International Congress of Arts and Science

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No.-

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS
OF ARTS AND SCIENCE

THE LAST TRIBUTE OF LEO X TO RAPHAEL

Hand-painted Photogravure from the Painting by Pietro Michis

Raphael, the equal in talent of any of his great contemporaries, was not
less a prince of good fellows than a prince of painters. He was esteemed even
more for urbanity, kindness of heart, and unselfishness than he was for his
masterly productions that will continue for all time to excite the admiration
of the world. His decorations of the Vatican alone would have made his fame
immortal, but every gallery of Europe is enriched by superb examples of his
genius. When he died his body lay in state in the Vatican, lamented by the
most exalted persons of Europe. The painting, here reproduced, shows his most
eminent friend, Pope Leo X, in the attitude of paying tribute to the memory
of the dead artist.

INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS

OF

ARTS AND SCIENCE

EDITED BY

HOWARD J. ROGERS, A.M., LL.D.

DIRECTOR OP CONGRESSES

VOLUME VI

LITERATURE AND ART

COMPRISING

Lectures on Classical Literature, English Literature,

Romance Literature, Germanic Literature,

Slavic Literature, Classical Art,

Modern Architecture and

Modern Painting

UNIVERSITY ALLIANCE

LOXDOX NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1906 BY HOUGHTON, MIKFMN & Co.

ALL RIGHTS RKSKRYKI)
COPYRIGHT 1908 BY UNIVKRSITY ALI.IANCK

ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME VI

FACING
PAGE

LAST TRIBUTE OF LEO X TO RAPHAEL .... Frontispiece
Photogravure from the painting by PIETRO MICH is

PORTRAIT GROUP OF DR. KARL FERDINAND BUDDE, DR. EDUARD SIEVEKS,

DR. KARL GUSTAV ADOLF HARNACK AND DR. OTTO PFLEIDERI-:R . 474

Photogravure from a photograph

A POTTING MODEL (>:>o

Photogravure from the painting by EDMUND BI.U.MK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME VI

HISTORY OF LITERATURE

(Continued)

CLASSICAL LITERATURE.

Relations of Classical Literature to Other Branches of Learning . 370
BY PROP. PAUL SHOBEY, Ph.D., LL.D.

Present Problems of the History of Classical Literature . . . 386
BY PRCF. JOHN HENRY WRIGHT, LL.D.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

The Relation of English Literature to Oilier Sciences . . . 401
BY PROF. FRANCIS BARTON GUMMERE, Ph.D.

Present Problems of Enylisli Literary History .... 415
BY PROF. JOHANNES HOOPS, Ph.D.

ROMANCE LITERATURE.

Evolution of the Study of Romance Medieval Literature in the
Nineteenth Century ......... 435

BY PROF. Pio RAJNA, Litt.D.

Present Problems in the Field of Romance Literatures . . . 45S

BY PROF. ALCKE FGRTIER, Litt.D.

UY PROF. L;x> WIKNER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Present Problems of Belles-Lettres ..... 545
BY PROF. BRANDEB MATTHEWS, LL.D.

Bibliography: History of Literature ...... 558

HISTORY OF AET

fundamental Conceptions and Methods of the History of Art . . 565
BY PROF. EUFUS BYAM EICHARDSON, Ph.D.

The Development of the History of Art ..... 577
BY PROF. JOHN C. VAN DYKE, L.H.D.

CLASSICAL ART.

Classical Archaeology and its Relations to the Allied Sciences . . 591
BY ADOLPH FURTVVAENGLER, Ph.D.

Some Present Problems in the History of Greek Sculpture . . 605
BY PROF. FRANK BIGELOW TARBELL, Ph.D.

MODERN ARCHIIECTURE.

Relations of Modern Architecture to the Study of Other Periods of the

Art . . 622

BY PROF. CAMILLE ENLART

The Problems of Modern Architecture ...... 638

BY PROF. ALFRED DWIGHT FOSTER HAMLIN, A.M.

MODERN PAINTING.

Problems of the Study of Modern Painting ..... 653
BY PROF. RICHARD MUTHER, Ph.D.

Modern Problems in Painting . . . . . ' . . 663
BY OKAKUKO KAKUZO

Bibliorji-a[ilty. History of Art ....... 67!)

Special H'orl.s of Reference on Modern Architecture . . . 680

S UPPLEMEN T A KY LECTURES

(Not delivered at tlic Cmiijrcsfi')

POETRY.

Tin: Idcti of Line in Pficlr;/ ... .... 685

BY PIIOF. WILLIAM JOHN ('ouRTiLOi'K. LL.IX

Passion and Imagination in Poetry ...... 728

liv PROF. II. c. BKECIUNG

73!)

