms appears as a miscellany. But certain psalms, mmibered as consecutive poems, draw together into "Hallels" — or hymns for festal occasions.' The Egyptian Hallel comprehends Pss. 111-18, the Great Hallel, Pss. 145-50. Again, Pss. 120-34 are unified by a common title^ — "Songs of Ascents," or literally, " Songs of the Goings Up." The signifi- cance of the title is disputed: probably, the "goings up" are intended to cover both the pilgrimages to the sacred feasts at Jerusalem, and the return from Babylonian captivity regarded ' See the Hallels as arranged in text of Modern Reader's Bible. Compare also Pss. 95-100. ' See note to Pss. 120-34 in Modern Reader's Bible (or Literary Study of the Bible, pages 165-67). 2i6 Literary Evolution as a pilgrimage. As the Psalms stand in our Bibles they con- stitute only a collection; it is possible by altering the order to read' them into an organic unity, starting with the lowest depths of the captivity (in Ps. 130), and reaching the climax of the festival in the Benediction of the Night Watch to the Re- tiring Congregation (Ps. 134). In this connection .may be mentioned the acrostic lyrics" of Scripture. The word is not used in the modern sense, where the alphabetical arrangement of initial letters spells a name. The initial lines simply follow the order of the alphabet. Thus the alphabetical scheme has no bearing on the thought, but seems a device of aggregation. It applies to poems of which the separate verses have much the air of independent lyric proverbs: the sequence is aggregation and nothing more. It is elaborate in the case of the 119th psalm: still more in the Lamentations' traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah. The whole spirit of this Dirge over Fallen Jerusalem is the compounding, by various devices, of lines which can usually stand alone; each single one a wail in the striking meter of lamentation, which may perhaps be represented in English by the refrain of David's Lament over Saul and Jonathan — How are the mighty< >f alien! The most notable illustration of poetic compounding applied to lyric poetry comes from what I have called collateral world literature. A Persian original, worked over by the English poet Fitzgerald, has eventuated in vhat appears as the master- 'The order I suggest is 130, 129, 120, 123; 126, 124, 121, 127, 128, 131; I2S, 122, 133, 132, 134. ' Literary Study of the Bible: see Index under "Acrostic" (or in Modern Reader's Bible, Note to Pss. 9-10). 3 See structural arrangement of the poem in the Modern Reader's Bible. (In the small-volume edition this will be found at the close of the second volume of Psalms. In the one-volume edition, the text begins page 876; the Introduction, page 1440.) Morphology of Lyric Poetry 217 piece of lyric wisdom for all literature. I refer, of course, to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam} The word Ruhaiyat is plural, and may be rendered ' Epigrams.' The quatrains of the English version, with their peculiar rhythmic shape, represent the tra- ditional form of the epigram in Persian poetry; and in the com- plete poem each epigram has a measure of independence. But — as in Hebrew wisdom we see gnomic sayings cluster" into sonnets and essays — so here the successive epigrams draw together into a sequence of thought. The unity of the whole as a Meditation on Life is assisted by the concealed image of a Day runniag through the poem, which opens with the freshness of morning, and closes with the serenity of moonlight. The fuU Ijrric flavor is not appreciated unless the reader catches the independent strength of the separate quatrains as well as the cumulative significance of the whole. Two other types of lyric compounding may be mentioned. We have, in the works of Dante, Petrarch, and especially Shake- speare, the sonnet sequence: the poems stand individually separate, but suggest an underlying story as creative framework. In Dante's Vita Nuova,^ the story is made clear by the poet's cormnentary. In Shakespeare's Sonnets'" the question is still discussed whether what the succession of poems suggests is a real history, personal to the poet, or a purely imaginative plot. Very different from such sonnet sequence is the case of the Odes of Horace.' These present themselves purely as a miscellaneous collection of short odes in four books. But there is a strong suggestion that the whole collection may be read as the reflec- tion of an Epicurean mood upon the various items of life that " Compare World Literature, pages 312-18. ' Compare Literary Study of the Bible, pages 299 ff. s Rossetti's translation in Temple Classics (Dent). * See Introduction to Dowden's edition (Kegan Paul), s Translations in one volume of Temple Classics (Dent). 2i8 Literary Evolution surround the poet. Certainly a new interest comes into the well-known ode in which Horace surveys his whole work, in such phrases as — ■ ' Exegi monumentum aere perennius — and again — Non omnis moriar — if we may regard the sum total of the poems, not as a monument simply of poetic skill, but as an Epicurean profession of faith. This Third Book has limited its survey of literary evolution to that body of correlated literature which constitutes world literature from the English point of view. It would swell the size of this volume too far to attempt anything more. Of course, the civilizations entering into our literary pedigree, and the literatures in which these are reflected, have each one an evo- lution of its own; the general processes of literary evolution manifest themselves, and the particular history of the civiliza- tion brings disturbing forces. But what is drawn from col- lateral and extraneous literatures enters our world literature as so much addition, not modification. And for additions of this kind there is usually needed some form of mediating interpretation. The simplest is translation, which merely transplants a work from one language to another. A deeper mediating interpretation is seen when a Fit;zgerald, or Southey, or Edwin Arnold, applies original creative thinking to imaginative matter belonging to a foreign civilization. Such enrichment of our world literature by mediating interpretation seems to be on the increase.' And this is much to be desired: no mode of deepening culture is more important than enlarging the field of our sympathies. ' Compare World Literature, pages 231, 311-12, 334, 376, 378. BOOK IV LITERARY CRITICISM THE TRADITIONAL CONFUSION AND THE MODERN RECONSTRUCTION CHAPTER X: Types of Literary Criticism and Their Tra- ditional Confusion CHAPTER XI: Speculative CRiTiasM. — The Fundamental Con- ception AND Function of Poetry CHAPTER XII: Speculative Criticism. — The Evolutionary The- ory OF Taste CHAPTER XIII: Inductive Criticism: or the Criticism of Inter- pretation CHAPTER XIV: The History of Critical Opinion CHAPTER XV: Judicial Chitictsm: or Critictsm m Restraint of Production CHAPTER XVI: Subjective Criticism: or Criticism Accepted as Literature CHAPTER XVII: The Place of Criticism in the Study of Litera- ture CHAPTER X TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEIR TRADITIONAL CONFUSION Literary criticism, in the most elastic meaning of the term, is literature discussing itself. It extends from the formal treatise to the floating criticism of everyday conversation on literary topics. It takes in creative literature: such a work as Ben Jonson's Poetaster, or the Frogs of Aristophanes, or even the Meistersinger of Wagner, will display in creative form literature discussing literature. From this broad field we may however mark off certain kinds of critical discussion that lie outside our present purpose. Textual criticism, it has already been pointed out, belongs to the outer literary study: its aflSliations are with literary history and bibliography. In the same category may be placed what is known at the present time as the higher criticism of the Bible: its problems are distinctly historical, and not literary problems. There is another kind of discussion, highly germane to literary study, which might be called the art criticism of literature. But the treatment proper for this seems to separate it from the criticism with which we are immediately concerned; it deals with the elements that go to make literature taken apart from the particular works in which they appear. Such analysis will find a place in the Sixth Book of the present work as the Gram- mar of Literary Art. Coming to literary criticism in the more limited and usual sense of the term, we are to see how this is affected by recog- nition of the unity of all hterature, and by the emphasis which modern thought places upon evolution and inductive observa- tion. In accordance with the general plan of this work I present in Chart XIX (page 222), at a single view and in CHART XIX Literary Criticism Traditional and Modem Traditional understands CRITICISM as a mode of judgment: Cnticism (j) As a starting-point literary practice is formulated into theory by Aristotle from the single literature of the Greeks (2) At the Renaissance this Aristotelian criticism is mis- understood as a binding norm for all literature — coming thus into collision with tendencies of medi- aeval and modem poetry (3) Criticism so constituted (o) ignores the imity of litera- ture; (J) ignores natural literary evolution; (c) tends to crowd out inductive observation of literature by preoccupation with theory and literary valuations understands TASTE (the name for the faculty of appreciation) in a static sense: the application to literature of assumed theory and standards of value The result is CRITICAL CONFUSION: The History of Criticism (since the Renaissance) appears a mass of contradictory positions — ^with a tendency toward the triumph of creative literature over criticism Modem Criticism enlarges to WORLD LITERATURE the field in which literary practice is to be formulated enlarges the conception of CRITICISM, discriminating four distinct types: (i) Inductive Criticism: examination -of particular litera- ture as it stands, with a view to interpretation and evolutionary classification — ^this the necessary basis of the other types (2) Speculative Criticism: working toward theory and philosophy of literature (3) Judicial Criticism: the application of assumed prin- ciples to the assaying of particular literature — criticism thus controlling production (4) Free or Subjective Criticism: critical writings treated as independent literature, a. revelation of the critic as author enlarges the conception of TASTE as either < Static: with assumed standards and theory: or Evolutionary: the Wordsworthian principle, that each variety of literature creates its own variety of taste The Four Types of Literary Criticism 223 tabular form, the contrast between traditional and modem criticism. Traditional criticism has conceived of criticism as a mode of judgment: as pronouncements upon points of literary theory, comparisons of literary merit and value, estimates of correctness and incorrectness. The word 'criticism,' which etymologically need mean nothing more than the noting of distinctions, has been specialized to distinctions of better and worse; in modem parlance to 'criticize* a person means not to approve of him, and the adjective ' critical ' is almost a synonjon for ' censorious.' It is not difficult to see how this has come about.' The formal study of literature begins with the Poetics of Aristotle, a work in which Aristotle, with the highest authority and skill, is seek- ing to formulate literary practice. But as a Greek, to whom all the rest of the world were barbarians, Aristotle founds his survey exclusively upon the single literature of the Greeks. At the Renaissance this Aristotelian criticism is misunderstood: it is taken to be a norm binding upon xmiversal literature. At once criticism has become judgment. It comes into collision with notable tendencies of creative literature in the mediaeval and modern world. The conflict thus generated makes the staple of critical discussions from the Renaissance to the present time. From our present point of view the criticism so constituted is seen, in the first place, to have ignored the unity of literature, by drawing its literary coiiceptions from the productions of a single school. It has at the same time set itself against the natural evolution of literature, which under conditions so di- verse as those of ancient Greece, of the Middle Ages, of modern times, must inevitably produce varieties of literature funda- mentally different. Description of literary productions as they actually are could, of course, never wholly cease: but under ' With all this compare chapter xiv. 224 Traditional Criticism: The Confusion of Types the conditions indicated such inductive observation of litera- ture tends to be crowded out by preoccupation with questions of theory and literary valuation. If we take the word 'taste' as, on the whole, the best word to express the appreciative faculty, this taste has, in traditional criticism, been understood ^ solely in a static sense: it has meant the application to literary works of fixed theory and fixed standards of value. The result has been a critical chaos.' In no field of thought can be found any considerable body of discussion which presents such a mass of inconsistencies, contradictory positions, ad- vancing and retreating argument, as in the history of literary criticism since the Renaissance. The paradoxes of criticism have come to be enrolled among the curiosities of literature. Perhaps the nearest approach to agreement among estimators of literary excellence is found in the tendency at the present time to recognize the supreme greatness of Shakespeare. But Shakespeare has won his reputation in the teeth of critical opposition: Shakespeare criticism has been a series of retreat- ing attacks. To one generation Shakespeare only makes an occasion for abusive language. Voltaire finds his poetry "the fruit of the imagination of an intoxicated savage." Rymer, reluctantly recognizing some comic merit in Othello, pronounces the tragic part of that play "a bloody farce without salt or savor." Another generation finds the Shakespearean drama remarkable, but hopelessly illegitimate; and Dryden unites with lesser persons in reconstructing Shakespeare's plays for him. Yet again, Shakespeare is made a compound of the high- est excellences with as many defects; Dr. Johnson scores these faults as unhestitatingly as if he were dealing with school ex- ercises. A later period treats Shakespeare as the revealing ' On this general subject compare my Shakespeare as Artist, pages 7-21; E. S. Dallas' Gay Science; Isaac d'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature (Rout- ledge), article "Sketches of Criticism"; Mr. Saintsbury's History of Criti- cism (Dodd), passim, more especially interchapters iv, v, vi. The Four Types of Literary Criticism 225 genius of a tj^e of poetry; seeking to do for Shakespeare just what Aristotle does for Greek tragedy and epic. It is the same with the other great masters. Rymer speaks of the Paradise Lost as "what some are pleased to call a poem"; Addison laboriously shows that Milton has the same qualities as the poetry of Homer and Virgil. Spenser's Faerie Queene is found by some critics all out of drawing; the Spenserian stanza — the delight of modern metrical critics — is by the age of the heroic couplet pronounced unworthy of consideration. Wordsworth has to run the gauntlet of reviewing abuse — "glorious deliriimi," "incoherent rapture," "low and maudlin imbecility" — before he is allowed to take his enduring place as a great master. Pope, equally prominent in poetry and in cridcism, regards the Rymer of the above pronouncements as one of the best critics England has ever had; critics of the rank of Macaulay and Saintsbury, agreeing in little else, agree that Rymer is the worst critic who ever lived.' Dr. Johnson, Literary dictator of his time, falls foul of Milton's Lycidas: "Its diction is harsh, its rhjTnes uncertain, its numbers unpleasing; .... in this poem there is no nature for there is no truth, there is no art for there is nothing new; . . ! . it is easy, vulgar, and therefore dis- gusting." In our own time Mark Pattison pronounces this same Lycidas the "culminating point in the development of Miltonic genius .... the high-water mark of English poesy."" Literary theory makes in this course of critical history no better show than literary valuations. The three unities as formulated by Aristotle are for a long time made the indis- pensable condition of dramatic writing; gradually they lose their authority, and finally it is discovered that Aristotie never ' Saintsbury's History of Criticism, II, 391-97; for Macaulay, "Essay on Boswell's Johnson.'' ' M. Pattison's Milton in Men of Letters Series (MacmiUan), chapter ii. 226 Traditional Criticism: The Confusion of Types formulated them. Blank verse — as distinguished from rhyme — is at one important moment declared impossible for English poetry, unless drama be taken as a semi-poetry that may ad- mit it; this does not prevent blank verse from becoming the dominant English meter. The general belief in literary theory is for a long time so firmly established that to compose according to theory is made the same thing as to compose well; later on theorizing is regarded as the great bane of creative literature; and so the "law of writ and the liberty" fluctuate in criticism as regularly as political parties go into government and oppo- sition. These startUng critical pronouncements cannot be excused as the slips or infelicities of criticism, for it is from the greatest names in literary history that they come. Nor can we deal with the vagaries of traditional criticism, in the way a good Catholic might deal with the 'variations' of Protestantism, by declaring criticism a vicious thing. Mr. Saintsbury, who, more than any other man, has gone through and through the whole history of critical discussion, continually breaks off to tell us that criticism is the most delightful of occupations; and the general world of culture seems to support this view, by its prac- tice of devoting ten hours to the reading of reviews for every single hour it devotes to the literature itself. We cannot even take refuge in the suggestion that criticism, otherwise excellent, is a lawless thing. For there is an approach to something lilce a law underlying fluctuations of literary judgments; and this law is the continuous triumph of creative Uterature over the criticism that has opposed it. Traditional criticism is a thing of confusion because its foundation has been built upon the sand. Modern criticism may follow Aristotle in the formulation of Uterary practice into Uterary theory; but it must begin by en- larging to the whole extent of world literature the field in which the literature is to be surveyed. If we go no farther than a The Four Types of Literary Criticism 227 single enlargement, it is interesting to think how different a system of poetics we might have received if Aristotle had had before him the literature we caU the Bible. The two ancestral literatures of modern culture are the supplements the one of the other. Greek drama is throughout its course dominated by theatrical performance; the ancient Hebrews had no theater, and dramatic form makes itself felt in the Bible by permeating other literary types.' Greek epic has a subject-matter and a verse medium of its own; Biblical epic follows the general course of national history, and is attracted to historic prose.^ Greek philosophy, almost from the beginning, is identified with analysis and the literature of prose; Biblical philosophy remains in the earlier stage of wisdom, and can add the whole range of creative literature to prose discussion.' The Greek language is so constituted that its prose and its verse are widely sundered; the Hebrew language rests its verse system upon a parallelism that also belongs to prose, creating thus an elastic medium of expression that can reflect the most subtle fluctuations of emo- tion.'' Perhaps there is no single cause from which oiu: current criticism has suffered more than from neglect of the literary study of the Bible. But modem criticism must also enlarge its conception of criticism itself, and discriminate four different tjrpes. We have in the first place, Inductive criticism: the examination of a particular piece of literature as it stands, with a view to inter- pretation and evolutionary classification. This is the indis- pensable basis for all other kinds of criticism. Of course, a critic of the judicial temperament would admit that, if he had failed to understand or had misinterpreted the literature he " Compare Literary Study of the Bible, pages 108-9, 185 £E., 423, and chapter xviii. ' Literary Study of the Bible, page 227, and chapter ix. ' Ibid., page 289, and chapter jdii. * Ibid., pages 113 ff. 2 28 Traditional Criticism: The Confusion of Types had been treating, his valuation or theory would fall to the ground. What he might perhaps fail to see is that such pure interpretation becomes possible only by a process from which the idea of judging has been wholly excluded. We have, in the second place, Speculative criticism, working toward a theory or philosophy of literature. There is ample room, in the third place, for the Judicial criticism which is the application of ac- cepted principles to particular pieces of literature. Yet a fourth type arises when literary criticism, of any kind, is treated as it- self independent literature, revealing the critic as author. What may prove inadmissible as an item of theory may nevertheless by its literary execution have high interest and value. Some will hold thatthis Free or Subjective criticism is the most important criticism of all. These four types of criticism, however they may mingle in a particular discussion, are in function clearly distinct. Traditional criticism was the unconscious arrogation of the whole field of criticism by a single one of these four t3rpes : the idea of criticism was narrowed to the idea of judgment, and no place was left for the interpretation from which the judicial attitude must be excluded. As modern study enlarges the field of literary survey, and the meaning it attaches to the word 'criticism,' so it enlarges our conception of the appreciative faculty, or 'taste.' The wide-reaching antithesis of static and evolutionary applies here also: side by side with judgment by fixed standards we have an evolutionary conception according to which every variety of literature, in the natural course of things, generates its own variety of appreciation. I propose in what follows to discuss separately each of the four types of criticism, and to begin with Speculative criticism. It might seem as if the criticism of Interpretation should have a logical priority, as the basis of all the rest. But the logical order is not always the best order of exposition; and there is an ad- vantage on the other side in the consideration that Speculative The Four Types of Literary Criticism 229 criticism deals with general conceptions of which the other kinds of criticism are the application. The three chapters which immediately follow will be devoted to Speculative criticism and the criticism of Interpretation. A fourth chapter will be upon the History of Critical Opinion; this will be a prelude to chapters on Judicial and Subjective criticism. I shall conclude with a few words upon the Position of Criticism in the Study of Litera- ture as a whole. CHAPTER XI SPECULATIVE CRITICISM.— THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEP- TION AND FUNCTION OF POETRY The subject on which we are now entering is what has usually been designated as the philosophy of literature. I have pre- ferred to speak of speculative criticism. I cannot see that there is any body of widely systematized thought obtaining sufficient general acceptance to constitute a philosophy of literature. The word 'speculative' suggests a tentative and temporary stage of advance toward such a philosophy. It lends itself to both of the modes in which men philosophize — a priori reasoning and induction; these in the tentative stage may well move together, like physiology kept side by side with clinics. Instead of seeking final definitions, the philosophy founded on which must stand or fall with the definition, we may advance speculative positions: tentative principles, not mutually ex- clusive, claiming what validity each may appear to have with- out prejudice to other principles that may be enunciated in the future. From the inductive point of view these will be working hjrpotheses. And a special service that may be rendered by criticism in the speculative stage is to make prominent the leading issues of literary philosophy, thus blazing trails by which the student may guide himself amid the tangle of con- flicting opinions. One such leading issue in criticism is the subject of the present chapter — the fundamental conception and function of poetry. In dealing with this, not the least of our difficulties will be to keep the discussion well within the bounds of literary theory, with as little divergence as may be into the outlying regions of psychology and aesthetics. Early treatments of the subject appeared before the provinces of study were clearly difier- 230 speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 231 entiated. The Poetics of Aristotle is at once philosophy of literature, practical treatise on rhetoric, and (incidentally) a system of elementary grammar. Aristotle not only constructs literary theory, but formulates it in harmony with the prevail- ing philosophy of ideas. At a very different epoch Addison founds his literary theory upon the faculty of the imagination:' but he is impelled to discuss — at great length — how this faculty works, the discussion reflecting the reigning philosophy of Descartes and the reigning psychology of Locke, to say nothing of indiscriminate reflections natural to the elegant essayist and the religious thinker of the eighteenth century. The desider- atum is a Uterary theory resting as far as may be on the Utera- ture it is intended to explain, and as little as possible entangled with successive stages of the aesthetic sciences. At the outset we may notice a way of looking at Uterature, and especially poetry, which perhaps has never been regularly formulated, but which nevertheless has wide prevalence, es- pecially at the present time. It may roughly be summed up thus, (i) In literature considered as literature the matter is little or nothing: the manner is almost everything. (2) This manner of Uterature consists very largely in phrase and diction; in such things as the grand style and nuances of expression. The free play of individual treatment is the point to emphasize, and theorizing should be discredited. (3) Where the question is of poetry, the main factor is rhythm and verse, and all that is traditionally known as the "poet's numbers." I beheve this is a false position: at the same time it appears to be a misreading of literary principles which are both true and important. I. Every possible kind of subject-matter — good and bad, high and low, trivial and weighty, novel and familiar, morally sound and unsound — can constitute, and has been made to con- stitute, the raw material for poetry of the highest order. Vice ''SpecUUor, Nos. 411-21. 232 Modern Reconstruction oj Criticism and crime are the natural food for tragedy; the weaknesses and meannesses of men are similarly the natural food for comic art; the most fleeting triviahties of social intercourse are the material out of which humor is constructed. Without pain and suffering there could be no pathos; without ugliness art would lose its effect of the grotesque. No poetry can be higher than the poetry of Dante and Milton: the masterpieces of these poets are pictures of hell and delineation of an archfiend. In this sense it may be said that in poetry the subject is of little moment, the manner of treatment is all-important. 2. But when we come to examine this manner of treatment in poetry, we find that it is a manner which largely affects the matter: which modifies, purifies, transfonns it. Failure to give attention to the matter of poetry thus artistically recast, through absorption in the interest of the expression, is a loss to Uterary study of serious importance. And, instead of there being opposition between mdividual treatment and literary theorizing, the freedom of individual treatment is itself a great part of the theory. 3. The contention that metrical considerations are the dominant factor in poetry is the reappearance of what at the com- mencement of this work was described as a fundamental mis- conception which, more than any other single cause, has brought literary study into confusion.' This misconception rests upon the ambiguity of the word 'prose,' which has unconsciously led to the identification of poetry with verse. I have main- tained that the fundamental distinction in literature is the dis- tinction between creative literature and the literature that is not creative; that the words 'poetry' and 'fiction,' both by etymology and by early usage, are the proper terms to designate the literature that is creative; that the distinction of verse and prose belongs to an entirely different order of thought. The origin of the misunderstanding is easily explained. By the ' Chapter I, pages 13-17, especially footnote to page 17. , speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 233 regular order of things verse for a long period dominates all literature, and prose appears late; accordingly the early poems of the Greeks, which gave our world its first conception of great poetry, were poems in verse, and caused a natural association of meter with poetry. A wider survey of literature shows that, while the great bulk of ancient poetry was in verse, the greater part of modern poetry (creative literature) is in prose; and that such supreme poetry as that of Shakespeare expresses itself in rapid transitions from verse to prose and prose to verse, these transitions producing just the dramatic effects which in Greek drama are produced by transition between different kinds of verse.' A wide survey of literature shows further that, while verse and prose in Greek are entirely unlike one another, in other literatures verse and prose shade into one another until the two can overlap. If the question is to be decided upon authority, the great names of Aristotle, Bacon, Sidney, Ben Jonson, Shelley, and Wordsworth may weigh against the large number of critics who have stood for the other view. More- over, this opposition view that makes verse a necessity of poetry is itself a position not entirely without foundation. The element of soundness in it is this : that, where poetry (creative literature) expresses itself in verse, it is both possible and prob- able that the metrical form will react to some extent upon the creative matter; we shall thus have poetry in verse and poetry in prose as two species of poetry. It is one thing to discriminate the species: quite another thing to make this discrimina- tion the same as the difference between poetry and what is not poetry. The usage of the terms is in hopeless confusion that no s kill can harmonize; it is however open to us to adopt a usage that is in harmony with fundamental principles. Not to do this involves us in absurdities. We must on such a theory pronounce that, while Lucretius' great work is poetry of the highest order, the epoch-making translation of it by Munro is ' Compare below, chapter xxvi, pages 479-86. 234 Modern Reconstruction of Criticism not poetry at all, yet comparatively unimportant metrical translations of it are to be considered poetry. In the same spirit we must decliae to recognize Shakespeare's Tempest as a poem: we must say that it commences to be a poem at line 57, and ceases to be a poem at line 68; becomes a poem again in the second scene; wavers between poetry and not poetry in the early part of Act II; ceases to be a poem at line i8 of the second scene of that act — and so on. Or we can escape this absurdity only by the greater absurdity of laying down that drama — ^which to the Greeks was the most concentrated of all kinds of poetry — ^is not poetry at all, but an amphibious thing which may not be classified as either poetry or prose. This digression has taken us into the very heart of the ques- tion we have before us — the relation of poetry to its subject- matter. Or we may put it, the relation of poetry to reality: for it is clear that poetry does not deal with x, y, z — ^abstrac- tions kept clear of the concrete. So far as appears on the sur- face, poetry has to do with just such persons and incidents and experiences and sentiments as we have in the real world around us. The question becomes, Is this surface impression correct ? or has reality become modified as it has been worked up into art ? The question emerges in the earliest discussions of literature. Speculative criticism makes its first important appearance in the imaginary dialogues of Plato. A much-quoted passage of Plato' represents Socrates as excluding Homer from his ideal state on the express ground that the poems give us incidents and ideas which, if we encountered them in real life, would be unwholesome. In another passage, where the undercurrent of thought is the philosophy of ideas — the notion that what we call reality is only a copy of eternal ideas — objection is made to poetry and the arts that these are only a copy of the copy." In fact, "the imitative art is completely divorced from truth." ' Republic, Book X, sections 598-99. ' Republic, Book X, passim, especially section S97. speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 235 If this train of reasoning is correct, then poetry is only a special form of philosophy: the criteria to be applied to the content of a poem are the same as the criteria applied to reality. Aris- totle, on the other hand, bases his theory of poetry on its con- trast to such a thing as history in its relation to reality and fact. The poet and the historian diEEer not by writing in verse or prose. The work of Herodotus might be put into verse, and it would still be a species of history, with meter no less than without it. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particiilar. By the universal I mean how a person of a certain type wUl on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probabil- ity or necessity; and it is this universality at which poetry aims in the names she attaches to the personages. The particular is — for example — ^what Alcibiades did or suffered.' Such passages as these not only raise the question we have before us, but also give us one hint toward its solution. It appears that poetry does not stand alone as regards relation to reality: what we call the fine arts are in the same category, or at least raise the same questions. We must not assimie that there is no difference between poetry and the other arts; but we are entitled, in considering the relation of poetry to reality, to get what light we can from viewing the fine arts as a whole. Is poetry a mode of philosophy or a mode of art ? It is remarkable how the traditional discussion of this ques- tion has been made to hang upon a single word — the Greek word mimesis, of which the traditional translation is imitation. Yet it is at least doubtful whether the spirit of these words is not altogether different. The connotation of the word imitation is positive: it suggests resemblance to reality. It is a question whether the word mimesis has not also a negative connotation, suggesting what is other than reality. At the back of the abstract term mimesis is the common noun mimus, the ordinary ' Poetics, chapter ix. 236 Modern Reconstruction of Criticism Greek word for an actor or spectacular entertainer. Thus to the Greek mind the presentive idea in all this class of words would be the dramatic or spectacular entertainment. Now, the root idea of such spectacular entertainment is acting, pre- tending, making yourself other than you are: all that children mean by their expressive word make-believe. If we look at the spirit of this make-believe, we see that it may be effective by close resemblance to life, or equally effective by being refresh- ingly unlike real life. The word creative has just this neutral suggestiveness; and this is the same idea which is found to underlie the words poet and poetry. In creative exhibitions we have character-painting that seeks to get close to actual life, and caricature which seeks to get as far away as possible; one plot tells by its probability, the plot of an extravaganza or farce is an outrageous violation of probability. Reasons may be assigned for preferring one or other of these types: but they are all alike varieties of creation. If such a word as 'creation,' instead of 'imitation,' had been made the basic idea for the dis- cussion of poetry and art, criticism might have been saved from many of the false scents upon which it has opened.' Many diffierent views have been put forward, and have found acceptance, as to the way in which reality becomes modi- fied in its appearance as art.^ We shall be safe in taking the ' The tenor of the argument refers to the traditional use of "imitation" as a basic idea of poetry. As to the use of the word in the text of Aristotle's Poetics, each passage must be determined by its context, it being always remembered that the Greek word has this double connotation. In Mr. Butcher's edition of the Poetics, the chapter on "Imitation as an Aesthetic Term" is valuable. ' As I am here discussing general theory, and in no sense giving a history of speculation, I shall rarely refer to authorities. For those who desire principles rather than detailed history, I especially recommend W. B. Worsfold's Principles of Criticism (Longmans), a work to which, once for all, I express my own great indebtedness. For fuller history: Professor Saintsbury's monumental History of Criticistn in three volumes (Dodd, Mead & Co.), especially its valuable "interchapters," and Gayley and Scott's Introduction to the Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism (Ginn) are highly serviceable. speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 237 position that poetry and art are a many-sided modification and extension of reality. I shall proceed, in the manner indicated at the commencement of this chapter, to formulate four prin- ciples: they are not to be understood as mutually exclusive, but each will have its own validity as explaining the phenomena of poetry and art. Poetry and the arts are a representation of reality in some special medium: the different media of the different arts in them- selves constitute a modification of reality. The medium of painting may be described as surface form, mass, and color; of sculpture, form in three dimensions and silb- stance; of music, rhythm and tone and timbre; of dancing, figures in motion. To make art, some real thing, or some ad- dition to the things of reality, must be translated into one of these or similar media. The anchor of a ship is not a thing of art: but an anchor cast in gold or carved in cocoanut is art. A familiar face is not art, but its portrait is; and the art is difier- ent according as the portrait is cast in bronze, or cut in marble, or painted in oils or water colors. The cry of a bird is not a thing of art: but when a succession of sounds, by no means identical with the sounds of the bird's cry, but suitable to some musical instrument, and forming a part of some musical progres- sion, suggests the thought of a bird, such representation becomes art. In each case there is no art unless the mind recognizes in what is before it a representation and not a reality. Thus art > excludes illusion. A certain painter having painted a picture of fruit in such wise that the birds came and pecked at it, his rival undertook to surpass this feat. When the day appointed for the trial was come, all being assembled, the painter bade his rival draw aside the curtain and show the wonderful picture. Now, what the painter called a curtain was 238 Modern Reconstruction of Criticism in truth the picture itself: wherefore his rival laughed, and claimed the victory; for, said he, You indeed deceived silly birds, but I have deceived a great painter. The answer to this riddle is that neither painter was better than the other, but both feats were equally outside art; an exhi- bition which so deceives the beholder that he does not recognize a representation of something is as far from art as are the clever tricks of a juggler. It appears, moreover, that the different arts modify reality differently in their representations of it. An oil painting of a farmyard would show the trees and cows and grass with approximation to the color of these things in the real world. But if a silver cream jug were sculptured with a farm- yard scene the trees and cows and grass would all appear of the same silver color. No one would object to the art of the cream jug on the ground that cows similar in color to leaves are not to be found in nature; the mind without difficulty discriminates between differences which are to be understood of the thing represented and differences which belong to the medium of representation. From this point of view we must inquire, What is the medium for the art of poetry ? The only adequate answer is, Language with the thought it conveys. We must not stop short with language. Words are no more the medium of poetry than brush-strokes are the medivun of painting. A Greek ode, with its antistrophic correspondences, declaimed before an audience that did not know Greek, might well produce an artistic impression, but the art would be that of language, not of poetry. An imperfect idea of the poetic medium has led to mistakes of criticism. The Laocoon of Lessing' is a very valuable treatise: but at one point the author is led by this cause into error. The whole work has started from an interest- ' Translated by Beasley (Bohn). The reference is especially to chapters XV and xvi. speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 239 ing comparison between a piece of sculpture, representing the death of Laocoon, and a description of the same incident in the poetry of Virgil. As the discussion widens to the general dis- tinction between the branches of art, it lays stress on the fact that in painting or sculpture we see all the different parts of the whole together side by side; in the poetic description the ele- ments of the incident come to us successively one after another; the conclusion seems to be that the medium of painting or sculpture differs from the medium of poetry as juxtaposition differs from progression. But the argument ignores an ele- mentary psychologic fact as to the mode in which language leads to thought. While the different parts of a complex thought are being presented to the attention, they are held in suspense until, when they are complete, the mind auto- matically and in a single moment combines them into a whole; just as the elements of a chemical compound might lie for a long time side by side until some electric shock transforms the whole in a moment into a new substance. A reader of Brown- ing may have to keep his mind in a state of receptive passivity for a couple of pages before the long-expected finite verb comes to convert the two pages into a single thought: had the finite verb been different the whole thought would have been differ- ent. So it is at the conclusion of a poet's long description that the consecutive details are resolved into a unity of coexistence: the poem, as much as the sculpture, presents the elements of the incident in juxtaposition. What we are dealing with is not a psychological refinement, but a matter of great practical importance in the study of Uterature. For not one but many readings of a poem may be necessary before it is grasped as an artistic whole. True, with the first reading elements will have combined into a unity; but if — from unfamiliarity or other cause — some of the com- ponent parts have failed to rivet the attention, the resulting impression may be different in kind from the true one.. Leave 240 Modern Reconstruction of Criticism out even a single element of a chemical combination, and either no combination takes place, or the result may be a totally different compound. We listen to a symphony of Beethoven, made out of musical elements that are famiUar, and we have a clear impression of the whole. We listen to a modem sym- phony, which introduces novel harmonies and progressions, and at the end we have no impression at all; with a third or fourth hearing the novel elements have been assimilated, and the symphony of Strauss seems as clear as the symphony of Beethoven, though more complex. Obvious as all this is, I believe the neglect of such considerations has seriously affected both the general reader of poetry and the professed critic. It is a common complaint that popular readers take out of cir- culating libraries hardly anything but works of fiction. I should say that they could hardly make a better choice, if only these novels were really read. But in novel reading a main interest is curiosity as to the ending of the story: while this lasts other elements of the fiction are overlooked. In a second reading there can be no curiosity, and other artistic impressions have a chance. Three or four readings may be required for a novel of considerable length. Or again, it is remarkable how many writers of undoubted authority have pronounced the Second Part of Goethe's Famt a failure. I wish they could be compelled to tell us on oath how many times they have read it. For myself, I wiU confess that when I first read that work it seemed to me a labored chaos. This is natural enough: as ,1 have shown elsewhere,' the application of the germinal story of Faust to so vast a thing as modern culture involves an in- finite intricacy of matters to be brought into combination. With multiplied readings, the whole Faust poem of Goethe pre- sents itself to my mind as a consummate masterpiece: equally impressive in the separate parts and in the harmony of design into which they are brought. I would go so far as to lay down ' World Literature, chapter v. speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 241 that the most important postulate of literary study is the re- peated readings of poetry. II Poetry and art are a selection of reality: the selection may he (a) of the nature of elimination and purification; or (b) it may he selection for a particular purpose, such as pleasure, or (c) for the negation of particular purposes, the play-impidse. The word ' selection ' in this formula does not mean that out of the infinite variety of things about us art selects some things and not others; the meaning is that any thing of reality in be- coming art undergoes some sort of selective process. This selective process may be of the nature of elimination or purifi- cation. The idea has been excellently expressed in metaphorical language, by saying that the reality is 'filtered' or 'deodorized' in passing through the mind of the artist.' This at once ex- plains one of the great paradoxes of art: that disagreeable or unimportant reality can make agreeable and transcendent art. An audience in a theater, enjoying to the full the histrionic art of a tragic situation, becomes suddenly aware — such things are said to have happened — that the particular actor before them has taken advantage of the imaginary situation actually to stab a rival actor whom he hates: in an instant art satisfac- tion is transformed into horror and disgust. The drama had eliminated some element which the particular actor has brought back. Of course, a case like this might to some extent come under our first principle: the audience retained their sense of art as long as they took what was before them for a representa- tion and not a reahty. But this will not explain why, with all the world to choose from, art feels a special attraction for what is farthest from beauty: where the raw material is most un- promising the triumph of purification is , the greater. From ■ Worsfold, pages 93, m. 242 Modern Reconstruction of Criticism this point of view, again, we see how a faithful portrait can yet be more beautiful than the original; how a portrait in oils can, by the skill of the artist in suggesting various moods of the sitter, surpass the comparatively mechanical photograph that is limited to a single impression. In this connection perhaps we can best understand the conception of art idealization that reigns in Aristotle and other Greek critics.' With their underlying thought that reality is an imperfect representation of eternal ideas, they see in art this reality purified of its particulars and brought nearer to the generalization, purified of imperfections and brought nearer to the idea. Or, the selection may be for some particular purpose, such as 'pleasure'; or again, for that negation of all particular pur- poses which has been called the 'play-impulse.' A muscular or mental efiFort directed to. some special purpose is work, or perhaps exercise: a similar effort that has no ulterior purpose, but is pursued as an end in itself, is sport or play. There is certainly something attractive in this last suggestion: Maxim. — Art is real life at play. But a large number of writers, from Aristotle* to Mr. Court- hope,' have insisted strongly upon pleasure as a necessary element in the conception of poetry and art. To me, the sug- gestion seems to raise more difiScuIties than it solves. We are impelled to ask many questions. Is the meaning any kind of pleasure ? Is poetry merely an entertainment, to be judged by its success in entertaining ? Some such idea seems to be affected by Sir Walter Scott, when, in prefaces to Waverley Novels,'' he will describe what his intention has been, and how a dense pub- ' Chapters x and xi of Butcher's edition of the Poetics are valuable in this connection. ' Compare chapter iv of Butcher's edition. 