A Popular Manual of English Literature

IF there be any matter in which a journal of literature may have an honest zeal, it is in the presentation of the history of literature; and no books excite our critical jealousy so quickly as manuals of literature, especially where they profess to cover both England and America, and are offered as guides to the young student. The author of the book before us¹ is encouraged in her undertaking by the fact that “ English literature has been assuming a more prominent place in the curricula of schools and colleges ” during the past few years. That is the very reason why we have been reading her book. The plan of the work is something between a hand-book and an encyclopædia, and we will let the author describe it, for her statement carries with it some sensible criticism. “Literature,” she says, “ is not a science, whose leading principles can be systematically exhibited within a moderate compass, and of which a complete elementary knowledge can be imparted within a limited time. English literature, even in its most restricted sense, covers a vast field through which, properly speaking, there is no short cut. Compendiums of English literature describe the field of labor instead of placing it before the student for personal examination, and hence, by converting the study into a mere exercise of the memory, fail to accomplish the most advantageous result. The only road to a competent knowledge of English literature is that of personal investigation, not only among its masterpieces, but also among the critical reviews and biographical essays pertaining to them and their authors, which are scattered here and there over the whole field of literature,— a labor requiring study so extensive as to be impracticable to the ordinary student. To make this road of investigation accessible, as far as possible, to the student, even during the limited time devoted to the study in the usual courses of instruction, the following volume attempts, by presenting within the limits of a convenient manual a carefully collected mass of facts and information respecting the representative English authors from varied and reliable sources, together with celebrated and characteristic passages referring to them and their writings, quoted from the works of the keenest critics of Europe and America.”

As an illustration of the method pursued, the treatment of Wordsworth will serve for an example. It should be premised that the subject occurs in a division of the book entitled Age of Revolution, which is dated 1784-1837. The introduction deals in a general way with the characteristics of the age in poetry, fiction, philosophy, journalism, and criticism ; a survey is made of the contemporary literature of the rest of Christendom ; and then follow monographs of Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron. First there is an account of the portraits of Wordsworth; then there is De Quincey’s portraiture from his Literary Reminiscences, and a reference to Hazlitt, Carlyle, and Brinley, for further details. Four pages of comment contain scraps of prose and verse from a variety of authors. A Topical Study of Wordsworth’s Life is prepared by the author, which, under various headings, and with more or less quotation from the poet himself and from other writers, considers in chronological order the main facts of a biography. Similar sections are given under the title Wordsworth’s Homes, Wordsworth’s Friends, Wordsworth’s Personal Character, Wordsworth’s Literary Career, consisting for the most part of excerpts from contemporaries or later critics. A Chronological Table of Wordsworth’s works, with dates of publication, is given, under four periods. Then follows a series of Studies, comprising Lyrical Ballads, The White Doe of Rylstone, Intimations of Immortality, and The Excursion. The author’s method in these studies is to make a preliminary statement of her own, with criticisms from other sources dovetailed in ; to copy a number of familiar quotations, and then selections from various criticisms. She gives up, to be sure, when she attacks the ode Intimations of Immortality, contenting herself with remarking, “ This poem is one of the grandest in the English language, and one that no thoughtful reader can study without ever-increasing reverence and awe. It has been justly characterized by Ralph Waldo Emerson as the ‘ high-water mark of English thought in the nineteenth century,’ ” — and then she prints an extract from the poem, forty or fifty lines long.

Now it is not to be gainsaid that the author has been very industrious ; has collected a great mass of material, and has arranged it in a methodical fashion. We suspect, moreover, that she would cheerfully acknowledge her indebtedness to the commentators on literature, and would disclaim any title to having made a philosophical study herself of this vast subject. Even when there are no quotation marks, one feels that the author is merely decanting out of her little glass what she has poured in from the bigger vessels that she has gathered about herself. We give her credit, too, for general accuracy as regards names and dates and all the apparatus which she has so diligently accumulated. But is there any evidence of qualification for her task beyond patience, industry, and a methodical mind ? And are these sufficient for one who essays to act as a guide in so vast a study as that of English literature?