SECTION B — CLASSICAL LITERATURE

SECTION B — CLASSICAL LITERATURE

(Hall 3, September 21,3 p. m.)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR ANDREW F. WEST, Princeton University.
SPEAKERS : PROFESSOR PAUL SHOREY, University of Chicago.

PROFESSOR JOHN H. WRIGHT, Harvard University.
SECRETARY: PROFESSOR F. G. MOORE, Dartmouth College.

THE Chairman of the Section of Classical Literature was Professor
Andrew F. West, of Princeton University, who in calling the session
to order congratulated the large audience present that the great
and abiding value of classical literature was recognized amid all the
external splendors and distractions of this vast International Ex-
position. He then advocated the thesis that it was classical literature,
rather than philology or arcrueology, that had the most value for the
most persons in the modern world, that this was due to the quality
of the ancient literature as Art, not as Science, — and that what was
most needed in America to make the classics beneficent and effectual
was the revival in full power of the Literae Humaniores, the trilogy
of ancient literature, history, and philosophy which contains the
beginnings and foundation lines of Western thought and expression.

RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE TO OTHER
BRANCHES OF LEARNING

BY PAUL SHOREY

[Paul Shorey, Professor of Greek, University of Chicago, since 1892. b. Davenport.
Iowa, August 3, 1857. Graduate, Harvard University, 1878; Ph. D. Munich.
1884; LL. D. Iowa College, 1905. Professor of Greek, Bryn Mawr College, 1885-
92. Author of De Platonis Idearum Doctrina; The Idea of Good in Plato's Republic:
The Odes and Epodes of Horace; The Unity of Plato's Thought.]

THE mutual interdependence of the constituted sciences, mathe-
matics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, if it does not admit of uncon-
troverted exposition, at least provokes arguments as definite as
those of Spencer criticising Comte's classification of the sciences, or
Professor Karl Pearson correcting the theories of both Spencer and
Comte. But the globus intcllectualis which this Congress has under-
taken to survey includes other disciplines that are mainly, if not
merely, collections of facts, as histories, or, at the most, systematic
methods of envisaging facts, as psychology, ethics, sociology. And in
respect of these, candor requires the acknowledgment that the topic
of " Relations " is merely the theme of a discursive essay whose quality
will vary with the talent or information of the writer, but which
remains a literary exercise rather than the authoritative report of
an expert. It is well that the historian of 'England or America should
have the broad outlook of a Freeman or a Fiske. But he can do
estimable work with no other equipment than the education of a
gentleman, industry, and a facile pen. And similarly, though almost
any fact or method of history or physical science may prove useful
to the psychologist and the sociologist, hardly any could be singled
out as indispensable in present practice. Inquiry into the relations
of such subjects is chiefly occupied with the proof that they, scien-
tifically speaking, exist. But. as Renan observes, the first geologists
did not concern themselves with a priori demonstration of the exist-
ence of geology — they geologized. Xow it may be true in tin-
abstract that man writes books as the bee secretes honey or the silk-
worm spins its cocoon, and that literature as a mental, supra-organic.
or social product will some time be brought under the province of
psychological or sociological, not to say biological, law. But at pre-
sent the study of literature is history, or, at the most, critical and
scholarly method, and its relation to other pursuits is to be found on
the one hand in the unity of modern historical and critical method
to whatever subject applied, and on the other in the material whirl)
it provides for the student of psychology, ethics, sociology, ethnology,
and comparative religion.

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 371

In these respects there is little to distinguish the historian of the
classic literatures from other historians. His exposition of the known,
his divination of the unknown, raise the same problems of literary,
erudite, or critical method that confront the student of English,
German, or Japanese literature. And if classical philology be defined
as "the knowledge of human nature as exhibited in antiquity," the
human nature of the Greek is presumably as significant for folk-lore,
ethics, and sociology as the human nature of the Veddahs or the Poly-
nesians, and the Iliad is as instructive a document as the Kalevala.

But to pursue either of these truisms further would be to lose
ourselves in detail, and after all miss the root of the matter. The
essential facts that determine the relation of classical (and especially
Greek) literature to the other intellectual interests of the modern
world are those that distinguish it from other literatures, its peculiar
intrinsic excellence and the influence which it has as a matter of
history exercised upon the development of Western civilization.
Herbert Spencer deplores the exaggerated attention that is still
bestowed upon "two petty Mediterranean tribes." And it is true
that to the geological and cosmogonical imagination familiar with
aeons of time and million-leagued space, the glory that was Greece,
the grandeur that was Rome, dwindle to the punctual insignificance
of the Roman Empire in Scipio's dream, or of the globe at whose
"vile semblance" Dante smiled in retrospection from beyond the
seventh Sphere. But our minds do not really inhabit the eternities
and the infinities, but the historic atmosphere of the past three
thousand years, and we do not live by the geological and cosmo-
gonical imagination, but by admiration, hope, and love, and by the
imaginative reason.