3 Life in Poetry, Law in Taste (Macmillan). < Compare Introduction (of 1830) to The Monastery. speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 243 lie (so it seems to us) has completely missed it, and how accord- ingly he will not do it again. This hardly seems satisfactory, and comes perilously near what the candidate is supposed to say to the electors: These, gentlemen, are my poUtical prin- ciples, but if they are not satisfactory they can be changed. Are we to side with the large number of people who can find no pleasure in a story that has not a happy ending ? or are we to say with the poet. Be our joys three parts pain, and so justify tragedy ? Is the pleasure the pleasure of people in general today, or of a future generation that may come round to the point of view of the artist ? If we seek in any way to qualify the word 'pleasure,' the proposition begins to lose its significance. If, with Addison, we prescribe "enduring pleas- ures of the imagination," we have introduced a new factor into the discussion, and made the imagination tlie criterion of art. If we try to specify what kind of pleasure is to be understood, we soon get down to an identical proposition — that art is the selection of reaUty for art satisfaction. There is however one virtue in such a suggestion as the one we have been considering — that it brings in the reader or hearer of poetry. However we may formulate the modification of reality that is to constitute art, it is a modification that must take in the percipient of art as well as the creative artist. Ill Poetry and art are an arrangement of reality: the modification of reality consists in the relativity of the details in the work of art. A conception of constant recurrence in discussions of art is expressed by the phrase unity in diversity. To make an im- pression of art there must be variety enough to rouse interest, together with the comprehension of all the parts in a sense of imity. We are led directly to the foundation step in art analysis 244 Modern Reconstrtiction of Criticism — the division into human interest and design: the human interest of the matter, the design of the composition or plot. There must be no matter outside the design; everything must be present that is required to make the design intelligible. And a detail that is superfluous is a detail that is inartistic. There will be no art in what presents itself as a single point; nor in such a succession of details as a chronicle history, which reveals no mutual connection of the events. Hamlet is made to speak of the drama as "holding up the mirror to nature": the con- text may justify Hamlet's image, yet the idea of reflection as applied to art is dangerously misleading. A landscape reflected in a mirror is not a picture, for there is no composition. The reader's household life exactly imitated by actors on a stage would not be drama, for it would have no plot. Maxim. — In art no detail liveth to itself. Here we have a tangible criterion for the difference between reality and art. In nature and real life details have independent existence in themselves; in a work of art the raisond'ttre of each detail is its connection with all the rest. An artist is painting a portrait with his eye upon the sitter; it is suggested (say) that the hair hanging over the brow is too heavy; the artist corrects this defect — ^how ? Not necessarily by doing anything to the hair, but by blackening the background, upon which the hair seems to lift itself from the forehead. Relational signifi- cance of all that appears is what constitutes art. This principle, even more than the last, lays emphasis upon the percipient of art. An arranged spectacle implies a specta- tor; perspective is perspective only from a given point of view. A painting hung in one place is a work of art; if it be hung in another place there is no art, for all is seen out of focus. What is true of the painting appUes to the more complex art of poetry. The audience in the theater fixes the viewpoint for the unity of design we call plot, and for the distinctions of serious and comic speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 245 which we call tone. If we describe Dogberry and Verges as comic, it is because they are comic to the spectator: in the story itself Dogberry and Verges take themselves with ponderous seriousness. I would not dwell upon a point so obvious were it not that so much of criticism is invaUdated by neglect of these considerations. Many people are attracted to Shake- speare by his grasp of human life: this element they study seri- ously, but they have no use for such technicalities as plot and tone. Unfortunately, it is only by attention to these that the content of the play can be correctly interpreted. What is to be called the Uf e presented in a drama is, not what happens in the scenes, but these happenings arranged so as to produce specific effects. We turn at one point to the stage, and what presents itself is men grappling with one another in deadly struggle, and women bemoaning the sight — we see rage and agony; we turn round and look at the audience, and find everyone laughing at a comic situation. To say that the scene means rage and agony is plain misinterpretation: it means rage and agony so arranged as to seem ludicrous. As I have elsewhere shown at length, the plots of Shakespeare's plays, with the variations of tone that are part of the plots, are the sole key to the underlying philosophy of life.' IV^ Poetry and art are an independent interpretation of reality: the reaction of reality upon the creative faculty, as science is the re- action of reality upon the rationalizing faculty. So far we have spoken of reality as if it were a simple thing needing no explanation. But what we call reality is itself an ' Compare Introduction to my Shakespeare as Thinker, pages s-io: the whole book is an expansion of this idea. Compare also below, chapter xviii, pages 3SO-SS. » In this part of the work I would express a general obligation to the writings of Dr. J. C. Shairp, more especially to his Poetic Interpretation of Nature (Houghton). 246 Modern Reconstruction of Criticism interpretation. Perhaps there is nothing in the world around us which seems so positive as light and sound. But science pronounces light to be the reaction of ether waves upon the optical sense; sound to be the reaction of waves of air upon the auditory nerve. If all sentient things, animal and human, could suddenly cease to be, the universe would be plunged in darkness and silence. The ether waves would undulate as before, but there would be no optical sense upon which they could react to produce light; the tide, in the absence of ears to hear, would no longer thunder upon the beach, it would simply tumble. The reasoning processes by which science so interprets reality we may sum up as the rationalizing faculty. The principle just enunciated assumes a distinct creative faculty as the basis for art, corresponding to the rationalizing faculty which is the basis for science: the art which this creative faculty produces is an independent interpretation of reality. Several points in the above proposition need attention, and we may commence with the word 'faculty.' The case for a special faculty as the basis of art is strengthened by the con- sideration that we can recognize similar special faculties in other regions of thought. We may assume faith — the instinct of the spiritual — as the basis of religion; a moral sense as the basis of moraUty. These special faculties — ^it is hardly necessary to say — are not assumed as psychological ultimates, incapable of further analysis, but simply as points of departure for their respective spheres of thought. The psychological analysis of them belongs to psychology, not to criticism. No psychological analysis of such a faculty can affect the exercise of the faculty when formed, just as no theory respecting the origin of our powers of perception can determine what we shall perceive. Such special faculties are of course developed by exercise, and impaired by neglect; they may be rudimentary, or altogether lacking, in individuals; all of them are less widely distributed than the rationalizing faculty that is the basis of science. Each speculative Criticism: The Conception of Poetry 247 is valid only for its own special sphere: experiences of color- blindness have no relevancy to those who have an eye for colors. Addison is one of those who have thought on these lines, and he makes the faculty of imagination the basis of art. He writes: A Poet should take as much pains in forming his Imagination as a Philosopher in cultivating his Understanding.' .... It is this Talent of afEecting the Imagination that gives an Embellishment to Good Sense, and makes One Man's Compo- sition more agreeable than another's. It sets o£E Writings in general, but is the very Life and highest Perfection of Poetry It has something in it like Creation; it bestows a kind of Existence, and draws up to the Reader's View several Objects which are not to be found in Being. It makes Additions to Nature, and gives a greater Variety to God's works." 'Imagination' is a very suggestive word to express the creative faculty in art; but we must beware of being led by the use of it into any detailed theory of its operation. The strength of the critical principle we are considering lies in its simply assuming a special faculty as the basis of art, and so claiming the art thus brought to us as an independent interpretation of reality. This principle, like those that have preceded it, has appKca- tion to the percipient of art as well as to the artist. We may continue the formula: The creative faculty extends and modifies reality by a doable process: viz., "to purify and clarify them by passing them through the mediimi of art," is an interesting illustration of one of the theories of art discussed above, pages 241-42. Plot the Key to Story Philosophy 353 pity and terror; or his doctrine of Hamartia^ — the tragic in- terest of a personality brought to ruin, not by the evil in him, but by some slight deviation from perfection; or Mr. Mere- dith's conception of comedy:' all these are excellent or vicious according to the use made of them. If they are put forward as single motives in dramatic analysis, they become illuminating principles. If (as usually happens) they are taken to be limiting definitions of what tragedy or comedy ought to be, then they are static ideas in conflict with the natural evolution of poetry, and will be contradicted again and again by what tragedy and comedy are seen to contain. It will be said that integral parts of a story — particular per- sonalities or incidents or effects — are also life in the concrete, and call for analysis. This is true: but the material on which such conceptions are to be based must always be referred to the plot which binds all together. Such story material, for example, has an interest in its rela- tion to the antithesis of inner and outer, character and manners. Caricature does not mean clumsy character-painting. Manners and character are two distinct literary interests: the one, mere surfaces of personality, making part of the spectacle of life; the other, outward manners interpreted into more or less of probability in the light of inner motives. At one end of a scale we have the 'humors' which Ben Jonson loves to present'; at the other end is the Ibsen social drama, or novels depending solely on character interest. Between come the many novelists and dramatists who combine the treatments; especially Shake- speare, Scott, and Dickens. Dickens is perhaps the most notable of these three, because his canvas is so crowded with figures. It is a shallow criticism that would caU Dickens a caricaturist. ' Poetics, xiii, 3: compare Mr. Butcher's valuable discussion, pages 319 ff. ' Essay on Comedy (Scribner). 3 Compare especially Prologue to his Every Man Out of His Humour. 354 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy The technique of his novels seems to select for a central per- sonage some David Copperfield or Florence Dombey, normal, perhaps commonplace, with whom the largest number of read- ers will be in sympathy. Attached to such central character are others — ^like Florence Dombey's father — abnormal, it may be, but fully revealed. Other characters are related to the central personage as heroes or villains of some tragic plot — like Edith Dombey or Carker the manager: in this capacity they are fully exhibited, but only in this aspect. Other personages have a smaller part in the" whole action of the story, and are proportionately less delineated: Mrs. Skewton, the juvenile old woman; Joe Bagstock, the blunt flatterer. On the out- skirts of the action there are crowded together what are seen as mere surfaces, scratches of manners-painting — Captain Cuttle, inseparable from a glazed hat; Jack Bunsby, with his eye for- ever on the coast of Greenland; Mrs. MacStinger, in the act of chastizing her offspring and setting them on the pavement to cool. Thus life, in Dickens' novels, is presented to the cen- tral personages of the story as life in reality is seen by each one of us: a center of character as fully revealed as one's own con- sciousness, and round this concentric circles of decreasing indi- viduality, ending in an horizon of unexplained 'humors.' So generally, the analysis of a particular character involves, among other thuigs, the degree to which, in the economy of the plot, the personality is allowed to display itself. From this interest of character and manners we must dis- tinguish another interest reflected in such terms as tragic, comic, farcical. This is, technically, interest of tone.' And tone is a particular aspect of plot: it is the emotional perspective in which the material of a story is presented. It is a mistake to think of tragic and comic as emotional qualities attaching to the experience portrayed. The Comedy of Errors — apart from ■ Compare Shakespeare as Thinker, pages 9-10, or chapter x; Sltake- speare as Artist, chapter xviil from page 343. Plot the Key to Story Philosophy 355 Aegeon — is full of the richest comedy: yet the actual experience of Adriana and Luciana and the two Antipholuses is, to these personages themselves, acutely painful; it is to the spectator, who sees this experience in the perspective of the whole plot, that the effect is comic. It is upon the spectator that the mixture of tones in a drama is brought to play. To sum up: the matter of story presents life, not in the casual connection of things we call reality, but life focused into a perspective of which the plot of the story is the formulation. It is this arrangement in perspective that brings the life pre- sented close to philosophic principle. To ignore plot is to see the life out of drawing. When principles of analysis like this have been fully observed, then it appears how rich story is in the philosophy of life. In the great phrase of Bacon, the truth of being, and the truth of knowing, are one: differing no more than the direct beam and the beam reflected. CHAPTER XIX LITERATURE AS THE CRITICISM OF LIFE Matthew Arnold was bringing a valuable phrase into the currency of common speech when he described literature as the criticism of life.' By 'criticism' Arnold understands the power of seeing things as they really are.^ Such is also the function of science. But the science which so markedly dis- tinguishes the modern world from the world of antiquity is bound up with specialization; the observation — comprehensive and minute — on which science rests is impossible except by the division of the field between co-operating bands of specialists. Such specialization is incompatible with what is meant in Arnold's phrase by 'life.' Where human life becomes the sub- ject of scientific treatment — in biology, sociology, psychology, and the like — only single aspects of life are considered, one at a time. It is the .synthesis of all these separate aspects that is expressed by our use of the word ' life ' in the full sense : as when we speak of 'seeing life,' or when we use the great saying — Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto. There is no possibility here of specialization: life in this sense we should have to murder in order to dissect. Accordingly literature, which is the mother country from which special studies have passed out as colonists, retains its dominion over the criticism of life. And it must be an unspecialized philosophy which performs this function: the instrument of observation would not be made truer by restricting itself further than the matter to be observed will admit. Poetry and prose, creation ' In his Introduction to Ward's English Poets (Macmillan). » Compare his Essays in Criticism. First Series (Macmillan), page i. 3S6 Literature as the Criticism of Life 357 and discussion, with all their varieties, must co-operate in the literary treatment of life.' In primitive literature, which is the stage common to all particular literatures before they have differentiated, the phi- losophy of Ufe has already begun. It manifests itself in the proverb, or gnome, which remains to the end the only philosophy of the uneducated classes. A proverb is a unit of thought in a unit of form. Each is a separate and independent observation made on hxmian life: the word 'aphorism' suggests how each, so to speak, has an horizon of its own. Even if there be no other prose or verse form, the epigrammatic character of the proverb has the effect of form. Such proverbs then are natural crystals of wisdom. They maintain themselves, and multiply through all subsequent phases of literary advance. Of the national literatures that associate themselves with our world literature, it is perhaps Spanish literature that is richest in this primitive wisdom: Sancho Panza is its prophet, and his dis- course — ^wheh he feels himself at home — ^becomes little more than aggregations of such wisdom crystals. And if your high and mightiness does not think fit to let me have this same government, why so be it; it may be for the good of my conscience to go without it. I am a fool, it is true, but yet I under- stand the meaning of the saying, The pismire had wings to do her hurt; and Sancho the squire may sooner get to heaven than Sancho the governor. There is as good bread baked here as in France, and Joan is as good as my lady in the dark. In the night all cats are grey. Unhappy he is that wants his breakfast at two in the after- noon. It is always good fasting after a good breakfast, There is no man has a stomach a yard bigger than another; but let it be never so big, there will be hay and straw enough to fill it. A bellyfull is a bellyfull. The sparrow speeds as well as the sparrow-hawk. Good serge is fine, but coarse cloth is warm; and four yards of the one are as long as four yards of the other. When the hour is come we must ■ The matter of this chapter runs parallel with, and is an expansion of, part of chapter vi. 3S8 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy all be packed off; the prince and the prick-louse gq. the same way at last; the road is no fairer for the one than the other. The Pope's body takes up no more room than the sexton's, though one be taller; for when they come to the pit all are alike, or made so in spite of our teeth; and so good-night, or good-morrow, which you please. And let me tell you again if you don't think fit to give me an island be- cause I am a fool, I will be so wise as not to care whether you do or no. It is an old saying. The devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glisters. From the tail of the plough Bamba was made king of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes, if the old ballads say true, and sure they are too old to tell a lie As for the governing part, let me alone: I was ever charitable and good to the poor, and scorn to take the bread out of another man's mouth. On the other side, by our Lady, they shall play me no foul play. I am an old cur at a crust, and can sleep dog-sleep when I list. I can look sharp as well as another, and let me alone to keep the cobwebs out of my eyes. I know where the shoe wrings me. I will know who and who is together. Honesty is the best policy: I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship.' When we come to literature in its full development, the philosophy of life appears, firstly, in wisdom literature. The supreme example of this type is the wisdom literature of the Bible. In this we can trace most clearly— as I have shown at length elsewhere' — the rise of the different literary forms of wisdom. We have aggregations of independent proverbs; then — especially in Ecclesiasticus — we see proverbs clustering around leading topics, and so passing, by stages, to the full form of the essay. The proverb couplet is the meeting-point of prose and verse: there is development, on the prose side, into the maxim, the essay, and the rhetorical encomium; on the verse side, into the epigram and the (Biblical) sonnet. Hebrew ' Motteux' translation. ' Literary Study ef the Bible, chapter xiii. Wisdom literature is also dis- cussed in the Introductions to the successive books of wisdom in the Modern Reader's Bible. Literature as the Criticism of Life 3 59 wisdom naturally oscillates between creation and reflection. We have here the grand personification of Wisdom, which has produced some of the greatest poetry in the world. It is in this that we catch most clearly the identification of moral order with the sustaining order of the external universe; by this per- sonification the interpreting principle of life becomes itself a vital thing, and we seem to have come upon the living soul of philosophy. Biblical wisdom is interesting, again, as presenting a closed circle of thought. The four books. Proverbs, Ecclesi- asticus, Ecclesiastes, Wisdom of Solomon — for Job, as a drama, stands apart — give us wisdom as passing through distinct stages. First, there is a stage of calm: adoration of the wisdom of the whole universe, combined with shrewd analysis of details. Then there is a stage of crisis where — ^in Ecclesiastes — analysis applied to the whole breaks down in skepticism, and wisdom changes to vanity. There is a final stage of triumph, when the idea of life is enlarged to immortal life, and Wisdom reap- pears as Providence. It may seem only a detail, but it is a very interesting detail, that our last view of Biblical wisdom gives just a glimpse of further development: For himself gave me an imerring knowledge of the things that are: to know the constitution of the world, and the operation of the ele- ments; the beginning and end and middle of times; the alternations of the solstices and the changes of seasons; the circuits of years and the positions of stars; the natures of living creatures and the ragings of wild beasts; the violences of winds and the thoughts of men; the diversities of plants and the virtues of roots. Ail things that are either secret or manifest I learned: for she that is the artificer of aU things taught me, even Wisdom.' In these enumerations we have a rhetorical foreshadowing of the analytic sciences. In the Classical literatures the course of wisdom is different. The starting-point is the same: Greece has its seven Wise Men, ' Wisdom of Solomon 7:17. 360 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy with their gnomic sayings. But at an early stage Greek wisdom was diverted in two different directions. On the one side it passes, through the transition stage of Plato, into analytic philosophy, continuous with the philosophy of modern times. On its practical side, Greek wisdom is absorbed into oratory, that wide literary area in which so much of the productions of Greek and Latin writers is comprehended: this is the appli- cation of literature to the business of life. At a later stage we have the wisdom literature of Seneca's writings, and the exquisite essays of Cicero on Friendship and Old Age. At its very close Classical wisdom returns to earlier forms in the essays of Epictetus, and especially the sayings of Marcus Aurelius which, for so many centuries, made the wisdom of Europe. The wisdom stage of philosophy is characteristic of oriental civilizations. In Indian literature, as in Greek, there has been an elaborate and subtle analytic philosophy. But the Vedantic philosophy stands entirely outside our world literature. On the other hand, Indian wisdom — from the original Vedas to the last poem of Sir Rabindranath Tagore — ^is readily assimilated by the western mind. A similar remark applies to Arabic or Chiuese wisdom. And Persian poetry — through the mediating interpre- tation of Fitzgerald — ^has given the world perhaps the greatest of all wisdom poems in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. In the modem world wisdom literature abounds — all but the name. This is surely the true designation for that large class of poetry of which, perhaps. In Memoriam is the best type; which includes great part of the poetry of Wordsworth and Browning, and of many lesser poets. Such a poem as Browning's Easter Day illustrates how poetic wisdom can fluctuate between re- flection and creative story. But indeed modern wisdom litera- ture has a flexibility of form that defies analysis. Satire is the comic counterpart of wisdom. Mediaeval life, in which there was so large a reversion to floating literature. Literature as the Criticism of Life 361 gives us the two types symbolized where some ruler of men appears with the Spruch-sprecker on his right hand, and the Fool on his left:' the Sayer of Wise Sayings, and the Fool, alike pour out wisdom. The institution of the Court Fool is simply wisdom disguising itself in cap and bells. Even comedy, as Mr. Meredith says, is thoughtful laughter. But in literary evolu- tion — as a former chapter' has shown — pure comedy is the later stage: the earlier stage is always satire. Greek iambic dances, Latin saturae or hodge-podge, the mythic dramas of Epicharmus, Aristophanic and great part of Roman comedy, aU have their basis in satiric attack; only gradually does the satire take a second place as caricature, and pure comedy come to the front. The realities of life cast grotesque shadows when the light of wisdom is thrown upon them: such shadow play is satiric comedy. In the other kind of satire, of which Juvenal is the grand type, the spirit is different: the philosophy of life has now grown bitter, and ridicule is flavored with hate. But the basis of this hate is wisdom. The very coarseness of such satire is, at bottom, a clvunsy tribute to decency. The philosophy of life appears again in the great literature of personality, with all its varying forms. This belongs espe- cially to modem literature. The personality of the earlier world — as Mr. Posnett' points out — ^was objective, and an individual was important in proportion as he revealed his clan or other social unit; as time goes on the center of interest shifts more and more from the aggregate to the individual. Even history will include lives of the great personages who have swayed events: with Plutarch's Lives* we get the interest of compara- tive personality, and it was through Plutarch that the world of ' Compare Sir W. Scott's Talisman, chapter xi. ' Chapter viii, pages 166, 173. 3 Posnett's Comparative Literature (Kegan Paul), page 131. 4 Compare my World Literature, pages 391-9S; and for this whole para- graph, chapter viii of that work. 362 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy the Renaissance was introduced to the world of antiquity. As a sequel to this we have the literature of character-sketching: with masterpieces like the English Microcosmography; the maxim writing of the French La Bruyere and Rochefoucauld, and of the Spanish Garcia; the self -revelation of Montaigne, and the chatty philosophy of Addison. The essay is fully established as an organ of personality; and a large class of lyric poems are subjective lyrics — crystallizations of a momentary sentiment, expressions of a single personal situation. Biogra- phy enlarges from lives of historical personages to lives that are interesting as so many studies of life; such biographical matter will take in familiar letters and diaries — all of them docu- ments for interest in human life. Formal sciences like psychol- ogy and ethics can deal only with generalities: the literature of personality is a sort of distributive ethics and psychology, all necessary if the philosophy of life is to be made complete. The growing minuteness with which individuality is studied reaches a climax in the sense of humor. Humor — as distinct from other provinces of laughter — ^rests distinctly upon the smaller peculiarities of personality.' This humor is a world in itself: an invigorating contemplation of clashing individualities, in which the philosophy of life has become a sport. It is at once a form of literature, and an element that interpenetrates all other forms; the only danger is lest hiunor, like a weed, should kill all other literary interests. The literary philosophy of life extends to take in the whole of creative literature. The previous chapter has discussed at length how story is a mode of interpretative thinking; how fiction, for secondary function, serves as the experimental side to the science and art of himian life. It is, of course, a sound instinct that regards its inherent beauty as the foremost use of creative literature. And it is true (we have seen) that the philosophic analysis of fiction has proved liable to serious errors ■ Compare Shakespeare as Thinker, chapter x. Literature as the Criticism of Life 363 and fallacies. Still, traditional errors of interpretation cannot affect a fundamental principle of literature. The errors are imperfections in the practice of interpretation: we must learn to spell before we can read in the field of poetic philosophy. Short cuts to the philosophy of drama and story will lead usually to philosophic bogs. On the other hand, the undervaluing of the interpretation of life latent in creative literature has brought great impoverishment to literary study. Finally, we have seen how the evolution of literature, begin- ning with a floating literature that is oral, reaches completeness with a floating literature of periodical writing — journalism in all its multiple forms.' Here we have one more organ for the philosophy of human life; an organ just fitted to catch the flimsy or evanescent elements that are beyond the range of more solid literature. What seem otherwise the deficiencies of journalism, from this point of view become so many virtues- its ultra-miscellaneousness, its ephemeral character: the reflec- tion of life finds here an instrument as flexible as the thing with which it deals. Only an instrument like this can shoot the passing folly — or wisdom — as it flies. When the present time shall have become a time long past, it is safe to predict that students of the philosophy of life will turn to the reflection of our days in the days' papers, more readily than to other kinds of literature, for light on the character of our age. ' Compare above, chapter i, pages 21, 25 ff. CHAPTER XX LITERATURE AS A HIGHER INTERPRETATION OF LIFE AND NATURE The criticism of life implies the power of seeing life as it actually is. But the range of literature as the, philosophy of life goes beyond this to a higher interpretation, which enhances as it interprets. It might be asked, Is not the phrase 'higher interpretation' a contradiction in terms? if we are enhancing are we not so far ceasing to interpret? The objection would hold good in what was only the criticism of life. But literature includes creation as well as criticism. It is by virtue of its creative power that poetry imparts of its own to what it touches;, confers on it enhanced values, yet such kind of values as are con- sistent with the function of interpreting. The first form which this higher interpretation takes is ex- pressed by the word 'idealization.' It is a word of extreme beauty: a legacy to modern speech from the old philosophy of ideas, which reigned through the Classical period, and, passing through the mediaeval controversy of realist and nominalist, was brought into contact with modern thought. The essence of the original philosophy was that the actual things about us were varied and imperfect copies of archetypes that belonged to a higher sphere of existence. In part, no doubt, this philoso- phy was based upon misapprehension. The Greeks were a people of a single language; they lacked the illumination that comparative study of languages casts upon the nature of lan- guage itself. They were thus always in danger of mistaking between words and things.' The modem mind has no diffi- • Compare World lAkrature, page ig; or Bryce's Holy Roman Empire, chapter vii. 364 The Higher Interpretation of Life and Nature 365 culty in seeing that there are no such things as blackness and length; that these are abstract terms in the classification which distinguishes between black and white things, things longer and shorter. In the realist and nominalist controversy one party insisted that these abstract ideas had a real existence inde- pendent of the things in which they were manifested; the other party insisted that they were only names used in the process of classification. The philosophy may have passed away; but in literature it is imperishable through the word 'ideal' which it has left behind it. It is open to us to study classes of things, searching through actual variations and imperfections to the archetype or ideal of each class. If these archetypes have no existence of their own, poetry can create them, and give them ideal existence. To idealize is thus to create: but it is also to interpret, for it is by study of the whole class that we arrive at its archetype. To call a man an angel may be to enhance, for angelic is a higher order of being than human; but it is not to interpret, for the two orders of being are diverse. On the other hand, to study the whole class of mankind with its infinite variations tiU we arrive at an ideal conception; to be possessed— in Seeley's great phrase' — ^with the enthusiasm of humanity that can trace the type in the imperfect realization of it: this is idealization, and idealization is the great work of poetry. It is to be noted that idealization is bound up with classification. To idealize is not simply to improve; for example, by taking a thing out of its class. If Shakespeare gives us ideal purity in Mariana and Isabella, he equally gives us ideal viUainy in Richard the Third: had the play ended with the conversion of Richard he would have been so much the less ideal. Good and evU, and the countless varieties of each, and the interplay of all these varieties in actual life-^these things, each in its kind, are the subject-matter of idealization; and such idealiza- tion is the higher interpretation of each. I Ecce Homo (Macmillan), chapter xiv. 366 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy The higher interpretation appears, in the second place, in the poetic handling of nature. Nature is the name given to external things, including man himself, regarded as the entour- age of the thinking mind, the sphere in which individual con- sciousness moves. This nature is interpreted by science in its own analytic way, such as resolves the rainbow into a form of prismatic action, and must bound its whole view by nature as it is. On the other hand, poetry by its creative power trans- forms the things of nature: yet only by aid of such ideas as the things of nature themselves evoke, so that the transformation is also interpretation. Thus man stands to nature in the posi- tion of a creator. Tradition tells how man himself is by the supreme Creator formed out of the dust of the earth, with the spirit of God breathed into him: poetry presents to us nature with the spirit of man breathed into it. We think of the eighth psalm as the grand charter of man's creative power over the world of nature. The psalm presents man as the viceroy of God: the Creator of the mighty heavens has made man — in comparison with these heavens a mere babe and suckling — his representative. For man himself a note of humility is struck: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? And the son of man, that thou visitest him ? Yet to this man is delegated God's sovereignty over nature. For thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, Yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, Whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. The Higher Interpretation of Life and Nature 367 The dominion is not limited by material uses: part of man's sovereignty over nature is to re-create. Thus, in the spirit of Sir Thomas Browne's saying quoted before/ the work of crea- tion did not cease with the sLxtli day: the creation of the uni- verse is still going on, and man is creating poetic nature. This is not the place to deal in detail with the poetic inter- pretation of nature, a topic so admirably handled by such writers as Shairp' and Biese:^ how man insinuates into nature itself his own exhilarating appreciation of opfen-air life; how he makes nature the setting for his own historic feats or individual experience; how he colors the features of nature with his own emotions, or, by parables, masses things of nature spiritual symbols; how by all shades of personification he raises impas- sive nature into a conscious being with a soul of its own. Perhaps no element of poetry is more universally grasped and appreciated than the poetry of nature. There appears to be only one word to be said on the other side. The poetic treatment of nature has been somewhat discounted through the influence of a phrase made current by Ruskin, when he applies the term 'pathetic fallacy' to the in- stinctive sentiment which feels the gloom of twilight, or speaks of the sighing wiad and the melancholy ocean. The phrase has been misunderstood. The only fallacy is where the observer of nature so colors it with his own personal emotions that he loses the power to see it truly as it is. Here there is illusion: and illusion (we have seen) is foreign to poetic and all other art. Some such illusion appears in the conventional treatment of nature which pervaded poetry so long: stock epithets of an " Above, page 297. 'J. C. Shairp's Poetic Interpretation of Nature (Houghton). I would repeat that in ail this part of the work I am under great obligation to this book. 3 Alfred Biese's The Feeling for Nature (translation published by Rout- ledge). 368 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy earlier time — ^which had once been genuine — came between real nature and the poets of the age of Pope and Johnson, and they babbled of nature beauties which they themselves would have been incapable of seeing. Hence the cry for a "return to na- ture." It is only when true observation of nature unites with creative coloring that we have the higher interpretation. A third sphere for the higher interpretation is found in prophecy — ^if only the word be rightly understood. No word has suffered more from the wear and tear of usage. In the speech of today prophecy means no more than prediction; and this usage has even induced a false etymology, as if the pro- in prophecy was the pro- that means 'beforehand.' In the true etymology it is the other pro- that means 'in place of.' The prophets of the Hebrew world were those who spoke in place of God, interpreters of the divine. And so to the Greek the Muses are prophets of Apollo: the essential spirit of poetry speaks through the variety of poetic forms. The prophetic literature of the Bible, like other literature, contains predictions: in this case the accident of meaning extruded the essence, and the word prophecy has passed into almost irremediable eclipse. When we examine the spirit of prophetic literature — ^in the Bible or elsewhere' — we see how prophetic is, in the spiritual sphere, the correlative of poetic in the sphere of art. Prophecy is spiritual idealization: it interprets life, not merely as it is, but in all its spiritual possibilities. It energizes what it touches, yet not so as to change it iato something else, but to develop it according to its own inherent law. Prophecy differs from wis- dom by its dynamic power; stoicism can interpret the mora,l life, but has no dynamic to make the ititerpretation prevail. Classical thought had its age of gold: but a golden age placed in the remote past could be only an idealized picture. Hebrew ' For the general conception of prophecy compare the Modern Reader's Bible (one-volume edition), pages 13883. For detailed discussion see Literary Study of the Bible, chapters xvi-xx. The Higher Interpretation of Life and Nature 369 prophecy, placing its ideal in the future, brings dynamic power to create a golden age. Satire can powerfully depict the evil side of life: prophecy, bringing to bear upon life both passion for righteousness and quickened sense of actual evil, raises the ideal of redemption as a supreme inspiration. And so in modern — or other — times we rightly call such men as Carlyle and Ruskin and William Morris the prophets of their ages: yet none is en- titled to the name who does not first interpret truly the age to which he belongs, and then add to his interpretation the rousing power which works for the age's elevation. Thus here, as in the other cases, we have the power to discern truly combining with something beyond itself: it is the fusion of criticism with creation that gives the higher interpretation of natiu:e and h\unan Life. CHAPTER XXI THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF LITERATURE AS IMPORTANT AS LITERARY ART We are concerned at this point with literature considered as a mode of philosophy. The word 'philosophy' expresses an attraction to a certain sophia, or wisdom, to which perhaps the nearest counterpart in our modem speech is the word 'inter- pretation.' It appears, first, as interpretation of life in action, or conduct. This widens to contemplation, contemplation alike of life and the external universe. Contemplation intensi- fies into analysis. When analysis is extended to the totality of things, it inevitably involves specialization and the unlimited subdivision of the field. Philosophy thus becomes a loose ex- ■|»ression for a bundle of independent sciences; or, philosophy itself takes on a scientific function, and becomes the scientia scientiarum — the science occupied with correlating the results of other sciences. Meanwhile, philosophy is one of the six ulti- mate elements of literature;' elements not mutually exclusive, but entering into combination and fusion. Philosophy readily embraces the two other elements of prose: history collects the materials which philosophy in the stricter sense is to correlate; and oratory — in the wide sense of the word that includes expo- sition — is the adaptation of the results of philosophy to different audiences. Philosophy further enlarges to take in creative literature: for story (we have seen) is a mode of interpretative thinking, and story embraces epic and drama and part of lyric poetry. Lyric poetry apart from story is a meditation differing from the meditation of prose philosophy only by admitting freely a creative element. It would thus seem as if philosophy ■ Compare above, chapter i, pages 17-20. 