Part 4

Such is the scheme which will, in conjunction with the similar scheme at Cambridge, supply England and the colonies with their literary professors. Let us examine it in detail. The first thing which strikes us is the contrast between the competence and judgment displayed in the organization of the philological part of the course and the confusion, inadequacy, and flimsiness so conspicuous in the literary part. Nothing could be more satisfactory than the provisions made for the study of Language. They are obviously the work of legislators who knew what they were about, and who, but for the thwarting requirements of the provisions for Literature, would have proceeded to a superstructure worthy of the foundation. A student who, in addition to having mastered the prescribed works in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English, is competent to translate and comment on unprepared passages from those dialects, has certainly laid the foundation of sound scholarship in an important department of Philology. In the fact that what properly belongs to his study has been relegated to the subjects out of which he has only the option of choosing one, we have a lamentable illustration of the effects of the compromise forced on the philologists. If, for the literary portion of the curriculum, a candidate could substitute the first four of the special subjects, he would have completed a thoroughly satisfactory course of Philology, so far at least as relates to the Teutonic and Romance languages.

But to pass from what concerns Philology to what concerns Literature. Now in considering this point it is necessary to remember that we are not dealing with the regulations of any subordinate institution or curriculum, with provincial Universities and seminaries, or with schemes of study in which Literature is only one out of many subjects. We are dealing with a Final Honour School at Oxford, with regulations which will inevitably form a precedent and model wherever the study of English literature shall be organized in Great Britain. We are dealing with a school which is to educate those who are to educate the country. Nothing, therefore, could be more disastrous than unsoundness and deficiency in the provisions of such an institution, nothing more deplorable than its giving countenance and authority to error and inadequacy. It is not too much to say that, if this scheme had been designed with the express object of degrading the standard of literary teaching, and of perpetuating all that is worst in present systems, it could hardly have been better adapted for its purpose. Not to dwell upon subordinate defects, it completely severs the study of our own literature from that of the ancient classical literatures. It necessitates no knowledge of any of the Continental literatures. It ignores absolutely the higher criticism. Contracting Literature within the narrowest bounds, its selection of books for special study is worthy of an Army Examination. In the wretched jumble in which Goldsmith’s _Citizen of the World_ jostles Shelley’s _Adonais_ and Burke’s _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_ Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s _Lyrical Ballads_, no attempt is made to discriminate between compositions which are representative, either critically of the work of particular authors, or historically of particular epochs, and works which have no such significance, while many of the most important departments of our prose Literature are unrepresented. Nor is this all. It affords every facility for cramming. It is adapted to test nothing but what may be mechanically acquired and mechanically imparted, what may be poured out from lectures into notebooks, and from notebooks into examination papers. Proceeding on the assumption that a literary education is merely the acquisition of positive knowledge, it neither requires nor encourages, as the prescription of an essay or thesis, or even “taste-paper,” might have done, any of the finer qualities of literary culture, such, for example, as a sense of style, sound judgment, good taste, the touch of the scholar. We can assure these legislators, and we speak from knowledge, that, setting aside the philological portion of this curriculum, which is, so far as it goes, solid enough, an experienced crammer, would, in about three months furnish an astute youth with all that is requisite for graduating in this school.

But to proceed to details. Conceive the qualifications of an interpreter and critic of English Literature, a graduate in Honours in his subject, whose education has proceeded on the hypothesis that he need have no acquaintance with the classics of Greece and Rome. Would any competent scholar deny that the history of English Literature, in its mature expression, is little less than the history of the modifications of native genius and characteristics by classical influence, that the development and peculiarities of our epic, dramatic, elegiac, didactic, pastoral, much of our lyric, of our satire and of other species of our poetry is, historically speaking, unintelligible without reference to ancient classical literature? That what is true of our poetry is true of our criticism, of our oratory, sacred and secular, of our dialectic and epistolary Literature, of our historical composition, of the greater part, in short, of our national masterpieces in prose? What, indeed, the Literature of Greece was to that of Rome, the Literatures of Greece and Rome have been to ours.[4]