And a like answer holds when the petty parochial scale of Greek
life is contrasted with the vaster ancient empires revealed by Oriental
studies, or with the world-commerce and the world-politics which
the progress of science and the fusion of races may be preparing for
the twenty-first century. The ancient civilizations of China, Baby-
lonia, and Egypt possess for us an interest of erudite curiosity. They
do not speak directly to our minds or hearts. We are not their
spiritual children, but the sons of Greece and Rome. Time may alter
this by merging the life of Western Europe in a wider world-civiliz-
ation whose unity will rest solely on the telegraph and the associated
press, on the laboratory, the rolling-mill, and the battle-ship, and in
which the peculiar spiritual inheritance and tradition of China
and Japan will count for as much or as little as that of Italy, France,
and England. When that day arrives a Martian sociologist, viewing
mankind with impartial survey from China to Peru, will tabulate the
statistics of Grocco-Roman civilization in the fashion of Herbert
Spencer, with no consciousness of the special quality that differentiates

372 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

them to our apprehension from analogous phenomena in the civiliz-
ations of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Hoang Ho, or the Amazon.
A primrose by the river's brim will be a yellow primrose to him, and
nothing more. With Mr. Goldwin Smith, he will speak of Hector's
Andromache as " that savage woman." A line of Homer that happens
to illustrate a "survival," a trait of primitive psychology, or the de-
velopment of a political institution, will be for him a fact of precisely
the same significance as a Babylonian brick, an Egyptian scarabseus,
or a Fiji fetish. But that it had also been used as a text by Socrates
and Plato, emended by the founders of Alexandrian criticism,
imitated by Virgil, Milton. Goethe, and Tennyson, recited on the
field of battle by a Roman Imperator, declaimed in the crisis of his
destiny by an English prime minister, translated by Chapman.
Pope, and Bryant, and singled out as a touchstone of true poetry
and talisman of the grand style by Matthew Arnold, — these would
be irrelevant and incidental associations, misty obscurations of the
dry light of science.

Now for many purposes of the philologian as well as of the sociologist
this scientific impartiality is the merest postulate of sound method,
and to deprecate it is sheer sentimentality. " Into paint will I grind
thee, my bride." Literature, even Greek literature, is raw mater-
ial for the style statistician and the syntacticist of to-day, for the
sociologist of to-morrow. As M. Gustave Lanson observes, in
his courteous but cautious lecture on Histoire Litteraire et la Socio-
logy, the historians of literature have all been sociologists in the
fashion of M. Jotirdain, who produced prose all his life without
knowing it. But the sociologist is abroad, and M. Jourdain is grow-
ing self-conscious. He now publishes his abstract of Buchholz's
Homerische Realicn, or his notes on Athenian life in Aristophanes
in the Journal of Sociology and entitles them the Sociology of
Homer and Aristophanes. They smell as sweet. The present speaker
himself at the Congress of the Chicago Exposition delivered, or was
delivered of, a study that has never recovered from the handicap of
its baptism as The Implicit Ethics and Psychology of Thucydidcs.
The contagion is irresistible, and for many purposes, I repeat,
benign. But for the purpose of estimating the still vital significance
of Hellenism to modern life and thought, this aping of scientific
method is a falsifying abstraction from the essential facts of the
historical tradition. The objectivity which it affects is possible to
a child of modern Europe only by virtue of an ignorance which will
prove more misleading than the prepossessions and prejudices of the
professional Hellenist. It may be left to the sociologists of Tokio and
Pekin, who share no family tree of civilization with us unless it be that
in the branches of which ancestors probably arboreal found nightly
repose.

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 373

There are, however, some other conceptions of a science of Greek
literature which if space permitted we might dwell upon at greater
length by way of introduction to our main theme, or which from
another point of view might even take its place. The best, the only
history of Greek literature which is at the same time itself a literary
work, is that of Alfred and Maurice Croiset. But despite its fullness
of matter and finish of form, it is not the final scientific construction
to which Professor Wilamowitz speaking for the new philology, or
M. Brunetiere as the representative of the science of literary evolution,
look forward. For very different reasons neither would accept as
adequate the definition of Matthew Arnold: "I call all teaching
scientific," he says, quoting Wolf with approval, "which is system-
atically laid out and followed up to its original sources." Now if
the sources were accessible, this definition might satisfy Professor
Wilamowitz. But the record, like that of geology, is full of faults —
gaps. And to the twentieth century philologian the science of classical
antiquity has come to mean the fascinating art of piecing out the
defects of our tradition by conjectural and divinatory combination.
Such work is scientific in its nice weighing of evidence and its method-
ical use of hypothesis. Where the analogy fails is in the lack of the
means possessed by physical science for the control of hypothesis.
The consequence is that while classical science slowly advances with
wasteful, but, in the sum, not wholly ineffectual toil, the flower of
classical culture and the fruits of classical education are choked by
a riotous overgrowth of highly specialized pedantry and unverifiable
conjecture. In spite of the forty thousand emendations of ^Eschylus.
it may be doubted whether the most recent texts of the Agamemnon
are any improvement upon those of the eighteenth century. The
hair-splitting refinements and the formidable terminology of modern
syntax have not impaired the point of De Maistre's observation that
"since they have taught us how to study Latin, nobody really learns
it." And the dreary literature which has gathered about Homer.
Plato, and Cicero, if it establishes nothing else, amply proves that the
sane interpretation of great world books depends far more on
the total culture which the individual reader brings to their perusal
than it does on any collective progress of "science."