370 The Subject-Matter of Literature 371 would be coterminous with literature. But there is a distinc- tion : that philosophy is concerned with the content and subject- matter of literature, as distinguished from literary form and art. It has been a note of the traditional study of literature that it has tended to lay the emphasis on the art and manner of literature rather than on its content and subject-matter.' The tradition began with the Renaissance, which sought to make a single literature the determinant of all the rest. But as, naturally, the matter of other literatures would differ from the matter of Classical writers, it was the art and form of litera- ture which made the field of comparison. Literary culture thus became a spirit of connoisseurship : in literary, as in other art, the tendency of the connoisseur is to lay more and more stress upon the mode of performance, leaving the subjects treated to the general public that is not sensitive to refinements. The change comes where art is conceived as a part of nature:' comparisons of kind become more significant than comparisons of merit, and in the variety of literature lies its richness. The comparative method, when once it is freed from ques- tions of competing merit, and applied to differences of kind, is the most powerful of all instruments for enlarging and quick- ening receptivity. It was the comparative study of languages which brought home to the mind what language reaUy was; a s imil ar service is rendered to literary matter by comparative reading. I have dealt with this subject elsewhere.' A simple example is found where some topic — say the Alcestis story — is studied in versions coming from diverse poets, in diverse literary forms, and gathered from different literatures. Or, take the versions of the Faust story.* What is in essentials the same • Compare above, chapter xvi, pages 327-28. ' Compare above, chapter xiii, page 296; and below. Conclusion, pages 491-92. » World Literature, chapter vii. * Discussed at length in chapter v of World Literature. 372 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy story has come to us from the Renaissance era, represented by Marlowe, from European culture at its highest point in Goethe, from the peculiar Spanish viewpoint of Calderon, from modern mysticism in the splendid poem of PhiUp Bailey. The com- parative study of these versions may almost be called a liberal education in itself. The point is not merely that the particular topic is elucidated, but that all these different eras become illuminated by watching the reaction upon each of a single pregnant theme. And there is here, of course, no question of competing merit: it is a comparative study in the subject- matter of poetry. The thought and matter that underlie literature are sus- ceptible of historic or scientific or other treatment; but the literary presentation has a potency of its own. Mediaevalism can be reconstructed by historic analysis: but in Dante we have the very soul of the Middle Ages.' The Homeri(; poems crys- tallize for us a primitive civilization of the highest order," for which there is no history except archaeological notes. I have elsewhere' dwelt at some length upon the remarkable poem, the Kalevala: how it restores to us a stage of evolution all but lost to history, a stage in which reality and imagination have no sepa- rating line, and animism reigns throughout: the genius of the poem makes us able to live and breathe amid these strange surroundings. We may generalize: a national literature is the nation's autobiography, its history speaking to us direct with its own best voices. And world literature is the autobiography of civilization.'' It might be objected that, while the forms of literature are in their nature eternal, the subject-matter, enters into the cate- gory of things progressive, where each new stage of progress ' Compare World Literature, chapter iv, pages i8o £E. 'Compare ibid., page io8. 3 Ibid., pages 333-50- < Compare ibid., chapter x. The Subject-M alter oj Literature 373 makes previous stages obsolete. But this is a half-trutli: it takes no note of the important distinction between two kinds of knowledge — the knowledge that is theoretic and the knowledge that is imaginative. This distinction has been so finely deline- ated by Seeley that I am impelled to quote — only abridging at points, because the drift of Seeley's argument has reference to an issue with which we are not here concerned.' There are two ways in which the mind apprehends any object, two sorts of knowledge which combine to make complete and satis- factory knowledge. The one may be called theoretic or scientific knowledge; the other practical, familiar or imaginative knowledge. .... In order of time the second kind of knowledge has the pre- cedence Before the stars, the winds, the trees and plants could be grasped scientifically and the laws which govern them as- certained, they had been grasped, and as it were appropriated, by the human mind experimentally and imaginatively. The latter kind of knowledge was in some respects better than the former. It was more intimate and realised, so that, as far as it was true, it was more available. For practical purposes, accurate scientific knowledge of a thing is seldom sufficient. To obtain complete practical com- mand over it you must take possession of it with the imagination and feeling as well as the reason, and it will often happen that this imaginative knowledge, helped very slightly by scientific knowledge, carries a man practically further than a very perfect scientific knowl- edge by itself Moreover, this kind of knowledge is more at- tractive and interesting, and so has a more powerful and modifying influence upon its possessor than any other kind, for the simple reason that it takes hold of the most plastic side of his nature [When Science comes] the mind passes imder a new set of impressions, and places itself in a new relation to the Universe In order not to be misled by feeling, it has been forced artificially to deaden feeling; lest the judgment should be misled by the impressiveness of the uni- verse, it arms itself with callousness; it turns away from Nature the ' Natural Religion by the author of Ecco Homo (Macmillan), chapter iii, pages 46-52. I wish to express my deep obligation to the whole of this great book. 374 Literature as a Mode of Philosophy sensitive side, and receives the shock upon the adamantine shield of the sceptical reason. In this way it substitutes one imperfect kind of knowledge for another. Before, it realised strongly, but scarcely analysed at all; now, it analyses most carefully, but ceases in turn to realise. As the victory of the scientific spirit becomes more and more decided, there passes a deep shudder of discomfort through the whole world of those whose business is with realising, and not with testing knowledge. Religion is struck first .... but poetry and art suffer in their turn We may look forward to a time when .... a new reconciliation shall have taken place between the two sorts of knowledge. When the distinction of the two kinds of knowledge has been laid down, it becomes clear that literature, in the most general sense, is the organ of the fuller knowledge, the knowledge which apprehends with the imagination and sympathy, and in which we make personal appropriation of what we understand. To knowledge in this sense no subject-matter ever becomes anti- quated. Literary study becomes a foreign travel, into all ages and among all peoples: not — ^like science — for the purpose of making discoveries, but with a view to that personal contact with others which is the enlargement of ourselves. Literature, then, by its matter is in close affiliation with philosophy; by its mode of treatment, with art. It would be deemed the very narrowest of literary study that should treat the content of literature as if it were only philosophy, and ignore the element of art. It is an equally narrow conception of the study that makes the whole a question of literary art, and overlooks that literature is also a mode of philosophy. BOOK VI LITERATURE AS A MODE OF ART CHAPTER XXII: The Grammar op Literary Am CHAPTER XXIII: Plot as Poetic Architecture and Artistic Providence CHAPTER XXIV: Poetic Ornament: Theory of Imagery and Sym- bolism CHAPTER XXV: Literary Echoing: The Conception of Litera- ture as a Second Nature CHAPTER XXVI: Language as a Factor in Literary Art CHAPTER XXII THE GRAMMAR OF LITERARY ART No argument is needed to prove that literary study includes the recognition of literature as one of the fine arts. To this side of the general subject this Sixth Book is devoted. The mode of treatment seems to be conveyed by the expression, 'the grammar of literary art.' We are familiar with the gram- mar of language, the grammar of music, the grammar of Greek art. By a similar usage of the term 'the grammar of literary art' will indicate analysis applied to the elements and eSects of literary art from the theoretic point of view. Traditionally, the discussion of literature from the art side has been left to such studies as poetics and rhetoric. These titles go back to the age of Aristotle. But it must be remem- bered that at that period the classification of studies was not well established: thus the modern reader of Aristotle's Poetics is astonished to find a considerable section of it devoted to the linguistic grammar of our school books." There will be much in common between the studies so named and the grammar of literary art. But the point of view is different: the interest of grammar is theoretic, the other studies are concerned with technique and the practical application of literary art. To a large extent the Poetics of Aristotle is a manual of composition. And rhetoric from the first has been made a practical art — ^the equipment of the professional orator for his daily work, though there has been a gradual modification in the conception of rhetoric, until it can almost mean literary appreciation. To me it seems that there is real value in separating the theoretical and the practical treatments of art. In a modem manual of ' Poetics, chapters jtx-xxii. 377 378 Literature as a Mode of Art rhetoric a large space will be given to tropes and figures of speech, to the detailed exposition of such things as metonymy, synecdoche, apostrophe, irony, h3^erbole, and the like. All this will be serviceable to practice in style, which is applied literary art; it wiU be like the 'exercises' by which the pianist or violinist develops his technique. But all this yields little to the theory of literature: such things sum up as the application of specific means to specific ends, or as the economy of force. Grammar, on the other hand, is a matter of theory. Whether it be the grammar of literary art, or the ordinary grammar of linguistic usage, we may say that no man by such grammatical study will add one cubit to his stature as poet or expositor; though perhaps some poetry or exposition has been dwarfed by the lack of it. A more serious objection to the terms 'poetic' and 'rhetoric' is that the distinction of these seems to rest largely upon what in this work I have maintained to be a capital error of traditional lit- erary study— the confusion of the distinction between verse and prose with the distinction between poetry and prose. Aristotle was the first to warn against this confusion:' but it has become vastly more serious in our time, when the larger half of creative literature is expressed in prose. It would of course be possible to discuss separately modes of creative and modes of discussional literature; but it seems doubtful whether there would be any advantage in the separation. One element in literary art is de- scription : it is clear that what goes to make effective description will to a very large extent be the same whether the descrip- tion is to be in prose or in verse, whether it is to be part of creative poetry or rhetorical exposition. Most of the elements claimed for poetry have their counterparts in discussional literature. The simile is supposed to be a great poetic weapon : but in final analysis it is difficult to separate this from the il- lustration or analogy in the exposition of prose. Metaphorical • Compare above, chapter i, page 13. The Grammar of Literary Art 379 language enters into creative and discussional literature. Even geometry cannot entirely evade metaphorical language. Its metaphors, truly, are of the faintest: yet a mathematical 'radius' is a metaphor from the spokes of a wheel; the 'hypote- nuse,' or the 'line subtending an angle,' is perhaps a veiled metaphor from stretching a carpet beneath a tent-pole; it is impossible to 'superimpose one triangle upon another' except in a metaphorical sense; the very word 'geometry' is a meta- phor from land-surveying. When, on the other hand, literary art is treated as an unbroken whole, there is a clear advantage in seeing how much there is in common between literature in verse and literature in prose; or, again, between literature of discussion and literature of creation. The most convenient method for the grammar of literary art is that which is described by the technical term 'topical': intermediate between the disconnected notes of the commenta- tor and the complete system of methodization. The chapters that foUow deal with some leading topics in literary art. With- in each separate topic there may be room for something of systematization. But the time has not come for a system of literary art as a whole; and any attempt at this would call for a complete treatise. One caution may be added. Art resolves into two elements: interest of design, and human interest. The first lends itself readily to analytic treatment, but human interest will often defy analysis. Thus, in taking up the grammar of literary art it is well to recognize the limitations of the subject. There can be no complete analysis for a thing of beauty. Some tenth or hundreth part of the whole beauty is all that admits of ex- planation: yet this modicum of analytic explanation seems worth while. CHAPTER XXIII PLOT AS POETIC ARCHITECTURE AND ARTISTIC PROVIDENCE The most fundamental point in literary art is interest of plot. A story, as a work of art, is unity in diversity: the more diverse the details the richer the art, provided that all the de- tails are felt to lie within a comprehending unity. Plot seeks to formulate this in application to particular cases: to state the general drift of a poem in language of design gives us the interest of plot. From this point of view plot is the architec- ture of poetry. But a story also has human interest. Viewed on this side plot is, in the sphere of fiction, what in the world of reality one man wiU call Providence, another man will call law: all things are conceived as parts of one significant whole. Each particular story is a microcosm, with the poet for creator and the plot for its scheme of law or Providence. But the two as- pects of plot are closely related. Design and human interest in art are inseparable: thus the underlying scheme that makes the Providence of a story must appeal to the sense of beauty. It is a common error to think of 'poetic justice' as demanding something juster than the justice of real life. On the contrary: if retribution (for example) works itself out with mechanical exactitude, the justice at once ceases to be 'poetic'; what makes it poetic is that — juster or less just-:-it comes about in ways which appeal to the artistic sense in us.' Plot is at once poetic architecture and artistic Providence.' ' Compare Shakespeare as Artist, pages 44-46, 381-84. For detailed discussion see Index to that work under word "Nemesis." Compare also B. Worsfold's Principles of Criticism (Longmans), page 72 and chapter iv as a whole. " A formal discussion of plot is contained in chapters xix and xx of Shake- speare as Artist. The Appendix contains some plot schemes. ■ Plot as the 380 Plot as Poetic Architecture and Artistic Providence 381 At the outset certain cautions and distinctions suggest them- selves. We must not lay too much emphasis on the formulation of a plot. Each particular poem becomes a problem, of which the unknown quantity is the plot: we must always hold in reserve the possibility of x=o. Yet the attempt to formulate is helpful, as forcing upon us the perspective without which we cannot have artistic impressions. Again: if we hear plot defined as consisting in a rising and falling action, with elements of exposition and exciting cause and catastrophe, we must be suspicious: this may admirably describe one particular kind of plot, but plot in general will be as varied as human invention. We must be prepared to distinguish between simple and complex plot: as with the distinction between unison and harmony, com- plex plot will resolve a work of art into elements each one of which has interest of design. The ignoring of this idea led criti- cism for a long period to pronounce Shakespeare dramatically impossible. Another important distinction is that between plot and movement. The first is the work of art conceived as a scheme: movement takes up the design in progression from beginning to end of a poem. In simple works the two may be identical: the plot lies in the movement. In more elaborate works they may be distinct. They are different aspects of the same thing, and movement is, so to speak, the architecture of progression. I Reduced to its lowest terms, plot appears in the point of an anecdote or joke: even this is felt to unify some diversity. Someone tells a funny story: the last word is hardly spoken basis of philosophical analysis is the subject of my other work, Shakespeare as Thinker: see especially pages s-io- Its Appendix is devoted to technical analysis of Shakespearean plot, with plot schemes for all the plays. In The Ancient Classical Drama discussion of plot occupies a considerable space; it may be followed by consulting the General Index under the word "Plot." CHART XXII Interest of Plot Plot as static design: formulation of the unity underlying a story Elementary Plot: the point of an anecdote or saying — the chain plot — ^plot of stock characters — the one-two-three form Plot in fully developed literatiire Plots of passion or situation Complication and resolution: an abstract form with many concrete mani- festations Movement as plot in progression Motive Form: simple — foreshortening — introversion — the regular arch Motive Force: motive situation — motive personages — momentum of character and circumstance — ^intrigues, counter intrigues, and irony. — Super- natural motive forces: destiny, Providence; retribution, and its negation in accident ^simple: unison interest — a climax in Shakespeare's federations of plots Plot/ ^complex: harmony; resolving into elements ^ch of which has full plot 382 Primitive Types of Plot 383 before all present break into laughter — all except one, who de- clares he cannot see the 'point' of the joke. It does not follow that this dissentient is lacking in sense of humor; it may well be that some idiom used, or some local custom assumed, familiar to the rest, is unknown to him. Thus the magnetic circle was for him incomplete, and the flash of humor did not follow. In the same way, something analogous to plot makes the epigram or saying: the 'brevity' which is the soul of wit is a variant of plot interest. An element of art so fundamental as plot may be expected to emerge in folk-lore and primitive poetry. In an earlier chapter' we have seen that the first recognizable form of poetry is folk-poetry: here the public — ^all who are present — consti- tute alike authors, performers, and audience. It is a game of poetry: the whole conception of a 'game' is a variant of the con- ception of 'plot'; one game differs from another game by hav- ing a different plot to its sport. We have seen how a leading form of such poetic game was the augmenting or diminishing chain: a survival of the former is "The House That Jack Built"; of the latter, "Ten Little Niggers." The chain plot is constituted by successive links, each leading to the next, and the whole may be prolonged indefinitely. "The House That Jack Built" might go on forever. This chain plot in a higher stage of literature is illustrated in a charming Japanese comedietta translated by Mr. B. H. Chamberlain under the title Ribs and Skin.' The complimentary verbosity so characteristic of Japa- nese literature makes it too long for quotation, and its vivacity suffers in the following condensation. The scene is a Buddhist Temple: the personages, the Rector, his Curate, and Parishioners who successively arrive. The Rector announces his intention to retire in favor of the Curate, and bids the Curate receive callers while he himself rests. — ^A Parishioner ' Chapter i, pages 36 ff. ' Classical Poetry of the Japanese (Triibner). 384 Literature as a Mode of Art arrives, and (after the usual interchange of compliments) requests the loan of the Temple umbrella, which the Curate at once grants. When he reports this to the Rector, the Rector approves, except that he should not have lent a new umbrella, never used: he might have invented a plausible excuse. "The request with which you honor me is a slight one. But a day or two ago my master went out with it, and meeting with a gust of wind at a place where four roads met, the ribs flew off on one side, and the skin on another. So we have tied both skin and ribs by the middle, and hung them up to the ceiling. This being so it would hardly be able to answer your pur- pose." — The Curate will bear this injunction in mind. — Soon a second Parishioner arrives, and (with the usual preliminaries) makes bold to ask a loan of the Temple horse. — "Nothing could be slighter than the request with which you honor me. But a day or two ago my master went out with it, and meeting with a gust of wind at a place where four roads met, the ribs flew off on one side and the skin on another. So we have tied both skin and ribs by the middle and hung them up to the ceiling. This being so it would hardly be able to answer your purpose." When the Curate reports this, the Rector storms at his stupidity. — ^But what ought the Curate to have said ? — Some fitting excuse: "We lately turned him out to grass; and, becoming frolic- some, he dislocated his thigh, and is lying down covered with straw in a comer qf the stable. This being so, he will hardly be able to answer your purpose." — ^The Curate will keep these injunctions in mind, but grumbles to himself at being blamed for doing exactly as he has been told to do. — ^A third Parishioner enters, and (with pro- fuse compliments) invites the Rector and the Curate to a feast at his house. — ^The Curate accepts for hirhself, but his master will not be able to attend. — ^Has the Rector, then, some other business ? — Not exactly; but "we lately turned him out to grass, and, becoming frolicsome, he dislocated his thigh and is lying down covered with straw in a corner of the stable.*' Obviously, this succession of blunderings can go on, link by link, indefinitely; though practical necessities will find some conclusion to a chain plot — in this case, the conclusion of a quarrel and a fight. Primitive Types of Plot 385 The chain formation enters into fully developed literature, and seems the basis of well-marked types of plot. Such are the picaresque novel, the story of adventure, the epic or dramatic caricature. Types like these rest upon linking together suc- cessive incidents of the proper kind: pieces of mischief, startling adventures, exaggerated personal characteristics. We must not expect, where strong human interest has come in, the defi- hiteness of chain formation found in the plot that is only a poetic game. But the principle is the same. Compare a chain plot like the story of the Hunchback' in the Arabian Nights with such a normal type as that of the Odyssey. In both we have a series of adventures: in the Odyssey the adventures are simply successive, in the other case they are cumulative. We might almost refer the plot of an allegory to the same class. Given the symbolism of an escape from a City of Destruction as typifying an attempt to shake o£E a life of sin: all the rest of the Pilgrim's Progress links with this initial idea. From primitive, or at least from very early, literature comes a second basic type of plot. This is the puppet-play, or better, the play of stock characters. Some three or four character t3^es are fixed by custom — say, the bumptious man, and the man who is always put upon, the heavy father, or the gay Lothario. In any particular performance those who assume these parts extemporize dialogue, and so action, in conformity with their parts. There is still the idea of poetry as a game. In fully developed literature this type appears as the plot of character relations. At the outset — ^perhaps in the title — interesting contrasts suggest themselves, and as the movement of the plot proceeds are developed. Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, are titles founded on this conception of plot. Of course, in the complexity of modem story any such type will probably be blended with other interests of story. " This is discussed ia World Literature, pages 307-10. Compare above, pages 147-48. 386 Literature as a Mode of Art Miss Austen, with the ease of a great master, links the main plot, suggested by the title Pride and Prejudice, with two other love stories that throw it up by contrast, the one idylliq the other founded on frivolity of character. In the field of primitive story which is well represented by the collections of Grimm there is a type of plot often appearing which is of great theoretic interest. It may be called the one- two-three form. The numerical basis is not limited to the number three: but in each case there is a series of incidents such that the rest serve only to make the final incident a climax. A simple example will be found in such a story as this.' A father, nearing the end of his life, realises that he has no property to leave to his three children except the family house, which of course camiot be divided. Accordingly he sends his sons out into the world for a year, in order that they may learn each a trade: the one who at the end of the year is found most expert in his trade shall have the house. One becomes a barber; another, a farrier; the third, a swordsman. When at the end of the year they are put to the test, the barber is so expert that he can shave a racer as he nms by with- out stopping him. The farrier shoes the four horses of a chariot while the chariot keeps moving. At this moment a shower comes on: the swordsman whips out his sword and waves it over his father's head with such rapidity that it serves all the purposes of an umbrella. The swordsman is awarded the family house. ' It is obvious that the feats of the barber and the farrier are introduced only to throw into relief the supreme dexterity of the swordsman. But this one-two-three form is capable of very high elaboration: as is illustrated in the beautiful story of the Giant with the Three Golden Hairs.' A baby is bom with a caul, which the gossips interpret to mean that he is doomed to become a king before he dies. The king of the country hearing this is jealous; he takes possession of the baby upon a pretext of bringing him up as a great lord, but contrives to have him ' Condensed from Grimm's Fairy Tales (Routledge). " Ibid. Primitive Types of Plot 387 dropped in a basket into a stream. The basket is stopped by a mill- dam, and the chUd is reared as the miller's son. Twelve years after the king by chance comes to the mill, is struck by the appearance of the youth, and hears the strange history. He recognizes the failure of his attempt; but takes the lad into his service, and sends him with a letter to the royal palace, the drift of which is that the bearer of the letter is instantly to be put to death. On his way to the palace the youth falls in, unknowingly, with a company of robbers, who notice the letter as they are about to kiU him, and, taking pity, alter the letter secretly, and make it a command that the youth shall im- mediately be married to the king's daughter. This has just been done, when the king returns. He recognises that the marriage is irrevocable; but persisting in his attempts on the life of the youth, makes out that the king's son-in-law is bound to undertake the dangerous mission of securing three golden hairs from the head of a certain Giant. The youth without hesitation sets out on the expe- dition. His journey leads him through a certain town: the guard, before admitting him, require that he should explain the great mys- tery of this town — why a certain tree that hitherto had borne golden apples has lately ceased to bear fruit of any kind. The lad promises that on his return journey he will tell them the reason. He comes to a second town and it is demanded that he explain why a fountain in that town, which used to run with wine, will not now even run with water. He promises to explain on his return. A river separates him from the land of the Giant, but there is a ferry: the fenyman insists on knowing why he alone is doomed thus to be forever ferrying passengers to and fro. This also the youth will explain on his re- turn. He now reaches the Giant's home, and makes friends with the Giant's grandmother; who hides him when the Giant returns at night and goes to sleep with his head on his grandmother's lap. The grandmother plucks a golden hair from the Giant's head: he awakes in a rage, but the grandmother pacifies him by telling of a dream that had disturbed her — ^how a fountain which had run with wine suddenly ceased even to run with water. The Giant says that there was a toad in the channel: let them take it out, and the fountain would run with wine as before. He returns to sleep and snoring, and the grand- mother pulls out a second golden hair, and a second time pacifies the 3^8 Literature as a Mode oj Art Giant's irritation by telling her dream — of a tree which instead of bearing golden fruit bore no fruit at all. The Giant impatiently re- marked that there was a mouse gnawing at the root of the tree. When the third golden hair is pulled, the Giant becomes furious. But the grandmother pleads that no one can help his dreams — this time the dream of a ferr3rman condemned to be forever ferrying passengers across the same river. The Giant answers, that the ferryman has only to put the oar into the hand of the next passenger, and the passenger will be doomed to take his place. The Giant is now left to sleep peacefully, and the youth with his prize returns. Ferried across the river, he tells the ferrjmian what to do with the next passenger. Reaching the first city, the youth explains about the toad: this is found to be true, and the citizens in gratitude give the youth two mules laden with gold. He comes to the other city, explains the mystery, and receives two more mules laden with gold. At last he arrives at his father-in-law's castle, with the three golden hairs, and also the four mules laden with gold. To the amazed in- quiries of the king, the youth answers with descriptions of the gold of the Giant's land, and of the ferryman who is ready to ferry pas- sengers to it. The wicked king sets out instantly, and is ferried across. Then the ferryman puts his oar into the hand of the king. And the king is ferrying passengers across the river to this very day. This is a masterpiece of the design which is the basis of plot: a one-two-three form, which is a series of adventures, just before completion develops a second one-two-three form, which is a series of wonders: the last detail of the last wonder strikes through the whole the unity of poetic justice. I have elsewhere discussed at some length the Kalevalaj' that single example of primitive poetry which has attained the highest degree of artistic excellence. Nothing is more notice- able about the Finnish masterpiece than the degree to which the one-two-three form pervades its whole construction. The movement of the poem — so far as it has a unity of movement — is an extended example of the one-two-three form. The numeri- ' World Literature, pages 333-50- Plot in Ancient Classical Drama 389 cal series, simple or highly involved, is the basis of every lyric efEect, and every epic incident. So accepted a convention has it become, that, in the Kalevala, it would appear that no one is permitted to tell the truth except as a climax to a series of lies. II It has been worth while to dwell at some length on the sub- ject of plot as it appears in early Uterature, because we may generalize on this point, and say that, in primitive story, just in proportion as the material is void of significance, in the same proportion the artistic appeal is to pure interest of plot design. When we come to poetry in its full development, it is obviously impossible, within the limits of a single chapter, even to hint at the variety of forms that may be assumed by plot. In the pre- vious chapters of this work, and in other works of mine, I have devoted a considerable space to the discussion of plot structure. AU I can attempt here is to indicate — and that only ia outline — the broader features of plot, and to refer readers who may de- sire further assistance to what I have said elsewhere. The chapter must, I fear, be a catalogue of what there is to discuss rather than a discussion. In the historic line of our world literature (we have seen) Classical epic and tragedy have had the prerogative voice in fix- ing our literary conceptions. This applies notably to conceptions of plot and movement. Classical drama laid the founda- tions for simple plot,' the Homeric poems for plot in its com- plexity.^ Greek drama, and the Roman drama which carried on its traditions, were from first to last limited to the drama of situation. Within this field we see firmly established the main distinction between plots of passion and plots of action i^ a * Above, chapter viii, especially pages 162-63. '' Above, chapter vii, page 143. ' For this and what follows, a more extended discussion will be found in Ancient Classical Drama, pages 130-41. 39° Literature as a Mode of Art distinction which to a large extent, though not altogether, falls in with the distinction between tragedy and comedy. In the plots which turn upon the emphasis of situations, I have else- where distinguished four varieties of Greek tragedies. We have an opening situation developed to a climax, as in the Agamem- non; or the development of a final situation, as in (Edipus the King. There is, again, development from one situation to another: as when (in the Ckoephori) we begin with Electra in her woe, and pass to a climax of watching her deliverer, Orestes, plunged back into the woe of madness. Or, we have an opening situation developed to its reversal: the Electra of Sophocles begins with Electra in her misery, to end with her unmitigated triumph. I would not lay much stress on the distinction of these four types: yet their mere enumeration illustrates the emphasis which Greek tragedy lays upon the dramatic situation. In a previous chapter' of this work I have indicated the phase of mediaeval literary history which modified the conception of tragedy, and made it, for Shakespeare, the development of a situation emphasizing fallen greatness. Contrast with all this the Greek plots of action, of which the Ion!' is a splendid example. By the movement of this drama, a mother is drawn on to attempt the life of her son, whose loss in infancy has been her life trouble; the enthusiastic votary of ApoUo is plunged in skepticism as to the character of the god he adores; the son is unconsciously haling his own mother to execution: v/hen a chance encounter with the Priestess reveals son and mother to one another, while Apollo emerges as the Providence that, by the smallest of accidents, has brought moral harmony out of chaos. Here we see developed that particular type of design which perhaps more than any other was destined to permeate creative literature. It is simply described as com- plication and resolution: a course of events is seen to enter ' Chapter viii, pages 177-78. ' Ancient Classical Drama, pages 134-36, 98. Plot in Ancient Classical Drama 391 into some entanglement, which entanglement however exists only that it may be resolved. Stated in these terms, it seems to be a plot form of abstract design. But such complication and resolution will often clothe themselves in concrete types of human interest. They will appear as a crime and its retribu- tion; as Hybris — the intoxication of self-sufficiency— and the resulting Nemesis; as exaltation and fall. We may have a problem with its solution; an oracle and its fulfilment, or in some other way mystery passing into clearness. In a lighter strain, we may have folly — ^like the folly of Parolles — and its exposure; peril and release; haunting (in ^ Midsummer-Night's Dream) and disenchantment; artificial conventions (like those of Love's Labour's Losty and reaction. The complication may take the form of an intrigue, with alternative resolutions of success or discomfiture. There is no limit to the concrete varie- ties that this abstract interest of complication and resolution may assume. In the field of Greek drama there is an interest- ing variant of this general type: we have the complication and its resolution completed, but this is not the end of the action — the resolution is recomplicated. In the admirable plot of the Iphigenia in Taurica," the complication reaches the point of a sister all but offering her own brother on the altar of Artemis; the resolution is an iatrigue of escape which is completely suc- cessful, until — ^as we learn from the Messenger's speech — ^at the outer bound of the harbor a sudden change of wind or current drives the fugitives back into their enemies' power: a divine intervention is required to conclude the action. Such plot of fortune turns may be carried farther still into the pendulum plot, with its backward and forward swing of alternations, as in the Fhiloctetes' of Sophocles, or the Andromache of Euripides. ' Fully discussed in Shakespeare as Artist, chapter xiv. ' Compare Ancient Classical Drama, pages 98-99, 136-37. 3 Ibid., pages 137-41- 392 Literature as a Mode of Art In the widely different literary field of the Biblical rhapsody' we sometimes have for interest of plot a similar pendulmn swing between displays of judgment and salvation. Ill Interest of movement makes one side of the general interest of plot.^ Dramatic or epic action takes motive form as we fol- low it from beginning to end of a poem. Suppose the scheme of plot to be complication and resolution: the normal order — indeed, the only possible order in actual events — is that the complication must precede the resolution which disentangles it. But every reader knows that this is not necessarily the.order in which the elements of the action come before us in the poem. In the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, we have seen^ the beautiful movement that may be called the foreshortening of story: the poems open with stages of the resolution, and the previous com- plication is later on made known to us in the hero's story of his past adventures. The Iliad follows the normal order — a quarrel and its consequences: yet this is consistent with the effect of movement known as introversion. A B C CC BB AA The last section balances the first — ^the tragic reconciliation of Achilles and Priam measures the woe that has sprung from con- ' A fine example is Isa., chapters 24-27: see Literary Study of the Bible, pages 416-23, where the rhapsody is printed in full, with the pendulum changes indicated by changes of type. ' Compare chapter xx of Shakespeare as Artist. 3 Chapter vii, pages 139-41, 145, is parallel with this section of the present chapter. Motive Force 393 sequences of the opening quarrel. In the main part of the ac- tion that comes between, there is a reversal of order — all at first runs counter to Agamemnon and in favor of AchiUes, then all is against Achilles until his submission. This motive form of introversion seems only a step removed from the movement of the regular arch. This has, in a previous chapter, been described at length in application to the Prophecy of Joel. It has also been illustrated from the Shakespearean drama: how in Macbeth, unbroken success in the fir^t half of the move- ment is balanced by unbroken failure in the descending half; the central point of the play is a mingling of success and failure, where Banquo is slain but Fleance escapes. Or the arch is reversed: the first half of fall is balanced by the second half of recovery. On page 192 has been indicated the movement 6f Winter's Tale — one of Shakespeare's consummately beautiful plots. Here the fall manifests itself in a sixfold action, answered by the corresponding sixfold action of the rise; while the central point of the movement is an oracle, in which the varied strains of the fall stand fully revealed, and the strains of the recovery are dimly shadowed. IV Interest of movement extends beyond such motive form to another kind of interest which may be designated as motive force.' When we fasten our attention upon a succession of incidents conceived as a movement of events, we are naturally led to inquire what brings about this movement of events, what are the literary motives of the plot. It is in relation to such ' Chapter xx of Shakespeare as Artist from page 380 deals with this general subject. In Ancient Classical Drama see Index under word "Mo- tives." 394 Literature as a Mode of Art motive forces realized in the course of a story that the general conception of plot passes beyond abstract design, and approaches the conception we call law or Providence in the world of reality. An earlier chapter has discussed at full length the beautiful plot in Scott's Monastery.^ Here it appeared that large part of the movement of the story was latent in the opening situation. The beginning of the Reformation is making itself felt in the territory of a monastery, a monastery on the borderland between England and Scotland; at once there arise a series of con- trasts between English and Scotch, Protestant and Catholic, older and newer ways of thinking and phases of life — in which contrasts great part of the interest of the story is found. But the opening situation does not constitute the whole motive force of the plot: there are in addition two special sources of move- ment. The euphuist — an exaggerated emanation from the age that is to be — serves as further complicating force, aggravating the confusion of events already existing. And there is a super- natural personage — one in strict harmony with the spirit of the age that is passing away — ^who consciously seeks to retard the drift of events, yet can only succeed in modifying, not in altering, the course of the movement. Besides the motive force of a situation, we naturally find motive personages. Richard the Third is the chief motive force of the play called after his name: of the multiplied retributions we see enacting themselves in this drama there is not one which does not receive some momentum from the conscious action of Richard.^ In Othello,^ lago is a motive personage: the four separate intrigues which he initiates, acting upon the three love stories going on from the coimnencement of the play, bring about an ever-increasing tangle of tragic complication, imtU ' Chapter xiii from page 273 on. ' The play is discussed at length in Shakespeare as Artist, chapters iv, v. ' Discussed at length in chapter xi of Shakespeare as Artist; compare also page 409 of that work. Motive Force 39 S the whole cuhninates in a tragic reaction upon lago himself. And so, in general terms, we may recognize as motive forces the momentum of character, and the sway of circumstance. In stories of a lighter tone, personality will often manifest itself in the form of intrigues; intrigues naturally call into play counter intrigues; in all these motive forces are found. It is obvious, again, that the supernatural — in varied forms — is a great motive force in story.' I have elsewhere" described the ancient Classical tragedy as the worship of destiny. Some- times it is as an external force that destiny is seen to control events: the irony of fate mocks all attempts to resist it. As we approach more modern thought, destiny changes into Provi- dence, the force outside ourselves coming to be conceived as design. Providence as a dramatic motive reaches perhaps its climax in The Tempest of Shakespeare.' In this story enchant- ment is postulated as an irresistible force, and by possession of this Prosjpero is made a personal Providence for the enchanted island, in which nothing can happen but by his permission or contrivance. Of course, retribution — as a purely moral idea, or in its more artistic conception of poetic justice — is a leading motive force in story.'' But here we must be on our guard against what I have elsewhere designated as the great ethical fallacy.' No fallacy of Uterary analysis can be more dangerous than that which would seek to read Shakespeare's plays as an elaborate ' Compare Shakespeare as Thinker, chapter xiv. ' Ancient Classical Drama, page 108; and generally, pages ps-rog. 5 Fully discussed in chapter xiii of Shakespeare as Artist: compare also chapter xii. 4 Compare chapter ii of Shakespeare as Thinker; chapters v and vi of Shakespeare as Artist. For poetic justice, compare Shakespeare as Artist, pages 44 ff., 383. s Compare above, chapter xviii, page 352; and Shakespeare as Thinker, page 7. 