It was the influence of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, Diphilus, which transformed the _Ludi Scenici_ and the Atellan farces into the tragedies of Ennius and Pacuvius and the comedies of Plautus and Terence. It was the influence of the Roman drama and of a drama modelled on the Roman which transformed, so far at least as structure and style are concerned, our similarly rude native experiments into the tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare. On the epics of Greece were modelled the epics of Rome, and on the epics of Greece and Rome are modelled our own great epics. Of our elegiac poetry, to employ the term in its conventional sense, one portion is largely indebted to Theocritus, Moschus, and Virgil, and another to Catullus and Ovid. Almost all our didactic poetry is modelled on the didactic poetry of Rome. Theocritus and Virgil have furnished the archetypes for our eclogues and pastorals. One important branch of our lyric poetry springs directly from Pindar, another important branch directly from Horace, another directly from the choral odes of the Attic dramatists and of Seneca. Our heroic satire, from Hall to Lord Lytton, is simply the counterpart--often, indeed, a mere imitation--of Roman satire. And if this is true of our satire, it is equally true of our best ethical poetry. The Epistles, which fill so large a space in the poetical literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, derive their origin from those of Horace. To the _Heroides_ of Ovid we owe a whole series of important poems from Drayton to Cawthorn. The Greek anthology and Martial have furnished the archetypes of our epigrams and of our epitaphs. It is the same with our prose. The history of English eloquence begins from the moment when the Roman classics moulded and coloured our style, when periodic prose was modelled on Cicero and Livy, when analytic prose was modelled on Sallust, Seneca, and Tacitus. With the exception of fiction, there is no important branch of our prose composition, the development and characteristics of which are historically intelligible without reference to the ancients. How radically inadequate must any study of the principles of criticism be, which has no reference to the critical works of the Greek and Roman writers, is obvious. But it is not merely in tracing the development and explaining the peculiarities generally of our prose and of our poetry that competent classical scholarship is indispensable. Is it not notorious that in each generation, from Spenser to Tennyson, from More to Froude, our leading poets and prose writers have been, with very few exceptions, men nourished on classical literature and saturated with its influence? Many entire masterpieces, much, and in some cases the greater portion, of other masterpieces, particularly in our poetry, are simply unintelligible--we are speaking, of course, of serious critical students--except to classical scholars. Take, for example, the _Faerie Queen_, and the _Hymns_ of Spenser, Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, _Comus_, _Lycidas_, and _Samson Agonistes_, Pope’s satires, the two great odes of Gray, Collins’s odes to _Fear_ and the _Passions_, Wordsworth’s great _Ode_ and his _Laodamia_, Shelley’s _Adonais_ and _Prometheus Unbound_, Landor’s _Hellenics_, much of the poetry of Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold. Indeed it would be as preposterous to attempt any critical study of our Literature, without reference to the ancients, as it would be for a man to set up as an interpreter in Roman Literature without reference to the Greek.

And the effect of this severance of the study of the ancient classics from the study of our own is written large throughout the whole domain of education, in the instruction given in schools and institutes, in the monographs, manuals, and “editions” which pour from scholastic presses. In one of the most popular manuals now in circulation, the writer gravely tells us that “the pastoral name of _Lycidas_ was chosen by Milton to signify purity of character,” adding “in Theocritus a goat was so called λευκιτας for its whiteness,” that Comus “the drinker of human blood” revelled in the palace of Agamemnon.[5] Another writer confounds the “choruses” in Shakespeare with the choruses of the Greek plays. Another, commenting on the symbolism of ivy in the wreath of a poet, tells us that it indicates “constancy.”[6] Nothing is more common than to find elaborate critical comments on the _Faerie Queen_ without the smallest reference to its connection with Aristotle’s _Ethics_, and on Wordsworth’s great _Ode_ without any reference to Plato. But such is the confidence reposed in Professor Earle and his theory, and so determined are the legislators for the new School to exclude all connection with classical literature, that it is not admitted even as a special subject. A candidate has, as we have seen, the option of studying the influence exercised on old English literature by French, and on later literature by Italian and German; but the one thing which he has not the option of studying is the influence exercised on it by the literatures of Greece and Rome. Some of our readers may remember that a few years ago a public appeal was made for an expression of opinion on the question of associating the study of our own classics and that of the ancients. Opinions were elicited from many of the most distinguished men in England. They were all but unanimous, not merely in supporting the association, but in deprecating the severance. So wrote Mr. Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, Professor Jowett, Matthew Arnold, Lord Lytton, Mr. John Morley, Walter Pater, Addington Symonds; so wrote the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, the Rector of Lincoln, the President of Magdalen, the Warden of All Souls, and many others. We may add, also--for we are now at liberty to state it publicly--that this was emphatically the opinion of Robert Browning. We cannot, of course, quote these opinions _in extenso_,[7] and that of the late Professor Jowett and a portion of that of Mr. John Morley must suffice.