But this is by the way. There can be no question but that in some
fields there is real progress in the filling out of the record. This is
notably the case in the domain of Attic institutions and Attic law.
where combination and conjecture are at once stimulated and con-
trolled by the new material supplied by inscriptions. The same may
be said of the history of Greek art, which has been completely re-
constructed since Winckelmann, and of that history of Greek religion
whose future outlines we can dimly discern. How far is it or can
it be true of literature? We may hope for anything in what have

374 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

been called these "piping times of Papyrus." The immense literature
called forth by the discovery of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens has
brought us sensibly nearer to a complete conception of Greek his-
toriography. In Bacchylides we have recovered not only a charming
poet, but a standard by which to measure Pindar, and a clue to the
history of the dithyramb. Herondas enlarges our conception of Greek
realism. Timotheus, besides enabling Wibmowitz to reconstruct the
obscure history of the vojuos, teaches us that a contemporary of
Lysias and Xenophon could outbid in fantastic euphuism the most
conceited Elizabethan, the most "precious" frequenter of the
Hotel cle Rambouillet. We are no longer wholly dependent on
Plautus and Terence for the restoration of Menander. The latest
edition of Blass's Attic orators can illustrate in detail the contrast
between the gentlemanly urbanity of Hyperides and the tense,
professional eloquence of Demosthenes. And the tantalizing bits of
Sappho that come as the one pennyworth of Hellenic bread to an
intolerable deal of Hellenistic and Ptolemaic sack remind us that
the greatest gap of all — that made by the loss of Greek lyric — may
be filled any day.

But the modern science of classical philology is not content thus
to wait upon the inheritance of the tomb. It has the courage of its
methods. Its "hope treads not the hall of fear." It undertakes by
sheer pertinacity in sweat-box interrogation of the extant witnesses,
and by the exercise of the detective ingenuity of a Sherlock Holmes in
the combination of data, to recover Greek literature for itself without
waiting for the aid of Egypt or any other foreign nation.

From this point of view the science of Greek literature consists of
such work as Professor Wilamowitz' reconstruction of what he naively
styles "die ewige Poesie " of an entire lost Hesiodic epic from seven
lines of fragments and a few remarks of the scholiast on Pindar; or
Blass's detection of fragments of early Attic prose imbedded in the
Protrepticus of lamblichus, or the restoration of the writings of
the Sophists from the polemic of Plato and his imitators, or the
reconstruction of the plots of Euripides' lost plays, or the recovery
of the lost post-Aristotelian philosophic literature, by the analysis of
Cicero's philosophic works and the moral essays of Plutarch, Dion
Chrysostomus, and Epictetus, or the determination of the literary
chronology of the fourth century by logarithmic tables of Platonic
particles and the polemical allusions in Isocrates. Only when all
our losses have been thus made good, and the iniquity of oblivion
repaired, can the "scientific" history of Greek literature be written,
wo arc told.

To be distinguished from this philologian's science of literature
is the conception of Taine. Hennequin. Posnett, and Brunetiere.
who would understand by the phrase something analogous to the

