On The Art of Reading Part 1

On The Art of Reading.

by Arthur Quiller-Couch.

PREFACE

The following twelve lectures have this much in common with a previous twelve published in 1916 under the t.i.tle "On the Art of Writing"--they form no compact treatise but present their central idea as I was compelled at the time to enforce it, amid the dust of skirmis.h.i.+ng with opponents and with practical difficulties.

They cover--and to some extent, by reflection, chronicle--a period during which a few friends, who had an idea and believed in it, were fighting to establish the present English Tripos at Cambridge. In the end we carried our proposals without a vote: but the opposition was stiff for a while; and I feared, on starting to read over these pages for press, that they might be too occasional and disputatious. I am happy to think that, on the whole, they are not; and that the reader, though he may wonder at its discursiveness, will find the argument pretty free from polemic. Any one who has inherited a library of 17th century theology will agree with me that, of all dust, the ashes of dead controversies afford the driest.

And after all, and though it be well worth while to strive that the study of English (of our own literature, and of the art of using our own language, in speech or in writing, to the best purpose) shall take an honourable place among the Schools of a great University, that the other fair sisters of learning shall

Ope for thee their queenly circle ...

it is not in our Universities that the general redemption of English will be won; nor need a mistake here or there, at Oxford or Cambridge or London, prove fatal. We make our discoveries through our mistakes: we watch one another's success: and where there is freedom to experiment there is hope to improve. A youth who can command means to enter a University can usually command some range in choosing which University it shall be. If Cambridge cannot supply what he wants, or if our standard of training be low in comparison with that of Oxford, or of London or of Manchester, the pressure of neglect will soon recall us to our senses.

_The real battle for English lies in our Elementary Schools, and in the training of our Elementary Teachers._ It is there that the foundations of a sound national teaching in English will have to be laid, as it is there that a wrong trend will lead to incurable issues. For the poor child has no choice of Schools, and the elementary teacher, whatever his individual gifts, will work under a yoke imposed upon him by Whitehall. I devoutly trust that Whitehall will make the yoke easy and adaptable while insisting that the chariot must be drawn.

I foresee, then, these lectures condemned as the utterances of a man who, occupying a Chair, has contrived to fall betwixt two stools. My thoughts have too often strayed from my audience in a University theatre away to remote rural cla.s.s-rooms where the hungry sheep look up and are not fed; to piteous groups of urchins standing at attention and chanting "The Wreck of the Hesperus" in unison. Yet to these, being tied to the place and the occasion, I have brought no real help.

A man has to perform his task as it comes. But I must say this in conclusion. Could I wipe these lectures out and re-write them in hope to benefit my countrymen in general, I should begin and end upon the text to be found in the twelfth and last--that a liberal education is not an appendage to be purchased by a few: that Humanism is, rather, a _quality_ which can, and should, condition all our teaching; which can, and should, be impressed as a character upon it all, from a poor child's first lesson in reading up to a tutor's last word to his pupil on the eve of a Tripos.

ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH July 7, 1920.

LECTURE I

INTRODUCTORY

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1916

I

In the third book of the "Ethics", and in the second chapter, Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were committed involuntarily, through ignorance, instances 'the man who did not know a subject was forbidden, like Aeschylus with the Mysteries,' and 'the man who only meant to show how it worked, like the fellow who let off the catapult' ([Greek: e deixai Boulemos apheinai, os o ton katapelten]).

I feel comfortably sure, Gentlemen, that in a previous course of lectures "On the Art of Writing", unlike Aeschylus, I divulged no mysteries: but I am troubled with speculations over that man and the catapult, because I really was trying to tell you how the thing worked; and Aristotle, with a reticence which (as Horace afterwards noted) may lend itself to obscurity, tells us neither what happened to that exponent of ballistics, nor to the engine itself, nor to the other person. My discharge, such as it was, at any rate provoked another Professor (_emeritus,_ learned, sagacious, venerable) to retort that the true business of a Chair such as this is to instruct young men how to _read_ rather than how to write. Well, be it so. I accept the challenge.