The first qualification in a person undertaking such a task is insight, the second is good taste, the third is a power of philosophic combination and discrimination. These are the higher attributes, and patience, industry, and method are those subsidiary virtues which a historian of English literature will find essential rather to the completion of his work than to the conception of it.

Let us test the author of this book on these points by a few instances; and we will take her on ground with which she ought to be familiar,— the literature of her own country. According to her plan, this is merely illustrative of English literature, and is passed over swiftly. All the more reason is there for the flash of light needed to guide the hurrying student. The first paragraph relating to the United States is as follows : “ American literature in the Colonial period had been almost exclusively theological, consisting of tracts and sermons by such writers as Roger Williams, John Cotton, Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather; which, though displaying considerable learning and acuteness, are of no interest to the general reader of the present day. During the Revolutionary era oratorical eloquence had burst forth in the patriotic speeches of Patrick Henry and James Otis ; Benjamin Franklin had produced his noble essays on moral, scientific, and philosophical subjects; and there had flourished a few satirical versifiers. But it was not till the struggles for existence and independence were over that ethical and rhetorical literature in the United States attained full development, or that didactic and romantic compositions were produced to any extent.”

This is commonplace to the last degree. Half the number of words given to Edwards’s Freedom of the Will and Franklin’s Autobiography would have been worth more to the student, and the barest reference to the reasons for the peculiar character of early American literature might have given a hint for a clearer understanding of the relation subsisting between American and English literature. So also the paragraph devoted to Cooper does not give the slightest intimation of his distinctive contribution to literature. When the author reaches the Victorian age, and undertakes to summarize American literature, she indulges in such criticism as “ Bryant is generally regarded as the finest type of American poets,” speaks of Mr. Howells as a disciple of Mr. James, tucks Emerson in at the end of a miscellaneous list of poets, calls Trowbridge’s Coupon Bonds a popular poem, makes Parkman one of the lesser historians, and winds up her statement of poetry with the hollow words, “ Of late years poetry has been somewhat declining, and American critics anxiously await the advent of some new poetic genius.”

These random passages indicate the weakness of this new guide to literature. There is a hopeless attempt at ranking everybody and everything. Dante’s Divina Commedia is a work which “ ranks second only to Homer’s Iliad.” Four lines from Chaucer are quoted as “ some of the choicest in all Chaucer’s works.” Literature is minutely divided into periods, and all the various forms culminate at some time or other. One gets the impression that intellectualism is constantly coming to a head, like a boil. This mechanical conception of the subject which is always looking for rounded divisions, and attempts to formulate the products of the intellect, is the pervading one, and the very fullness with which the plan is carried out tends to confirm in the student a habit of thought regarding literature which is destructive of a really close acquaintance with great work.

Our objection to the method followed goes farther. We quite agree with the author that a mere description of the field cannot take the place of investigation ; but the trouble with her plan is that it gives the student too much material in a fragmentary way, and is quite as prejudicial to real investigation. The fault to be found with those hand-books which attempt to give a view of literature by means of extracts is only a little greater than the objection which we are raising against this hand-book. Knowledge about authors is not to be had by means of extracts, and it is unfair to the criticism itself to take it out of its context. Mr. Stedman, for example, has made a conscientious, connected, and sustained study of Tennyson in his Victorian Poets. Miss or Mrs. Phillips snips out a passage here and there, and fits it into her mosaic of criticism. But criticism is not made up of obiter dicta, and a student of Tennyson would do much more who sat down to his poet with such a guide as Genung for In Memoriam than if he attempted to digest the very mixed banquet set before him in this volume.

In short, this work tends to increase a superficial mode of studying English literature. It makes such a show of omniscience that the ingenuous student fancies an application to it will make him a master of the subject. He gets a smattering of knowledge; he is not in the hands of a wise guide, he is not put in the way of a really continuous and evolutionary study, and he is not given in each section such a survey as will serve him if he wishes to know some one subject thoroughly. Stopford Brooke’s little hand-book is of more real value than this omnium gatherum. It sets one to thinking. This does his thinking for him, and makes him a sort of literary capon.