I am as strongly of opinion that in an Honour School of English Literature or Modern Literature the subject should not be separated from classical literature, as I am of opinion that English literature should have a place in our curriculum.

So writes Professor Jowett.

It seems to me to be as impossible effectively to study English literature, except in close association with the classics, as it would be to grasp the significance of mediæval or modern institutions without reference to the political creations of Greece and Rome. I should be very sorry to see the study of Greek and Latin writers displaced, or cut off from the study of our own.

So writes Mr. John Morley.

But the Professor of Anglo-Saxon and his friends, as we have seen, think otherwise, and have, unhappily for the interests of letters and education, persuaded Oxford to think otherwise too. We say advisedly the interests of letters and education. For the precedent of excluding from a School of “Literature,” and that at the chief centre and nursery of liberal culture, the Literatures of Greece and Rome cannot but be detrimental to the vitality and influence of the ancient classics; and, as Froude truly observed, both the national taste and the tone of the national intellect would suffer serious decline, if they lost their authority. The reaction against philological study which has set in during the last ten years has given them a new lease of life. But the spirit of the age is against them; they have rivals in languages far easier to acquire; they are not, and never can be, in touch with the many. Let them become disassociated from our curriculums of Literature, and they will cease to be influential, They will cease to be studied seriously, to be studied even in the original, except by mere scholars.

Another absurdity, not less monstrous, in these regulations, is the absence of all provision for instruction in the principles of criticism. There is indeed an unmeaning clause about the history of criticism, and of style in verse and prose, being included in the examination; but as nothing is specified, and as no work on criticism, with the exception of Dryden’s _Discourse on Epic Poetry_, and Johnson’s _Lives_ (of eighteenth-century poets),[8] is included in the books prescribed for special study, it is plain that this important subject has no place. Why it should not have occurred to these legislators to substitute, say, for Goldsmith’s _Citizen of the World_ and Burke’s _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_, some work which would at least have opened the eyes of the literary professors of the future to the existence of philosophical criticism, is certainly odd. Had they prescribed select essays from Hume; and Shaftesbury’s _Advice to an Author_, or Campbell’s _Philosophy of Rhetoric_, or Burke’s _Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful_, or even the critical portions of Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_, with the two essays of Wordsworth, it would have been something. But the truth is that, as they have excluded, except from the optional subjects, all literatures but the English, one absurdity has involved them in another. The course for the literary education of our future professors, proceeding on the principle that they need know no language but Gothic and Anglo-Saxon, has necessitated the elimination of all the great masterpieces of critical literature. As they are assumed to know no Greek, they can have no serious instruction in such works as Aristotle’s _Poetic_ and _Rhetoric_, and in the _Treatise on the Sublime_. As they are assumed to know no Latin, they can have no instruction in Roman criticism. On the same principle such works as Lessing’s _Laocoon_ and _Hamburgische Dramaturgie_, Schiller’s Æsthetical Letters and Essays, Villemain’s Lectures, and Sainte-Beuve’s Essays, can find no place in their curriculum of study. And so it comes to pass that Dryden’s _Discourse on Epic Poetry_ and Johnson’s _Lives_ of the eighteenth-century poets, represent--_proh pudor!_--the course in Criticism.

Now it is not too much to say that, for a University like Oxford to confer an honour degree in English Literature on a student who need never have read a line of the works to which we have referred, is to authorize not simply superficiality, but sheer imposture. How can a teacher deal adequately even with the subject which these regulations profess to include--the history of criticism--who need have no acquaintance with the _Poetic_ and _Rhetoric_, the _Treatise on the Sublime_, and the _Institutes of Oratory_? How could a teacher possibly be a competent exponent and critic of the masterpieces of our literature, who had not received a proper critical training, and how could he have any pretension to such a training when all that is best in criticism had been expressly excluded from his education?