396 Literature as a Mode of Art ethical system. No poet has been more clear than Shake- speare in his insistence upon accident — the incalculable — as a large force in human life. In the play of Romeo and Juliet^ — precisely as in the sacred drama of Job — it is. made clear that the culminating waves of calamity come upon the central per- sonages, not through errors on their part, but as the result of circumstances beyond their control; the play is a presentation, not of retribution, but of the pathos of life. The interminable discussions we hear as to the play of Hamlet seem to me largely due to the fact that interpreters confine their attention to the personality of Hamlet himself, and ignore the large extent to which the issues of events in this play are determined by acci- dents. On page 397 (Chart XXIII) I cite from another work of mine' a plot scheme of the play. This brings out how, in the six separate actions of which (apart from the interest of Ham- let himself) the bulk of the story is made up, not a single one reaches its denouement without the intervention of accident. Hamlet himself, of course, is a large motive force to the action of the play: but here again the designs of Hamlet need the interposition of accident to determine their event. And this, which analysis makes so clear, is emphasized in the language of the play itself. When at the close Horatio undertakes to interpret the course of events, it is accident which makes a dis- tinctive note of his exposition. And let me speak to the yet unknowing world How these things came about: so shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts. Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads. ' For accident and the play of Romeo and Juliet, compare chapter iii of Shakespeare as Thinker (see also Index under "Accident"); Ancient Classical Drama, page 136. 'Shakespeare as Thinker, page 364; pages 318-22 discuss the play. Main Plot CHART XXIII Plot Scheme of Hamlet 1. The King: greater crime and (accident assisting) full nemesis 2. The Queen: lesser crime and (accident as- sisting) pathetic nemesis 3. Polonius: politic intermeddling and (acci- dent assisting) pathetic nemesis 4. Guildenstern and Rosencrantz: lesser nature intermeddling and (accident assisting) nemesis 5. OpheUa: love yielding to circumstances and (accident assisting) pathetic nemesis 6. Laertes: duty yielding to circumstances and (accident assisting) nemesis Motive Character Action : Hamlet (resting on outer and inner life) : by hesitation enlarging the wrong — by sudden determination (accident assist- ing) consummating the nemesis and pathos System of Six Actions Graded wrong with Nemesis and Pathos Motive Circumstances / .initiating the movement: the Ghost ^assisting the consummation : the Pirates Stationary Character Action: Horatio: illuminating the plot Enveloping Action : wars of Norway and Denmark Underplot of Relief Supernatural awe: Ghost incidents Hysteric mockery of Hamlet Histrionic passion of the players Pathetic madness of Ophelia Weird humor: the GraVediggers Successive phases of passion 397 398 Literature as a Mode of Art The general practice of Shakespeare falls in with the formal speech he puts into Horatio's mouth, in placing accident side by side with retribution among the motive forces of his dra- matic world. Structural interest reaches its highest point in complex plot: a work of art analyzes into component parts each of which has its own interest of design. So much has been said on this sub- ject in earlier chapters' of this work, which have treated the evolution of epic and dramatic poetry, that there seems little need at this point for repetition. The earliest conspicuous type of epic poetry in our world literature was found in the Homeric poems: these constitute, technically, the organic epic — the amalgamation of many stories in a common plot, .a number of traditional legends drawn into harmony by a single architectonic mind. Within the limits of the Homeric poems the development of this organic epic appeared gradual. The Iliad" shows a single main story, working within the enveloping action of the Trojan War, with addition of secondary stories which are excrescences. In the Odyssey, 3 the elaborate main story has a scarcely less elaborate underplot, while the secondary stories are satellite stories cen- tering round personages of the main action: the control of plot over matter is complete. We have seen how this tradition of the organic epic remains, almost to our own time, the main interest of epic poetry;" though side by side with it we have another interest of briefer plots reaching a climax in the modern short story.' Attention has been given to the various modes in which the constituent parts of organic epic are brought into ' Chapters vii and viii. Compare also Shakespeare as Artist, pages 359-69. ' Above, pages 135-38. * Above, pages 143 ff. 3 Above, pages 138-43. » Above, pages 152-53. Complex Plot 399 harmony:' the agglutination of stories with common heroes, or common interests like that of metamorphosis; tlie merging of stories in a common enveloping action; regular co-ordination of main plot and underplot; episodes growing into independent interests; the beautiful effect of involution, with its multipli- cation of stories inclosed within stories. In the field of Greek drama, connection with the stage and Chorus were unfavorable to complexity of plot.' In Roman comedy^ — in spite of the confinement to a single situation — we find multiple action iu the way that various intrigues enter into the same complex situation, and reach a common disentangle- ment. When the literary atmosphere of the Middle Ages has em- phasized pure story interest, as against dramatic concentration, we reach the Romantic drama:'' in this dramatization of many combined romances complexity of plot has full course. Shake- speare's plots are federations of plots, any one of which would have sufficed for the single plot interest of antiquity. The ex- quisite art with which this great master draws different stories into a common design has been illustrated by such examples as The Merchant of Venice^ or Winter's Tale.^ Complexity, with Shakespeare, seems an instinct. If he takes up the Roman story of the Menaechmi,'' with its confusions between a pair • Above, pages 143-52. ' In Euripides the germ of underplot, and agglutinative combination of stories, appear. See Ancient Classical Drama, pages 187-90. 3 See above, chapter viii, pages 174-75; and Ancient Classical Drama, pages 412 ff. < Above, chapter viii, pages 176, 184 ff. 'Above, page 188. Fuller discussion of this play in chapters i-iii of Shakespeare as Artist. ' Above, pages 191-93. 1 Compare plot scheme for Comedy of Errors in Shakespeare as Thinker, page 339- 400 Literature as a Mode of Art of twins, he at once duplicates the action into a confusion be- tween two pairs of twins, and at the same time interweaves this with a serious story. He cannot work out a moral problem — itself a complex problem — in the royal family of Lear, without duplicating it with a similar, and yet a contrasting problem, in the family of Lear's lord chamberlain.' The plot is most complex in what appear to the reader to be Shakespeare's light- est plays. On page 401 (Chart XXIV) I give the plot scheme of Twelfth Night to illustrate this point." Complication with reso- lution is an effect applying to the simplest story: in Twelfth Night we have a considerable number of such stories, each com- plicated and resolved. But these different stories or actions fall into well-marked groups: complication and resolution applied withLa a group becomes clash and disentanglement of the related stories. But the plot thickens: there is found to be interference between one group of actions and another group — a higher clash and disentanglement. Then all is suddenly made straight, with as much ease as in the manipulation of a 'cat's cradle.' This image seems appropriate to plot: since anthropology shows that the two hundred (or more) different varieties of 'cat's cradle' constitute, for certain stages of human evolution, the main interest of artistic design. The purpose of this chapter, I repeat, has not been complete analysis of literary plots — which would require a volume — but only sufi&cient analysis to illustrate the theory of plot as poetic architecture and artistic Providence. These two aspects of plot must always be taken together, reflecting the essential elements of art in design and human interest. Objection has sometimes been made to such analysis — and especially to its plot schemes-^on the ground that it reduces the literary interest of the plot to mere mechanism. But this seems a perverse ' Fully discussed in chapter x of Shakespeare as Artist. ' More fully discussed in Shakespeare as Thinker, pages 170-74. CHART XXIV Plot Scheme of Twelfth Night Plot- From the motive drcumstance of the Shipwreck, by the complicating person- age Viola (disguised as a page): Main Plot: Situation of error (i.e., mistaken identity) developing into a clash or triangular duel of fancy Viola in love with the Duke Duke In love with Olivia Olivia in love with the Page (Viola) Underplot: A triplet of folly, graded Belch and Maria: natural abandon Aguecheek: imitation abandon Malvolio: unnatural antagonism to abandon developing into a clash of the rest against Malvolio Clash of the main and underplot in the course of development: intrigue to set Aguecheek against (disguised) Viola From the motive circumstance of the Shipwreck, by the resolving personage Sebastian (twin to Viola) : Main Plot: disentangled as a double marriage Viola and Duke Olivia and Sebastian Underplot: resolved with the resolution of the main plot Relief — Professional folly of the Clown brought successively into contact with all the persoinages of the plot 401 402 Literature as a Mode of Art objection, that would confuse between the plot and the plot formula. It would be a parallel error to find fault with the prosody of a sonnet, that it degrades a lovely lyric to a mere abbaaccadeedde. The matter of a sonnet might be expressed in prose; the content of a drama or story might occur in history. Artistic enhancement comes in where the same material appeals also to our sense of design, restraining itself within rhythmic beats and correspondences that can be formulated. Two cautions, however, must be observed in reference to the whole subject. The first is that, when criti- cism traces design in creative literature, the reference is never to conscious design on the part of the poet, but only to design that seems inherent in the poetic product. The second principle is that analysis in application to art is always a means to an end, never an end in itself. So far as the suggestion of scheme and order is felt to enhance the poetic effect of the work as a whole, it is sound: when it goes beyond this, and becomes analysis for the sake of analysis, it falls to the ground by its own weight. CHAPTER XXIV POETIC ORNAMENT: THEORY OF IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM In this chapter we take up certain varieties of literary art which are among the greatest sources of poetic beauty. They may loosely be comprehended in the general term 'imagery': but we shall see that some of these are really antithetic to imagery, though they perform a similar function; on the other hand certain things not usually termed imagery are by theoretic considerations brought into the same classification. What makes all these varieties of effect into a unity is comparison: that is to say, ideas entirely external to the matter in hand are imported into the sentence for the purpose of comparison with the matter in hand or some detail of it. The comparison may be effected in various ways; but we can always trace the origi- nating idea, forming part of the structure of the poem, the accessory idea imported for comparison with this originating idea, and the interest of the comparison itself. In the general view of poetic art all these varieties sum up as ornament: as with ornament in architecture, poetic ornament is a source of beauty not essential to the structure of the poem, but accessory. The images are, of course, never inharmonious with the point of the poem at which they appear; they often enhance the gen- eral effect; and they are always an independent beauty in themselves. I First: we have simile and metaphor. These varieties of poetic effect have always been associated together: the simile has been called an extended metaphor, the metaphor a com- pressed simile. But the real difference between the two is a difference of great theoretic importance. In the simile, the comparison is indicated by a distinct particle — like, as. Simile 403 404 Literature as a Mode of Art is thus formal imagery. In the metaphor we have veiled imagery: there are no particles to indicate comparison, but the connection of the two ideas is made indirectly, insinuated into the wording of the sentence. Take a notable passage from Paradise Lost. The Demons in Hell, about to enter the Council Hall, suddenly contract their vast bulk, so that myriads can find room in a single chamber. Behold a wonder! They but now who seem'd In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race Beyond the Indian mount, or faery elves. Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees. Or dreams he sees, while over-head the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course; they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart reboimds.' Here the originating idea is that of demons contracting their spirit forms: two accessory ideas — of pygmies and of fairies — are imported to make two similes. But the two similes are differently treated: the comparison to pygmies is barely stated; the comparison to fairy life is worked up into an elaborate picture — shadowy fairy existence, life of mirth and mischief and music, lonely and beautiful haunts, mystic relations with the moon, mixed awe and rapture of the surprised beholder. It is further clear that this comparison with fairy life might be conveyed in metaphorical form, and interwoven with the struc- ture of the narration: the sentence might run — Fairy grace Replacing demon bulk, with roomy ease Peopled the Hall of Council. ' Paradise Lost, i, 777. Imagery: Simile and Metaphor 405 The whole illusfxation suggests three kinds of interest in the treatment of simile and metaphor, (i) In the simile, the im- ported idea being kept outside the original passage has the greater scope for working up into what makes a detailed picture in itself. (2) The metaphor, lacking this, has a compensating characteristic that, as veiled imagery, it can exhibit the most varied degrees in the veiling or revealing of the comparison. (3) In both simile and metaphor alike, there is the intrinsic interest in the comparison of the original and the accessory ideas. We may first take up the interest of working out a sumle in detaU. Milton, following Homer and Virgil, is particularly powerful in this elaboration of similes; though the criticism of the later classical school ridiculed these as comparaisons d. longue ■ queue.^ Two varieties of treatment may be distinguished. In the first, the particulars are used to elaborate the accessory idea, thus only indirectly assisting the purpose of the compari- son. The muffled applause of the demonic assembly is com- pared to reverberations among hoUow rocks. He scarce had finish 'd, when such murmur fill'd Th' assembly, as when hollow rocks retain The sound of blust'ring winds, which all night long Had rous'd the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull Sea-faring men o'er-watch't, whose bark by chance Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay After the tempest." Much less than this would have conveyed the comparison; but the whole makes a finished sea-picture. Of the same nature is another passage: the simile of the rustic maiden in the midst of rural scenes emphasizing the shock of surprise with which ' Spectator, No. 303. " Paradise Lost, ii, 284. 4o6 Literature as a Mode of Art Satan, invading the beauties of Eden, comes upon the yet more exquisite beauty of Eve. As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's mom to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoin 'd, from each thing met conceives delight, The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine. Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound; If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass. What pleasing seem'd, for her now pleases more. She most, and in her look sums all delight.' In the other treatment, the added particulars, besides mak- ing a picture in themselves, also emphasize the comparison. The style of St. Paul, it is often remarked, is one that freely admits digressions: yet such digressions that at the end of each the general argument seems to have been advancing. It is the same with this type of imagery. Satan had been de- scribed as lying prone on the sea of fire: in bulk as huge As ... . that sea-beast Leviathan, which God of all his works Created hugest that swim the ocean stream; Him haply slumbring on the Norway foam. The pOot of some small night-founder 'd skifiF Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell. With fixed anchor in his scaly rind Moors by his side under the lee, while night Invests the sea, and wished mom delays: So strecht out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay Chain 'd on the burning lake." It is a quaint picture of a whale mistaken by seamen for an island; but the whole of it assists the general idea of bulk. I Paradise Lost, ix, 445. " Ibid., i, 196. Imagery: Simile and Metaphor 407 Again: the night scene in Eden reaches a point where the angelic guard suddenly threaten Satan: Th' angelic squadron bright Tum'd fiery red, sharpning in mooned horns Their phalanx, and began to hem him round. With ported spears, as thick as when a field Of Ceres ripe for harvest waving bends Her bearded grove of ears, which way the wind Sways them; the careful ploughman doubting stands Lest on the threshing-floor his hopeful sheaves Prove chafi.' The accessory idea is rural, yet its note of anxiety is in harmony with the panic moment of the scene in Eden. Similarly, when the Serpent-Tempter is leading Eve to the fatal tree — Hope elevates, and joy Bright 'ns his crest, as when a wandring fire Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night Condenses, and the cold environs round, Kindl'd through agitation to a flame, (Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends) Hovering and blazing with delusive light, Misleads th' amazed night-wanderer from his way To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool. There swallow 'd up and lost, from succour far.= We have an elaborate picture of the ignis fatuus, but every de- tail emphasizes the thought of leading astray. The spirit of this second treatment may be seen in the choice, as well as the elaboration of simUes. It is noteworthy that no less than ten similes appear in different parts of Milton's poem all insisting on the vast numbers of the Fallen Angels : in all these the variety of similes employed is in exact harmony with the circumstances • Paradise Lost, iv, 977. ' Ibid., ix, 633. 4o8 Literature as a Mode of Art of the Fallen Hosts at the moment.' While they are on the burnihg lake, they are numerous as leaves in Vallombrosa, as Red Sea sedge, as the Egyptians swallowed up in the returning waters; springing into the air, the angels are numerous as a plague of locusts; forming on the plain, as hordes of northern barbarians; crowding into the narrow council hall, as bees in spring; contracting their forms, they are numberless as pygmies, or faery elves. In heaven, before their sin, they are described to be innumerable "as stars of night, or stars of morning, dew- drops." The essence of metaphor, as veiled imagery, is found in the exact degree of closeness or remoteness with which it allows the two ideas — the originating and the accessory idea — to be asso- ciated in the comparison it suggests. Take a particular case. On a sudden open fly, AlVith impetuous recoil and jarring sound, Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thimder, that the lowest bottom shook Of Erebus." Here the originating idea — the statement actually made — is that the opening gates grate with a harsh sound; the idea im- ported for comparison is thunder. We may frame a scale of degrees of closeness with which these two ideas may be asso- ciated in the grammatical structure of a sentence. a) The doors grate harsh like thunder. [A simile.] h) Their harsh grating, a very thunder, resounds. [Juxtaposi- tion — a metaphor which is all but a simile.] c) Their grating, a harsh thunder, resounds. [Slightly closer connection: the attributes of the two ideas have become entangled.] ' Compare Paradise Lost, i, 303-12, 338, 351, 768, 780-81; v, 745. »7W.,ii, 879. Imagery: Simile and Metaphor 409 d) The thunder of their harsh grating resounds. [The connection is now organic: the two ideas form a single grammatical phrase.] e) The doors grate harsh thunder. [Closer organic connection: the imported idea becomes the completion of the old predi- cate.] /) The doors thunder forth a harsh grating. [Last stage of close- ness: the new idea has replaced the old predicate.] In this series of forms taken by the same comparison we see the external or imported idea advancing until it has supplanted the root-word of the original expression. A invites B to his home as a guest; B marries A's daughter and enters the family; finally B acquires the family home and entertains his father-in- law as guest. Poetic discrimination is shown in seizing the exact degree of prominence with which two particular ideas wiU bear to be associated. We may compare " Stars of morn- ing, dewdrops" with "The morning star that guides the starry flock": in the first, the original idea, dewdrops, and the ac- cessory idea, stars of morning, can stand in simple juxtaposi- tion, almost as in a simile; in the second case, the imported idea of a shepherd does not appear at all except as implied in the starry flock. Three metaphors of Milton have the same , imported idea, that of clothing: The moon o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. Night invests the sea. Caves o'er which the mantling vine lays forth her purple grape. In the first, the accessory idea, mantle, is just substituted for moonlight. In the second, the idea of clothing is given more prominence by being made a verb and the action of the moon. In the third case, the sentence is complete without the accessory idea; this is only thrown in as an additional epithet to the vine. The way to test analytically the entanglement of ideas in metaphors is to turn, them into corresponding similes, in which 4IO Literature as a Mode of Art the accessory ideas will stand apart from the rest. As the ad- vancing armies are about to meet in the shock of battle Satan interposes between them; the expression is — On the rough edge of battle ere it joined.' Turn this into simile form, and we find a double ccanparison: an army is like a weapon, and its front rank like that weapon's edge. In the compression of the metaphor, the accessory idea of the second comparison (edge) is organically connected with the original idea of the first {army, which in Classical phraseol- ogy is called battle) ; again, the epithet rough (that is, bristling with weapons), which belongs to the first comparison, is as- sociated with the accessory idea {edge) of the second. It is a powerful expression of Milton's where he speaks of the sword "with steeps force to smite descending." Here the originating idea is descending force, the imported idea is a fall from a precipice: the imported idea nowhere appears except so far as steep is an epithet for a precipice. One of the most intricate of metaphors is found in the description of the rainbow that attends the cessation of Noah's Flood: — a flow 'ry verge to bind The fluid skirts of that same watery cloud, Lest it again dissolve and shower the earth.^ This resolves into a double simile: the rainbow is to the storm like a binding to a fraying skirt (note the exquisiteness of the woTd fluid), like a flowery border to a lawn: all the elements of the two comparisons are inextricably interwoven. Perhaps the strongest metaphor in all poetry is Hamlet's bitter word: "Frailty, thy name is woman!" The originating idea is woman and her frailty; the imported idea is a person and his name. It would have been a strong expression to have said, "Woman, thy name is frailty": here the imported idea of name would be joined organically to the subject of the original sentence. Ham- ' Paradise Lost, vi, io8. ' Ibid., vi, 324. ' Ibid., xi, 881. Imagery: Simile and Metaphor 411 let's metaphor is stronger still: the imported idea and the original subject have exchanged places. Of course, it is only rarely that analysis is needed to determine closeness of associated ideas in metaphorical expressions: in ordinary cases we appreciate the effect instinctively, as we appreciate 'touch' on a musical instrument. This 'touch' would analyze in terms of infinitesimal fractions of a foot-pound of pressure, and of a second of duration. By practice we develop our sense of touch; by practice, occasionally assisted by analysis, we develop an instinct for metaphor. Simile and metaphor, then, have each its characteristic treatment: both stand alike in regard to that which is the in- trinsic interest of imagery — the pleasure derived from associa- tion between two disconnected sets of ideas. Here there seems little reason for analysis, unless it be as an excuse for lingering longer on these gems of poetic beauty. We. might particularize involuntary images: the basis of these seems to be the poet's vivid realization of a scene, the im- ported idea being so closely connected with the general concep- tion as to be almost a part of it. The Council Hall in Hell "rose like an exhalation"; Satan in Chaos "springs upward like a pyramid of fire"; the trees at the creative fiat "rose as in a dance"; the rising all at once of the demon assembly was like "the sound of thunder heard remote"; Satan, crouching in form of a toad, at the touch of Ithuriel's spear dilates into his native form as if a spark had fallen upon a heap of nitrous powder. Or, we have similes of attraction. These seem to depend upon the nature of the poet's mind, which is a storehouse of beautiful conceptions: conceptions of nature phenomena, or drawn from the previous poetry of the world which — alike to the poet and his reader — has become a second nature. Where an idea the poem is presenting approaches one of these things of beauty, its mere attractiveness seems to force a simile. A 412 Literature as a Mode of Art large number of Milton's similes are founded on accepted topics of Biblical or Classical literature. And many others are drawn from ordinary phenomena of nature which so powerfully afEect a sensitive imagination. The settled gloom which had hung over the Council of Fiends at last finds some relief when the project of the temptation of man is broached: it is irresistible to link this with the picture of a misty day that has found light at eventide. Thus they their doubful consultations dark Ended rejoicing in their matchless chief: As when from movmtain-tops the dusky clouds Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread Heav'n's cheerful face, the lowring element Scowls o'er the landscape dark'ned snow, or show'r; If chance the radiant sun with farewell sweet Extend his ev'ning beam, the fields revive, The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.' When the horror of Satan and the horror of Death for the first time encounter one another, dark images of external nature seem to rush in of their own accord. Incenst with indignation Satan stood Un terrified; and like a comet bum'd That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge In th' Arctic sky, and from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war Such a frown Each cast at th ' other, as when two black clouds With Heav 'n's artillery fraught, come rattling on Over the Caspian, then stand front to front Hov 'ring a space, till winds the signal blow To join their dark encounter in mid air: So frown 'd the mighty combatants, that Hell Grew darker at their frown." ■ Paradise Lost, ii, 486. ' Ibid., ii, 707. Imagery: Simile and Metaphor 413 Distinct from both these types are expository images, which serve a definite purpose in the narration. We have similes of scale: conve3dng the notion of size and degree in regard to objects of the imaginary world without the use of definite terms, which would have limited the imagination. Where Satan is beheld stretched out at full length, instead of saying (as Dante would have said) that he covered so many acres, Milton (we have seen) compares his bulk to the floating sea- monster. So Satan's shield is compared to the moon seen through a telescope; his spear exceeds the tallest Norwegian fune. Uriel hastening from the sun to warn the guardians of Eden comes flying as swift as a shooting star;' the ported spears of the angelic host henmiing Satan round threaten as thick as' a wind-swept field of corn. Or, imagery may help over a detail of description which is really difficult for the imagination to grasp. The tradition on which the Hell of the Paradise Lost is founded represents it as a world of fire, but also as a world of darkness: the difficulty of mentally combining these opposite ideas is wonderfully assisted by a simile: On dry land He lights; if it were land that ever bum'd With solid, as the lake with liquid fire. And such appear 'd in hue, as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hUl Tom from Pelorus, or the shatter 'd side Of thund'ring Aetna whose combustible And fuell'd entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fuiy, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom, all involv 'd With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole Of unblest feet.3 Occasionally, we note a curious closeness of resemblance be- tween two sets of disconnected circumstances as that which • Paradise Lost, iv, 556. ' Ibid., iv, 977. 3 Ibid., i, 227. 414 Literature as a Mode of Art has brought about the comparison. Satan, laboring through the shifting consistence of Chaos on his journey to the bright world of Eden, alights for a while on the outer shell of the world, still vexed by storms of Chaos yet affording comparatively solid foothold: a parallel can be found even for this. As when a vulture on Imaus bred, Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, Dislodging from a region scarce of prey To gorge the flesh of lambs or yearling kids On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams; But in his way lights on the barren plains Of Sericana, where Chineses drive With sails and wind their cany wagons light: So on this windy sea of land, the Fiend Walk'd up and down.' These are three among many types of imagery that might be distinguished. In the first type, the raison d'Ure of the com- parison seems to be the vividness of the originating idea: in the second, the attractiveness of the imported idea; in the ex- pository type, it lies in the connection between the two. From metaphor in general we may distinguish metaphor direct. Where an association of ideas is, without formal par- ticles of comparison, to be woven into the structure of a sen- tence, it is clear that this can be done in several different wordings: among others we may have some mode of expression that admits ambiguity — ^it may be read as a metaphor, it may also be read as a direct statement of fact. To take a very simple example. We have a clear simile in the verse — As the hart panteth after the water-brooks. So panteth my soul after Thee, God. Paradise Lost, iii, 431. Imagery: Simile and Metaphor 415 The association of a panting beast with an aspiring soul may be conveyed metaphorically in various wordings of the sentence. My hunted soul panteth after the water-brooks of Zion. God, my glory in victory, my water of refreshment in the chase. A hunted beast pants for the brooks of Zion. This last wording differs from the others: the wording is ade- quate to convey the metaphor to a reader who catches it; it might also be read as a mere statement of a beast panting for particular streams, without any suggestion of the soul. This is metaphor direct: a metaphor capable of being misread as a direct statement. All three forms of imagery come together in a well-known passage of Lycidas. Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find. And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th ' abhorred shears. And slits the thin-spun life. 'But not the praise,' Phoebus replied, and touch 'd my trembling ears. The comparison of fame to a spur is made by juxtaposition, the form of metaphor which is all but simile. The comparison of death to the Fury with her shears is highly metaphorical: the originating idea death is not named. Metaphor direct is found in the concluding line. This may be read as a direct statement: that the god of poetry touched the poet and re- minded him of what he had forgotten. But the word trembling suggests the metaphor of a horse: the kindly driver playfully flicks the horse's ear that responds with the weU-known quiver. It would not seem worth while to make metaphor direct a separate form of imagery, were it not for the grave importance 4i6 Literature as a Mode of Art of this in one branch of literature. Such direct metaphor is specially characteristic of the literature of the Bible, and is con- stantly overlooked; in my opinion more mistakes of biblical interpretation arise from this than from any other single source. I have elsewhere dealt with this subject at length: I may be permitted to quote one or two illustrations.' A critical sentence in Ps. 78 is the followuig: The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, Turned back in the day of battle, They kept not the covenant of God, etc. It has been customary to see in this an allusion to a specific historical incident, though no satisfactory incident of history has been adduced. Here, again, the whole can be read as a piece of imagery: Like war- riors who, in armor and with weapons in hand, turn their hacks in the midst of the battle, so the children of Ephraim were treacherous to the covenant of God. No particular incident is described, but the whole defection of northern Israel from the covenant is compared to soldiers deserting on the field of battle. And this makes a suitable starting- point for the psalm, which is a national hymn of Judah, portraying alternately God's strength displayed over his people, and their frailty resisting his purposes, imtil a final outburst of divine power rejects northern Israel and proclaims the house of David as the chosen people. It may be added that a not dissimilar -image (but this time in simile form) occurs in verse S7 • But turned back, and dealt treacherously Uke their fathers, They were turned aside like a deceitful bow. Another important case arises in Ps. 84: Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house. And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young. Even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my king and my God. Read as direct statement, this has been understood by some commen- tators to refer the psalm to the period of the exile when the temple is in ruins, the haunt of birds; others see an indication that the poet 'What follows is from the Note on Metaphor Direct in the Modern Reader's Bible, pages IS34-3S- Personification and Semi-personification 417 must have been a dweller in the temple precincts, accustomed to watch the birds flitting round the sacred edifice. A better interpre- tation is surely found by understanding an image: Like the birds finding in spring their nesting places, so the sacred seasons of the pil- grimages bring me to the altar of God. Nothing else in the psahn sug- gests the period of the exile, the whole being filled with the idea of the pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the sacred feasts: the passage here dis- cussed adds the exquisite image which compares the joyous approach of the sacred festivals with a stirring instinct of birds in the nesting season. We may understand, then, a scale of varying degrees of close- ness with which ideas are associated by imagery: one term of the scale is the simile, the other is this metaphor direct. I pass on to certain varieties of imagery sufficiently distinct to be called by special names. Of these, the most obvious is personification. No element of poetic effect is so widespread in usage as this. In Classical literature, and in mediaeval alle- gory, it would seem that to use an initial capital for a word was aU that was necessary to produce the effect of personification. In the philosophical books of Scripture, the idea of personified Wisdom is so fundamental that in one of them, the Wisdom of Solomon, this is most frequently indicated only by the pronoim She. All kinds of personification analyze as a particular type of metaphor, such that the accessory idea is always human personality. The underlying thought is a mental scale of which the ascending terms are abstract, concrete, personal: when attributes belonging properly to personality are metaphorically assigned to things concrete or abstract, the 'things' are, as it were, lifted in the scale, and endowed in greater or less degree with the privileges of consciousness. There are varieties of personification, which difier — as might be expected from what is a variant of the metaphor — according to the degree in which the personality is allowed to appear. 4i8 Literature as a Mode of Art First, we have personification proper : here personal attributes are metaphorically assigned to things, and the personality is both distinct and sustained — sustained through a whole poem, or it may be a whole region of poetry. Such full personi- fication makes the staple of mythology: illustration seems superfluous. There is, however, one remarkable example of per- sonification proper: the conception of Sin and Death, which is so deeply embodied in the poetry of the Paradise Lost. It is interwoven with the whole structure of the poem; but appears most prominently in three episodes: an episode of the Second Book, where Satan encounters Sin and Death at the gate of Hell; an episode of the Tenth Book, in which Sin and Death build the bridge from Earth to Hell — the "broad way that leadeth to destruction"; and another episode of the same book where Sin and Death lay waste all creation after the fall of man has taken place.' The foundation for the whole is a single verse of Scripture,^ the wording of which is faintly metaphorical: "The lust, when it has conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is fullgrown, bringeth forth death." The incestuous genealogy thus suggested is by Milton drawn out in full details, details designedly made repellent with the proper loathsomeness of evil. The climax is the prayer' addressed by Sin to Satan: this is exquisitely worded so as to translate the deepest instincts of our spiritual nature into their evil counterparts, the depths of impiety posing as the height of devotion. The whole treat- ment of Sin and Death raises the most diflicult of all the prob- lems of interpretation belonging to the Paradise Lost: the question whether in all this we are to read imagery or not — whether the personality attached to the abstract ideas of Sin and Death is not to be understood as a real personality, Sin and I Paradise Lost, ii, 681-726; x, 229-414; x, 585-613. " James i : 15. 3 Paradise Lost, x, 354-82. Personification and Semi-personification 419 Death being in the same category with the Satan, the Good and Evil Angels, the Hell and Paradise, of the poem; whether the underlying theology does not poiat to Satan as an anti-God, with a dark hint at the linked figures of Satan, Sin, and Death as a Trinity of Evil. ^ Other varieties of personification may be summed up in the general term 'semi-personification.' Personal attributes are assigned to things: the personality may be distinct enough, but not sustained beyond a single phrase; or it may be sus- tained in snatches over a long passage, yet not with the distinct- ness of full personality. Or, the personality may be neither distinct nor sustained: we are conscious only of a strong ex- pression, which on analysis appears as the assignment of some measure of personality to what is non-personal. Illustrations of this last may be seen in such expressions of Milton as these: lifted a noble stroke; gunpowder dilated and infuriate; war tormented all the air; Hell's artillery emhowell'd with out- rageous noise the air; pain implacable; the ridges of grim war; deformed rout entered and foul disorder; war wearied hath performed what war can do. There is a higher degree of dis- tinctness in the semi-personification which describes an awful moment of waiting for the descent of the angelic swords in the words,' "Expectation stood in horror"; or again, where the exquisite picture of on-coming evening — Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompanied, for beast and bird. They to their grassy couch, these to their nests Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; reaches a climax in the clause — Silence was pleased." I Paradise Lost, vi, 306. ' Ibid., iv, 598. 420 Literature as a Mode of Art Semi-personification is often applied to a combination of things: Mom, Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand Unbarred the gates of light.' Or, it expresses a relation between things: Discord, daughter of Sin; Sin, and his shadow Death, and Misery, Death's harbinger. It is a tour de force of epic description which has suggested the beauty of Eden as sum of the beauties of all other beautiful regions: the climax is in the lines' — Universal Pan Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance Led on th' eternal Spring. The unanalyzable sense of beauty in Nature as a whole voices itself in the Greek word Pan; the Graces are beauties of Nature in detail, the Hours are beauties of Nature taken in succession: all are here linked together in a single stroke of per- sonification. One type of such semi-personification is peculiarly interest- ing, and of wide usage: where the vividness, copiousness, or luxuriance of natural phenomena — or, it may be, the opposite of all this — is brought out by suggesting for them a human motive. In the description of Eden we read of compliant boughs; of pampered boughs; how the trees wept gums, the gales whispered whence they stole their balmy spoils; the gar- den derides with wanton growth the efforts of Adam and Eve, who direct the clasping ivy where to climb. So the immediate- ness of response to creative fiat appears in the waters hastening with glad precipitance, in the sun jocund to run his longitude; especially, the effect is seen in the picture of the subsiding waters of the Flood:' ' Paradise Lost, vi, 2. " Ibid., iv, 266. ' Ibid., xi, 841-49, Personification and Semi-personification 421 The clouds were fled, Driven by a keen north-wind, that blowing dry Wrinkled the face of Deluge, as decay 'd; And the clear sun on his wide watery glass Gazed hot, and of the fresh wave largely drew, As after thirst; which made their flowing shrink From standing lake to tripping ebb, that stole With soft foot toward the deep. This tj^e of semi-personification includes what is one of the simplest instincts of the sensitive mind — a previous chapter' has mentioned it as the 'pathetic fallacy' of Ruskin. This is the instinct of reading human emotions into the elements of nature around us, as when we speak of the angry sea, the raging fire, the greedy ocean, of the fire licking its prey, of the earth opening its mouth to swallow up. Of this nature is the power- ful imagery in the Walpurgis Night of Goethe's Faust:' Clouds frown heavily, and hearken How the wood groans as they darken .... Hearken how the tempest wrenches Groaning trunks and crashing branches. And the earth beneath is rifted, And the shrieking trees uplifted — Bole and bough and blossom cheerful. Fair trees fall in ruin fearful; How the haughty forest brothers Bend and tremble! how they fall! How they cling on one another's Arms! each crushes each and smothers, Till tangled, strangled, down come all; And the wild Winds through the ruin Are howling, hissing, and hallooing! Down the valleys how they sweep, Round and roimd, above and under. Rend the giant cliffs asunder, ' Chapter xx, page 367. ' Anster's translation. 