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 375

natural history, the comparative anatomy and embryology, the
evolutionist biology, of the nineteenth century. On the first explicit
promulgation of these theories by Taine their suggestiveness was
conceded, their too vigorous and rigorous application deprecated by
Sainte-Beuve and Scherer in criticisms to which the discussions of
the past two decades have added little. There is, perhaps, some
naivete in laboring this point. To critics of the calibre of M. Brune-
tiere, M. Faguet, M. Lemaitre, M. Anatole France, M. Pellisier, the
application of biological analogies to literature, and the theory of the
evolution of genres is, like the question of 'objective and subjective
criticism, a convenient theme for dialectical variations, a pleasant
device for keeping aloft the shuttlecock of rejoinder and surre-
joinder in the Parisian fcuilleton. None of his critics can know better
than does M. Brunetiere that it was not the distinction between
literary " history " and literary " evolution " that enabled him to write
his admirable book on the French lyric of the nineteenth century,
but rather his scholarly mastery of French literature, his trained gift
of exposition, and his lifelong loving familiarity with the poets. The
system does not save him from preferring, tout has, Racine to
Sophocles. It does not preserve him from vagueness and uncertainty
when he touches on the poetry of England and Greece. Nor does the
absence of a system prevent Scherer from being perhaps the only
French critic of his generation who writes of English poetry as one
to the manner born. The only law of literary development that has
any prospect of general recognition is the law of fashion — expressed
in the words imitation, culmination, exaggeration, satiety, reaction.
And the chief canon of literary criticism was announced by Cicero
two thousand years ago : " Nemo potest de ea re quani non novit
non turpissime loqui."

What, after all, does La Methode Scientifique dc VHistoirc Litter
aire of the conscientious Professor Renard contain but a bald and
painfully explicit enumeration of questions, problems, points of
view, generalizations which every competent and scholarly modern
critic applies as a matter of course when he needs them? And
what genuine student of literature would exchange for a wilderness
of such abstract categories the letters in which Fit/Gerald com-
municates the thrill of his literary admirations, or a Shakespearian
interpretation by Lamb. Hazlitt, or Coleridge1, a Causcrie of Sainte-
Beuve, an essay in criticism of Arnold, an "Appreciation" by
Pater, a seeming-frivolous fcuilleton of Anatole France or Jules
Lemaitre? Here, if anywhere, the saying of Renan applies: ''It is
the part of a clever writer to have a philosophy but not to parade it."

In any case, the battleground or field of application of the new
biological criticism will for some time be French rather than Greek

376 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

literature. Greek will at the most be drawn upon for casual illustra-
tion of principles elsewhere established. M. Brunetiere himself can
hardly expect that after he has shown us how modern French lyric
is a transformation of seventeenth century pulpit eloquence, he will
be able to prove a like origin for the Jiolian lyric of Sappho
and Alcseus. The mere mastery of the erudition indispensable to
the historian of classical literature will exercise a sobering and con-
servative restraint upon speculation, and a deep sense of Hellenic
logic, measure, and proportion is incompatible with the exagger-
ations of the Spirit of System. We may venture to predict, then,
that the future historian of Greek literature will have no thesis to
sustain, but will write rather in the spirit of Croiset's admirable
Introduction.

Thirdly the idea of a possible science of literature finds expression
in the phrase " Comparative Literature." The literary criticism of the
Romans, as it appears in Aulus Gellius and Macrobius, was mainly a
comparison of Latin authors with their Greek sources. The criticism
of the Renaissance often took this form, as we may observe in Francis
Meres' naive Macedon and Monmouth "comparative discourse of
English Poets, etc., with the Greek, Latin and Italian Poets, etc."
The comparison of the various Merope, Sophonisba, Medea and Ipi-
geneia tragedies has always been a popular scholastic exercise. Com-
parative literature in a sense also is that discussion of the relative
merits of the ancients and moderns which was suggested perhaps
by Tacitus' Dialogus to John of Salisbury, Leonardo Bruni, and Dry-
den, and which constitutes an interesting but sufficiently studied
chapter in the literary history of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.1 But something more than this is meant by the modern
science of comparative literature, though precisely what it is not
easy to say. In the International Scientific Series 2 it stands for a
method of correlating the forms of literature with the corresponding
.social and political conditions, applicable impartially to the •' tribal "
epic inspiration of Homer or the Hottentots, to the drama and ora-
tory of the city-state, to the development and expression of person-
ality that accompanies the growth of the modern nation and finds
its fullest expression in the modern '' novel." In the practice of the
few university chairs that bear the title, comparative literature
is more concerned with coexistences than sequences, and seems to
mean the special study of those periods of European culture which
are swept by a common wave of thought and literary taste, — as
the Middle Age. the Renaissance, the Reform. From this point of
view are written the Periods of European Literature, edited by Mr.
Saintsbury.

1 Rigault, Jlixtnirf d? In (turrdlr des A ncir-ns ft rlcfs ^lodrrnes (Paris, 1S59).

2 Posnett, Cnmparatire, Literature (London, 18S6). See also in Contemporary
Review, June, 1901, his naive account of how he founded the " new science."

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 377

The journals of comparative literature have hardly yet defined for
themselves a field distinct from that of Poet Lore or the special jour-
nals of English, French, and German literature. Their hospitality
welcomes almost any erudite inquiry that includes more than one
literature in its scope, from the article on Internationale Tabaks
Poesie, in the Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Litter atur-Geschichte, N. F.
vol. 13, p. 51, to the exhaustive study of Der Einfluss der Anakreon-
tik und Horazens, auf Johann Peter Uz, in vol. 6, p. 329.

