VI

(a) To begin with, then, these valiant fighters, intent on pushing their cause to the front, kept no sense of proportion. All their geese were swans, and "Beowulf" a second "Iliad." I think it scarcely too much to say that, of these men, all so staunch in fighting for the claims of English Literature, not one (with the exception of Dr Hales) appears to have had any critical judgment whatever, apart from the rhyme, verse and inflectional tests on which they bestowed their truly priceless industry. Criticism, as Sainte-Beuve, Matthew Arnold or Pater understood and practised it, they merely misprized.

(b) I think it was of true scholarly desire to vindicate English Literature from the charge of being 'too easy,' that—as their studies advanced—they laid more and more stress on Middle-English and Old English writings than on what our nations of England and Scotland have written since they learned to write. I dare to think also that we may attribute to this dread of 'easiness' their practice of cumbering simple texts with philological notes; on which, rather than on the text, we unhappy students were carefully examined. For an example supplied to Dr Corson—I take those three lines of Cowper's "Task" (Bk I, 86-88):

     Thus first necessity invented stools,
     Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
     And luxury th' accomplish'd SOFA last.

Now in these three lines the word 'accomplish'd' is the only one that needs even the smallest explanation. 'But,' says Dr Corson, 'in two different editions of "The Task" in my library, prepared for the use of the young, no explanation is given of it, but in both the Arabic origin of 'sofa' is given. In one the question is asked what other words in English have been derived from the Arabic.' ('Abracadabra' would be my little contribution.)

(c) These valiant fighters—having to extol what Europe had, wrongly enough, forgotten to count among valuable things—turned aggressively provincial, parted their beards in the Anglo-Saxon fashion; composed long sentences painfully innocent of any word not derivable from Anglo-Saxon, sentences in which the 'impenetrability of matter' became the 'un-go-throughsomeness of stuff (but that may have happened in a parody), and in general comported themselves like the Anglo-Saxons they claimed for their forbears; rightly enough for anything anyone cared, but wrongly enough for the rest of us who had no yearning toward that kinship and went on spelling Alfred with an A.

(d) They were—I suppose through opposition—extremely irascible men; like farmers. Urbanity was the last note in their gamut, the City—urbs quam dicunt Romam—the last of places in their ken. There was no engaging them in dialectic, an Athenian art which they frankly despised. If you happened to disagree with them, their answer was a sturdy Anglo-Saxon brick. If you politely asked your way to Puddlehampton, and to be directed to Puddlehampton's main objects of interest, the answer you would get (see "Notes and Queries" passim) would be, 'Who is this that comes out of Nowhere, enquiring for Puddlehampton, unacquainted with Stubbs? Is it possible at this time of day that the world can contain anyone ignorant of the published Transactions of the Wiltshire Walking Club, Vol. III, p. 159—"Puddlehampton, its Rise and Decline, with a note on Vespasian?"'

(e) These pioneers—pushing the importance of English, but occupied more and more with origins and with bad authors, simply could not see the vital truth; that English Literature is a continuing thing, ten times more alive to-day than it was in the times they studied and belauded. The last word upon them is that not a man of them could write prose in the language they thrust on our study. To them, far more than to the old classical scholars, English was a shut book: a large book, but closed and clasped, material to heighten a desk for schoolmasters and schoolmistresses.

But schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, like chickens and curses, come home to roost. Once set up your plea for a Tripos of English Language and Literature on the lower plea that it will provide for what they call a 'felt want,' and sooner or later you give English Language and Literature into their hands, and then you get the fallacy full-flowered into a convention. English Literature henceforth is a 'subject,' divorced from life: and what they have made of it, let a thousand handbooks and so-called histories attest. But this world is not a wilderness of class-rooms. English Language? They cannot write it, at all events. They do not (so far as I can discover) try to write it. They talk and write about it; how the poor deceased thing outgrew infantile ailments, how it was operated on for umlaut, how it parted with its vermiform appendix and its inflexions one by one, and lost its vowel endings in muted e's.

     And they went and told the sexton,
     And the sexton toll'd the bell.

But when it comes to writing; to keeping bright the noble weapon of English, testing its poise and edge, feeling the grip, handing it to their pupils with the word, 'Here is the sword of your fathers, that has cloven dragons. So use it, that we who have kept it bright may be proud of you, and of our pains, and of its continuing valiance':—why, as I say, they do not even try. Our unprofessional forefathers, when they put pen to paper, did attempt English prose, and not seldom achieved it. But take up any elaborate History of English Literature and read, and, as you read, ask yourselves, 'How can one of the rarest delights of life be converted into this? What has happened to merry Chaucer, rare Ben Jonson, gay Steele and Prior, to Goldsmith, Jane Austen, Charles Lamb?'

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces!

gone into the professional stock-pot! And the next news is that these cooks, of whom Chaucer wrote prophetically

     Thise cookes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grynde,
     And turnen substaunce into accident!

have formed themselves into professional Associations to protect 'the study of the subject of English Literature' and bark off any intruder who would teach in another way than theirs.