422 Literature as a Mode of Art And, with shout and scream appalling, Catch the mighty fragments falling! How they laugh, and how they leap, As they hurry off their plunder! Headlong steep, and gorges deep, Gulf, and glen, and rock, in wonder Echo back the stormy thunder! In this connection it is natural to mention that strange work, the Polyolhion of Drayton: this describes the geography of England, but geography elevated to a poetic plane by this same device of semi-personification. The Taw, which from her fount forced on by amorous gales. And easily ambling down through the Devonian dales. Brings with her Moul and Bray, her banks that gently bathe. Which on her dainty breast,' in many a silver swathe. She bears unto the bay where Barnstaple beholds How her beloved Taw clear Torridge there enfolds. If we look at the map of Devonshire and Cornwall we note certain rivers curving in particular directions; the 'pathetic fallacy' must find a human interpretation for such curves: (The Torridge) seems at first to flow That way where Tamar strains; but, as she great doth grow, Remembreth to foresee what rivals she should find To intercept her course. Etc. Dickens is a great master of this special variety of semi- personification. The plain fact he has to chronicle is that a sudden wind slammed Mr. Pecksniff's door in his face and tumbled him down his own front steps: but on this he enlarges in a personifying strain maintained for several paragraphs.' An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The withering leaves no longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of shelter from its chill pursuit Then the village forge came out in all ' Martin Chuzzlewil, chapter ii. Personification and Semi-personification 423 its bright importance Out upon the angry wind! how from sighing, it began to bluster round the merry forge, banging at the wicket, and grumbling in thft chimney, as if it bullied the jolly bel- lows for doing anything to order. And what an impotent swaggerer it was too, for all its noise; for if it had any influence on that hoarse companion, it was but to make him roar his cheerful song the louder, and by consequence to make the fire burn the brighter, and the sparks to dance more gayly yet: at length, they whizzed so madly round and round, that it was too much for such a surly wind to bear; so off it flew with a howl, giving the old sign before the ale-house door such a cufE as it went, that the Blue Dragon was more rampant than usual ever afterward It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humor on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury; for not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted them into the wheel-wright's saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the yard, and scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and fol- lowed at their heels! The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round and roimd at his pleasure; and they crept under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to the sides of hayricks like bats; and tore in at open chamber windows, and cowered close to hedges; and in short went anjrwhere for safety. But the oddest feat they achieved was, to take advantage of the sudden opening of Mr. Pecksniff's front door, to dash wildly into his passage; whither the wind following close upon them, and finding the back-door open, incontinently blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff, and slammed the front door against Mr. Pecksniff, who was at that moment entering, with such violence that in the twinkling of an eye he lay on his back at the 424 Literature as a Mode of Art bottom of the steps. Being by this time weary of such trifling per- formances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing, roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got out to sea, where it met with other winds similarly disposed, and made a night of it. It may be thought that such an element of nature as wind lends itself easily to devices of imagery; but Dickens can infuse touches of semi-personification into the most prosaic topics: witness the bedroom of this same Blue Dragon: It was none of your frivolous and preposterously bright bedrooms, where nobody can close an eye with any kind of propriety or decent regard to the association of ideas; but it was a good, dull, leaden, drowsy place, where every article of furniture reminded you that you came there to sleep There was no wakeful reflection of the fire there, as in your modern chambers, which upon the darkest nights have a watchful consciousness of French polish; the old Spanish mahogany winked at it now and then, as a dozing cat or dog might, nothing more. The very size and shape, the hopeless immova- bility, of the bedstead, and wardrobe, and in a minor degree of even the chairs and tables, provoked sleep; they were plainly apoplectic and disposed to snore Even the old stuffed fox upon the top of the wardrobe was devoid of any spark of vigilance, for his glass eye had fallen out, and he slumbered as he stood. It may be added, that we have an extension of the general idea of personification into what may be called quasi-personification. Here qualities of material things are assigned to abstract ideas or to things not material; there is the same underlying notion of a scale of things, and the lifting one degree in the scale. MUtonic examples would be such as these: Horrid confusion heaped upon confusion rose; The battle swerved with many an inroad gored; The shout tore Hell's concave. In all these cases the abstract is momentarily lifted into the concrete. Finally, every art effect generates another art effect in its con- verse: we thus get depersonification, where a metaphorical expression is a lowering in the scale. "Satan his heart ex- The Fable 425 plores": consciousness is part of personality, here it is explored as if it were a country. So pain is a part of consciousness: in the MUtonic expression, "Pain which makes remiss the hands of mightiest," the beautiful metaphor remiss applies to this thing of personality the concrete image of the slackened bridle- rein. It is natural to pass from personification to that which is in some measure its converse — the fable. It is true that the word fable has suffered, both from the natural wear and tear of lan- guage, and also from the special fact that the Latin form of the word was used by the criticism of antiquity in the sense of story or plot, and the usage was retained by Addison and other early critics. Considered however as a literary type, what consti- tutes the fable is that we apply the ways of the lower animals, or of vegetable life, to suggest the ways of humanity. Mere stories of animals are not fables: Grey friars Bohhy^ is in the fuU sense a canine biography — ^more interesting to some of us than the majority of human biographies. But when plants or animals suggestively satirize men — ^when, in the phrase of Dave- nant, "we blush to see our politics in beasts" — then we have the literary fable. From the standpoint of poetic art, all such fables are sustained metaphors, constituted a separate type by the fact that the accessory idea is always a non-human nature, as in personifications the accessory idea is always human na- ture. Aesop was the Homer for the Classical fable; in the mediaeval world the 'beast epic' was of this type, evolving an elaborate masterpiece in Reynard the Fox? In Hebrew litera- ture the preference seems rather to have been for vegetable life as imaginative clothing of fable. Perhaps this type has never reached a higher point than in the fable with which Jotham caricatures political conditions around him, as he addresses the motley rabble escorting the base king they have ■ By Eleanor Atkinson (Harper). ' Translation by F. S. EUis (Nutt). 426 Literature as a Mode of Art proclaimed in violation of the sacred tradition that Jehovah alone is king/ The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees? And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us. But the fig tree said unto them. Should I leave my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to wave to and fro over the trees ? And the trees said unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over lis. And the vine said unto them. Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees ? Then said all the trees unto the bramble. Come thou, and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon. The fable belongs to the metaphor side of imagery — an exten- sion of metaphor direct: it is tempting to correlate with it the parable as holding a corresponding relation to the simile. If the parables of Jesus may be taken as the norm, these regularly contain the comparative particle: the Kingdom of Heaven is likened to something on earth. But so many lines of meaning meet in the word 'parable' that it is not safe to take this as a literary type. I proceed to particular varieties of literary art which I shall group together under the name of moving imagery. Of these the most important is that which may be called the dramatic background of nature. This is especially a device of modern poetry, and William Morris is its great master. External nature makes a suitable background for incidents of human life. These are seen in a surrounding of open-air scenery; or, if they do not take place in the open air, there is at least an element of 'Judges 9:8. Moving Imagery: Dramatic Background of Nature 427 nature implied in the sunlight or accompaniments of night. There is a tendency in modern poetry to emphasize this back- ground of nature. In dramatic poetry this is obvious: the ancient stage was limited to exterior scenes, in which the light would be uniform; the modern stage, combining exterior with interior scenes, makes copious use of natural scenery and light effects for dramatic emphasis. In the poetry that is narrated there is a similar tendency, by reiterated touches of detail, to keep before the reader's attention the nature surroundings of important incidents; and in some cases to suggest sudden or continuous changes in the background of nature, a movement in the scene that mystically harmonizes with the movement of the incidents themselves. This is the technical device here styled the dramatic background of nature. It must, of course, be distinguished from more general descriptions of nature, with which modern poetry abounds, but which, however interesting in their intrinsic beauty, have no essential relationship to the movement of the poem in which they occur. Conspicuous examples are such as these. In the finale of Marlowe's Faustus,^ the hero, watching through his last hour on earth, has his attention caught by a black cloud, slowly and silently rising, measuring its advance (and so measuring the lapse of the hour) by the stars it successively blots out, until precisely at midnight it bursts in the thunderstorm of doom. At one point of its advance, it would seem as if the Northern Lights had suddenly flashed in the sky, as suddenly to vanish: the popular name of these Northern Lights, which connects them with streaming blood, makes the apparition suggest to Faustus the thought of the blood of Christ, but with the dis- appearance the momentary hope changes to despair. The ascending cloud breaks into strange forms: suggesting the threatening arm of God, beetling mountains, yawning caves ' This is somewhat more fuUy presented in World Literature, pages 228-31. 428 Literature as a Mode of Art that refuse their shelter. As the storm bursts we can mark, in Faustus' cries, the first sound of the whistling wind, of the rain pattering upon the roof; the sheet lightning that seems the fierce countenance of God, the forked lightning that plays like adders and serpents around the doomed man. This rising cloud that thus measures the advance of doom is an example of dramatic background of nature. Again: the last phase of the dialogue in Job (from 36:24) is accompanied — so the words of Elihu suggest — ^by a slowly gathering rainstorm, increasing to thunder (37:1), and at last to pitchy darkness (37:19) and whirlwind: this whirlwind changes into the voice of Deity. In Paradise Lost, as the long- drawn excitement of the temptation reaches the actual crisis of the Fall, there is a sudden shiver and groan throughout ex- ternal nature: So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck 't, she ate; Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe That aU was lost. The effect is repeated as Adam makes the Fall complete: Earth trembled from her entrails, as again In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan; Sky lowr'd, and muttering thundef, some sad drops Wept at completing of the mortal sin.' There is a bold suggestion of the effect in Wagner's Valkyrie: the opening door makes a sudden revelation of spring at the critical moment of Sigmund's passion for Sieglinda. Perhaps the finest illustration of aU is in Tennyson's ballad of The Sis- ters: by a refrain in each verse the wind is kept before us, dra- matically accompanying successive stages of the horror by its changes — blowing, howling, roaring, raging, raving, back to blowing as the crisis is past. ' Paradise Lost, ix, 780, 1000. Moving Imagery: Dramatic Background of Nature 429 We were two daughters of one race: She was the fairest in the face: The wind is blowing in turret and tree. They were together, and she fell; Therefore revenge became me well. O the Earl was fair to see! She died; she went to burning flame: She mix'd her ancient blood with shame. The wind is howling in turret and tree. Whole weeks and months, and, early and late. To win his love I lay in wait: O the Earl was fair to see! I made a feast; 1 bade him come; I won his love, I brought him home, The wind is roaring in turret and tree. And after supper, on a bed, Upon my lap he laid his head. O the Earl was fair to see! I kissed his eyelids into rest: His ruddy cheek upon my breast. The wind is raging in turret and tree. I hated him with the hate of hell, But I loved his beauty passing well. O the Earl was fair to see! I rose up in the silent night: I made my dagger sharp and bright. The wind is raving in turret and tree. As half-asleep his breath he drew, Three times I stabb'd him thro' and thro'. O the Earl was fair to see! I curl'd and comb'd his comely head, He look 'd so grand when he was dead. The wind is blowing in turret and tree. I wrapt his body in the sheet. And laid him at his mother's feet. O the Earl was fair to see. 43° Literature as a Mode of Art In Morris' poem of Sigurd the Volsung, this treatment is applied to every important incident, and worked out in great detail; such dramatic background of nature makes one of the most characteristic features of the poem viewed from the side of art. The central incident, the awakening of Brynhild,' is drawn out with great elaboration — the riding over the heath, the Shield-burg, the mound with the recumbent figure on it, the ripping of the armor which reveals the sleeping woman. As we foUow through the long sense of expectation to the climax, we find the gradual approach of daylight indicated by continu- ous touches and fine gradations of light: the glimmering twi- light, the new-risen moon paling, the stars growing faint with day; the earliest wind of dawning agitating the golden buckler, the light from the yellowing east beaming soft on the wall of shields; as Sigurd faces the earth-mound the dawn is growing about it; the sword that rips open the armor burns bright with the clearing east; he kneels over the fair form — While soft the waves of the dayUght o'er the starless heavens speed, And the gleaming rims of the Shield-burg yet bright and brighter grow, And the thin moon hangeth her horns dead-white in the golden glow. At last the risen sun suddenly bathes in morning glory the embrace that begins Sigurd's day of love. So with the other incidents that open the hero's glorious career — the slaying of Fafnir," the winning 4he World's Treasure' — there is an accompaniment of approaching day. On the contrary, the approach of Sigurd to the Burg of the Niblungs is mystically accompanied with suggestions of day giving place to night, of cloud- threatenings and angry heavens; and the efEect is repeated ' Sigurd the Volsung (Longmans), pages 135-40. ' Sigurd, pages 121-27. ' Ibid., pages 132-34. Moving Imagery: Dramatic Background of Nature 431 when he returns to the same spot after his night journey of be- wilderment.' Night scenery in its successive stages is kept before us all through the awful crisis of Brynhild being claimed by the semblance of Gunnar;" here morning comes as the dose, not the goal, of the incident. So the long suspense of waiting for the murder of Sigurd^ is punctuated by stages in the passing of night — the waning moonlight, the fading torches. Yet again: as Gunnar sings his death-song in the pit of snakes, the moon Ughts up his harp; he dies in the chill of morning.'' The final doom of Atli's hosts has a night accompaniment: the rising sun is met by the smoke of the burning hall; the f casters awake from their stupor to a day of HelLs It may be added, that all this is part of a sustained color harmony that pervades the whole poem: with colors of night for the Niblungs, gold and brightness for the Volsungs, for Brynhild the soft whiteness of the swan. When Gudrun first meets Brynhild — In the hall her arms shine white, And her hair falls down behind her like a cloak of the sweet- breathed night But lo, as a swan on the sea spreads out her wings to arise From the face of the darksome ocean when the isle before her lies, So Brynhild arose from her throne and the fashioned cloths of blue When she saw the Maid of the Niblungs, and the face of Gudnm knew.' Not only is this dramatic background of nature a specially modern effect, but it seems to be the substitute in modern poetic art for the elaborated similes of Homer and Virgil and Milton. Sigurd the Volsung is the only modern epic that can be paraEeled with these. In Sigurd similes are conspicuous by their compara- tive absence: there are long tracts of the poem without a single example; of elaborate similes there are few, and briefer ones are • Sigurd, pages 170-77, 190-91- * Ibid., pages 334-37. ' Ibid., pages 208-18. « Ibid., pages 344-46. J Ibid., pages 255-60. ' Ibid., page 152. 432 Literature as a Mode of Art not abundant. The explanation seems to be this. The great proportion of similes in Homer and Milton are founded on ex- ternal nature; thus threads of nature scenery are, by this de- vice of imagery, woven into incidents of human life. In Morris, the same — or an even greater — amount of nature detail is intro- duced into the scenes of the story, but it is made more of an actuality, and less of a mere comparison. External nature is kept before us in continual notes of place (that is scenery) and time (movement of day and night). And in this effect of dra- matic background, instead of the nature details being imported from outside for comparison, they are made a part of the inci- dent, moving in mystic harmony with human events. There is still the association between separate trains of ideas, but it is a dynamic, not a static association. It is imagery, but it is mov- ing imagery. When once we have recognized moving imagery, we can see that a second variety of literary art to be referred to this heading is the allegory. Here, as in aU imagery, the essence is a com- parison between two disconnected trains of ideas; one is actual — part of the thought of the poem, what we have called the origi- nating idea; the other is only brought in for comparison. But the distinguishing point of allegory is that in this the extraneous or accessory train of ideas fills the whole field of action: it is the actual and essential thought that is left for inference. What the Pilgrim's Progress is engaged in describing is a City of De- struction, an escape from this, an arbor in which a roll is lost, an Interpreter's House, a Vanity Fair, Delectable Mountains, a river to be waded through. But every reader knows that these are not the realities of the poem: they are the shadows or images, comparison with which is giving him the real thoughts as he proceeds from beginning to finish. Allegory is imagery, and imagery that is moving with the movement of a story, as it suggests a corresponding movement of thought in the back- ground. CHART XXV Poetic Omament Resting on Accessory Ideas Imported for Comparison Imagery ^Pictorial Comparison Simile =Fonnal Imagery Metaplior=VeiIed Imagery: the interest resting on the degree of veiling — extreme in metaphor direct and concealed imagery Specialized Imagery Personification and Depersonification (the accessory idea always human personality) The Fable (the accessory idea non-hmnan personality) Moving Imagery Dramatic Background of Nature Allegory: Suggestive Background of Thought Symbolism = Conventional Comparison — cresting on Traditional Standards of Comparison Interest of Initial Mystery Riddles and Riddling Symbolism Dimib Show in Drama (cf . oratorical gestures) Emblem Prophecy, especially in Ezekiel (cf . Text and Sermon) Emblem Poetry of the Middle Ages Visions and Dreams (emblems externally presented) 433 434 Literature as a Mode of Art II The varieties of poetic ornament so far considered sum up as imagery: the accessory idea in all of them is an image, and the appeal of the comparison is to the pictorial power of the imagi- nation. There remain other elements of poetic effect which, like these, involve an essential detail of a poem and an extrane- ous idea imported for comparison; but the comparison in these cases appeals to something other than imaginative beauty; nay, it often happens that the inhibition of such imaginative picturing is essential for the effect. These constitute sym- bolism.' It is specially characteristic of oriental literature, and comes into our world poetry chiefly through the Bible. It must be understood that I am not referring to religious or theo- logical symbolism, such as that which makes The Song of Songs typical of the relations between Christ and his church. S5rm- bolic reading of this kind belongs to secondary interpretation. But in the primary interpretation of the Bible as literature the distinction between imagery and symbolism is important. We may approach the subject by particular examples. The Song of Songs is a love poem." The heroine, expatiating upon the charms of her lover, says — His head is of the most fine gold .... If the sentence stopped here, this might be an image: just the image which Shakespeare uses when he says — Golden lads and lasses must, Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust. ' It is hardly necessary to remark that this is only one out of many mean- ings of the word symbolism. " Symbolism as it appears in this poem is discussed in Literary Study of the Bible, pages 220-24. (Part of this is incorporated in the present dis- cussion.) A more detailed discussion will be found in the Introduction to the poem in the Modern Reader's Bible. Symbolism in Biblical Poetry 435 But her sentence continues: His head is of the most fine gold; His locks are bushy, and black as a raven. The two statements seem incompatible. But they are con- tradictory only when we seek to visualize the comparison: no picture can possibly paint the same hair as both golden and raven black. Reading symbolically, we understand a reference only to traditionally accepted standards of beauty: gold is the highest thing of its class, then my love's hair is of gold; raven black is the supreme type of black, then my love's hair must have the raven's gloss. So again, when the king enumerates his queen's attractions, he compares her nose to "the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus." To the western reader, who must visualize everything, the effect is comic; the symbolist, trained in imaginative restraint, sees only comparison with a famous landscape in which the tower of Lebanon is (so to speak) the center of expression. Modern readers find in Solomon's Song a sensuous emphasis which disappears in the reserve of symbolic interpretation. When the general principle has been caught, it is easy to recognize the guarded treatment in Solomon's Song of what borders on the sensuous. Maidenhood becomes a garden shut up; chastity, in contrast with too facile disposition, is veiled under symbols of wall and door. The en- raptured gaze of the bridegroom bending over his bride at the feast is disguised as 'a banner of love' waving over her. The sweet surrender of the maiden to her spouse is symbolically put: They made me keeper of the vineyards; But mine own vineyard have I not kept! The Shulammite does not in plain terms clasp her lover to her breast, but the refrain bids him be as a roe upon ' the mountains of separation.' Symbolism is a form of reserve; it is this veiled treatment of topics excluded from direct western speech which 436 Literature as a Mode of Art has enabled the Bible to provide the great Honeymoon Song of the world. Another passage of Biblical literature will both illustrate this imaginative reserve and also lead us to a second basis for symbolic comparison. The opening of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes' impresses every reader with its sustained poetic beauty. Yet the actuality to which so many poetic thoughts are attached is the most prosaic and unlovely of topics: nothing else than the symptoms of senile decay and the death that fol- lows. The treatment will stand out the clearer by comparison with a highly realistic picture of old age that comes from a great Elizabethan poet. I have space only for a single stanza. Crookback'd he was, tooth-shaken, and (blear-eyed: Went on three feet, and sometimes crept on four; With old lame bones, that rattled by his side. His scalp all pill'd, and he with age forlore; His wither 'd fist still knocking at death's door; Tumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath: For brief, the shape and messenger of death. With this compare the symbolic treatment in Ecclesiastes: Or ever the evil days come. And the years draw nigh When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them. Or ever the sun. And the light, And the moon, And the stars, Be darkened. And the clouds return after the rain; ' This is also discussed in the passage of Literary Study of the Bible men- tioned in note 2 to page 434; and part of the discussion is incorporated here. Symbolism in Biblical Poetry 437 In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, And the strong men shall bow themselves, And the grinders cease because they are few, And those that look out of the windows be darkened. And the doors shall be shut in the streets; When the sound of the grinding is low. And one shaU rise up at the voice of a bird. And all the daughters of music shall be brought low; Yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high, And terrors shall be in the way; And the almond tree shall blossom. And the grasshopper shall be a burden. And the caper-berry shall burst: Because man goeth to his long home. And the mourners go about the streets. Or ever the silver cord be loosed. Or the golden bowl be broken. Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, Or the wheel broken at the cistern: And the dust return to the earth As it was; And the spirit return to God Who gave it. In the powerful vision of Sackville every detail paints a repellent picture; the Biblical poem introduces ideas which have no visible resemblance to the spectacle of old age, and the compari- son they call for stirs a melancholy pleasure. Light fitly sym- bolizes the joy of mere existence: the darkening of sun and moon and stars recalls the gradual loss of pleasure in life for its own sake. Youth with its troubles and quick rallying knows only the simimer showers: when the rallying power is gone, "the clouds return after the rain." The "wither'd fist still 43^ Literature as a Mode of Art knocking at death's door" stamps the picture of the infirmity upon the imagination: the shaking hands recede into the dis- tance when, with a whole group of like infirmities, they are repre- sented by the elements of panic in a city — trembling keepers, strong men bowed down, grinders ceasing to work and specta- tors to look out of windows, while every door is made fast. Similar dim symbols just touch the loss of appetite, of sleep, of voice; the timid and uncertain gait; the sparse hairs of age, its feeble strength. The sudden bursting of the caper-berry that has been long shriveling up marks the transition to the reality that is being symbolized: Man goeth to his long home, And the mourners go about the streets. For the actual death that puts a period to the gradual decay other apt s)mibols follow: the house lamp of gold that has been secretly straining its silver chain now suddenly dropped and extinguished; the pitcher that has gone daily to the fountain, the cistern wheel that so long has mechanically turned, at last broken and useless. A long string of life's dull infirmities, from all of which realistic imagery must shrink as things un- lovely, has been transformed into a thing of enduring beauty by casting over it the softening veil of symbolism. The comparisons in this poem we may recognize as riddling comparisons. So successful has the riddle been in this case that the whole passage, by prosaic interpreters, has been read as an on-coming storm, as a picture of a siege, as a medical enumeration of physiological details some of which need an expert anatomist to identify.' This idea of riddling comparison makes a second basis for symbolism. It must be remembered that the riddle of modern popular amusement is a feeble repre- sentative of the poetic riddles that figure so largely in early ■ Compare the history of the interpretation of the poem in Ginsbuig's valuable edition. Riddling Symbolism 439 literature. An illustration or two may be quoted, preserved for us in the Exeter Book} Together came sixty men to the wave-shore on horses riding; they had eleven (the associates) war-horses, four white ones. These comrades could not pass o'er the sea, as they desired, for the flood was too deep, dire the biUow's force, the shores high, the streams strong. Resolv'd then to mount the men on a wain, and their horses together; they loaded amid the wave which bore away the horses, the steeds, and men arm'd with spears, over the water's swell, the wain to land; so that no ox drew it, nor power of men, nor fat stallion, nor swam it on the flood, nor on the ground waded under its guests, nor did the water drive it, nor flew it in the air, nor tum'd back, yet it brought the men over the bourne and their horses with them from the high shore, so that they step'd up on to the other the bold men from the waves and their horses sound. The answer to this riddle I understand to be a Bridge: to the next it is a Dream. Writings say that there is a creature with mankind oftentimes plain and visible; it has special craft, greater by much than men know of; it wiU seek every one separately bearing life, departs again on its way; it is not ever there a second night, but it must always with exile's track homeless wander, yet is not the viler. ' Thorpe's translation. 44° Literature as a Mode of Art It has nor foot nor hand, nor earth ever touch 'd, nor eyes, either of the two, nor mouth has it, nor speech with men, nor has it understanding; but writings say that it is poorest of all creatures which after their kinds have been brought forth. It has nor soul nor life, but it fates shall through this wonder world amply endure. It has no blood nor bones, yet has to children been throughout this mid-earth to many a comfort. Heaven it never touched nor to hell may go, but it shall always in the King of glories' doctrines live. Long is to say how its life afterwards goes the tortuous decrees of fate. That is a curious thing to teU of; true is everything which concerning this creature we by words signify. It has not any limb, yet lives nevertheless. If thou canst riddles quickly tell in true words say what it is called. The poetic riddle is one kind of symbolism; the answer is the actuality, the riddle itself is the extraneous idea imported for comparison. But the comparison excludes pictorial or ex- act resemblance: there must be more of mystery than of con- gniity as between the symbol and the thing symbolized. It illustrates what is a leading function of symbolism: to raise an attitude of wonder or expectation, which glorifies the often trivial actuality when it comes. This interest of initial mystery applies to another poetic device: the dumb show which, in the early poetry of the Renais- sance, was used to introduce a drama. Or a partictdar act in a drama. Thus the first act of Gorbodtic was preceded by a dumb show of the faggot that could not be broken until it was separated into sticks: the act that follows exhibits a king pro- posing to divide his kingdom between his two sons. The Emblem Literature 441 second act is introduced by a dumb show of a king rejecting good wine offered him on the one side and accepting poison offered on the other side: the scenes of the act give us, successively, Ferrex and Porrex placed similarly between good and evil counselors. And every reader remembers the example in Hamlet, how the Murder of Gonzago — the play introduced into the third act— is prefaced by a dumb show of poison poured into a sleeper's ear. The dumb show is the initial symbol: the action of the play is the reality to which it is attached. But such dimib show is not imitation: to precede a dramatic scene by a well-executed oil painting of the scene would pro- duce no literary effect at all. The symbolic prelude generates an attitude of wonder, which gives emphasis to the dramatic action when it comes. Of the same nature is another literary tj^e, of considerable importance in the Bible, and in the literature inspired by it. This may be called emblem literature.' If Prophecy in general is in the form of discourses, S3rmbolic pro- phecies are discourses with texts; but the texts taken by the prophets are not, like the texts of modern sermons, quotations from the sacred writings, but object-texts, that is, external objects treated sym- bolically. Perhaps modem life has approached nearest to such Sjon- bolic Prophecy in the 'Emblem Literature,' now forgotten, but for a century or two the chief reading of the reUgious world. This Emblem Literature was made up of sermons in verse with hiero- glyphic texts. To take a typical case. One of Quarles's emblems represents a balance; in one scale of this balance worlds (represented conventionally by balls with cross handles) are being heaped up; the other scale contains nothing, but a mouth is seen blowing into it, and this empty scale weighs down the heaped-up worlds on the other side. ' What follows is taken from Literary Study of the Bible, pages 372 S. The general subject of s)nnbolic prophecy is discussed in pages 372-83 (com- pare also page 523) of that work. Another discussion in the Introduction to Ezekiel in the Modern Reader's Bible. 442 Literature as a Mode of Art This hieroglyphic is the text: on the opposite page a poetic sermon works out with vigour the thought that worldly goods are less than empty breath. In the same way there is an Emblem Prophecy which has for its texts, not exactly pictures, but visible things or ac- tions. Jeremiah is commanded to wear a linen girdle in the eyes of the people; when they have become accustomed to it he is to take the girdle off and hide it in a hole of the rock; several days after he is to show it again, marred and profitable for nothing. This is to be a text, from which he wiU preach how Judah, that ought to cleave to the Lord as the girdle cleaveth to the figure, shall for their sins be seen to be marred and useless. Or again, the same prophet is led to watch the potter at work, aiming at one kind of vessel, but if the clay is marred making it at his pleasure into a vessel of a different kind: from this text he will proclaim that Israel in the hands of Jehovah is but the clay in the hands of the potter. Of such emblem literature a variant is the literary dream and vision: the difference is that, instead of the emblem being initiated by the speaker, it comes to him from without; in the dream it comes in sleep, in the vision it is presented by super- natural machinery. But the spirit of all these forms is an ap- 'peal to mystery, not to pictorial resemblance. The poetic dream must be obscure: the event resolves it into clearness. The most elaborate vision offers nothing beyond a symbol, which yet awaits interpretation. The popular fallacy supposes a vision in Biblical literature to be a sort of supernatural tele- scope, such as would enable Ezekiel in the Far East to see what was going on at the moment in Jerusalem;' or a reader of Revelation' to see incidents and events of future ages. The visions have the force of the supernatural; but what is thus revealed is not incidents and events, but mystic symbols, which only the actual events will interpret. ' Ezekiel, chapter 8; compare Literary Study of the Bible, page 381. ' Compare Introduction to St. John's Revelation in Modern Reader's Bible (or Literary Study of the Bible, pages 471-76). Emblem Literature 443 I have elsewhere' dealt at length with the symbolic litera- ture of Scripture, and all the rich variety it has in the hands of its great master Ezekiel. One detail has relevance here. There are certain discourses of Ezekiel in which, for one reason or another, the initial symbol is lacking. Its place seems to be supplied by another literary device: as the discourse proceeds a particular train of ideas is found to pervade the whole and bring it into a unity. The doom of Tjrre — the great mercantile community of the prophetic world — is elaborated in the de- scription of the wreck of the goodly ship Tyre; Egypt is de- nounced in a train of ideas presenting a river monster; Assyria appears as a fallen cedar; restored Israel is pictured with a multitude of details building up an exquisite scene of pastoral peace.' Now, all this is simply sustained imagery. We are reminded how close are symbolism and imagery: they have the same function of association between what is real and what is suggested for comparison. The appeal of imagery is to pic- torial beauty. The basis for the various forms of symbolism may be expressed by saying that s)Tnbolism is conventional comparison. The illustrations from the poetry of Solomon's Song we saw to be appeals to conventionally accepted stand- ards of beauty. Other forms — the riddle, the emblem — appeal to a conventionally established form of poetic thought, which begins in obscurity and wonder, and develops into interpreta- tive clearness. This chapter has run to undue length. But the analysis it attempts is designed to prepare for the variety of demands which poetic ornamentation will be found to make upon the sympathetic reader. To confuse between one type of beauty and another is simply to misunderstand. We have seen how the reading of symbolic poetry with a mental focus adjusted to ' Introduction to Ezekiel in Modern Reader's Bible. = Compare Ezekiel, chapter 27; 29:1-16; chapters 31, 34. 444 Literature as a Mode of Art imaginative picturing is to mar the whole effect. A similar error is seen where readers complain of the heaven of Milton's poem as being material — ^with its golden pavement and gates of pearl — not catching that these are echoes of symbols conse- crated by long literary usage. We even hear at times of the "lurid" character of Christian literature, with its insistent em- phasis on ideas of blood. But such an impression implies a narrow literary outlook. How far the original is from such sug- gestion is suflSciently evidenced by the single descriptive phrase telling of those who have "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. " The wide range of poetic ornament demands from readers of poetry a flexibility of appre- ciation, ready at any moment to enhance a detail of reality with pictorial color, or to shroud it in the mystery of symbolic reserve. CHAPTER XXV LITERARY ECHOmG: THE CONCEPTION OF LITERATURE AS A SECOND NATURE This will be a short chapter on a very large subject. Indeed, we may almost say that the one half of poetic effect rests upon a basis of what is here called literary echoing. We have already seen' how, in the maturity of poetry that follows the Renais- sance, the saneness of its balance depends on the union of the Romantic and the Classic, as the centrifugal and centripetal impulses in poetry: the Romantic, that looks to freshness and novelty; the Classic, that tunes itself in harmony with accepted forms, and gives to what is intrinsically beautiful the added beauty of familiarity and reminiscence. What is implied is not the mere fact that certain poets use traditional material: the echoing extends to the minutest de- tails — epithets, names, sentence structure, conventional turns of expression. An otiose acceptance of the fact that there is resemblance will not do: the resemblances are reminiscences, and yet reminiscences subdued to the delicate faintness of the 'echo.' Readers steeped in the poetry of Virgil and Milton understand well what is meant: for those who need explanation the literary echo can only be illustrated by a large body of de- tailed examples. Elsewhere,' in a discussion of Milton, I have endeavored to provide this at considerable length; though I. feel the unsatisf actoriness of such treatment, which is like the attempt to explain hxmior. What we are here concerned with is the place of all this in literary theory. Two points may be ' Above, chapter iv, page 88. ' World Lilerature, pages 196-219. MS 446 Literature as a Mode of Art noted. In the phrase of the late Professor Conington' — who more than anyone else has emphasized this feature of poetic art — ^poetic accumulations of the past become to each poet of the classical succession a 'second nature,' and 'truth to nature' becomes felicitous reminiscence of the familiar. Again: in pure imaginative creation — that contrasts with realistic story — each new departure involves an imaginative effort on the part of the reader; some coherence with the poetry of the past gives a kind of support for the novelty, and for the world of imagina- tion reminiscence takes the place of evidence. In any kind of literature the effect of echoing the past may appear: but there are three fields of poetry which are specially 'Classical' in this sense. When we make Hellenic civilization one of the bases of modern culture, it must be remembered that the literary repre- sentation of this is not the national literatures of Greece and Rome, but only that small proportion of these which has grown apart as a separate literature under the name of 'Classics.' The first masterpieces of Greek poetry, and the successors and imitations of these, make a closed circle of poetry, in which the same matter and forms are reiterated, while each poet of this Classical succession seems to value himself most on the degree to which his poetry reflects the poetry that has preceded him. Chief of this Classical succession is Virgil, who comes at the end, and depends more than any other poet upon the reminiscent element in his works. The Eclogues of Virgil seem to have little positive poetic quality except that his Roman creations should think the thoughts, and speak in the forms, and often in the names, of Sicilian predecessors. And even the great epic dedicated to the providential mission of the Roman Em- pire is occupied with laying the foundations of this conception in the field of Homeric poetry.' ' Introduction to the Eclogues in his edition of Virgil. » Compare World Literature, pages 157-62. Literary Echoing 447 Again: it is the same with the second of our foundation civilizations: its literary representation is not the whole literary output of the Hebrew people, but that extremely small part of it which constitutes the books of the Bible. Though the term is not often so us6d, yet in truth these are the 'Classics' of Hebraism. The spirit that binds these into a unity is still closer than that of Greek Classics. Hence the great master- piece of literary echoing is found in the poem that closes the Bible and serves as its epilogue. This Revelation' takes the form of a succession of mystic visions, moving with increasing mystery to a central point, at which the shout of all heaven's hosts proclaims the key to all mystery in the recognition of Jesus Christ, supreme over aU authorities, center of all history. What these visions present is, not events and incidents, but sjnnbols; all of them veiled echoes of Old Testament symbols; the light of prophecy changes into converging rays of Ught, all pointing to Jesus Christ. But there is a third field of Classical effect: such modem poetry as leans to the Classical, rather than to the Romantic, of its component elements. Hence a supreme master of literary echoing appears in Milton: he is on a par with Virgil in the degree to which he uses literary reminiscence, and he goes far beyond Virgil in the width of the literary field from which the associations are drawn.' To Milton, Greek and Hebrew Classics make a single literature; Hebrew thought for him clothes itself naturally in Greek form; alinost every line of Milton strikes a note which fimds echoes from all over the poetry of the past. No doubt a Milton is coherent and intel- hgible apart from the associative value of his writing. But the 'For the general effect compare Introduction to Revelation in the Modern Reader's Bible (or Literary Study of the Bible, pages 471-76). For details, see Notes to Revelation in the Modern Reader's Bible, where the original passages and the echoes are given in parallel columns. " Compare World Literature, pages 196-219. 448 Literature as a Mode of Art difference between such bare intelligence and the full poetic effect is as great as the difference between the cold clearness of a gray day and the radiant warmth of a sunset. II It may be well to illustrate two specialized forms which the general principle of literary echoing sometimes takes. The first case is where the effect of reminiscence attaches solely to the shaping or molding of an incident, while as regards matter and expression there is nothing of resemblance. We may take an example from Spenser's Faerie Queene. The hero of the Second Book, the representative of Temperance, is among other trials subjected to the temptation of Mammon, and the seventh canto is given up to this topic. In its form this incident is closely modeled upon Biblical temptations, though of course personages and matter and thought are altogether unlike. A figure on page 449 (Chart XXVI) suggests the parallelism. The first nineteen stanzas of Spenser's canto are outside the incident with which we are dealing: they are devoted to the shock of the encounter between two opposite ideals, the ideal of chivalry and the ideal of mammon. The Temptation itself commences where Guyon, amazed at the sight of the vast wealth, wonders whence it could have come, and is bidden to see for himself. "Come thou" (quoth he) "and see." So by and by Through that thick covert he him led, and fownd A darkesome way, which no man could descry, That deep descended through the hollow grownd, And was with dread and horror compassed arownd. At length they came into a larger space, That stretcht itself into an ample playne; Through which a beaten broad high way did trace. That streight did lead to Plutoe's griesly rayne. ■H»-S o w .S O 3'° S Og H^ S k ^ ~ < o •s £? a g> « ^ ^ § •3 i <3 g ■a s 1 H U U ^ .a ■*-> o .J2 a 13 s ■? O bp oj .3 ■3^-0 ■38^ ■0x1 M a 2 449 450 Literature as a Mode of Art By that wayes side there sate internal Pajme, And fast beside him sat tumultuous Strife: The one in hand an yron whip did strayne, The other brandished a bloody knife; And both did gnash their teeth, and both did threten life. On thother side in one consort there sate Cruell Revenge, and rancorous Despight, Disloyall Treason, and hart-burning Hate; But gnawing Gealousy, out of their sight Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bight; And trembling Feare still to and fro did fly, And found no place where safe he shroud him might; Lamenting Sorrow did in darkness lye. And Shame his ugly face did hide from living eye. And over them sad Horror with grim hew Did alwaies sore, beating his yron wings; And after him Owles and Night-ravens flew, The hatefull messengers of evil things, Of death and dolor telling sad tidings; Whiles sad Celeno, sitting on a clifte, A song of bale and bitter sorrow sings, That hart of flint asonder could have rifte; Which having endfed after him she flyeth swifte. All these before the gates of Pluto lay. By whom they passing spake unto them nought; But th ' elfin knight with wonder all the way Did feed his eyes, and fild his inner thought. At last him to a litle dore he brought. That to the gate of Hell, which gaped wide. Was next adjo3Tiing, ne them parted ought: Betwixt them both was but a little stride. That did the house of Richesse from heU-mouth divide. Before the dore sat selfe-consuming Care Day and night keeping wary watch and ward, For feare lest Force or Fraud should unaware Breake in, and spoil the treasure there in gard: Literary Echoing 451 Ne would he suffer Sleepe once thither-ward Approch, albe his drowsy den were next; For next to death is Sleepe to be compard; Therefore his house is unto his annext: Here Sleep, ther Richesse, and Hell-gate them both betwext. All this is only the opening phase of the incident: Guyon led by Mammon into the darksome underworld is the parallel to Jesus led into the wilderness to be tempted. But I have cited the passage in full because the details of the description illus- trate other effects of poetic echo, different from what is our immediate subject. When the hero of the Aeneid is led by the Sybil into the world of Shades, as they pass the boundary, Virgil surrounds them with shadowy personifications of the thoughts we associate with death — Grief, Cares, pale Diseases, sad Old Age, and the like.' So when Sackville's hero' is led by Sorrow into the same underworld, they encounter a similar group of personified associations — Remorse, Dread, Old Age, and others. Spenser, we see, peoples the same path to the world below with similar pictorial figures. Milton, introducing us suddenly to Chaos, surrounds personified Chaos with per- sonified Night, Kimiour, Chance, Discord.