In this convenient, if not precisely scientific sense, "comparative
literature" is simply the study of literature as practiced by the
growing body of scholars who are enabled to compare one literature
with another by the broadening of modern erudition, the multipli-
cation of monographs, and the bibliographical facilities and card
catalogues of modern libraries. From such studies a science may or
may not emerge, but at present their constitutive principle is no
definable scientific method, but Goethe's conception of a world-
literature, or rather Matthew Arnold's idea of Europe as a federation
of states whose culture is measured by their knowledge of one another
and of classical antiquity.

If we lay due stress upon the slighted second element in this
definition, comparative literature brings us back to our main topic,
the historical influence of the classics upon the literatures of modern
Europe. The proportion of articles devoted to this fundamental
subject by the journals is absurdly small. And in return M. Texte,
in his introduction to M. Betz's useful Bibliography of Comparative
Literature,1 complains that the new science has been coldly received
by classical scholars. And it is doubtless true that the classicist is
absorbed in his own specialty, and is inclined to be tenacious of dis-
tinctions of quality which scientific impartiality is supposed to ignore.
But, to dismiss these recriminations, there is plainly a great work
to be accomplished which demands the cooperation of both classical
and modern philologists and critics. The relation of the modern
literatures to one another can never be understood until their
common debt to antiquity has been measured.

The merest outline of the work to be clone requires more space than
can be given to it here. The inspiration and influence of classical
antiquity must be characterized for each of the great epochs of
modern culture, it must be traced in the development of each of the
national literatures, it must be minutely observed in the education
and life-work of individual authors, it must be studied in the specific
history of each separate literary form and tradition.

To the Middle Age it is Aristotle, the master of them that know.
Hippocrates the physician, Virgil the mage, Ovid the story-teller,

1 Louis P. Rotz, La Literature corn-pane, Essai Bibliographitfue, deuxieme edi-
tion, etc. Strasbourg, 1904.

378 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

Boethius the consoler; it is the dream of Scipio with allegorical exe-
gesis, the Platonic Book of Genesis in a maimed Latin version; it is
the Tale of Troy and the Legend of Alexander, looming monstrous
through the mists of tradition, or fantastically distorted in the
mirror of chivalrous fancy. The Roman de la Rose itself, the quint-
essence of medievalism, is in its way as much indebted to classic
motifs and copied from classic models as a poem of the Renaissance.
The very epochs and revolutions of medieval thought are determined
by the stages of its acquaintance with Aristotle, from the commentaries
of Boethius and Porphyry, through Latin versions of Hebrew ren-
derings of Arabic and Syrian translations to the recovery of the
complete Aristotelian corpus. Its revivals of culture and reforms of
education are pathetic preludes of the Renaissance, — the establish-
ment here and there of a cloister school in which the Greek alphabet is
learned and a few additional Latin poets are read. Its greatest thinkers
and scholars are precisely those who avail themselves best of such
opportunities for a wider classical culture — a "Venerable" Bede,
a Scotus Erigena, a Gerbert, a Rabanus Maurus, a John of Salisbury,
a Roger Bacon. Nothing could be less Hellenic than the distinctive
quality of medieval thought and feeling. Yet it is no accident or
paradox that an old-fashioned classicist like Victor Leclerc, trans-
ferred to this new field at the age of fifty, proved the best editor of
the Histoire Litteraire de la France of the Middle Age. For the
discipline of classical philology and the exact knowledge of the
classical heritage of the Middle Ages are the indispensable equipment
of the medievalist, in default of which the columns of Migne and the
tomes of the Schoolmen remain a labyrinth without a clue.

To the Renaissance, again, the vision of antiquity is the disper-
sion of a long night, the rolling away of a great mist. It is the restor-
ation of the title-deeds of humanity, the liberation of the human
spirit from creeds that refuse and restrain, the discovery of man.
nature, and art, of personality, eloquence, and fame. It is philosophy
transfused with poetry. It is the religion of Beauty and the cult of
Pleasure. It is Platonic Idealism and Platonic Love. It is incondite
erudition, omnivorous reading, omniscient scholarship. It is Homer,
.Eschylus, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Cicero. Tacitus, Plutarch, pour-
ing at once into the wide hollows of the brain, — knowledge enor-
mous, making man as God.

To Humanism it is the diction of Cicero and Virgil. To the Reform
it is the text of Scripture and the faith of the fathers.

To the classicism of the seventeenth and eighteenth century it is
nature conceived as right reason, it is art controlled by common
sense and submissive to a tradition of sustained dignity and nobility,
it is humanity generalized and rationalized. It is law, order, measure,
propriety. It is Aristotle. Horace, and Quintilian. It is correct tragedy,

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 379

Virgilian epic, and the point, finish, and hard-surface polish of Latin
epistle, satire, and epigram.

