On The Art of Reading Part 9

(3) Then we go back and compare this kind of quiet immortal beauty with the pa.s.sionate immortality hymned in the "Nightingale Ode"

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down...

with all the rest of that supreme stanza: from which (with some pa.s.sages my reading supplies to ill.u.s.trate the difference) we fall to contrasting the vibrating thrill of the "Nightingale"

with the happy grace of the "Grecian Urn" and, allowing each to be appropriate, dispute for a while, perhaps, over the merits of cla.s.sical calm and romantic thrill.

(4) From this we proceed to examine the Ode in detail line by line: which examination brings up a whole crowd of questions, such as

(a) We have a thought enounced in the first stanza. Does the Ode go on to develop and amplify it, as an Ode should? Or does Pegasus come down again and again on the prints from which he took off? If he do this, and the action of the Ode be dead and unprogressive, is the defect covered by beauty of language? Can such defect ever be so covered?

(b) Lines 15 and 16 antic.i.p.ate lines 21-24, which are saying the same thing and getting no forwarder.

(c) We come to the lines

What little town by river or sea sh.o.r.e, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

with the answering lines

And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

and we note Sir Sidney Colvin's suggestion that this breaks in upon an arrest of art as though it were an arrest on reality: and remember that he raised a somewhat similar question over "The Nightingale"; and comparing them, discuss truth of emotion against truth of reality.

We come to the last stanza and lament 'O Attic shape! Fair att.i.tude' for its jingle: but note how the poet recovers himself and brings the whole to a grand close.

I have, even yet, mentioned but a few of the points. For one, I have omitted its most beautiful vowel-play, on which teacher and pupil can dwell and learn together. And heaven forbid that as a teacher I should _insist_ even on half of those I have indicated.

A teacher, as I hold, should watch for what his pupil divines of his own accord; but if, trafficking with works of inspiration, he have no gift to catch that inspiration nor power to pa.s.s it on, then I say 'Heaven help him! but he has no valid right on earth to be in the business.'

And if a teacher have all these chances of teaching--mind you, of _accurate_ teaching--supplied him by a single Ode of Keats, do you suppose we cannot set in an Examination paper one intelligent question upon it, in its own lawful category?

Gentlemen, with the most scrupulous tenderness for aged and even decrepit interests, we have been trying to liberate you from certain old bad superst.i.tions and silently laying the stones of a new School of English, which we believe to be worthy even of Cambridge.

Our proposals are before the University. Should they be pa.s.sed, still everything will depend on the loyalty of its teachers to the idea; and on that enthusiasm which I suppose to be the nurse of all studies and know to be the authentic cheris.h.i.+ng nurse of ours. We may even have conceded too much to the letter, but we have built and built our trust on the spirit 'which maketh alive.'

[Footnote 1: Why had he to swear this under pain of excommunication, when the lecturer could so easily keep a roll-call? But the amount of oathtaking in a medieval University was prodigious. Even College servants were put on oath for their duties: Gyps invited their own d.a.m.nation, bed-makers kissed the book. Abroad, where examinations were held, the Examiner swore not to take a bribe, the Candidate neither to give one, nor, if unsuccessful, to take his vengeance on the Examiner with a knife or other sharp instrument. At New College, Oxford, the matriculating undergraduate was required to swear in particular not to dance in the College Chapel.]

LECTURE VI

ON A SCHOOL OF ENGLISH

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1917

I

It is now, Gentlemen, five years less a term since, feeling (as they say of other offenders) my position acutely, I had the honour of reading an Inaugural before this University and the impudence to loose, in the course of it, a light shaft against a phrase in the very Ordinance defining the duties of this Chair.

'It shall be the duty of the Professor,' says the Ordinance, 'to deliver courses of lectures on English Literature from the age of Chaucer onwards, and otherwise to promote, so far as may be in his power, the study in the University of the subject of English Literature.'

That was the phrase at which I glanced--'the subject of English Literature'; and I propose that we start to-day, for reasons that will appear, by subjecting this subject to some examination.

II

'The _Subject_ of English Literature.' Surely--for a start--there is no such thing; or rather, may we not say that everything is, has been or can be, a subject of English Literature? Man's loss of Paradise has been a subject of English Literature, and so has been a Copper Coinage in Ireland, and so has been Roast Sucking-pig, and so has been Holy Dying, and so has been Mr Pepys's somewhat unholy living, and so have been Ecclesiastical Polity, The Grail, Angling for Chub, The Wealth of Nations, The Sublime and the Beautiful, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Prize-Fights, Grecian Urns, Modern Painters, Intimations of Immortality in early Childhood, Travels with a Donkey, Rural Rides and Rejected Addresses--_all_ these have been subjects of English Literature: as have been human complots and intrigues as wide asunder as "Oth.e.l.lo" and "The School for Scandal"; persons as different as Prometheus and Dr Johnson, Imogen and Moll Flanders, Piers the Plowman and Mr Pickwick; places as different as Utopia and Cranford, Laputa and Reading Gaol. "Epipsychidion"

is literature: but so is "A Tale of a Tub."

Listen, for this is literature:

If some king of the earth have so large an extent of dominion, in north, and south, so that he hath winter and summer together in his dominions, so large an extent east and west as that he hath day and night together in his dominions, much more hath G.o.d mercy and judgement together: He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now, now G.o.d comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon to ill.u.s.trate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons[1].

But listen again, for this also is literature:

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction: An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher: A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly: A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat: A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.

Here again is literature:

When I was a child, at seven years old, my friends on a holiday filled my pockets with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys for children; and being charmed with the sound of a whistle that I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered him all my money for one.

I then came home and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle but disturbing all the family. My brothers and sisters and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth ... The reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure. [BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.]

Of a bridal, this is literature:

Open the temple gates unto my love, Open them wide that she may enter in!

But so also is Suckling's account of a wedding that begins

I tell thee, d.i.c.k, where I have been.

This is literature:

And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; As rivers of water in a dry place, As the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

But so is this literature:

One circle cannot touch another circle on the outside at more points than one.

For, if it be possible, let the circle ACK touch the circle ABC at the points A, C. Join AC.

Then because the two points A, C are in the circ.u.mference of the circle ACK the line which joins them falls within that circle.

But the circle ACK is without the circle ABC. Therefore the straight line AC is without the circle ABC.

But because the two points A, C are in the circ.u.mference of ABC therefore the straight line AC falls within that circle.

_Which is absurd._ Therefore one circle cannot touch another on the outside at more points than one.

All thoughts, as well as all pa.s.sions, all delights

_votum, timor, ira, voluptas_--