^ Each of these devices powerfully recalls the others; though — with the free- dom that distinguishes the poetic echo from mere imitation — Sackville is f oimd to expand into a shadowy sculpture gallery of personification what the other poets touch with only momentary pictorial effect. It might be added that even in the course of this description other reminiscences present themselves. The name Celeno is a formal allusion to a story of the Aeneid.'^ The location of the House of Riches and the House of Sleep ^ Aeneid wi. 273-81. = Sackville's Induction to the Mirror for Magistrates (at full length in Southey's British Poets). 3 Paradise Lost, ii, 951-67. ' Aeneid iii. 345^ 452 Literature as a Mode of Art on either side of Hell-Gate is a double echo: of Virgil's word,' "Death's own brother Sleep"; and of the saying, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven!" We now have the Triple Temptation of Mammon. The first temptation is to Wealth in Store. It is the spirit of the miser, and the scene in which it is presented is idealized on the basis of the miser's strong room: rudest defenses for most precious treasures, with suggestions of the bloodshed and cruelty called for by their defense. The offer of this treasure is formally made. It is rejected with the Maxim of Honor: to be lord of those that have treasure, not to have and be its slave. The second temptation is Wealth-Production: we see idealized manufacturing of wealth in surroundings that echo the Cyclops^ at their metallurgic work. There is again the formal offer, and the rejection with another saying of the code of chivalry — the Maxim of Contentment: All that I need I have. With another change of location we reach the third temptation — to what wealth can bring — mystically exhibited in the elaborate Temple of 'Philotime' or Ambition. The formal offer of this Philotime to Guyon for bride is rejected with the Maxim of Chivalrous Constancy: To change love causeless, is reproach to warlike knight. There remains only the final phase of the incident, that will be parallel to the hunger of Jesus and angelic ministration. But before this comes another incident is interposed. This proves to be an echo of the other great Biblical Temptation: the matter that makes the basis of Paradise Regained is in- terrupted only to introduce the matter that makes the basis of Paradise Lost. We have once more a Temptation in a Gar- den: the Garden of Proserpina — with all its associations of ' In the passage referred to above: vi. 273-81. ' Ibid. viii. 407-53. Literary Echoing 453 poetic legend — ^replaces the Garden of Eden. Amid its black vegetation the Tree of Mammon's Temptation bears apples of gold: the phrase has only to be mentioned, and around it cluster allusions to all the famous stories of classic poetry in which the fascination of apples of gold is the starting-point. Their fruit were golden apples glistring bright, That goodly was their glory to behold: On earth like never grew, ne Uving wight Like ever saw, but they from hence were sold; For those which Hercules, with conquest bold Got from great Atlas daughters, hencp began, And planted there did bring forth fruit of gold; And those with which th' Eubaean young man wan Swift Atalanta, when with craft he her outran. Here also sprong that goodly golden fruit With which Acontius got his lover trew. Whom he had long time sought with fruitlesse suit: Here eke that famous golden Apple grew. The which among the gods false Ate threw; For which th' Idaean Ladies disagreed, TUI partial Paris dempt it Venus dew, And had of her fayre Helen for his meed, That many noble Greekes and Trojans made to bleed. Where Eve and Adam succumb, Guyon resists. Here, then, the incident may complete its form. Guyon faints with ex- haustion of the strain; but even in telling this the poet brings in the echo of "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." When Guyon reaches the outer air he swoons: the canto that succeeds opens with an angel hovering over him, and the general thought of angelic ministration: How oft do they their silver bowers leave To come to succour us that succour want! How oft do they with golden pineons cleave The flitting skyes, like flying Pursuivant, Against fowle feendes to aid us miUtant! 454 Literature as a Mode of Art They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward, And their bright Squadrons round about us plant; And all for love, and nothing for reward. O! why should heavenly God to men have such regard ? Ill The second specialized example of the general principle is found where, not the matter or form, but the literary motives of past poetry are echoed. It is this which has given their standing in literature to certain highly artificial types or genres of poetry and prose. Such is the inflated euphuistic style which was epidemic at the epoch of the Renaissance. Such again is the "Gay Science" — the "metaphysics of love" — which was a reminiscence of mediaeval Courts of Love,' yet was the inspiration of the sonnet poetry of Petrarch and his school. Such, above all, is pastoral poetry. This seems to have had a definite start with Theocritus, and to have become a long tra- dition — carried on by Virgil in his Eclogues, by English masters like Spenser, Sidney, Ben Jonson in his Faithful Shepherdess and Fletcher in his Sad Shepherd, and by Milton himself in his Lycidas; it powerfully affected Italian poetry and the opera, and in another art broke out in the Watteau patterns, and in a school of portraiture that led fine duchesses to be painted in milkmaid's costume holding in their hands the inevitable shep- herd's crook. What is this pastoral poetry? Descriptions of rural life in Homer, or in Wordsworth, are totally unlike it. Pastoral poetry is a pure convention, by which the ordinary interests of life are translated into pastoral form as a means of idealization. Love becomes the love of a melancholy shepherd for a disdainful shepherdess; the lover's service is to guard her flocks for her, and bring offerings of dainty fruits or wanton squirrels. Competition becomes the strivings of shepherd ' A brief account of these may be seen in H. Morley's First Sketch of English Literature, pages 83-85. Literary Echoing 4SS boys in amoebaean song for a floral wreath; enterprise is hunt- ing of the stag; the wisdom of age is a Meliboeus who has been at court and come back to the simple life; music is Colin Clout piping apace; even controversial theology can come in as Pali- nodie and Piers' translating into rural terms the Catholic and Protestant sentiment. So artificial a thing would hardly have maintained itself, but for the power of this principle of literary echoing. And so pastoral poetry is seen at its best when, in the hands of the great masters, this echoed motive is made to mingle with other motives of poetry. The Sixth Book of the Faerie Queene gives several cantos' to a pastoral episode; but flavors it with the motive of chivalry represented in Calidore, and brings it into contact with the rude reaUties of life in another conventional motive of brigandage. And, more elaborately still, Shakespeare, in As You Like It, gives full scope to the pastoral matter, but proceeds to play upon it a triple stream of humor — the humor of Jaques, of Orlando and Rosalind, and of Touchstone — until the artificial has been dissipated into common-sense, and unreality has been led to the practical con- clusion of a quadruple wedding.' ' Spenser's Shepheards Calender (Maye). ' Cantos ix-xi of Book VI. 3 This has been worked out in detail in chapter xv of my Shakespeare as Artist. CHAPTER XXVI LANGUAGE AS A FACTOR IN LITERARY ART Language, as the medium in which literature expresses itself, has a natural place in literary art. At the same time, language is an independent study, or group of studies, wide in field and copious in matter, a large part of which has little or nothing to do with literature. It thus becomes a difiGicult problem to determine how far language is a factor in literary art. The traditional study of literature has signally failed to solve this problem. It began with a great principle — its recog- nition of the Greek and Latin Classics as a citadel of literary study. This was theoretically sound, though theoretically imperfect, since (as we have seen) the Hebrew Classics have the same claim on us. But in passing from the theory to the practice of education the traditional study fell into the con- fusion between language and literature, in its tacit assumption that these Classical literatures were to be studied only in the original languages, an assumption that ignored the importance of translation as a substitute for or addition to study in the origi- nal. Now, in the competing claims of language and literature, language study has the advantage that it lies on the outer sur- face of literature. Language study is like the mediaeval barons who built castles at the mouths of rivers, and exacted toll of those who wished to pass to their destination in the ioterior. The Classical languages make a heavy toll for those who are seeking the Classical literatures. For the large majority of those educated in schools and colleges the interpretation of exegesis in Latin and Greek, with its machinery of grammar and dictionary, excludes the interpretation of perspective on which literary culture depends. No doubt there is a minority who, through linguistic aptitude or other advantages, come tp read 4S6 Metaphorical Vitality of Words 457 the foreign languages with ease : for these there is a rich literary culture, though this is combined with loss of perspective for literature in general. For the majority, their literary educa- tion has coike to an end before it has been in a position to begin. The traditional study has failed, not through its insistence upon the Classical literatures, but through its failure in practice to give the average man or woman any heart knowledge of these literatures. It has been a foundation principle of this work that we must recognize an outer and an inner study of literature: the inner study is the essential; what of the outer study can be combined with this must be decided for each case as it arises. Language belongs to the outer literary study: we are concerned here with literary art. What this chapter attempts is to indicate some points of practical discrimination in linguistic study, as to where it does and where it does not bear upon literary art. yEtymology (linguistic science — outer study) Distinguish^ ^Metaphorical Vitality of Words (literary art — inner study) An important point in literary art is the force and vitality of words. But metaphor is a great element in the vitality of a word, and an element that fluctuates with its history. Here then is a point at which linguistic and literary study meet. Etymology, the history of words, belongs to linguistic study: it is a science of facts and language connections. Of such ety- mological history only a very small part — as it were the acci- dents of etymology — has any bearing upon the literary quality of words: but so far as it has relevance it is of high literary importance. Metaphor is one of the principal sources from which the force of words, as distinguished from their meaning, is derived: but the metaphorical force of a particular word 4S8 Literature as a Mode of Art depends upon certain stages in its etymological history. After an association of ideas has been brought out, perhaps in the first instance by a simile, and then, becoming more familiar, has been sufficiently expressed by a metaphor, it becomes at length familiar enough to be suggested by a single word, and thus there is a gain to the vocabulary of the language. But as this metaphoric word is more and more used it becomes of wider and wider application, and the clearness of the original metaphor becomes gradually obscured, until often it is entirely lost, and (for aesthetic purposes) the word is dead. Thus the life history of a word may pass through three main stages, which we may think of as the stage of the seed, of the tree, of the wood. A. The word is a mere token for a particular idea; and so lifeless. B A. The word is metaphorically applied to a second idea, carry- ing with it the first idea as an associated image: it is now fuU of metaphorical vitality. B. By indiscriminate use of the word in the second significance the associated image is blurred and finally lost; the word is now a lifeless token for the second idea. So long as a word is a mere token for a particular thing, it has meaning, but nothing of vitality. 'Chair' is a token for one thing, 'table' for another thing; there is no force or beauty in such tokens; if usage permitted the chair might just as well be called a table, and the table a chair. In this token stage words are lifeless, like seed. But, by metaphor, the word may be used to signify a second thing, carrying with it its first sig- nificance as an associated image: this association of two sig- nificances in a single word fills the word full of metaphorical vitality, and it is a living thing like a tree. But as the word in its new significance is more and more indiscriminately applied, it becomes jnore and more difficult for it to retain the image of its first meaning: at last this is lost, and the word becomes a life- Metaphorical Vitality of Words 459 less token for what was its second significance, as when a tree has been cut up into wood. Let us take a particular case, and follow the life history of a highly poetical word. A. Vaj<= waste, desert (Bohemia and Sicilia) shook hands over a vasP In the dark vast and middle of the night" A+B As long as a journey over a vast B A A vast journey (i. e., long, like crossing a desert) B a Vast sea, vast regions B Vast strides, vastly pleased; (the trumpet) sounded through the vast of heaven B. Fas/ = long or big Originally, vast is etymologicaUy identical with waste, and signifies a desert or blank space: the two friends in Bohemia and Sicilia can shake hands as if there were only a blank space between; the vast of the night is the empty hours when nothing is doing. A simile connects the idea of desert with the idea of length, the two (as always in simile) keeping their distinctness. Then, by metaphor, the word vast is made to have the new sig- nificance of long, keeping its first significance as an image — long, like a journey over a desert; it is beautifully applied by Milton to Chaos in the phrase vast infinitude and vast vacuity.^ This is the stage (B A) in which the word has its highest vitality. The next stage (B a) shows vast, in its new significance of long, in miscellaneous applications, so that the metaphor of the desert is becoming obscured. At last the metaphor is lost, and vast can be used where such an image is impossible: as when we hear of Satan's vast strides, or the vast circumference of his ' Winter's Tale, I, i, 32- ' Bantlet, I, ii, 198. 3 Paradise Lost, iii, 711; ii, 932. Note also the striking use of the word in application to the precipitous height of heaven above hell: vast abrupt (ii, 409) : as if a desert were set up on end. 460 Literature as a Mode of Art shield;' or when an eighteenth-century hostess is vastly pleased to see her guests; we even read of the trumpet sounding through the vast of heaven,' where least of all things there could be the association of a desert. The word that began by being a token for desert has ended by being a mere token for long: but the metaphorical transition from the one meaning to the other has yielded stages at which the word possessed a high degree of vital force. Beauty of poetic language rests very largely upon the way in which poets will use words in their highest stage of meta- phorical vitality. I shall be content with a single example of two words, which to us are all but dead, which to Milton are so full of living force that he reserves them for his strongest effects. Etymology shows the word horrid at first as a mere token for the idea of bristling: korrida sus means a pig with bristles; the hel- met of Prince Arthur in the Faerie Queene' is "horrid all with gold." So, hideous in its first etjmiological stage refers to the creeping of the skin. By a powerful metaphor both words are applied to things dreadful — so dreadful as to cause the hair of the beholder to stand on end, and his flesh to creep. With this overpowering force of suggestion Milton uses the two words. The evil angels fall "with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition"; when Satan speaks his first word in Hell he breaks "the horrid silence"; when the word 'death' is first spoken "Hell trembled at the hideous sound"; Moloch imagining the terrors of Hell infinitely intensified expresses these as — ■ Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall One day upon our heads.* In modern speech, the conversational slang of our drawing- rooms has so far sapped the vitality of these words that we can ' Paradise Lost, vi, log; vi, 256. 3 1, vii, 31. 'Ibid., vi, 203. *Ibid., i, 46, 83; ii, 788; ii, 177. Idiom and Slang 461 speak of a lady as horridly dressed, and declare that her hat looked hideous. Two reflections are suggested: the first, that we should beware, in our anxiety for showy talk, lest we become accessories to the massacre of poetic language. The second suggestion is that it would be well if annotations, and other aids to the study of poetry, would discriminate between the mere etymologies with which notes are loaded — nearly the whole of which are without literary significance — and that special side of etymology which makes the foundation for what is a leading beauty of poetic language. II Distinguish^ •Syntax and diction (linguistic grammar — outer study) \ udiom (literary art — umer study) I pass from single words to the grouping of words in phrases and sentences: what in linguistic grammar is syntax. Here again linguistic study and literary art meet. Our actual speech, like so many other things, seems to be determined by the balance of two opposite forces, centripetal and centrifugal. The centripetal force in language is logic, law, convention: if there were nothing to counteract this we should sink into uni- formity and monotony of speech. The centrifugal force in language is idiom: the word is a Greek expression for private property in language. There is the idiom of locality, a part of dialect; there is the idiom of special arts, technical phraseology; there is the idiom of particular authors; last, but not least, there is the delicious idiom of the nursery. It seems to me that the traditions of linguistic science have leaned too exclusively to the conventional side of speech. Grammar began by being wholly conventional: it announced itself as the art of speaking and writing "with propriety." It has traveled far beyond this now, and become a science tracing the principles underlying usage: still, it is mainly established usage that is recognized 462 Literature as a Mode of. Art by grammar. Yet the analysis of idiom, in all its forms, would jdeld results of linguistic science equally valuable, and per- haps more important for language considered as a factor in literary art. The consideration of idiom must include slang, as embryonic idiom, lacking as yet the sanction of established usage. The common tendency to proscribe slang as a whole is, from the point of view of literary art, too indiscriminate in its censure. Great part of the objection to slang is objection on social grounds: in our speech, as in our dress, we owe a measure of deference to conventional usage — ^how much deference each individual must determine for himself. There is often, moreover, a moral objection to slang: not unfrequently it is only a form of self- indulgence, and the indication of a slipshod soul. When we come to the linguistic and literary objection to slang it becomes necessary to discriminate between the slang that is recupera- tive and the slang that is detritive in its nature. The latter I have already illustrated in the way in which modern flippancy has worn down the vitality of the words horrid and hideous: in George EKot's apt phrase, debasing the moral currency.^ But other slang is creative in its effect, adding to the vitality of words. When a street urchin calls his hat his 'lid,' we have an example of the same impulse which led early poetry to call the sea the 'swan-bath,' and the human breast the 'bone-locker.' The distinction of the two kinds of slang has been used with effect by George Eliot in Middle-march.' The two speakers are Rosamond Vincy, fair embodiment of all proprieties, and Fred Vincy affecting the critical tone of the brother who has been to college. "Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now. Superior is getting to be shopkeeper's slang. " ' Theophrastus Such: title of one of the chapters. ' Chapter xi. Linguistic and Literary Prosody 463 "Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?" said Rosamond, with mild gravity. "Only the wrong sort. AU choice of words is slang. It marks a class. " "There is correct English: that is not slang." "I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets." "You will say anything, Fred, to gain your point." "Well, tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a leg- plaiier." "Of course you can call it poetry if you Uke." "Aha, Miss Rosy, you don't know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to you to separate." Established usage must always have a voice in the matter, yet there is no doubt that what I have distinguished as re- cuperative slang is a force tending to enhance the vitality of language. Ill I pass on to the subject of prosody. Few subjects have been discussed with more elaborateness than this, an elaborateness involving in the highest degree scientific precision and artistic insight.^ Yet at more than one point, in this discussion of prosody, distinctions have to be made from the point of view of language considered as a factor in literary art. < English as a particular language: this involves the antiquities of English English as the medium of world literature English is a particular language, and one of' a family of lan- guages. It has passed through certain historic stages — ^Anglo- Saxon, Early English, Middle English, Modern English — ^which, ■It is hardly necessary to mention Professor Saintsbury's History of English Prosody, in three volumes (Macmillan). Elementary Distinction< < CHART XXVII Prosody Prose = veiled rhythm 'Verse = rhythm recurrent y Classical influence of the free period Straggle in English prose between^ ^Hebraic influence of parallel clauses Combination of verse and prose in the same rhythmic system Meter (Classical) resting on Combination of feet in lines unit of feet jamb • Trochee — <- Dactyl - « w Anapaest w w — etc. Modifications of catalexis, anacrusis, caesura Law of dominance Lower unity of couplet (fixed) and strain (elastic) Higher unity Uniform — with variations of duplication, augmentation and diminution, suspen- sion, and interruption — Particular figures like envelope and refrain stanzas Antistrophic — alternating, interlacing, in- troverted — with introductions, conclu- sions, and odd stanzas The same verse-mass may reflect more than one underlying rhythm system Clause Parallelism (Hebraic) Meter j Clause Parallelism ' meet m stanzas Rhythmic Styles as unit in literary prosody Sustained meter Fixed variations or stanzas Free variations or pure lyrics Non-metrical rhythm of prose Principles: (i) Particular meters have little or no literary significance (2) All changes of rhythmic styles have literary significance as reflecting changes of tone or movement 464 Linguistic and Literary Prosody 465 notwithstanding their historic connection, differ from one another, for literary purposes, as much as if they were different languages. The literature contained in the earlier stages of English has little or no bearing upon our world literature,' the ancestral sources of which are the Classical and Hebraic litera- tures and mediaeval Romance. Language study includes the antiquities of English, and the developments of prosody that these involve. When we consider the prosody of English as the vehicle of our world literature, we must remember that the three components of this world literature were characterized by distinctive rhythmic systems. Hellenic literature founded its verse system on meter, a meter depending mainly on syllabic quantity. Hebraic or Biblical literature has a verse that rests upon the paralleUsm of clauses, a rhythm of thought more than a rhythm of words. In that part of our literary ancestry which in this work has been designated Romance, rhythmic achieve- ments were a considerable factor. To Romance belongs the conclusion of the revolution, begun before the close of the Classical period, by which accent superseded syllabic quantity as the main foundation of meter. To the Middle Ages, again, belongs the development of rhyme," and of minor rhythmic de- vices such as alliteration and assonance: in these mediaeval developments our earlier English had its share. No prosody of fully developed English literature wiU be satisfactory that does not recognize — as the three basic principles of our rhythmic system — ^meter, parallelism of clauses, and rhyme; ' Of course, this is a controverted point. Mr. Stopford Brooke's History of Early English Literature (Macmillan) may be cited on the other side. It is one of the merits of Mr. Courthope's History of English Poetry (Mac- millan) that he traces the pedigree of our great poetry through the Classical and Mediaeval periods. (The first two volumes of this history are specially important.) " Goethe has made a great feature of this in the portion of his Faust (Second Part, Act III) where Classical and Romantic meet in the persons of Helen and Faust. Compare World Literature, pages 272-77. 466 Literature as a Mode of Art while alliteration, if not assonance, can claim recognition as a modifying force. I have noted in the first chapter' of this work the elementary rhythmic distinction between prose and verse. Prose is veiled rhythm, verse is rhythm recurrent; prose is presented to the eye in the 'straightforward' printing which the name implies: verse in lines, similar lines being similarly indented. The musical analogue of prose is recitative; of verse, music in time barsj which correspond to the lines of verse. The prose of EngUsh Hterature reflects the influences of its ancestral litera- tures, Classical and Biblical. There was, it is true, a Romance influence on prose style: but this was temporary. I refer to the inflated style, which in English is called euphuism, which under various names appeared in European languages like an epidemic in the early days of the Renaissance. The great linguistic achievement of the Middle Ages was the evolution of the vernacular languages, Dante and Italian leading the way: an evolution from something like barbarism to a point where modern languages could hold their own with the great lan- guages of antiquity. The inflated style seems a by-product of this process: it seems to be inspired by a joyous sense of attained mastery over sentence formation, a mastery carried to the point of sportiveness in style, until the novelty has died away. Classical and Hebraic prose are strongly contrasted, as every reader of Scripture feels, when he turns (speaking generally) from the New Testament to the Old, or, in wisdom literature, from the other wisdom books, which are Hebrew, to the Wisdom of Solomon, which is Greek. It may be weU to take illustrative passages; and first, an extreme example of Greek style from the Epistle to the Ephesians.' Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in " Above, pages 14-15- " Opening of the Epistle. Hellenic and Hebraic Influence on English Prose 467 Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: hav- ing foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his wiU, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in him, I say, in whom also we were made an heri- tage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will; to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ: in whom ye also, having heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, — in whom, having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance unto the redemption of God's own possession, unto the praise of his glory.' It will be noted that the whole of this long passage makes a single period: and the period is the unit of prose style. Greek language retains a high degree of inflection, which enables it to correlate clauses in subordination ; it also has a large number of conjunctions and other 'particles' that concatenate sen- tences in definite relations. The two devices make it possible for Greek to articulate closely together a large amount of matter in a single complex period. With this compare a passage from the oratory of Deuteronomy.' Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with aU thy might. And these words, which I command thee ' The citation is from the Revised Version, in which the concatenation of sentences in the original Greek is closely followed. Other translations vary much from this. " Deuteronomy 6 : 4 fE. 468 Literature as a Mode of Art this day, shall be upon thy heart: and thou shalt teach them dili- gently unto thy children, and thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt biad them for a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thy house, and upon thy gates. The parallelism of clauses, which was the basis of Hebrew verse, was also a powerful force in its prose: instead of the highly articulated and complex Greek period, we have short periods compounded together, following one another with more or less of parallelism. Take next a passage from Bacon,' who feels the influence of Classical literature chiefly in its modified Roman form. Martin Luther, conducted (no doubt) by an higher providence, but in discourse of reason, finding what a province he had undertaken against the bishop of Rome and the degenerate traditions of the church, and finding his own sohtude, being no ways aided by the opinions of his own time, was enforced to awake all antiquity, and to call former times to his succors to make a party against the present time. So that the ancient authors, both in divinity and in humanity, which had long time slept in libraries, began generally to be read and revolved. These by consequence did draw on a necessity of a more exquisite travail in the languages original, wherein those authors did write, for the better understanding of those authors, and the better advantage of pressing and applying their words. And thereof grew again a delight in their manner of style and phrase, and an admira- tion of that kind of writing; which was much furthered and precipi- tated by the enmity and opposition that the propounders of those primitive but seeming new Opinions had against the schoolmen; who were generally of the contrary part, and whose writings were alto- gether in a difiering style and form; taking liberty to coin and frame new terms of art to express their own sense, and to avoid circuit of speech, without regard to the pureness, pleasantness, and (as I may call ■ Advancement of Learning, First Book, section IV, 2. Hellenic and Hebraic Influence on English Prose 469 it) lawfulness of the phrase or word. And again, because the great labour then was with the people (of whom the Pharisees were wont to say, ExecrdbUis ista turba, quae non novit legem), for the winning and persuading of them, there grew of necessity in chief price and request eloquence and variety of discourse, as the fittest and forciblest access into the capacity of the vulgar sort: so that these four causes con- curring, the admiration of ancient authors, the hate of the schoolmen, the exact study of languages, and the e&cacy of preaching, did bring in an affectionate study of eloquence and copie of speech, which then began to flourish. Bacon belongs to the beginning of the modern period: we may see lastly the style of characteristic writers of our own times, such as Macaulay or Greene. [Elizabeth] was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless courage, and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh manlike voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were schoolboys; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear; she would break, now and then, into the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a fishwife. But strangely in contrast with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous, self- indulgent nature she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a Caliph's dream. She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favour." Though particular modern writers — notably Ruskin — can affect the involved period, yet the trend of English style has clearly been toward the triumph of shortened periods following one another with a suggestion of parallelism. The preponderance of the Hebrew over the Greek ideal of style seems one of the ' Greene's Short History of the English People (Macmillan), page 363. 47° Literature as a Mode of Art many things we owe to the widespread influence of the King James Version of the Bible. It often seems to be assumed that the articulated Greek style is a more exact and higher instrument of thought than the 'looser' style of modern English. But this seems to me highly disputable. The precise compacting of clauses and sentences by inflections and definite particles is in part a limitation of thought. The asyndeton of English style leaves the members of a paragraph to suggest their mutual con- nection. From the point of view of literary art, the appeal to the suggestive may be a higher effect than definite determina- tion. An interesting question of linguistic mechanics is the combi- nation of prose and verse in what, rhythmically, is a common sys- tem. The analogy of music is wholly in its favor: strict as is the measuring of time in music, there is at any point the possi- bility of recitative, during which all time is suspended, after which strict time is resumed. The verse of Classical poetry, founded on the meter of syllabic quantity, does not admit the union of prose and verse. In Biblical verse, the metrical system of which rests on clause parallelism, the overlapping of verse and prose is a prominent feature. The two can be combined in the same unit of recurrence. The Lord sent a word into Jacob, And it hath lighted upon Israel. And all the people shall know, even Ephraim and the inhabitant of Samaria, that say in pride and in stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen, But we will build with hewn stone; The sycamores are cut down. But we wiU change them into cedars. Therefore the Lord shall set up on high against him the adver- saries of Rezin, and shall stir up his enemies; the Syrians before, Rhythmic Combination of Verse and Prose 471 and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his anger is not turned away, But his hand is stretched out still! Yet the people have not turned unto him that smote them, Neither have they sought the Lord of hosts. Therefore the Lord will cut off from Israel head and tail, palm- branch and rush, in one day. The ancient and the honourable man. He is the head; And the prophet that teacheth lies, He is the tail. For they that lead this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed. Therefore the Lord shall not rejoice over their young men, neither shall he have compassion on their fatherless and widows: for everyone is profane and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh foUy. For all this his anger is not turned away. But his hand is stretched out still. (This rhythmic pattern is four times repeated.') Prose and verse can also combine in alternation. The doom form — so important in prophecy — ^is made up of recitative prose inter- rupted at intervals with lyric passages: the recitative passages are found to draw together into a continuous monologue, usually by a divine speaker, while the interrupting Ijrrics celebrate point by point what the speech of Deity has advanced." In » Isa. 9 : 8 — 10 : 4. The whole is given (in structural form) in the Modern Reader's Bible; or in Literary Study of the Bible, pages 370-71. ' The doom form is fully discussed in Literary Stiidy of the Bible, pages 123-28, and again in chapter xvii (more briefly in the Modern Reader's Bible, pages 1531-32)- 472 Literature as a Mode of Art English poetry, it would seem as if criticism had acted as a restraining force against this overlapping of prose and verse. The traditional English prosody is an adaptation of Classical prosody to a language in which accent has replaced syllabic quantity: such a conception of prosody has naturally been un- favorable to the union of prose with verse. Indeed, it seems to have relegated it to comic or farcical verse. Deserted (as you will remember, Mr. Venus) by the waning moon When stars (it will occur to you before I mention it) proclaim night's cheerless noon. On tower, fort, or tented ground, The sentry walks his lonely round. The exception is that small part of English poetry in which the verse is based upon parallelism of clauses. The poetry of Walt Whitman is the great example: his rhythm — measured in clause parallelism — is strict and forcible, yet clearly at times admits the principle of recitative suspension. I cite passages," taking the liberty to indicate by brackets the recitative efiEect. Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands, Even now your features [joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes] dissipate away from you. Your true soul and body appear before me. They stand forth out of affairs [out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying] Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem, I whisper with my lips close to your ear, I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you. ■ From Walt Whitman's Birds of Passage: "To You." Classical and Hebraic Elements in English Meter 473 The mockeries are not for you, Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, I pursue you where none else has pursued you, [Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accus- tomed routine] if these conceal you from others or from your- self, they do not conceal you from me. [The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion] if these balk others they do not balk me, [The pert apparel, the deform 'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death] all these I part aside. As the analogy of music so strongly suggests, it is a serious narrowing of prosody to make no provision for the rhythmic interlocking of verse and prose. Meter, in the stricter sense of the term that prevails in Classical prosody, is the measuring of rhythm ia feet, which are the ultimate unit; the combination of feet in the larger unit of the line; and of lines in the larger unit of the stanza. There is, moreover, variety in the rhythmic character of the ultimate feet, with such differences as iambic, trochaic, dactylic, ana- paestic, and the like, which are familiar, and can be caught by the least sensitive ear. Such rhythmic variety extends to the combination of feet in lines, and we get iambic, trochaic, anapaestic lines. At this point certain modifying forces are recognized, which add much to the fiexibUity of a metrical system. Two of these modifying forces are catalexis and ana- crusis. The first is a recognition that a particular line may, without disturbance to the general rhythm, be defective at the end: thus, in a sequence of foiur- trochee lines, the last trochee is broken short: Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and yolithful J611ity. Anacrusis recognizes redundant syllable or syllables at the be- ginning of a Une: thus, in the same system, we can have: And II idd to these retired Leisure, That II in trim gardens t&kes his pleasure. 474 Literature as a Mode of Art The modifying force of these two devices taken together is such that the same particular line may be scanned in different wa)^; for example, as dactylic with catalexis at the end: There was a | dwelling of | kings ere the | w6rld was | wixen | old or as anapaestic with anacrusis at the beginning: There || was a dwel|ling of kings | ere the world | wasw3x|en61d. A third modifying force in meter is tlie caesura, the technical name for the natural cleavage of longer lines. The caesura ■ serves as break and for relief. It also serves for variety: every reader knows how Milton and Spenser will delicately vary the caesura in successive lines. An interesting use of this device is found in the ballad hexameter which we associate with William Morris' Sigurd, and which is used by Mr. Way with such effect in his translations of Classical hexameters.' This always has a caesura in the middle of the line: but the caesura is often used for a kind of recitative effect, the rhythm being suspended for the interjection of one, or occasionally two, redundant syllables — a sort of anacrusis in the center of a line: Though e 'en in that w6rld's begin(ning) rose a mfirmur n6w and agiin Of the midward tJme and the f4d(ing) and the list of the l&tter d&ys. Thou shalt drink of the cfip of aw4k(ening) that thine hind hath h61pen to fill. But the most important principle affecting the compounding of feet into lines is what may be called the law of dominance. When a sequence of verse is described as iambic, or trochaic, or anapaestic, the meaning Js that the iambic, or trochaic, or anapaestic rhythm dominates the passage as a whole: other kinds of feet may replace at any point the iamb, or trochee, ' Arthur Way's translations of the Iliad and Odyssey (Macmillan) and of the Argonaulka (in Temple Classics). Classical and Hebraic Elements in English Meter 475 or anapaest, provided that the dominant rhythm is not broken. English blank verse is classified as iambic pentameter: this clearly describes the rhythm of a mass of such blank verse, though at particular parts of particular lines almost any other foot may be found. Milton's L' Allegro and II Penseroso con- stitute a single poem in two contrasted halves. The meter of the whole (apart from two introductory passages) is trochaic tetrameter. Particular couplets of the poem, if isolated from their context, might be scanned as iambic: But c6me, thou g6ddess, fair and fr6e. In h6av 'n ycI6pt Euphr6syne. But the trochaic swing of the whole poem shows that these lines must be scanned as trochaic with the modifications of ana- crusis and catalexis: But II come, thou g6ddess, fair and frde, ' In II heav'n ycl6pt Euphr6syne. This law of dominance is a fundamental consideration of prosody in its bearing upon literary effect. ' Our other ancestral literature, the Hebraic Bible, introduces quite a different rhythmic system, based upon the parallelism of clauses.' We recognize a lower and a higher unity: the first involving only adjacent lines, the higher unity correlating on the basis of parallelism the most distant parts of an elaborate poem. Two units make the basis of the system. One is the couplet: The Lord of Hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge. " A full exposition of this in Literary Study of the Bible, cliapter i-iii, and Appendix III. Much the same treatment will be found in the Modern Reader's Bible (one- volume edition), pages 1517-32. The structural system so expounded is carried out in the text of the Modern Reader's Bible, and particular points of metrical effect are treated in the notes. 