To eighteenth-century sentimentalists, who saw it through the
eyes of Rollin or Rousseau, it is the heroic and virtuous antiquity
of Plutarchan naivete, the nobly draped patriotic antiquity of Livy.
It is Seneca recasting in rhetorical epistles the antithetic paradoxes
of Stoic ethics, Juvenal declaiming against luxury, Tacitus idealizing
the blue-eyed barbarian and retrospectively tempering despotism with
epigram.

To the philosophy of pre-Revolutionary France it is enlightenment
emancipating from dogma and superstition, nature throwing off the
yoke of artificial convention.

To the nineteenth century it is the recapture of something of that
first careless Renaissance rapture tempered by a finer historical
sense, controlled by a more critical scholarship. It is the recon-
struction of the total life of Grseco-Roman civilization by German
philology. It is the Periclean ideal of a complete culture reinter-
preted by Goethe and Matthew Arnold. It is the deeper sense of the
quality of the supreme masters, Homer, ^Eschylus, Pindar, Plato,
Aristophanes. It is Greek sculpture recovered from the soil and ap-
preciated by the finer connoisseurship that is aware of the difference
between the Apollo Belvedere and the Hermes of Praxiteles, and the
" Theseus " of the Parthenon. It is the inspiration of Greek poetry
revived in Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Arnold, and Swinburne. It
is Greek philosophy, an unexhausted domain of research for the
scholar, an inexhaustible source of suggestion for the thinker and
the poet.

If we turn from the European to the national tradition, each of the
great modern literatures will claim for itself the preeminence which
Bursian's excellent history of classical philology asserts for Germany.
And each will be in a measure justified. The culture of Italy never
lost touch with Rome, and medievalism there was the twilight of
an arctic summer. It was no mere affectation of the Renaissance
that regarded Italian literature as one. whether written in Latin or
the vernacular. The unity of tradition and the unity of national
feeling imposed this point of view. Dante reaches the hand to Virgil
across the centuries in a way impossible to a Chaucer or a Racine.
And in the heroic lines of Petrarch, repeated as a trumpet-call in
Machia velli's Prince, in Leopardi's Ode to Anijclo Mai. on the re-
covery of Cicero's Republic from a Vatican palimpsest, in Carducci's
ringing alcaics on the exhumation of the Brescia Victory, we are
sensible of a fervor and glow of feeling which no antiquarian theme
could kindle in Northern breasts. Petrarch, the inaugurate!' of the
Renaissance, the first literary dictator of Europe, and the first
modern man. felt himself as much a Latin author as an Italian.

380 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

"Questi son gli occhi della lingua nostra," he boasts of Cicero and
Virgil in the Triumph of Fame. The literature of the Renaissance
is equally classic in motive in whatever tongue composed. The
exquisite Winnowers' Song of Joachim du Bellay is a paraphrase of
the Latin verses of Andrea Navagero, themselves the elaboration
of an epigram attributed to Bacchylides in the Palatine Anthology.
The sonnet of Angelo di Costanzo selected for special praise by Mr.
Garnett is a combination of one of Ovid's Amores in the Octave, with
a sestet translated from a conceit of Martial. Such surface indications
merely point to the wealth of the mine that awaits the properly
equipped explorer of the polyglot Renaissance classicism. Not only
may we trace to it countless minor poetic motifs of the " Pleiad " of
the Elizabethan and seventeenth-century lyric and of Milton, but
it is the source of the French drama, of the literary criticism of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,1 of their political philosophy,
and philosophical rationalism. And even where the classic form
became a mere convention, the use of old bottles for the new wine,
it was still, as in the days of Schiller, the sun of Homer that ripened
the grape, and the old bottles that gave to the vintage its peculiar
flavor. The decline of classical studies was a chief symptom, if not
cause, of the Italian decadence. The Spanish inquisitor laid his ban
at Rome upon that study of Plato which had kindled the enthusiasms
and the idealisms of Florence. And when the lowest depth was reached
in the conceits and affectations of the Marinists and the Petrarchists,
the restoration of dignity and strength began with the return of the
worthy if uninspired Chiabrera to Hellenic models. The slow revival
of the Italian spirit through the eighteenth century was accompanied.
if not caused, by the renewal of serious archaeological and classical
studies. United Italy to-day is a vigorous rival of France and Eng-
land in the second and more scientific Renaissance of which Germany
is the leader, and the names of three enthusiastic Greek scholars,
Alfieri, Leopardi, Carducci, who are also the three greatest poets of
Modern Italy, bear witness to the unwaning power of Hellenism in
her higher literature.