I propose in this and some ensuing lectures to talk of the Art and Practice of Reading, particularly as applied to English Literature: to discuss on what ground and through what faculties an Author and his Reader meet: to enquire if, or to what extent, Reading of the best Literature can be taught; and supposing it to be taught, if or to what extent it can be examined upon; with maybe an interlude or two, to beguile the way.

II

The first thing, then, to be noted about the reading of English (with which alone I am concerned) is that for Englishmen it has been made, by Act of Parliament, compulsory.

The next thing to be noted is that in our schools and Colleges and Universities it has been made, by Statute or in practice, all but impossible.

The third step is obvious--to reconcile what we cannot do with what we must: and to that aim I shall, under your patience, direct this and the following lecture. I shall be relieved at all events, and from the outset, of the doubt by which many a Professor, here and elsewhere, has been haunted: I mean the doubt whether there really _is_ such a subject as that of which he proposes to treat. Anything that requires so much human ingenuity as reading English in an English University _must_ be an art.

III

But I shall be met, of course, by the question 'How is the reading of English made impossible at Cambridge?' and I pause here, on the edge of my subject, to clear away that doubt.

It is no fault of the University.

The late Philip Gilbert Hamerton, whom some remember as an etcher, wrote a book which he ent.i.tled (as I think, too magniloquently) "The Intellectual Life." He cast it in the form of letters--'To an Author who kept very Irregular Hours,' 'To a Young Etonian who thought of becoming a Cotton-spinner,' 'To a Young Gentleman who had firmly resolved never to wear anything but a Grey Coat' (but Mr Hamerton couldn't quite have meant that). 'To a Lady of High Culture who found it difficult to a.s.sociate with persons of her Own s.e.x,' 'To a Young Gentleman of Intellectual Tastes, who, without having as yet any Particular Lady in View, had expressed, in a General Way, his Determination to get Married: The volume is well worth reading. In the first letter of all, addressed 'To a Young Man of Letters who worked Excessively,' Mr Hamerton fishes up from his memory, for admonishment, this salutary instance:

A tradesman, whose business affords an excellent outlet for energetic bodily activity, told me that having attempted, in addition to his ordinary work, to acquire a foreign language which seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been obliged to abandon it on account of alarming cerebral symptoms. This man has immense vigour and energy, but the digestive functions, in this instance, are sluggish. However, when he abandoned study, the cerebral inconveniences disappeared, and have never returned since.

IV

Now we all know, and understand, and like that man: for the simple reason that he is every one of us.

You or I (say) have to take the Modern Languages Tripos, Section A (English), in 1917[1]. First of all (and rightly) it is demanded of us that we show an acquaintance, and something more than a bowing acquaintance, with Shakespeare. Very well; but next we have to write a paper and answer questions on the outlines of English Literature from 1350 to 1832--almost 500 years--, and next to write a paper and show particular knowledge of English Literature between 1700 and 1785--eighty-five years. Next comes a paper on pa.s.sages from selected English verse and prose writings --the Statute discreetly avoids calling them literature--between 1200 and 1500, exclusive of Chaucer; with questions on language, metre, literary history and literary criticism: then a paper on Chaucer with questions on language, metre, literary history and literary criticism: lastly a paper on writing in the Wess.e.x dialect of Old English, with questions on the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, language, metre and literary history.

Now if you were to qualify yourself for all this as a scholar should, and in two years, you would certainly deserve to be addressed by Mr Hamerton as 'A Young Man of Letters who worked Excessively'; and to work excessively is not good for anyone.

Yet, on the other hand, you are precluded from using, for your 'cerebral inconveniences,' the heroic remedy exhibited by Mr Hamerton's enterprising tradesman, since on that method you would not attain to the main object of your laudable ambition, a Cambridge degree.

But the matter is very much worse than your Statute makes it out.

Take one of the papers in which some actual acquaintance with Literature is required the Special Period from 1700 to 1785; then turn to your "Cambridge History of English Literature", and you will find that the mere bibliography of those eighty-five years occupies something like five or six hundred pages--five or six hundred pages of t.i.tles and authors in simple enumeration! The brain reels; it already suffers 'cerebral inconveniences.' But stretch the list back to Chaucer, back through Chaucer to those alleged prose writings in the Wess.e.x dialect, then forward from 1785 to Wordsworth, to Byron, to d.i.c.kens, Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, even to this year in which literature still lives and engenders; and the brain, if not too giddy indeed, stands as Satan stood on the brink of Chaos--

Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith He had to cross--

and sees itself, with him, now plumbing a vast vacuity, and anon nigh-foundered, 'treading the crude consistence.'