It may be urged that he would himself supply these deficiencies, that the study of our own Literature would naturally lead him to the study of other Literatures, that intelligent curiosity, ambition, or a sense of shame would induce him to supplement voluntarily, and by his own efforts, what he needed in his profession. In some instances this would undoubtedly be the case. In the great majority of instances such a supposition would be against all analogy. As a general rule, a high honour degree in any subject represented at the Universities is final. It winds a man up for life. It determines, fixes, and colours his methods, his views, his tone, in all that relates to the subject in which he has graduated. If he chooses teaching as a profession, he has no inducement to correct, to modify, or even materially add to what has been imparted to him, for his scholastic reputation has been made, and a comfortable independence is assured. To very many men, indeed, who go up to the Universities with the intention of following teaching as a profession, a high degree is a mere investment, the one instinct in them which is not quite banausic being the conscientious thoroughness with which they impart what they have been taught. Nothing, therefore, is of more importance to education than the sound constitution of the Honour Schools of Oxford and Cambridge, and nothing could be more disastrous than the toleration in those Schools of inadequate standards, and of palpably erroneous theories of study.

But to return to the Regulations. The ridiculous disproportion between the ground covered and the work involved in the different “special subjects” open to the option of candidates, would seem to indicate, either that the regulators are very inadequately informed on those subjects, or that divided counsels have resulted in the settlement of very different standards of requirement. Compare, for instance, what is involved respectively in such subjects as “English Literature between 1700 and 1745,” and “The History of Scottish Poetry.” Why, a competent knowledge of the history of Scotch poetry in the fifteenth century alone would be more than an equivalent to the first subject. Not less absurd is the prescription of “English Literature between 1745 and 1797” as an alternative for “English Literature between 1558 and 1637.” The prescription of such “special subjects” as the influence exercised on our Literature by the Literatures of Italy, Germany, and France, is one of the few steps in a wise direction discernible in these regulations; but, as no student is free to take more than one of them, or required to take any of them at all, their inclusion in no way affects the constitution of the School. A competent literary education is not very much furthered by a student being invited to study how our Literature has been affected by one out of the five Literatures which have influenced it. As, moreover, the integrity of a chain depends on its weakest link, so the efficiency of examinational tests, in their application to purely optional subjects, depends on that subject in the list which involves least labour. A candidate who can “get a first” out of “English Literature between 1700 and 1745,” or between 1745 and 1797, will be much too wise to attempt to “get a first” out of subjects which will require treble the time and labour to master. Is it likely that candidates, anxious, naturally, from less lofty motives than the love of Literature for its own sake, to obtain an honour degree, will, after laboriously acquiring Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, which are compulsory, voluntarily specialize in a subject requiring a knowledge of Italian and German, when it is open to them to choose, as their special subject, “Old English Language and Literature down to 1150”?

The statute authorizing the foundation of this School recites that in its curriculum and examinations “equal weight” is, “as far as possible, to be given to Language and Literature, provided always that candidates who offer special subjects shall be at liberty to choose subjects connected either with Language or Literature, or with both.” It would be interesting to know what this means. If by “equal weight” be meant equality in the proportions of what is prescribed for the study of Literature, and what is prescribed for the study of Language, the provision is stultified by the very constitution of the course. To suppose that the history of English Literature, and the special study of a few particular works like Shelley’s _Adonais_, Burke’s _Present Discontents_, and the _Lyrical Ballads_, is equivalent to the History of the English language, the Gospel of St. Mark in Gothic, the _Beowulf_, and a volume of extracts in Anglo-Saxon, _King Horn_, _Havelok_, _Sir Gawain_, and the prologue and seven _passus_ of _Piers Ploughman_ in Middle English, is palpably absurd. If by “equal weight” be meant that an examiner is to assign equal marks to candidates who distinguish themselves in Literature, and to candidates who distinguish themselves in Language, it involves gross injustice. For while the latter have every opportunity for displaying knowledge and competence, the former have not. If a student has literary tastes and sympathies, if he is conversant with the Classics, if, attracted by what is best not merely in our own but in other modern Literatures, he has indulged himself in their study, if he has made himself a good critic and acquired a good style, what chance has he of doing his attainments and accomplishments justice? But if it be meant that “equal weight” will be given, not to literary merit regarded as Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold would regard it, but regarded in relation to the standard indicated by the regulations of the School, then the philologists would have just reason to complain.