47 6 Literature as a Mode of Art The other has been called the strain: this is an elastic unit, consisting of a couplet either line of which may be strengthened by a supporting clause, but not both. Strive thou, O Lord, with them that strive with me: Fight thou against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler and stand up for my help: Draw out also the spear and stop the way against those that pursue me: Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Let destruction come upon him at unawares; And let the net that he hath hid catch himself; Into that very destruction let him fall. All three are strains: the first is a simple couplet; the second is a couplet with the first line strengthened; the third has the second line strengthened. The fixed and the varying unit prevail in different classes of Biblical poetry. When we pass on to the highest unit of the stanza, it would appear that the stricter metrical prosody inspired by Classical literature, and the metrical system founded upon clause paral- lelism, to a large extent coalesce. In modern English the more familiar conception of stanzas is that of uniform stanzas, uni- form for a whole poem or large section of a poem. To this both Classical and Biblical verse add the further conception of stanzas running in pairs, strophe and antistrophe: the two strophes of a pair agree minutely in rhythm, but the rhythm may alto- gether change between one pair of strophes and another. The mutual relation of stanzas admits a large variety of elaborations. Antistrophic stanzas may be alternating, or interlacing, or united by the beautiful effect of introversion; they may have introductions and conclusions, and be varied by epodes or odd stanzas. Stanzas otherwise uniform may be varied by regular duplications, by augmenting and diminution. There are the general effects of suspension and interruption; particular figures Classical and Hebraic Elements in English Meter 477 like the envelope figure, particular devices such as the refrain. This is not the place to discuss these in detail;' it is enough to recognize the principle that in verse, as in other music, the ideal is to attain the highest elasticity of treatment without losing the rhythmic step. In this connection it becomes desirable to lay down the general principle that the same poem, or verse-mass, may have more than one underlying rhythmic system, though one such system wUl usually be dominant. The verse of the Bible (we have seen) is founded on parallelism. Yet it is a matter of controversy among scholars whether the original Hebrew has not also a metrical system. If such a metrical system be es- tablished, this can make no difference of any kind to the system of parallel clauses, which stands self -evidenced and independent. The very early poetry of the Kalevala has in the original a clear meter (imitated in translations), but also exhibits parallelism of clauses to an almost equal extent. Even the highly metrical verse of modern English poetry is not inconsistent with other bases of rhythm. Few metrical units are as defined as the stanzas of Spenser's Faerie Queene, yet occasionally we find passages of that poem which are equally clear schemes of clause parallelism. I instance a particular stanza^ printed on both systems. First, it may be seen as a metrical stanza. Wrath, jealousy, grief, love, do thus expell: Wrath is a fire; and jealousy a weed; Grief is a flood; and love a monster fell; The fire of sparks, the weed of little seed, The flood of drops, the monster filth did breed: But sparks, seed, drops, and filth, do thus delay; The sparks soon quench, the springing seed outweed. The drops dry up, and filth wipe clean away: So shaU wrath, jealousy, grief, love, die and decay. • They are fully discussed in the exposition of Biblical meter mentioned in the note to page 475. ' Faerie Queene, II, iv, 35. 478 Literature as a Mode of Art Next, it may be presented as a system of clause parallelism. Wrath, jealousy, grief, love, do thus expell: Wrath is a fire;^ And jealousy a weed; Grief is a flood; And love a monster fell; The fire of sparks. The weed of little seed, The flood of drops. The monster filth did breed: But sparks, seed, drops, and filth, do thus delay; The sparks soon quench. The springing seed outweed, The drops dry up. And filth wipe clean away: So shall wrath, jealousy, grief, love, die and decay. In another illustration from the same poem,' the limits of the stanza are transcended, and parts of two stanzas blend in a beautiful scheme of introverted parallelism. Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree: The joyous birds, shrouded ui cheerful shade. Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet; Th' angelical soft trembling voices made To th' instruments divine respondence meet: The silver soimding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the waters fall; The waters fall with difference discreet Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call: The gentle warbling wind low answered to all. We have here the envelope figure of parallelism: what the first line advances is by the last line carried to completion; between come the detailed clauses in introversion — a bbccdde. The whole is a masterpiece of thought reflected in rhythm. ' Faerie Queene, II, xii, 70-71. Literary Prosody: Doctrine of Rhythmic Styles 479 IV All that has so far been touched upon concerns the elements of linguistic rhythm. It is preliminary to what appears the most important consideration of language as a factor in literary art. /Prosody (mainly linguistic — outer study) Distinguish^ ^Literary Significance of Rhythmic Changes (inner study) The technique of prosody belongs in the main to the science and art of language. On the other hand, there is one aspect of what may be called prosody which has a distinct place in the inmost study of literature; it seems to be so little noticed in ordinary treatments of prosody that I do not know any generally accepted term by which it may be expressed; but I will call it the literary significance of rhythmic changes. The rhyth- mic changes I have in mind are interchanges between rhyth- mic styles. Meters and rhythms are innumerable: but the rhythmic styles may be summed up as four in number. Four Rhythmic Styles: 1. Sustained Meter, such as Blank Verse, Heroic Couplets, Terza Rima: where the same unit is maintained for the whole of a poem or section of a poem. 2. Fixed Variations, or Stanzas: changes of meter in suc- cessive lines but with recurrence in groups or stanzas. 3. Free Variations, or Pure Lyrics: imlimited change of meter in successive lines. 4. Non-metrical rhythm of prose. Using this nomenclature we may lay down two principles. A. Particular meters have Uttle, if any," Uterary significance. B. All changes of rhythmic style have Uterary significance, as re- flecting changes of tone or movement. ' For what might seem exceptions, see Ancient Classical Drama, pages 306-13. 480 Literature as a Mode of Art Take a simple passage from Temiyson. Airy, fairy, Lilian, Flitting, fairy Lilian, When I ask her if she love me, Clasps her tiny hands above me. Laughing all she can; She'll not tell me if she love me. Cruel little Lilian. When my passion seeks Pleasance in love-sighs. She, looking thro' and thro' me Thoroughly to undo me, Smiling, never speaks; So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple. From beneath her gathered wimple. Glancing with black-beaded eyes. Till the lightning laughters dimple The baby-roses in her cheeks; Then away she flies. Every ear catches the daintiness of the verse; and at first one is inclined to say that the effect is largely due to the meter employed. Yet this same meter (of trochaic tetrameter) is used to convey sentiment as opposite as can be conceived. Day of wrath 1 day of mourning! See fulfilled the prophet's warning! , Heaven and earth to ashes burning! O what fear man's bosom rendeth! When from heaven the Judge descendeth, On whose sentence all dependethi Of course, within the limits of the particular meter there is variety of treatment — ^use of anacrusis and catalexis, relief of longer by shorter lines — in different parts of the poems; but the particular meter chosen for the two contrasting lyrics is the same. Or, take an example from Milton, who is' a supreme Literary Significance of Metrical Changes 481 master of rhythmic effects. In his U Allegro and II Penseroso, the essential point is to weigh in equal poise two contrasting sentiments, the bright and the somber sides of life. What is the metrical treatment ? The same meter (trochaic tetrameter) serves to express each of the opposing tones. On the other hand, where each half of the poem opens by dismissing the opposite spirit before it settles down to the spirit it is itself to express, we find that the introductory lines are in a different rhythmic style: in free lyrics, instead of sustained meter. Hence loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight bom. In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights un- holy; Fiud out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings. And the night-raven sings; There under ebon shades, and low-brow 'd rocks. As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come thou goddess fair and free, In Heav'n yclep'd Euphrosyne, And by men, heart-easing Mirth; etc. This poem illustrates both our principles at once: the same particular meter is used for sentiments of opposite significance; but a change of tone in the body of the poem reflects itself in a change of rhythmic style. It is a marked phenomenon in all great literatures, this use of rhythmic changes to reflect changes in tone, or movement, or atmosphere.' Yet it seems to have attracted so little attention 'In my own writings I have illustrated this important prindple: in Ancient Classical Drama, pages 86-92, 303-17, 401-91 438-44; and in Shakespeare as Artist, pages 349-SS- (Part of this is incorporated in the dis- cussion above.) In Biblical literature, the foundation of the whole metrical 482 Literature as a Mode of Art that, until recently, translators have for the most part neglected it.' It is a specially notable feature in the episodes of Greek Tragedy and Comedy, where the variatipn is between what may be called blank verse' and free lyrics. Here the rhythmic changes have additional accentuation in the well-known fact that, in Greek drama, blank verse {logos) was only spoken, whereas lyric passages (melos) were chanted or sung: there is thus the interchange between what in modern phrase would be drama and opera. It is remarkable what powerful and subtle changes of spirit these rhythmic changes reflect. Take a simple illustration from the Alcestis. The noble bearing of the queen on the morning of her day of self-sacrifice has been described by the Attendant in blank verse, when the palace door opens, and Alcestis is borne out with signs of approaching death in her face: at once there is a change to chanted Ijtics. But in the course of this death scene Alcestis suddenly -rallies her strength at the thought of a duty she has forgotten — to pro- vide for the future of her children; this part of the scene ex- presses itself in blank verse. The episode of the return from the tomb commences with lyric dialogue chanted between Ad- metus and the Chorus who seek to console him: but their remark that if Admetus has lost a spouse he has gained his life seems to jar upon the feelings of the widowed king, and as he turns round to resent the suggestion the lyrics give place to blank verse. To take another play. The finale to the Aga- system involves the principle that variations of meter reflect variations of thought: illustrations will be found passim in my discussions of Biblical meters {Literary Study of the Bible, pages 534-56; Modern Reader's Bible, pages 1517-30, and notes to Job and Song of Songs). 'The translations of A. S. Way, Gilbert Murray, Lewis Campbell, B. K. Rogers, F. J. Miller, and Plumptre may usually be relied upon to reflect these changes. " Blank verse in Greek is longer than the English blank verse by one additional iamb. Literary Significance of Metrical Changes 483 memnon opens in blank verse: Clytaemnestra in affected calm- ness advises Cassandra to yield to her destiny, and join the family sacrifice. When Clytaemnestra has withdrawn, the prophetic afflatus begins to come upon Cassandra: at first we have snatches of song, and then sustained wild lyrics. The Chorus at first do not understand, and bear their part in the dialogue in quiet blank verse; when Cassandra's words become unmistakable, the Chorus catch the excitement, and the whole scene becomes lyric music. Suddenly, there is a change to blank verse: it is that Cassandra has realized that her doom is inevitable, and in dialogue with the amazed Chorus she moves calmly to the scene of her death. When, later, the machinery of the roller-stage suddenly displays Clytaemnestra, blood-stained, standing over the corpses of her victims, blank verse conveys the cool exultation of the queen over her long-meditated ven- geance, and the bewilderment of those who look on. But soon the natural horror of the scene seizes the Chorus, and their words become lyric song; the murderess for a while maintains blank verse and unnatural coolness, but soon she also is swept into the stream of Ijnric excitement. Yet the culmination of the incident is in blank verse: as ^gisthus, triumphant, is added to the scene, with his display of force at his back. But suddenly the Chorus catch the significance of Cassandra's vision, up to that point hidden from them: the moment that the name of Orestes — fate-appointed avenger — is mentioned, the tone of the whole situation is reversed. The changed tone appears, in this case not in a change to lyrics, but from blank verse to a different type of sustained meter, and the long rolling lines of accelerated rhythm maintain themselves to the end of the play.' In the Shakespearean drama, besides the interchange between blank verse, rhyme, and lyrics, we have the still more effective interchange of verse and prose. In the whole technique of ' The reader can follow these changes in the origmal text of the plays, or in such translations as those mentioned in note i on page 482. 484 Literature as a Mode of Art Shakespeare nothing is more noticeable than these significant changes of rhythmic style. Every play will furnish illustrations: we may instance The Tempest. The opening confusion — ^with mariners and pas- sengers jostling one another in the storm— expresses itself in prose; at the sudden cry, "All lost! to prayers! to prayers!" the shock brings a rise to blank verse. Yet there is one per- sonage present who can see a humorous side even to this situa- tion: Gonzalo's bit of humor falls to prose. Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death. Inside the enchanted island, the presence of Prospero the en- chanter maintains an even atmosphere of blank verse wherever he is present. In one scene (II, 2) Caliban, fresh from an en- counter with Prospero, is pouring out his execrations in blank verse: the entrance of the drunken sailors changes the spirit of the scene, and prose dominates. Yet not entirely: the sailors have forced alcoholic liquor down the throat of Caliban, and as he feels the novel elation of mind he breaks from prose to verse — These be fine things, an if they be not sprites: That's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor. Under this influence Caliban continues to speak verse amid the surrounding prose; until complete drunkenness finds expression in rude lyrics: No more dams I'U make for fish; Nor fetch in firing At requiring; Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish: Ban, ban, Cacaliban Has a new master; get a new man. Literary Significance of Metrical Changes 485 We have the same personages in a later scene (IV, i from line 194): here Caliban, in excitement over the conspiracy against Prospero's life, maintains blank verse; while the sailors, too sodden with drink to remember their purpose, talk prose. The first scene of the second act of this play makes a fine study for rhythmic variations. The main thread of the scene is Gonzalo's kindly attempts to console the afflicted king: this is in blank verse. But in asides — ^perfectly audible to Gonzalo — Antonio and Sebastian are mocking his efforts: the mockery makes an undercurrent of prose. At last (from line 49) the irritation of this mockery depresses Gonzalo's speech to prose, and prose continues until the king speaks: You cram these words into mine ears against The stomach of my sense. Now all becomes verse, as Antonio and Sebastian taunt the king, and Gonzalo continues his attempts at consolation, though with interruptions of prose ejaculations. The king again ex- presses impatience: Prithee, no more: thou dost talk nothing to me. Now Gonzalo turns upon his tormentors, and the whole becomes prose: until the sudden spell of enchantment changes alto- gether the nature of the scene, and blank verse has full course to the end. Just one more illustration may be added. There is one short section of The Tempest which stands apart from the rest of the play: it is the Masque of the Spirit Actors,' raised by the spells of Prospero — a play within a play. This masque is metrically marked off from the rest of the poem by the use of rhyme: even the comments of the on-lookers are in a different meter. The questions that have here been discussed constitute, of course, only a small part of the whole science of prosody; and ' IV, i, 60-138. 486 Literature as a Mode of Art prosody itself is only a single element in the study of language. The responsibility in this chapter is only for those points in which the study of language and the study of literature over- lap. There is no authority that can determine whether lin- guistic or literary study is the more important: each represents an independent province of culture. The danger is — as the history of literary study abundantly proves — lest the student who is not alive to the distinction between the inner and the outer study of literature may, by giving free course to linguistic analysis, be led to neglect that very part of linguistic study which undeniably concerns literature. CONCLUSION THE TRADITIONAL AND THE MODERN STUDY OF LITERATURE CONCLUSION THE TRADITIONAL AND THE MODERN STUDY OF LITERATURE In bringing this work to a conclusion I desire, in the briefest space, to sum up the salient points of the general argument. The study of literature might set up a plausible claim to be the foremost of studies, in the sense that it has been the mother country from which all other studies have set out as colonies. Yet there is a widespread feeling that literary study has fallen behind some other studies of front rank. I believe that there is some foundation for this impression : that traditions of literary study, dating from as early a time as the Renaissance, haVe acted as a retarding force, and have made the study of litera- ture less sensitive than it ought to have been to the vivifying spirit of modern thought. It seems obviously unsound that the study of literature should have fallen into departmental studies of particular literatures, with little attention to the interrelation of these literatures, and with almost no attention to the conception of literature as a whole. The unity of literature, which should be the basis of all literary study whether on a larger or smaller scale, is not to be sought in the mere aggregation of separate literatures, but in the perspective view of the whole which in this work has been formulated as world Hterature. This con- ception of world literature is not a practical compromise, any more than a map is a compromising view of a country. Nothing in imiversal literature is outside world literature: but the per- spective attitude enables each particular reader to catch the relative proportions and the mutual relations of whatever por- tions of literature present themselves to his attention. This world literature is the natural center of the Humanity studies: it reflects the evolution of civilization, as national 489 49° Conclusion literatures reflect the histories of the nations. The basis on which the whole of the Humanity studies should rest is the combination of Hellenic and Hebraic civilizations, and the out- come of their gradual coalescence in mediaeval Romance. Traditional literary study has taken in only the Classical factor. For a long time it endeavored to treat the Romantic as an- tagonistic to Classical, and not as its natural supplement. And the Hebraic factor it has ignored altogether, and been content to leave the Bible itself to the chapter-and-verse travesty of literary form which unliterary mediaeval commentators had imparted to it. This has been the most serious of all errors in the traditional study of literature: the matter of the Bible, with its immense spiritual importance, has been lost to aca- demic culture; and criticism has been cramped by the ignoring of the original and beautiful Hebraic literary forms, which would have been the natural corrective to an Aristotelian theory that had only a single literature to draw from. The necessity of constantly recognizing the distinction be- tween the outer and the inner study of literature is another application of perspective to the field of our study. All that constitutes the outer study, it is admitted, has some bearing upon literature. But where the distinction is not kept in view, the danger is that the reader may be forever occupied with knowing about literature, instead of actually knowing it. For the intrinsic study of literature the question is, not the origins of literature, but the literature itself: the origins, only so far as they elucidate the literature. It is concerned, not with the relations of literature to particular peoples or epochs, but with some catholic grasp of literature, and with particular histories only so far as they assist this catholic view. It is occupied, not with individual literary productions, but with literary t3^es and their interrelations: and with the particular productions only so far as they illustrate the types. In a word, its main interest is, not in literary history, but in literary evolution: in Conclusion 491 literary history only as the field in which literary evolution appears. It has not the responsibility of recording literary products — this belongs to the history of particular peoples — but seeks to interpret the record: and deals with particular literary works only in proportion as they assist in interpreting the record. But we must not stop here. Literary study not only in- terprets the record, but seeks to interpret the conception of Uterature itself. The conception of literature as a whole: the interpretation of which is criticism. And the conception of the varieties of form in which literature clothes itself: this is literary morphology, with its fundamental principle that literary form is the key to interpretation of matter and spirit. The traditional study at the outset assumed a false attitude toward these forms of literature: the paramount position at the moment of Classical poetry led naturally to the idea that the forms of this poetry were limiting models, defining once for all literary types. In the phraseology followed in this work, a static had been sub- stituted for an evolutionary attitude toward poetic fprm; the fallacy of kinds conceived the type as governing the composi- tion, in contradistinction to the view of literary types that un- fold themselves as the literature evolves, and elements of literary form adapted by their very nature for combination and fusion. As a result of this false position, sjonpathetic appreciation stiffened into judgment, and interpretation was ready to set itself in antagonism to that which it was to interpret. Of such a state of things the only outcome could be controversy; and we have seen how for a long period the history of criticism has been a controversial confusion, under which the only law seemed to be the triumph of creative authors over the criticism which had sought to restrain them. The whole attitude to art of appreciation was involved. The idea had in some way arisen that art was something different from nature: it was an 'artificial' product, working under the 492 Conclusion correction of theory and criticism. The turning-point is found where it is perceived that art is a part of nature: the artist, and the processes by which he works, are comprehended in the processes of nature. Art appreciation seeks its laws in art production. The change of attitude stands fully revealed in the evolutionary theory of taste which we associate with the Wordsworth controversy: appreciation adjusting itself to the evolution of creative literature, as each new departure in poetry creates a new departure in taste. Thus, a difference as great as that between the modern and the older geocentric concep- tion of the universe separates the modern from the traditional literary study: tradition has expected the literature to adjust itself to the critic; the modern attitude — approaching art as nature — seeks to adjust the reader to the literature. One practical corollary from this is the necessity of repeated readings and study before the reader can keep up with the poets who are pioneers in art. Analysis of poetry in this spirit has been illustrated in the Grammar of Literary Art which makes one section of the present work. In all that has been said there is nothing derogatory to the idea of judicial criticism. The error of traditional study has been that this single element of criticism was allowed to usurp the whole field, and change the meaning of criticism to mere judgment. There was thus no room for the criticism of pure interpretation, on which all other criticism must rest. When this is once recognized, there is an ample field left for judicial criticism. Man seeks to control nature, but only by principles which are themselves natural; so criticism can restrain produc- tion, but on principles which only creative art will justify or condemn. There will always exist a criticism of values. But the distinction must never be forgotten between values and valuations; matters of technique can be precisely appraised, but things which have the highest of values least admit of valuation. No one has attempted to make a calculus of faith. Conclusion 493 hope, and charity. And the history of judicial criticism will be, essentially, a history of critics. This last consideration, however, widens into another of considerable importance. Pronouncements upon literature, independently of their theo- rectic soundness, will have a literary value of their own: sub- jective criticism is the literature of appreciation. Thus, in the modern reconstruction of criticism three types of criticism have already been noticed: to these a fourth type must be added. The formal literary theory that belongs to traditional study has in this work been restated as speculative criticism. Nothing that has been said is hostile to the use of a priori reasoning in the discussion of literature. It is, however, one of the difficulties of a priori reasoning that the smallest of errors made at the start may throw all that follows out of gear. It has been contended in this work that a fundamental error of this kind has affected traditional literary theory. Aristotle's definition of poetry as techne mimetike involves an ambiguity: it has been traditionally understood — to express the difference in English — as imitation, instead of creation. The true con- ception of poetry and the other arts bases them on a special creative faculty. The products of this creative faculty con- stitute an independent interpretation of reality, independent of the interpretation that comes from science, yet equally true, with a different truth of its own. Moreover, what we are accustomed to consider reality is itself an interpretation: an interpretation of things made by science through its own special faculty, which we call rationalization. In this way literature becomes a part of philosophy as well as a mode of art. One consequence from this is that the subject-matter of poetry becomes not less important than poetic art. So long as poetry is conceived as mere imitation, the emphasis is shifted from the matter to the manner of performance; more and more the spirit of connoisseurship turns from deeper things to delicate nuances of effect. If poetry is creation, the subject-matter 494 Conclusion takes the center of the field. This theoretic consideration is supported by historic fact. Science as it progresses becomes involved in an ever-increasing specialization. But one im- portant subject of thought by its very nature is incompatible with specialization: this is himian life as a concrete whole. It is thus literature that serves as the science and practical art of life: story (we have seen) is a mode of interpretative thinking, and in the study of human nature fiction is the counterpart of what in natural science is experiment and observational ap- ' paratus. But literature is more than the criticism of life. The inter- pretation of things that comes from poetry and art is a higher , interpretation, in the sense that, at one and the same time, it interprets and creates. Poetic idealization enhances what it touches, but enhances only by first interpreting. The nature revealed by science is a lesser thing than the nature on which creative poetry has operated. Once more we have the distinc- tion of static and evolutionary: the creation of the universe did not come to an end in some mystic past, but is going on now and forever, a,s man in poetry is re-creating nature. The creative faculty is assumed for the appreciation of poetry and art, as well as for the producer. Every lover of poetry is him- self a poet; and there is much of poetry in the world that never embodies itself in art creations. The first and last word in literary theory is interpretation. The criticism of inductive interpretation is the basis on which all other criticism rests: only as the reader verifies his concep- tions by observation of the literature can he become a judge; only as the theorist has interpreted the evolution of literary forms can he even understand the literature they embody. And the literary art he thus seeks to interpret is itself the crea- tive interpretation of nature and human life. SYLLABUS GENERAL INDEX WORKS OF THE AUTHOR REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING PAGES SYLLABUS INTRODUCTION— DOMINANT IDEAS OF MODERN STUDY Unity: the application of perspective to the field of the study as a whole. Induction: verification of principles by observation of subject- matter as a final test to which results (however attained) must ultimately be referred. Evolution: distinction between a static habit of mind, seeking fixed principles which will be universal, and an evolutionary mental attitude, tending to interpret things as manifestations of an underlying process. In regard to all three of these ideas the study of literature is less advanced than other studies of front rank. BOOK I. LITERARY MORPHOLOGY: VARIETIES OF LITERA- TURE AND THEIR UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I. THE ELEMENTS OF LITERARY FORM I. The ballad dance as literary protoplasm. — ^The four cardinal points of literary form: description and presentation, poetry and prose. (Stumbling-block to literary theory in the traditional con- fusion between poetry and verse.) — ^Relations between the elements of Hterary form summarized in Chart I, page i8. — Important dis- tinction between literary elements and literary classifications. Pages II -20 II. Fundamental distinction of floating and fixed literature (summarized in Chart II, page 21). — ^Application of floating and fixed to the literary elements gives the life history of literary form (summarized in Chart III, page 26). Pages 20-28 III. Special topics. — (i) The "Homeric Question" illustrates a regular phenomenon of literary evolution. — (2) Genuineness, authenticity, date, questions of authorship, not of literature. — (3) 497 498 Syllabus Fossil poetry. — (4) Relations between journalism and the rest of literature. — (s) The evolution of originality (summarized in Chart IV, page 37). Pages 28-41 CHAPTER n. THE FUSION OF LITERARY ELEMENTS I. Side by side with the differentiation of literary elements is a counter movement toward their combination and fusion. — Natural affinity of the elements for one another. Pages 42-50 II. Notable illustrations of poetry resting upon the combination and fusion of literary forms. — Greek tragedy — the Biblical rhapsody —the poetry of Browning. Pages 50-63 CHAPTER m. LITERARY FORM THE KEY TO LITERARY INTERPRETATION Foundation principle of literature that form and structure are the key to interpretation of matter and spirit. — In modern books the technique of the printed page makes literary form and structure unmistakable. Pages 64-5 The great exception: Morphological confusion of Biblical litera- ture in its transmission through the Middle Ages — in ordinary Bibles the true form and structure are suppressed, and a spurious form and structure have been introduced by mediaeval commentators. — Slow recovery of structure in Biblical literature : significance of the Modern Reader's Bible. — Illustrations of obscurity or misinterpretation of Biblical literature caused by ignoring the literary form and structure. Pages 65-74 BOOK II. THE FIELD AND SCOPE OF LITERARY STUDY CHAPTER rV. THE UNITY OF THE LITERARY FIELD AND THE CONCEP- TION OF WORLD LITERATURE I. The departmental organization of the Humanity studies furnishes not a study of literature but of nationalities — all its constitu- ent elements except literature have become independent studies. — World literature as universal literature seen in perspective from a national point of view. — ^The civilization of the English-speaking peoples rests upon Hellenic and Hebraic civiliza,tions, with a third Syllabus 499 factor produced by the coalition of the two in mediaeval Romance. — Stages of mediaeval history eventuating in Romance. — ^The Classical and Romantic the centripetal and centrifugal forces in modern poetry. Pages 77-88 II. The pedigree of world literature serves as a map of literature in general — literature ancestral, collateral, extraneous — ^modern (European) literature to be regarded as a single literature of which the national literatures are (so to speak) dialectic varieties. — World literature the proper field for literary culture whether elementary or advanced. — ^World literature, presenting the literary material as an historic unity, is the only safe basis for literary theory. Pages 89-92 CHAPTER V. THE OUTER AND THE INNER STtTDY OF LITERATURE I. Affliation of Uterary study with other studies summarized in Chart VIII, page 94.— Traditional confusion between literary and afiiliated studies. — Remedy: the recognition as a fundamental prin- ciple of an Outer and an Inner study of literature. Pages 93-100 II. Detailed distinctions illustrating the separation of Outer and Inner literary study. — Literary biography distinct from Uterary organs of personality (such as essays and lyrics). — ^Differentiation of literary and linguistic studies. — ^Interpretation of exegesis (the unit a word) and interpretation of perspective (the unit a whole poem). — Literary history (as Outer) and Uterary evolution (as Inner) study. — Literary stmcture distinguished from historic structure. — ^The inner study of literature has a field, a method, a scholarship, of its own. Pages 1 00-116 BOOK in. LITERARY EVOLUTION AS REFLECTED IN THE fflSTORY OF WORLD LITERATURE CHAPTER VI. THE DIFFERENTIATION OF POETRY AND PROSE This is summarized in Chart X, pages 122-23. CHAPTER Vn. EVOLUTION IN EPIC POETRY Epic poetry covers aU creation in narrative form from Homer to a novel. Pages 132-33 Soo Syllabus I. Evolution of the organic epic represented in Homer (summa- rized in Chart XI, page 134) — ^plot and movement in Iliad and Odyssey. Pages 133-43 II. Plot forms arising out of the crystallization of epic material into organic epics (summarized in Chart XIII, page 144). Pages 143-52 III. Free differentiation of epic types — ^with tendency to cul- minate in the modern Short Story. Pages 152-53 IV. New departure in modern epic: the Epic of Life (summarized in Chart XIV, page 155). Pages 153-61 CHAPTER vm. EVOLUTION IN DRAMA Comprehensive survey of the whole dramatic field in our world literature. Pages 162-63 I. Evolution of the ancient Classical drama (summarized in Chart XV, page 166). Pages 163-75 II, III. Evolution from Classic to Romantic drama: with special position of the morality as a highly unstable poetic form (summarized in Chart XVI, page 176). Pages 175-84 IV. The Romantic drama as the marriage of drama and epic romance — reflected in the technique of Shakespearean plots; federa- tions of Classical unit plots, with the units romantically expanded. Pages 184-93 V. Modem Classical drama of MoliSre and Racine. — Rapproche- ment between the two main types of drama in Victor Hugo's Romantic Drama of Situation. Pages 193-95 VI. Free differentiation of miscellaneous dramatic types without dominance of Classical or Romantic. Pages 195-96 Syllabus Soi Chapter tx. evolution in lyric poetry The matter of this chapter siunmarized in Chart XVIII, page 198. BOOK IV. LITERARY CRITICISM: THE TRADITIONAL CON- FUSION AND THE MODERN RECONSTRUCTION ■ chapter X. TYPES OF LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEIR TRADITIONAt CONTUSION The matter of this chapter is summarized in Chart XIX, page 222. CHAPTER XI. SPECULATIVE CRITICISM. — THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEP- TION AND FUNCTION OF POETRY Speculative criticism is the philosophy of literature in the tenta- tive stage — embracing a priori reasoning and inductive observation. ^Desideratum: the minimum of entanglement with the fluctuating sciences of psychology and aesthetics. Pages 230-31 A current view of poetry. — (i) True view. — (i) Any subject- The matter of little importance, the matter may be raw material for treatment almost everything. (2) poetic treatment. (2) But the This treatment largely consists in treatment transforms the matter: style and nuances of expression. which thus becomes of equal im- (3) The most essential element of portance with poetic art. (3) The , poetry is the verse. only basis of poetry is creation — creation in verse and creation in prose are two species of poetry — the alternative view an accident of literary history. Pages 231-34 A leading issue is the relation of poetry to its subject-matter, and so to reality. — In early discussions (Plato and Aristotle) divergent views appear: (a) Poetry a mode of philosophy (i.e., the criteria of poetry the same as the criteria of reality); (6) poetry and the other arts antithetic to history and reality (with criteria of their own). — An element of confusion introduced into the discussion by the ambiguity of the foundation word mimesis: which should be inter- preted, not as imitation, but as creation. Pages 234-36 502 Syllabus It is a safe position that poetry and art are a many-sided modifica- tion and extension of reality — further development of this position in principles not mutually exclusive. 1. Poetry and art a representation of reality (thus illusion ex- cluded) — in a special medium: the special medium for poetry is (not language but) language with the thought it conveys — thus repeated readings may be necessary before the language crystallizes into the creative thought. Pages 236-41 2. Poetry and art apply a selective process to reality. a) Purification of reality. b) Selection for a particular purpose such as 'pleasure.' (Cross- examination whittles down the suggestion of 'pleasure' to a principle that the effect of art must take in the percipient as well as the crea tive artist.) c) Negation of purpose: Art as reality at play. Pages 241-43 3. Poetry and art are arrangements of reality: relativity of de- tails discriminates art matter from reality. — It implies perspective, and so the viewpoint of a spectator. Pages 243-45 4. Poetry and art an independent interpretation of reality: the reaction of reality upon a special creative faculty. Special facidties assumed for science (rationalization), art (crea- tion), religion (faith), morality (the moral sense). — ^What is called reality is itself an interpretation. — The special faculties not assumed as psychological ultimates, but as points of departure for their re- spective spheres — ^very differently distributed in different individuals. Pages 245-47 Creative facility twofold: pure creation (of artist) and responsive creation (of percipient). — Relation between the two explains tem- porary obscurity of art, and the cheapening of beauty by its multi- plication. Pages 247-50 Interpretation. — Poetry and art include exercises of the creative facvdty not embodied in works of art. Pages 250-52 Syllabus 503 Independent. — The interpretations coming from the different special faculties equally true, but with a truth different in kind for each. — Thus they caimot clash. Pages 252-55 Thus: poetry by its mode of interpretation connects with art — by the interpretation itself with philosophy. Page 255 CHAPTER Xn. SPECULATIVE CRITICISM. — THE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY or TASTE Taste an accepted term for the faculty of appreciation. — ^Applica- tion to taste of the antithesis between static and evolutionary. — Traditional criticism admits only static taste, identifying the whole of criticism with judgment. Pages 256-58 Modem criticism admits also an evolutionary conception of taste — appearing first in German writers like Herder — obtaining full recognition in the literary controversy associated with Wordsworth's Prefaces. — ^Wordsworth's Essay Supplementary presents a conception of appreciation that is evolutionary in form: Passive taste (static) suffices for much of art ("proportion and congruity"), but each new departure in poetry creates a new departure in taste, by means of power commimicated from production to appreciation. Pages 258-65 Theoretic importance of this view as giving definiteness to the idea of literary evolution: The origin of literary species lies in the differentiation of the conventional. (The 'conventional' as a tacit imderstanding between production and appreciation — the conventional separates art from reality — sepa- rates the different arts from one another — separates between the different genera of a particular art — separates, finally, the species of a genus: A literary species constituted by all the works m which the conventional is the same.) Importance of the view in practical study: the first condition of understanding a particular literary work is adjustment of the mental focus to a point of view collected from the work itself. Pages 265-69 504 Syllabus CHAPTER Xm. INDUCTIVE CRITICISM ;• OR THE CRITICISM OF INTERPRETATION I. Criticism of interpretation defined by antithesis with criti- cism of judgment. — Foundation axiom of inductive criticism: Inter- pretation is of the nature of an hypothesis. — Groundless objections: the fallacy of mechanical induction — variability of subjective im- pressions finds its limit in the concrete details. Pages 270-73 II. Detailed illustration of criticism of interpretation in appli- cation to The Monastery of Sir Walter Scott. (Tabulated on page 2 74.) Pages 273-86 III. What constitutes evidence in literary interpretation. o) In the work interpreted: direct and indirect evidence — chain evidence (disparate details unified by the interpreting process). b) External evidence: allusions and echoings — congruity with similar art effects — accepted traditions. — Principle: Imported ex- ternal ideas fnust find some -point of attachment in the text itself. Pages 286-89 IV. Errors in the inductive process of interpretation. — Special fallacies: allegorizing fallacy — fallacy of the moral — fallacy of incon- sistency — fallacy of the superior person — the author fallacy — fallacy of art and nature — fallacy of kind and degree — ^fallacy of law and fault — the common-sense fallacy. Pages 289-301 V. Relation between interpretative and judicial critcism: judg- ment must be preceded by interpretation. Pages 301-2 CHAPTER XIV. THE HISTORY OF CRITICAL OPINION The matter of this is summarized in Chart XXI, page 304. CHAPTER XV. JUDICIAL CRITICISM: OR CRITICISM IN RESTRAINT OF PRODUCTION Judicial criticism may be defined in antithesis to the criticism pf interpretation — or as criticism in restraint of production — or as the Syllabus 505 criticism of values: here arises the fallacy of values (confusion between values and valuations). Judicial criticism has a place in practical life — in education — in literary theory. Pages 317-21 The question of authority in taste. — In things spiritual freedom not incompatible with authority. — (i) Institutional authority of an Academy. — (2) Authority in the form of a literary conscience. Pages 32r-22 Limitations of judicial criticism. — (i) It must be preceded by criticism of interpretation. — (2) The history of judicial criticism works out as a revelation of critics more than as a revelation of litera- ture. Pages 323-24 CHAPTER XVI. SUBJECTIVE CRITICISM: OR CRITICISM ACCEPTED AS LITERATURE Subjective criticism not a branch of criticism, but aU literary criticism taken as independent literature: the literature of apprecia- tion. Pages 325-26 Dangers in subjective criticism: substitution of traditional opinions for effort at independent appreciation — tendency of past criticism to divert from the matter to the manner in literature, and from broader to minuter eflfects. Pages 326-28 CHAPTER XVII. THE PLACE OS CRITICISM IN THE STUDY Or LITERATURE Literary criticism furnishes the natural perspective of literary study. The prevailing practice in the^ study^ of Uterature reverses the proper proportions between (i) literary theory and (2) the history of critical opinion. — The actual history of critical opinion since the Renaissance discounts its value in literary theory. — Such history of opinion (o) in outUne is a part of literary theory; (6) in its fulness has value as subjective criticism; (c) and belongs to the literary side of history. Pages 329-31 So6 Syllabus The ignoring of literary theory itself constitutes a theoretic posi- tion, and a bad one. (What is of fundamental importance is, not the views advocated in this work, but the issues which these views raise.) Pages 331-32 BOOK V. LITERATURE AS A MODE OF PHILOSOPHY CHAPTER XVm. STORY AS A MODE Or THINKING Story, besides being in itself a thing of beauty, has a secondary function as a vehicle of philosophic thinking. — Concrete story ana- lyzes into underlying conceptions of life. Pages 335-36 I. Ms^thology earlier and modern. — In literature, myth is story in its function of suggestive interpretation. — (Illustrations: mythic genealogies — the metamorphosis.) — Degrees in mythologic suggest- iveness. Pages 336-42 II. Fiction as the experimental side of hxmian philosophy. (The misuse of 'fictitious' as 'false' part of the deep-seated popular confusion between fact and truth. — Facts and fictitious details alike the material of either truth or falsehood. — Facts differ from fictitious details as particulars that happen to have happened. — Fiction antithetical to the literature that limits itself by facts. — Fiction truer, or falser, than the literature of fact, but always more potent.) Pages 342-45 Distinction between the literature of fact and fiction precisely analogous to the distinction in science between mere observation and the extension of observation to arranged conditions that is called 'experiment.' — Further analogy between fiction and observational apparatus in science suggested by the word 'imagination.' — The creative faculty a selective instinct penetrating through non- significant particulars to underlying principles. — ^Misunderstanding of 'fiction' extends to traditional education, and explains its failure in the training of the imagmation. Pages 345-50 Syllabus 507 III. The process of analyzing concrete story into its underljdng philosophy full of perils. — Foundation principle: Plot in story the key to interpretation. — Fallacy of quotations — fallacy of ethical system — the definition fallacy. — Particular elements of story (such as characters, incidents) can only be interpreted ''n reference to the unifying plot. — Antithesis of character and manners. — Interest of tone. — ^Matter of story, taken apart from the plot, is seen out of perspective. Pages 350-55 CHAPTER XIX. UTERATURE AS THE CRITICISM OF LIFE The matter of this has been summarized in section V of Chart X, page 123. CHAPTER XX. LITERATURE AS A HIGHER INTERPRETATION OP LIFE AND NATURE Literature by virtue of its creative power goes beyond criticism: at once creating and interpreting. — ^Idealization gives creative exist- ence to class ideals. — ^Nature poetry: scientific mterpretation of nature transcended by human creative thought. — Prophetic the spiritual counterpart of poetic in art: wisdom become dynamic. Pages 364-69 CHAPTER XXI. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF LITERATURE AS IMPORTANT AS UTERARY ART Philosophy, as interpretation, an element of literature which readily fuses with the other elements, emphasizing their matter as distinct from their form. — Renaissance tradition with its single stand- ard emphasizes art and comparisons of merit: the modem conception oi art as nature extends the comparative method to subject-matter. — ^Literature the autobiography of histoiry. — Difference between scientific and imaginative knowledge: literature the organ of imagi- native knowledge for the whole field of thought. Pages 370-74 5o8 Syllabus BOOK VI. LITERATURE AS A MODE OF ART CHAPTER XXn. THE GRAMMAR OF LITERARY ART Grammar analyzes literary art from the theoretic point of view. — Traditionally, literary art treated in poetics and rhetoric — in these the interest is rather technical than theoretic — and they are involved in the traditional confusion between poetry and verse. — ^The method to be followed is topical: co-ordination of material under separate topics, without attempt at general systematization. Pages 377-79 CHAPTER XXm. PLOT AS POETIC ARCHITECTURE AND ARTISTIC PROVIDENCE This has been summarized in Chart XXII, page 382. CHAPTER XXIV. POETIC ORNAMENT: THEORY OF IMAGERY AND SYMBOLISM This has been summarized in Chart XXV, page 433. CHAPTER XXV. LITERARY ECHOING : THE CONCEPTION OE LITERATURE AS A SECOND NATURE I. Echoing the poetry of the past a fundamental element of poetic effect — ^not resemblance only but reminiscence — the reminiscence sub- dued to the delicate faintness of an echo. — ^Its theoretic basis: (a) poetic accumulations of the past become to the poet and reader a second nature — (6) in the world of pure imagination reminiscence is of the nature of evidence. Pages 445-48 Specialized forms of poetic echoing II. Echoing in the form of incidents irrespective of matter and expression. (Illustration: Temptation of Mammon in the Faerie Queene.) — ^III. Echoing of literary motives: especially pastoral poetry. Pages 448-55 CHAPTER XXVI. LANGUAGE AS A FACTOR IN LITERARY ART Overlapping of Imguistic and literary study.— I. Distinguish ety- mology (linguistic) and metaphorical vitality of words (literary). — II. Distinguish syntax and diction (linguistic) and idiom (literary),. — '■ III. Linguistic and literary prosody. This has been summarized in Chart XXVII, page 464. Pages 456-86 Syllabus 509 CONCLUSION: THE TRADITIONAL AND THE MODERN STUDY OF LITERATURE.— PAGES 489-94. TRADITIONAL Departmental study of separate literatures without regard to their interrelations. Recognition mainly of the Classical factor — total ignoring of Biblical — its spiritual import lost to academic culture — ^loss also of a natural corrective to Classical limitations. Outer study (miscellaneous appli- cations of literature) allowed to crowd out the Inner study of literature itself. — The emphasis on literary history. Purely static conception of literary morphology — fallacy of kinds, as if early forms dominated future literature. Literary art: art conceived as 'arti- ficial,' working under correction of criticism— criticism thus lim- ited to criticism of judicial com- parison. Literary theory vitiated at the out- set by confusi6n between imitation and creation in application to poetry. The basic idea of poetry as imitation shifted the emphasis from the matter of poetry to poetic art — and increasingly to the smaller points of poetic art. World literature: literature, irre- spective of division between lan- guages, seen in perspective from the national point of view. World Uterature as the reflection of our civilization — resting on the three factors. Classical, Biblical, Romandc. Intrinsic study of the literature it- self the main interest — the Outer study oidy so far as it assists the Inner. — ^The emphasis on literary evolution. Evolutionary conception: forms imdergoing modification^ and fusion as literature develops — these forms the key to interpreta- tion of matter and spirit. Art as part of Nature: evolution of taste adjusting itself to evolution of production — ^judicial criticism presupposes criticism of pure in- terpretation. — But all criticism has an independent value as his- tory of appreciation. Poetry and art an independent interpretation of things resting on a special creative faculty, as science rests upon its special faculty of rationalization — the creative faculty postulated for both production and appreciation. Subject-matter of literature equally important with Uterary art — literature the science and practical art of human life — with fiction as its experimental side. Literature is further a higher interpretation of life and nature, at once creating and interpreting. The root idea of literary study is interpretation: to interpret a literary art, which is itself a creative interpretation of nature and human life. WORKS OF THE AUTHOR Referred to in the Preceding Pages World Literature: and Its Place in General Culture. Published by MacmUlan (price in America, $i . 75 net ; in England, ys. 6d.). The Modern Reader's Bible: Books of the Bible (including three books of the Apocrypha) edited in full literary structure: with copious introductions and notes. Issued in two differ- ent forms: (i) complete in one volume (1,733 pages), pub- lished by Macmillan (price in America: cloth $2.00 net; morocco $5.00 net; price in England: clothioi.net; leather 12S. 6d. net). (2) in twenty-one small volumes, published by Macmillan; volumes sold separately; Genesis, The Exodus, Deuteronomy, The Judges, The Kings, The Chronicles; The Psalms and Lamentations (two volumes), Biblical Idylls (one volume, containing Solomon's Song, Ruth, Esther, Tobit); Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and the Minor Prophets; Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus, Ecclesiastes and Wisdom of Solomon, Job; St. Matthew (with St. Mark and the General Epistles), St. Luke and St. Paul (two volumes), St. John (price of each volume: in America, 50 cents [cloth], 60 cents [leather], net; price in England, zs. 6d.). The Literary Study of the Bible: An Account of the Leading Forms of Literature Represented in the Sacred Writings. 2d ed.; in America: published by D. C. Heath & Co., price $1.45; in England: published by Isbister & Co., price los. 6d. A Short Introduction to the Literature of the Bible. Published by D. C. Heath & Co. (price in America, $1.00; in England, 4*. 6i.). The Ancient Classical Drama: A Study in Literary Evolution. Intended for English Readers. 2d ed. Published by the Oxford University Press (price in England, 8i. td.; in America, $2.35). 512 Works of the Author Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist: A Popular Illustration of the Principles of Scientific Criticism. 3d ed. Published by the Oxford University Press (price in England, yj. 6d.; in America, $2.00). Shakespeare as a Dramatic Thinker: An Illustration of Fiction as the Experimental Side of Philosophy. Published by Mac- millan (price in America, fi.so net; in England, 6*. 6d.). GENERAL INDEX [The digestion of topics ttsually made in an Index has in the present work been to a large extent presented in a Syllabus [pages 4Q5f.), and in the Charts scattered through the volume. To avoid repetition, references are made in this Index to the Syllabus and Charts. — Particular works are usually given under their authors.] Academy as an institutional author- ity in art 321-22, 312 Accident as a motive force in plot 396-98 Action, plots of, 382, 390-92 Acts in drama 60-61 Addison: on imagination 231, 243, 247 — on Milton 225, 313 — on false wit 206. — His position in evolution of the novel 155-57 — his use of 'fable' 425 Address, Literature of, 19 Aeschylus 162 — ^his Agamemnon 390, 482-83 — Choephori 390 — Prometheus 7, 120 Aesop 425 Aesthetics as one of the associated studies, 94, 95 Agathon 306 note 2 Agglutination as a plot form 143, 144 Aggregation of literatures distinct from unity of literature 78-79 Alcestis story 371 Allegory; see Imagery Amoebae AN Poetry 198 Anacrusis 473-75 Ancestral literature 89 (com- pare 81) Anecdote as the epic unit 152, 153, 382-83 Anglo-Saxon literature 91, 465 Anthology (Greek) 198, 212 Apollodorus' Argonautica 144 Apparatus (scientific) analogous to creative faculty 348 Arabic civilization and culture as a factor in our literary pedigree 81, 82-88 — ^Arabic language in the Middle Ages 83, 86 — ^Arabic notation 330. — The Arabian Nights Entertainment 147, 385 Arch form of movement 104-7, 187-88, 191-93, 393 Archaeology as one of the associ- ated studies 94, 95 Architectonic factor in the evo- lution of poetry 135 Arion, revolution of, 166, 167 Ariosto 144, 145 Aristophanes 7, 41, 162, 170, 254, 361. — ^The Aristophanic or Old Attic Comedy 166, 170 Aristotle and his Poetics 13, 121, 222, 223, 225, 226, 231, 233, 235 ff., 242, 303-s, 352-53, 377 Arnold, Edwin, 218 Arnold, Matthew, 130, 252, 313, 322, 356 Art: as an element in literature 8, 93 ff. — its analysis into design and human interest 379 — authority in art 321-22 — art and nature 296- 97, 3°4, 314-15. 371, 491-92 S13 SI4 General Index Art, Literary, Grammar of, 377 and chapter xxii [syllabus 508] Aet, Literature as a Mode of, 375 and Book VI [syllabus 508; charts 382, 433. 464]— compare 255 Akyan civilization 81 Associated studies 94 (compare 93-100) Aston's History of Japanese Litera- ture 214 AtJSTEN, Jane: Pride and Prejudice 385-86 — Sense and Sensibility 385 Authenticity a question of author- ship not of literature 30-32 AtTTHORiTY in taste 321-23 Authorship: connected with era of originality 7-8, 36-41 [chart 37] — collective and individual 20- 28 [chart 21] Autobiography in application to world literature 372 Axioms in literary study 266, 271, 296 (See also Maxims, Para- doxes) Bacon 156, 233 — quoted 126, 290- 91. 303. 319, 3SS, 468-69.— The "Baconian Theory" 100 Ballad Dance: as literary proto- plasm II, 49 — germ of three dis- tinct arts 11-12 — its place in the evolution of literary form 11-12, 18, 25-28, 36-40 — a factor in evo- lution of ancient drama 163 ff. Balzac 144, 150-51 Beast epic 425 Bennett, Arnold, 151 Biased art creation 254 Bible: morphological confusion of Biblical literature in the Middle Ages and in current versions 65- 73 (compare 3, 53, 308, 313) — ^Authorized Version 470; Re- vised Version 68; Modern Reader's Bible 68, 113; Polychrome Bible 1 13-14. — ^The Bible in the Middle Ages 84-85, 308. — Biblical phi- losophy of life a factor in the Shakespearean drama 185. — ^Bib- lical sonnets 207-9, 35^ — ^haUels 198, 215 — the Lord's Prayer 70- 71 — ^Deborah's Song 203-4 — Jotham's Fable 425-26 — story cycles 143, 144 Bible: Particular books of. — Deuteronomy 47-48, 112 note i, 114-15, 467-68 — Ecclesiastes 71- 72, 359, 436-38 — Ecclesiasticus 156. 358, 359— Ephesians 466-67 — ^Ezekiel 442-43 — Isaiah 66-68, 70, 392 note I — ^Jeremiah 23-34, 442— Job 31, 54, 69, 290, 359, 396,428— Joel 104-7, 393— Judges 203-4, 425-26 — ^Lamentations 198, 216 — Micah 69-70 — Proverbs 359 — Revelation 442, 447 — Song of Songs 72-73, 198, 200, 434- 36 — ^Wisdom of Solomon 359, 417. — ^The Book of Psalms 107- 8 — dramatic psahns 46, 198, 200 — songs of ascents 198, 215- 16 — acrostic psalms 198, 216 (Particular psalms: the 8th, 366; the i8th, 44; the 57th, 45; the 78th, 108 note, and 416; the 84th, 4i6-i7; the 136th, 38) Bibliography as an associated study 94, 97 BiESE 367 Biography, place of, in literary study 94, loo-ioi, 108 ff., 123, 130 General Index SIS Blank veese 226, 47s, 479, 482, 483 £f. Boccaccio's Decameron 144, 146 BoiLEAU 312 Book literature 20-24 Browning, Robert: his place in literary morphology S3~63 — ex- ample of wisdom literature 198, 203, 360 — ^his alleged obscurity 248. — Dramatic Lyrics 58-59 — Dramatic Romances 59-62 — Para- celsus 251-52 — Sorddlo S3 — Inn Album S3 — Prince Hohenstid- Schwangau 55 — The Ring and the Book 55-56 — Fifine at the Fair 56-58 — The Boy and the Angel 6o-6i — Mesmerism 61-62 — other poems 39, 53-60, 360 Bruner, J. D., on Victor Hugo 195 note Bryce's Eoly Roman Empire 84 note I, 364 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 385, 432 BtriCHER's edition of Aristotle's Poetics 236 note i, 242 notes i and 2, 352 note 3, 353 note i Byron 41, 198, 200 Caesura 473-74 Caujeron 19s Camoens' Lusiad 148-49 and note Cardinal points of literary form 18-20 [chart 18] Caricature 299 — ^in Roman Com- edy 173 Carlyle 48, r23, 129, 369 Cartoons 26, 28 Catalexis 473-75 Catastrophe 187; see Turning- points Cat's Cradle 126, 400 Celtic civilization and literature an element of Romance 81, 87-88 Cervantes' Don Quixote 144, 149 — quoted 357-58 Chain evidence 287 — plot 382, 383- 85 Character as a motive force in plot 395 Chateaubriand 313 Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 144, 146 Cheapening of art beauty 249-50 Chevy Chase, Ballad of, 44 Chinese civilization 81 — wisdom 123, 360 Chorus: in Ancient Classical Drama 166-75 passim — ^in Mod- em Classical Drama 194 — in lyric poetry 198, 203-4 Cicero 123 Circumstances as motive force in plot 395 Clarke, Sir Andrew, quoted 269 Classical literature the prerogative voice in evolution of poetry 91 — its position in higher education 456-57 — ^Hellenic and Hebraic Classics 446-47, 456-57 — the Classical idea 304, 307. — ^The antithesis of Classical and Roman- tic, chapter iv passim, 304, 309 ff., 311 fE., 445— in plot 186 fiE.— The Ancient Classical Drama 162-75 [chart 166], 176-77. — The Mod- em Clasdcal Drama 176, 193-95 COLEREDGE 258, 312, 327-28 Collateral world literature 89 Comedy: Primitive 166, 169 — Old Attic (or Aristc^hanic) 165-67 [chart 166] — Middle Attic 166, Si6 General Index 172 — New Attic 166, 172. — Changed significance of the word in the Middle Ages and in Shake- speare 177-78 Commonplace art 248-50 Common sense in criticism 300-301 Communal poetry 36-39 [chart 37] Comparative reading 371-72 — compare 298-99 Complication and Resolution 139-41, I4S, 173, 191-93, 382, 390-92 Concerto, Lyric, 168 Confusion, era of, in history of criticism 222, 224-26 CONINGTON on literary echoing 446 Conscience in taste 322 Convention and Conventional: as technical terms of literature 20-25, 36-41, 266-68 — in applica- tion to the origin of literary species 266-68 — in application to poetic ornament 433, 434-44 Convincing as a critical term 252 Co-ordination as a plot form 144, 149-50 Copyright and collective author- ship 21, 25 CORNEILLE 312-13 Cosmopolitan tendency in novel- reading 155, 160 Countings out 37 COURTHOPE, W. J., 242, 322 — ^his History of English Poetry 91 note Cox on mythology 337 note Creation, Creative: meaning of the word 236 (compare 13, 15-17, 231-34) — the creative faculty as basis of the arts 245-55 [syllabus 502-3] — as a selective instinct 348. — Pure and responsive creation 247-50 (compare 243, 244-45, 316). — Interpretative creation ap- plied to external nature 366-68 Criticism: meaning of the word 223, 228, 356. — ^Textual criticism 94, 97, 98, 221 — ^Higher criticism (of Bible) 221 — ^Art criticism of literature 221 and Book VI — unformulated criticism 304, 305- 6 — confusion in traditional criti- cism 222, 224-26— quiescence of criticism in the Middle Ages 87 — conservatism of Greek criticism 304, 306-7, 185. — ^Literature as the Criticism of Life 95, 356 and chapter xix [chart 123] Criticism, Literary, 219 and Book IV [syllabus 501-6, charts 222, 304]. — Traditional and Modem Criticism, 222, 228, Book IV, and Conclusion passim. — ^Types of, 221 and chapter x [chart 222], 304, 314-16; see under Inductive, Judicial, Speculative, Subjec- tive. — ^History of Critical Opinion 303 and chapter xiv [charts 304, 222], and compare 329-30. — Place of Criticism in the Study of Literature 329 and chapter xvii, compare 8, 491 Current Fiction 155, 160-61 Cycle, Heroic, as a stage in epic evolution 134, 135, 29 note i Dante: his position in criticism 308-9 — his reflection of medi- aevalism 372 (compare 85, 466) — on art and nature 297. — Divine Comedy 178, 198, 201-2 — Sonnets 198, 205 Dark Ages 83, 84, 175, 176-78 General Index 517 Darwin 265 Date, how far a literary question, 30-32 Deborah's Song 203-4 Defoe 64 — Robinson Crusoe 157 Demosthenes 19 Departmental tradition in literary- study 4, 77-78 and chapter iv passim, 108, 489 Description and Presentation as cardinal points in literary form 12, 18 Design, meaning of the word in critidsm, 142, 295, 402 Dialogue plays 183 Dickens 298-99 — ^his technique in character and manners 353-54 — use of semi-personification 422- 24. — The Old Curiosity Shop 347 — Martin Chuzzlewit 422-24 Didactic purpose in art 254 Differentiation: as a term of evolution 49, 119 — its application to the origin of literary species 266-68. — Differentiation of Po- etry and Prose 119 and chapter vi [chart 1 2 2-23]. — Differentiation in epic 152-53 — ^in lyric 198, 203-4 — ^in drama 163, 195-96 Discovery, Joy of, 248 Dithyramb 167 Dominance, Law of, in prosody 464, 474-75 Dominant ideas in modem study 3-8 (compare 489-92) Drama: as an element of literary form 18-20 [chart 18], 26-28 — its fusion with other elements 43- 46, 47-48, 51^62 passim, 168-69. — Evolution in Drama 162 and chapter viii [syllabus 500, charts 166, 176, 185]. — German drama 196 — Italian 196 — Spanish 195- 96 — drama of situation 173-75, 185, 186-88 — ^miscellaneous types 176, 196. — Soliloquies as a con- vention in drama 266 — inter- change of drama and opera in Greek tragedy 51 (compare 482- 83). — See also Classical, Roman- tic, Mediaeval Dramatic background of nature; see Imagery Drayton's Polyolbion 422 Dreams (in symbolic poetry) 433, 442 Driver, S. R., 113 note i Dryden 196, 224, 249, 313 Dumas 144, 150 Dumb Show as a form of symbolism 433. 440-41 Echoing, Literary, 445 and chap- ter XXV [syllabus 508], compare 23, 288, 304, 307, 311.— In poetry of Virgil 446 — Book of Revelation 447 — ^MUton 447-48 — Spenser 448 -54 Editorials 26, 27-28 Editor, Letters to, 26, 27-28 . Education, Higher: its bias toward studies of fact 349-50 — strength and weakness of its treatment of Classics 456-57 Elegies 198, 204 note i Eliot, George: position in evolu- tion of the novel 157. — Middle- march 160, 462-63 — Daniel De- ronda 158 ff. Elocution as one of the associated studies 94, 97 Emblem literature 433, 441-43 Si8 General Index English language 463-86 English-speaking civilization, its literary pedigree 80-88 [syllabus 498-99, chart 81] Envelopment: as plot form 144, 145-47 — enveloping actions 137- 38, 139, 144, 160, 397, 398 Ephemeral matter of literature 21, 25 Epic: as an element of literary form 17-20, 26-28, 32-33 — its fusion with other elements 43-44, 48-49, 53-62. — Lyric epics 198, 200-202. — Evolution in epic 132 and chap- ter vii [syllabus 499-500, charts 134, 144, 155]— The Epic of Life 153-61 [chart 155]. — Organic epic 133-52, 160 — classical epic 152 — grand epic 151-52 — multiple epic 150-52. — Speeches a convention in epic 266. — Preponderance of epic in the Middle Ages 176 £f. Epichaemus 361 Epictetus 123, 130, 360 Epigrams 199, 211-14, 383. — Bibli- cal 198, 210-11 — Classical 198, 211-13 — modem 198, 213 — San- skrit (quatrains) 213-14 Episodic Expansion as a plot form 144. 148-49 Essay : as a species of literature loi , 123, 130 — its place in evolution of the novel 155, 156-57 Etymology distinguished from word vitality 457-61 Euphuism 249, 274, 276, 454, 466 Euripides 20, 41, 162, 171, 351. — Alcestis 482 — Andromache 391 — Ion 390-91 — Iphigenia in Tawica 391 Evidence in literary interpretation 286-89 [syllabus 504] Evolution: one of three dominant ideas in modem study 7 — ancient and modem conceptions of 7-8, 49, 119, 265 (See Static and Evo- lutionary). — A factor in literary study 94, 95-96. — Disturbing forces in evolution ; attraction and imitation 121, 166, 169-71 — con- servatism 171, 185 — ^individual revolutions 166, 167 Evolution, Literary, 7-8, 117 and Book III [syllabus 499-501 , charts 122-23, 134. 144, 15s. 166. 176. 185, 198] — compare 266-68 Exegesis, Interpretation of, dis- tinguished from Interpretation of Perspective 102 £E. Exeter Book 439 Experiment in science analogous to fiction 342-50 Explosive civilizations 84-86 Extraneous civilizations 81 — liter- ature 89 Fable; see Imagery Fact and Truth 343-45 Faculty: Special faculties as bases for particular spheres of thought 245-SS [syllabus 502-3]. — Special faculty of art 245-47 Faith: a special faculty for the sphere of religion 246, 252, 254-55 Fallacies, Literary: of allegoriz- ing 290 — of art and nature 296-97 — of the author 293-96, 336 — of common sense 300-301 — of defini- tion 352-53 — of ethical system 352 — of inconsistency 291-92 — of kinds 49, 74, 306 note 3 — of kind General Index S19 and degree 298-99 — of law and fault 299-300 — of mechanical in- duction 272 — of the moral 291 — the pathetic fallacy 367-68, 421 — of quotations 331-52 — of the superior person 292 — of values 317-18 Faust, Story of, 371-72. — Mar- lowe's version 288, 292, 427-28 — Goethe's version 240, 292, 421 Fiction as a literary term 16, 232 ff., 240, 306, 342. — Fiction as the ex- perimental side of hmnan philoso- phy 342-50 [syllabus 506], com- pare 123, 130. — ^The (modem) novel as the epic of life 153-61 [chart 155]. — Current Fiction 155, 160-61 Fielding 41 Finnish civilization and literature 81 — the Kalevala 144, 388-89 FiSKE, John, 128 — quoted 299 FiTZGEKAID 218, 360 Fixed and Floating literature; see Floating Fleay, F. E., Ill note 2 Floating and Fixed literature 20- 28 [chart 21]. — Oral 20-28, Period- ical 20-28, 123, 130-31, 319. — Current Fiction as floating epic 155, 160-61 Focussing, Mental, 443-44, 269 (compare 266-68, 239-40) Folk-poetry 36-39 [chart 37] — Folk-lore as an associated study 94.95 FOEESHORTENING of movement 392 (compare 139-41) Form, Literary: the Key to Liter- ary Interpretation 64 and chapter iii [syllabus 498].^Elements of Literary Form 11 and chapter i [syllabus 497, chart 18], compare 42, 74. — Fusion of Literary Ele- ments 42 and chapter ii, compare 197-203, 304, 306, 314, 350, 370- 71. — See MoEPHOLOGY Fossil poetry 21, 32-33 Frame stories 146 £E. — Creative frame for essays 155, 156-57 Frazer, J. G., 336 Free Criticism 228 (See Sub- jective) Freeman as historian 123, 128 Feench influence in Uterary evolu- tion 193 S. — genius for simplicity 194 Froude as historian 48-49, 123, 128-29 Fuknivall's textual criticism of Shakespeare in note 2 Garcia 362 Gayley and Scott's Methods and Materials of- Literary Criticism 236 note 2 Gay Science 454 Genealogy a factor in mythology 338-39 Genetic structure in literature iiifi. Genres of literature 50, 152, 306, 4S4 Genuineness, how far a Uterary question 30-32 Germanic civilization and Uterature 81, 87-88— important German contribution to the evolution of taste 258-59 Gesta Romanorum 144, 146 Gnomic literature 120, 122, 124. — Riddles 120, 122, 124 — riddling 520 General Index symbolism 433, 438-40. — ^Prov- erbs 120, 122, 124 — Biblical prov- erbs 210-11 Goethe 196. — See Faust GoLLANCz' textual criticism of Henry the Eighth 112 note 2 GoKBODUc 440-41 Grammar 42-43, 64, 65, 377-78, 461. ^Grammar of Literary Art 221, 377 and chapter xxii [syllabus 508] Gray 313. — The Bard 197-200 Greek conception of drama 234. — Contrast of Greek and Hebrew drama 227, epic 227, philosophy 227, verse 227. — Greek and Norse use of metamorphosis 339-41. — Greek epic 20, 49-50, chapter vii passim. — Greek drama 44 and chapter viii passim. — See under Hebraic and Hellenic Greene, J. R., quoted 469 Greyfriars Bobbie 425 Grimm's mythology 336 Grimm's stories 386-88 Grote's History of Greece quoted 338 Gummere's Beginnings of Poetry 17 note Hallam 128 Hallels, Biblical, 198, 215 Hamartia, Doctrine of, 353 Harrison, Frederic, on Choice of Books 194 note Hazlitt 325 Hebraic and Hellenic factors in the literary pedigree of the English-speaking civilization 80- 82 and chapter iv passim [syllabus 498-99, chart 81] — compare 304, 308 Henry or Huntingdon 178 note 1 Herder 258-59, 313-14 Hermeneutics as one of the associ- ated studies 94, 95 Herodotus 121, 122 Heroic Cycles 29 and note 1 Hesiod 120, 122 Hideous as an example of word vitality 460-61 History: as one of the associated studies 94, 95. — ^As an element of literary form 18-20, 26-28, — its fusion with other elements 46. — Literary history distinct from literary evolution 108 ff. — ^His- toric and literary structure iii £f. Histrionic art 287-88 HoBBEs's Leviathan 297 Hogarth 302 Homer: The Homeric Question (or Process) 28-30 — the Homeric era 372 — Homeric catalogues 120, 122. — Homer as organic epic 133- 43 [chart 134].— lUad 29, 135-38, 142, 392-93. 39^-— Odyssey 29, i38-43> 342, 385. 392> 398 Horace: in criticism 312 — in lyric 198, 204, 217-18 Horrid as example of word vitality 460-61 Hugo, Victor, 53, 144, 151, 195 Humanity Studies: traditionally organized on departmental lines, 77-78 — importance to these of world literature 77 and chapter iv passim [syllabus 498-99] — compare 350, 489-90 Hume, David, 262 Humor: its place in the evolution of originality 37, 41 — its connection with personality 362. — ^Humors 353, 354 General Index 521 Hypotheses in inductive criticism 271 — creative 48-49 Ibsen 53, 63, 196, 353 Ideal and Real 37, 41 Ideauzation: in art 242 — in the higher interpretation of Life 364-65 Idiom 161-62 Idsll, Lyric, 72-73 Imagination made by Addison the basis of art 247 — as a selective instinct 348-49 Imageky, Theory of, 403-32 [chart 433]. — Distinction between imag- ery and symbohsm 403, 433, 434, 443-44. — Simile and metaphor 403-14 [chart 433] — metaphor direct 414-17 — metaphorical vi- tahty of words 457-61 — ^personifi- cation 417-25 — fable 425-26 — parable 426 — amoving imagery 426-32 — dramatic backgrotmd of nature 426-32 — allegory 432 Imitation: as translation of mime- sis 23s £f. — as a force in evolution 121 (compare 166 flf.) Inceementals 37 Indian civihzation as a factor in our literary pedigree 81, 83, 84-88 passim Indhteeence, Moral, of art 253-54 Induction: its place in modem studies 4-5 — connection with the New Thought of the Renaissance 124 £E. [chart 122] — appUcation to literature 5-6, 270, 271-73, 288, 300 Inductive Criticism 222, 227, 270 and chapter xiii [syllabus 504] — compare 304, 315, 494 Inner and Outer study of Utera- ture 99 and chapter v [syllabus 499] Interlude play 176, 183-84 Interpretation 74, 494, 271. — Interpretation of exegesis and of perspective 102 £E. — ^Art an inde- pendent interpretation of reality 245-55 [syllabus 502-3].— Litera- ture as a higher interpretation of Life 364 and chapter xx [syllabus 507I Interpretation, The Criticism of, 270 and chapter xiii [syllabus 504] Introversion as a form of story movement 136, 392 Involution as plot form 144, 147-48 Irving, Washington, quoted 153 Islam and Christendom 83, 85-86 James, William, 128 Japanese civilization and literature 81, 198, 214 Johnson, Samuel, 30, 224, 225, 261-62, 313, 323, 326-27 JoNSON, Ben, 233, 299, 353, 454 Jotham's Fable 425-26 Journalism and its place in litera- ture 25-28 [chart 26], 33-36, 123, 130-31, 161, 301, 319, 327, 363 Judicial Criticism 317 and chapter XV [syllabus 504-5, charts 222, 304]— compare 228, 315, 323-24, 492 Juvenal 361 Kalevala; see Finnish Kaxharsis, Doctrine of, 352-53 Kinds as fixed types 49, 74, 306, 314, 491. — Distinctions of kind and of degree 298, 371 522 General Index Knowledge, theoretic and imagina- tive, 373-74 KoMMOS 1 68 note Labor, Songs of, 37 La Beuyere 362 Lamb 325-26 Lang, Andrew, on mythology 337 Language: language and literature studies discriminated loi £E., 456- 57. — Language as a factor in liter- ary art 456 and chapter xxvi [syllabus 508, chart 464] Lanier, Sidney, 343 note 2 Law: ambiguity of the word 299-300 Leading Articles 26, 27-28 Lessing 196 — his Laocoon 238-39 License, Poetic, 300 Life: analytic and synthetic senses of the word 129-30, 356. — ^Litera- ture as the Criticism of Life 95, 356 and chapter xix [chart 123], compare 129-31, 154, ISS> 493- 94. — ^Literature as Higher Inter- pretation of Life and Nature 364 and chapter xx [syllabus S07I Literature: a function of Thought, Art, and Language 93-97. — Study of literature and associated stijdies 93-99 [chart 94]. — ^Literary and linguistic studies discriminated loi fE., 456-63,479-86. — National literatures the reflection of na- tional histories 93, 94, 108- 9. — History of literature distinct from aggregation of literary histories no Lope de Vega 195 Lord's Prayer, The, 70-71 LowiH 31? Lucretius 121, 122, 233-34 Lyric: as an element of literary form 18-20, 26-28, 165, compare 72-73, loi, 107-8 — its fusion with other elements 44-46, 47, 50-53, 58-59, 168-69, 197-203.— Evolu- tion in Lyric 197 and chapter ix [chart 198] Mabie, Hamilton, 248 Macaulay 128, 225, 326, 469 Macdonnell's History oj Sanskrit Literature 213 Mackenzie, A. G., on evolution of literature 36 note Macpherson's Ossian 30, 313 Malory's Morte d' Arthur 144 Manly, John M., 179 note Manners and Character 353-54 Manuscripts, Ancient, their form- less arrangement 65 £E. Marcus Aubelius 123, 130, 360 Martial 198, 212-13 Matthews, Brander, on the Short Story 152-53 Maupassant 153 Maxims in criticism 242, 244, 294 Mediaeval Bible 3, 65 £E. — epoch in criticism 3043. — drama 176, 178-84 — miracle play 176, 179, 185 — morality 176, 179-84 — ^mys- tery 178 — dialogue 183 — interlude 176, 183-84 Mediating Interpretation 218 Melodrama 249 Menander 172 Meredith, George, 353, 361 Metamorphosis as a poetic motive 339-41 Metaphor; see Imagery General Index 523 Meter 464, 473-79. — Literary sig- nificance of metrical variations i68-6g, 200-201, 281, 282, 283, 475^-86 MiCEOSMOGRAPHY 156, 362 Middle Ages, Historical Frame- work of, 82-8 [chart 83], compare i7S~8 [chart 176]. — See Mediae- val Miller, F. J., translation of Seneca 171 note 3 Milton: his position in the history" of criticism 304, 310-11. — His use of literary echoing 447-48, 451. — Areopagitica 161 — V Allegro and II Penseroso 47s, 480-81 — Lycidas 225, 415, 454 — Paradise Lost 144, 148, chapter xxivpassim (especially 418-19) Mimesis an important word in the history of speculative criticism 235 Minstrels 22, 39, 176 ff. Miracle Play 176, 179, 185 MniROR for Magistrates 178 Modern Reader's Bible 68 Modern Study, Dominant ideas in, 3-6 MoLliRE 20, 193-95 Monody 168 Morality Play 176, 179-84 Morphology, Literary, Book I [syllabus 477-78, charts 18, 21, 26, 37] — compare 8, 108 ff., 491. — Morphological confusion of Bib- lical literature in the Middle Ages and in current versions 65-73, 308, 313 Morris, William: a prophet 369 — an English Homer 30. — His use of metamorphosis 340-41 — of dra- matic background of nature 426- 32. — The Earthly Paradise 144, 146 — Jason 152 — Sigurd the Vol- sung 144, 430-32, 474 Motives, Literary, 393. — See Mo- tive Force under Plot MuLLER, Max, on mythology 337 note Multiple Unity as a plot form 144, 150-52 MuNRo's translation of Lucretius 233-34 Murray, Gilbert, 29 notes i and 2 Mythology 94, 95, 120, 122, 336-42 Mystery Play 178 Naylor, J. S.: his musical setting of the 78th psalm 108 note New Thought (of Renaissance) 88, 122, 124 ff. — Religion, Art, and Poetry 88 News as material of literature 20-28 [chart 21] Newspaper 25. — See Journalism Nominalist controversy 364 Norse civilization and literature as a factor in Romance 81, 87 ff. — use of metamorphosis 340-41 Novel, Modern, as epic of Life 153-61 [chart 155] Number Sonnets of Bible 198, 209- 10 Obscurity in art 248-49 Omar Khayyam 198, 216-17, 218 One-two-three form of plot 382, 386-89 Opera 19, 168, 267 Oracular Action 191-93, 391 Oral poetry 20. — See Floating Oratory, or literature of address: as an element of literary form 18-20, 26-28 — its fusion with other elements 46, 47, 51 524 General Index Originality: its relation to float- ing and fixed literature 8, 20-28 [chart 21] — evolution of original- ity 36-41 [chart 37] Origins, Literary, distinct from the study of literature 36 and note — compare no, 337, 490-91 Ornament, Poetic, 403 and chapter xxiv [chart 433]. — See Imagery, Symbolism OssiAN 144, 313 Outer and Inner study of litera- ture 99 and chapter v [syllabus 499], chapter xxvi passim, especially 457, 461, 479 — compare 490-91 Ovid 204 note i. — Metamorphoses 144, 145-46, 340 — -Fasti 120, 122 Paleography as one of the associ- ated studies 94, 96 — compare 65- 66 Parabases 171 Parable; see Imagery Paradoxes in criticism and art 224, 249-5°. 30O7 302, 345 Parallelism (Biblical), 207-9, 475" 76 — compare 464 Parts or Speech (in grammar) analogous to elements of literary form 42-43 Passion, Plots of, 382, 389-90 Pastoral Poetry 454-55 Pattison, Mark, 225 Pedigree, Literary, of the English- speaking civilization 80-88 [syl- labus 498-99, chart 81] Percy Ballads 32, 313 Periodical floating literature 21, 25 ff. Persian civilization and literature as a factor in our literary pedigree 81, 83, 84-88 Personages; Motive, 394-95 Personality, Literature of, 100- loi, 123, 130, 361-62 Personification; see Imagery Perspective: the foundation of world literature 79-80 — its bear- ing on the Outer and Inner liter- ary study 99, 490 — applied to literary history iio-ii. — ^Inter- pretation of exegesis and of per- spective 102-8 Petrarch 198, 217, 454 Philosophy: as one of the associ- ated studies 94, 95 — as an element of literary form 18-20, 26-28, 370-71 — its fusion with other elements 46-47 — its relation to the differentiation of poetry and prose 120, 128. — Compare 8, 230, 329 Philosophy, Literature as a Mode of, 334 and Book V [syllabus 506-7] Pindar 198, 204 Plagiarism, its place in literary evo- lution, 7-8, compare 36-40 Plato 121, 122, 125, 234-35, 360 Plautus 174 Play-impulse 241-42 Pleasure, how far essential in art, 241-43 Plot: involves design and human interest 380 — unity and diversity 243-45 — compare 380, 30 note. — Plot the key to the philosophical analysis of story 351-55 [syllabus 507] General Index 525 Plot as Poetic Architecture and Artistic Providence 380 and chap- ter xxiii [chart 382], compare 400. — ^Movement as one aspect of Plot 382, 392 £f. — emotive form 382, 392-93 — motive force 382, 393-98. — Complex Plot 382, 398- 400, 188-93 — miderplots 139-41, 144, I4S> 149, I74-7S-— Plot and Movement in Classical epic and drama 143-52, 184-87, 389, 39i- 94, 398-99 — ^in Romantic epic and drama 184-93, 274, 393-98, 399- 400 — ^in Shakespeare 186-93 — in Biblical drama 104-7, 392-93 — in the Seneca drama 172 — in primitive literature 381-89. — Classical and Romantic plot com- pared 184-93 Plot: Particular forms of Plot and Movement. Point of anecdotes 381-83— chaui plot 382, 383-85— puppet-plays and plot of stock characters 382, 385-86 — one-two- three plot 382, 386-89 — plots of passion and action 382, 389-92 — compUcation and resolution (with concrete expressions of these) 139-41, MS, 173, 191-93, 382, 390-92 — introversion 136, 392 — arch movement 104-7, 187-88, 191-93, 393 — foreshortening 392 (compare 139-41) Plot schemes for particular epics and dramas. — Aeneid 145 — Ara- bian Nights 147 — Cymheline 187 — Hamlet 396-98 — Iliad 136-37 — Lusiad 148, 149 note i — Mac- beth 187-88 — Merchant of Venice 188-89 — Middlemarch 160 — Mon- astery 274 (compare 273-77) — Odyssey 139, 140 ff. — Phormio 174-75 — ^Tasso's Jerusalem 149 — ■ Twelfth Night 400-401 — Winter's Tale 192 Plutarch 156 PoE 153 Poetic Diction 249, 259 Poetry: significance of the word 15- 17, 124, 236. — Confusion of poetry with verse 15-20, 26, 119, 121, 232-34, 235, 294, 378.— Poetry and prose as cardinal points of hterary form 12, 13, 15-20 (chart 18], 293. — Diflferentiation of poetry and prose 119 and chapter vi [chart 122-23]. — Fundamental conception and function of poetry 230 and chapter xi [syllabus 501-3]. — Poetry a mode of phi- losophy and a mode of art 235 ff., 255. — Poetic handling of nature 366-68. — Poetics 94, 96, 377-79. — ^Poetic diction 249, 367-68 — poetic justice 380, 395 Polychrome Bible i 13-14 Pope 41, 225, 249, 312, 323 Posnett's Comparative Literature 36 note, 361 Premature Methodization 303, 30s Presentation as one of the cardinal points of Uterary form 12-20 Prophecy, Prophetic: analogous to poetic in art 352, 368 — one as- pect of the higher interpretation of Life 368-69 Prose: double meaning of the word 13, 232 — as one of the cardinal points of literary form 12, 13-20 [chart 18], 26 — compare 154, 466. — ^Prose and verse 14-15, 133, 154, 526 General Index 470-73. — Prose style in English 466-70. — ^Differentiation of poetry and prose 119 and chapter vi [chart 122T23] — compare 133, 159 Prosody 463-86 [chart 464]. — Linguistic and literary signifi- cance of prosody 479-86 Proverbs as philosophy of primi- tive life 357-58. — See Gnomic Providence as motive force in plot 382, 395 Psychology as one of the associ- ated studies 94, 95 — compare 230-31. — Distributive Psychology 362 Punctuation a grammatical ana- logue to literary structure 65 Puppet-play 19, 385 Purpose, meaning of the word in criticism, 142, 295, 492 QuAEiES 441-42 Quatrains (Sanskrit) 213-14 quintilian 19 Rabelais 254 Racine 193-95 Rationalizing faculty as the basis of science 245-55 [syllabus 502-3] Reading of novels 240 — repeated readings 239-41, 269 Real and Ideal 37, 41 Realism of incident as a factor in evolution of originality 37 (com- pare 36-41) Realist and Nominalist con- troversy 364 Refrains 36-39 Religio Laici quoted 297 Renaissance as transition from mediaeval to modem 81, 83, 88. — Renaissance criticism 222 S., 304, 309 ff. Responsive Creation 247-50 — compare 243, 244-45 Restoration Comedy 196, 254 Reynard the Fox 425 Rhapsodic recitation 29 Rhapsody, Biblical, 51-53 Rhetoric as one of the associated studies 94, 96 — an influence in Latin literature 172. — Rhetoric as a study distinguished from Grammar 377-79 Rhythmic changes. Literary sig- nificance of, 479-86 Ribs and Skin (Japanese comedi- etta) 383-84 Richardson's novels 41, 44, 157-58 Riddles; see Gnomic Rochefoucauld 362 Romance as a factor in the literary pedigree of the Enghsh-speaking civilization 82-88 [syllabus 498- 99, chart 81]. — Romance current in the history of criticism 304, 308-16 passim — antithesis of Classic and Romantic 88, 89, 186-93, 304, 309 S., 311 fE., 445. — Romantic epic, 144, 150, iSSi 159 — Romantic drama 176, 184-93 — Romantic drama of situ- ation 195. — Romance languages 86 — Romance as secularized story 176, 177 — ^prosody in Romance 465 Rosiceucian lore 278, 289 RusKiN 367, 369, 421 Rymer 224, 225 Sackville 436, 451 Saintsbury's History of Criticism 49, 225, 226, 236 note 2, 306 note 3, 309 note 2, 312-13, 316 note, 323-24, 325, 463 note i General Index 527 Satike so, 123, 130, 360-61 ScmLLER ig6, 204 note ScHLEGEL, Feederick, 313 and note Scholasticism 125-26 Science, its relations with litera- ture, 120 and chapter vi passim, 252-53 Scott, Sir Walter, 144, 145, 150, IS9, 242, 353. — The Betrothed 144, I4S — Ivanhoe 144, 145 — Monas- tery 273-86 [chart 274], compare 242, 394 — Redgauntlel 44 — Talis- man 144, 145, 361 Seeley, Sir J., 365, 373 Selective process in art creation 241 fE. Semitic civilizations 81 Seneca (drama) 166, 171-72, 194 — (philosophy) 120, 130, 360 Sentiment, its relation to the evolu- tion of originality, 36-41 [chart 37] Serial story 26-27 Shairp, Dr. J. C, on Poetic Inter- pretation of Nature 245 note, 367 note 2 Shakespeare 6§, 162, 185, 193. — Shakespearean drama 184-93. — His position in the evolution of criticism 304, 310 £E. — Criticism on Shakespeare 224 £E. — Phi- losophy of the Shakespearean drama 348, SSo-S^- — ^His usage of verse and prose 233, 483-86 — of character and manners 353. — The Sonnets 198, 205, 217 Shakespeare : Particular Plays. All's Well 391 — Antony and Cleo- patra 288 — As You Like It 455 — Comedy of Errors 3S4-SS, 399" 400 — Cymbeline 187 — Hamlet 396- 98, 441 — Henry V 288 — Henry VIII 48, 112 — Lear 189-91, 287, 288, 289,400 — Love's Labour's Lost 391 — Macbeth 187, 292, 393 — Merchant of Venice 188, 291, 399 — A Midsummer-Night's Dream 391 — Much Ado 245,299 — Othello 224, 3g4.-g5— Richard III 352, 394— Romeo and Juliet 352, 396 — Tem- pest 234, 278, 288, 395, 484-85— Twelfth Night 400, 401 — Winter's Tale 187, 191-93, 297, 314, 393, 399 Shelley 198, 200, 233 Sidney 233, 454 SlENKIEWICZ 144, 150-51 Simile; see Imagery Situation: story of, 273-86 [chart 274]— drama of, 173-75, 185, 186-88. — Situation as motive force in plot 273 ff., 394 Slang 462-63 Smectymnuus 161 Smith, Adam, 262, 320 Sociology as one of the associated studies 94, 95 Soliloquies as a literary conven- tion 266 Sonnet: in lyric poetry 198, 205 £E. — miniature sonnets 198, 209-15 — sonnet sequences 198, 217 — Biblical sonnets 198, 207-11, 358. — Place of the sonnet in the evolu- tion of originality 37, 40-41 Sophocles 162. — Electra 390 — Oedipus as King 390 — Philoctetes 391 SOUTHEY 198, 200-201, 218 Special Correspondence 26, 27 528 General Index Species, Literary, 121, 267-68 — origin of literary species in the differentiation of the conventional 266-68 Speculative Criticism 222, 228, 304, 315, 493. — Fundamental conception and function of poetry 230 and chapter xi [syllabus 501- 3]. — Evolutionary theory of taste 256 and chapter xii [syllabus 503] Spencer, Herbert, 128 Spenser, Edmund, 294-95, 477-7S. — ^His position in the history of criticism 304, 310-11 — his relation to literary echoing 448-54 — to pastoral poetry 454, 455. — The Faerie Queene 144, 150, 225, 448- S4j 4SS — The Shepheards Calender 4SS Stage Art as one of the associated studies 94, 97 Stage Lyrics 168 Stanza as a metrical unit 464, 476- 78 Static and Evolutionary: men- tal attitudes 7-8— applied to authorship 7-8 — to literary dis- tinctions 49 — to literary forms 74, 314-15 — to criticism 222 B., 314-15 — to taste 222, 224, 256- (>5, 3I4-IS- — Static and dynamic elements in plot 274 ff. Story: common to epic and drama 43. 33S— story fusion 134, 135— stories with a purpose 336. — Story . as a Mode of Thinking 335 and chapter xviii [syllabus 506-7] — compare 273-89. — The Short Story as a technical term 152-53. — Secondary stories 136, 138, 139, 141-42 — satellite stories 139, 141- 42 — wonder stories 141 — frame stories 144, 146 S. Strain as a metrical unit 464, 475-76 Structure as an element in inter- pretation 103 ff. — literary and historic structure discriminated iiiff. Subjective Criticism 2 2 2, 229, 325 and chapter xvi [syllabus 505, charts 222, 304], 315-16 Subject-matter of literature as important as literary art 370 and chapter xxi [syllabus 507] — com- pare 231-32 Supernatural, The, as a motive force in plot 382, 395 Symbolism as a branch of poetic ornament 434-44 [chart 433]. — Distinction between symbolism and unagery 403, 433, 434, 443-44. — Conventional standards 433, 434-38 — riddling symbolism 433, 436-40 — dvimb show 433, 440-41 — emblem literature 433, 441-43 — ^visions and dreams 433, 442 — initial mystery 433, 440-43 Tagore, Sir Rabindranath, 360 Tanka (Japanese) 198, 214-15 Tasso 310, 311. — Jerusalem De- livered 149 Taste: technical term for the fac- ulty of appreciation 222, 224, 228, 256 — static and evolutionary 222, 224, 228, 256 and chapter xii [syllabus 503] — authority in taste 321-23 Technical literature 123, 127-29 — phraseology 127-28 Technique, Inspiration of, in lyric poetry 198, 205-15 General Index 529 Tennyson 323. — Idylls 0} the King 143, 144 — In Memoriam 123, 360 — Lillian 480 — The Sisters 428-29 Terence 174. — Phormio 174-7S Thackeray 299 Theocritus 198, 454 Theology as one of the associated studies 94, 95 Theory, Literary, 225, 304, 312- 16, 493 Thespis, Revolution of, 166, 167 Thomas, Calvin, quoted 258 Thomson's Sophonisba 41 Thucydides 121, 122 TOMLINSON, C, on the Sonnet 205 note I Tone, Interest of, 354-55 (com- pare 192). — Mixture of tones in Old Attic Comedy 170-71 Tragedy: etymology of the word 167 — significance changed in the Middle Ages 177-78. — Ancient Greek 165-69 [chart 166] — Ro- man 171-72 [chart i65] — ^Lyric 166-67 — Choral 168-69 — ^Modern Classical 176, 193-95 Trent, W. P., Authority in Criti- cism, 321 note Trollope, Anthony, 151 Truth and Fact 343-45 TuppER, Martin, 14, 130 Turner 248, 293 Turning-points in dramatic move- ment 187-88 TussER 122, 124 Unities, The Three, 225, 299 Unity: a dominant idea of modem studies 3-4 — its realization in the conception of world literature 77- 80 and chapter iv [syllabus 498- 99, chart 81]. — Unity an element in interpretation 107-8 Universal Literature distinct from world literature 78-80 Valuations, Literary, 224-25, 323-24, 379, 492-93 — compare the fallacy of values 317-18 Vast as illustration of word vitality 459-60 Vedantic philosophy 360 Verse; see under Prose, Poetry VlDA 312 Virgil: illustration of literary echo- ing 445, 446, 450, isi.—Aeneid 144, 145, 3g2— Eclogues 446, 454 — Georgics 122, 124 Visions in symbolism 433, 442 Voltaire 224 Wagner 221, 248. — The Valkyrie 428 Ward, A. W., History of English Dramatic Literature, 178 note 3, 179 note Watson's Hekatompathia 207 Way, Arthur S., his translations, 474 note Westcott, Bishop, his Paragraph Psalter, 108 note Whitman, Walt, 14, 130, 472-73 Wisdom literature, 202-3, 358 £E. [charts 123, 198] Wit, False, 198, 206 Words, Metaphorical Vitality OF, 457-61 Wordsworth 40, 41, 59, 123, 225, 233, 253, 360. — The Words- worthian Principle of Evolution- ary Taste 222, 256 and chapter xii [syllabus 503] — ^its bearing 53° General Index on literary theory 265-68 — on practical study 268-69 — on liter- ary evolution 265-68 — compare ' 304, 312, 314 World Lixeratube: general con- ception and application to the English-speaking civilization 77 chart 81] — compare 108 S., iig, 489-90 WoRSFOLD, Basil, his Principles of Criticism, 236 note 2 Young's Night Thoughts 130 and chapter iv [syllabus 498-99, Zola 343