The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to _know_ it in any reputable sense of the word--let alone your learning to write English--is, in short, impossible. And the framers of the Statute, recognising this, have very sensibly compromised by setting you to work on such things as 'the Outlines of English Literature'; which are not Literature at all but are only what some fellow has to say about it, hastily summarising his estimates of many works, of which on a generous computation he has probably read one-fifth; and by examining you on (what was it all?) 'language, metre, literary history and literary criticism,' which again are not Literature, or at least (as a Greek would say in his idiom) escape their own notice being Literature. For English Literature, as I take it, is _that which sundry men and women have written memorably in English about Life._ And so I come to my subject--the art of reading _that,_ which is Literature.

V

I shall take leave to leap into it over another man's back, or, rather over two men's backs. No doubt it has happened to many of you to pick up in a happy moment some book or pamphlet or copy of verse which just says the word you have unconsciously been listening for, almost craving to speak for yourself, and so sends you off hot-foot on the trail. And if you have had that experience, it may also have happened to you that, after ranging, you returned on the track 'like faithful hound returning,' in grat.i.tude, or to refresh the scent; and that, picking up the book again, you found it no such wonderful book after all, or that some of the magic had faded by process of the change in yourself which itself had originated. But the word was spoken.

Such a book--pamphlet I may call it, so small it was--fell into my hands some ten years ago; "The Aims of Literary Study"--no very attractive t.i.tle--by Dr Corson, a distinguished American Professor (and let me say that, for something more than ten--say for twenty--years much of the most thoughtful as well as the most thorough work upon English comes to us from America). I find, as I handle again the small duodecimo volume, that my own thoughts have taken me a little wide, perhaps a little astray, from its suggestions. But for loyalty's sake I shall start just where Dr Corson started, with a pa.s.sage from Browning's, "A Death in the Desert," supposed (you will remember)--

Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene

narrating the death of St John the Evangelist, John of Patmos; the narrative interrupted by this gloss:

[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach, How divers persons witness in each man, Three souls which make up one soul: _first,_ to wit, A soul of each and all the bodily parts, Seated therein, which works, and is _What Does,_ And has the use of earth, and ends the man Downward: but, tending upward for advice, Grows into, and again is grown into By the next soul, which, seated in the brain, Useth the first with its collected use, And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,--is _What Knows_: Which, duly tending upward in its turn, Grows into, and again is grown into By the last soul, that uses both the first, Subsisting whether they a.s.sist or no, And, const.i.tuting man's self, is _What Is_-- And leans upon the former

(Mark the word, Gentlemen; '_leans_ upon the former'--leaning back, as it were felt by him, on this very man who had leaned on Christ's bosom, being loved)

And leans upon the former, makes it play, As that played off the first: and, tending up, Holds, is upheld by, G.o.d, and ends the man Upward in that dread point of intercourse, Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.

_What Does, What Knows, What Is;_ three souls, one man.

I give the glossa of Theotypas.]

_What Does, What Knows, What Is_--there is no mistaking what Browning means, nor in what degrees of hierarchy he places this, that, and the other.... Does it not strike you how curiously men to-day, with their minds perverted by hate, are inverting that order?--all the highest value set on _What Does--What Knows_ suddenly seen to be of importance, but only as important in feeding the guns, perfecting explosives, collaring trade--all in the service of _What Does,_ of 'Get on or Get Out,' of 'Efficiency'; no one stopping to think that 'Efficiency' is--must be--a relative term! Efficient for what?--for _What Does, What Knows_ or perchance, after all, for _What Is_? No! banish the humanities and throw everybody into practical science: not into that study of natural science, which can never conflict with the 'humanities' since it seeks discovery for the pure sake of truth, or charitably to alleviate man's lot--

Sweetly, rather, to ease, loose and bind As need requires, this frail fallen humankind ...