For three centuries the literary and critical fashions of Europe
were set by those of France, which in turn were determined by, or at
least reflected, the phases of European scholarship. A revival of
classical studies was repeatedly the prelude to a new development
in literature. — at the Renaissance, in 1660. in the second half of the
eighteenth century, in the middle of the nineteenth. Reaction leads
to decadence or proves to be the substitution of one form of classical
influence for another. The intellectual aridity of the later middle age
was partly due to the encroachments of science, as then understood,
upon literature in education. The literary studies of the Trivium,

1 Spingarn, History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, New York, 1899.

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 381

as John of Salisbury complains, were curtailed in order to hurry the
student forward to Aristotelian dialectic and scholastic theology.
The revolt against the medieval Aristotle was conducted in the name
of Plato, and when the seventeenth-century Cartesianism at last
banished the Aristotle of the Physics, literary criticism enthroned in
his place the Aristotle of the Poetics. Ronsard, Montaigne, Rabelais,
are direct products of Renaissance erudition and Renaissance en-
thusiasm. Ronsard is with the exception of the Hellenists, La Fontaine
and Racine, the only poetical poet in French literature before the
Hellenist Andre Chenier. Montaigne's saturation with ancient criti-
cism of life makes the Essays a chief source of all subsequent ethical
and reflective literature. Rabelais, beneath the veil of Aristophanic
buffoonery and Lucianic satire, is pregnant with educational and
social suggestions three centuries in advance of his age.

The half-century which ensued was one of decline in classical studies
and of literary decadence. The classical revival of which Boileau
became the legislator was, despite Racine, La Fontaine, and Fenelon,
more Latin than Greek. This is the classicism that dominated Euro-
pean literature for a century and a half. For the healthy encyclo-
pedic appetite and uncritical enthusiasms of the Renaissance it-
substituted a nicer taste and a more discriminating admiration.
It marked the distinction between the antique and the classic. It
undertook to correct the crudity of Senecan tragedy and Spanish
melodrama by the precepts of Aristotle and the practice of Sophocles.
It selected fewer models for more careful imitation,, and completely
assimilated the urbanity of Horace, the elegance of Virgil, the hu-
manity of Cicero, the good sense of Quint ilian.

The end of this classicism was, to copy the title of M. Bertrand's
interesting book, at the same time a return to antiquity.1 But it is
only because he confines his survey to eighteenth-century France that
M. Bertrand can describe this return to antiquity as a recommence-
ment of the work of Malherbe, an attempt to resist the German and
English invasion by galvanizing into artificial life a dying tradition.
The tragedies of Voltaire or Ducis, the Georgics of Delille, the Pin-
daric odes of Lebrun, the criticism of La Harpe, may possibly be
reduced to this formula. But the memoirs of the Academy of Inscrip-
tions, the connoisseurship of Caylus and Choiseul-Gouffier, the investi-
gations and discoveries of Villoison. the real if coquettishly displayed
erudition of the " Anacharsis, " arc evidences of a genuine revival
of scholarly interest in antiquity. In France and Italy this move-
ment, after producing a few estimable scholars, antiquarians, and
connoisseurs, was checked by the ignorance and educational un-
settlement which the Revolution brought in its train. But in Ger-
many it developed continuously into the new Renaissance in which
1 La Fin du Classicisme et Ic Rctour a I' Antique, etc. Paris, 1897.

382 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

we are still living. Again, we are reminded of the close connection
between literature and the programmes of the schools. M. Faguet
plausibly attributes the failure of the brilliant Romantic movement
to create enduring drama, epic narrative, or serious philosophy, to
the fact that the generation of 1815 had not learned their human-
ities. He sees the effects of a sounder classical discipline manifesting
themselves between 1850 and 1870 in the more solid work of Flaubert,
Taine, Renan, Leconte de Lisle. With the generation of 1870 we
enter again upon a period of decline and decadence. But we need
not consider the matter so curiously in order to appreciate the signi-
ficance of the classics both for French literature and the scholarly
study of its history.

This secular interaction of scholarship and literature cannot be
traced in Germany, for the simple reason that while German scholar-
ship dates from the Renaissance, or it may be from Charlemagne
or the Apostle Boniface, German literature, in the proper sense of
the word, begins with Lessing and may almost be said to end with
the deaths of Goethe and Heine. But this fact only makes more
prominent the coincidence and interdependence of this brief bloom
of German literature with the great revival of classical scholarship
which is one of Germany's chief gifts to the modern world. The
detailed history of this relation is yet to be written. The outline is
so familiar that I need not labor the point. Lessing, the founder,
occupies a place in the history of philology only second to that
which he holds -in literature.1 Of Winckelmann, the creator of the
history of Greek art. Goethe says that he made his own career pos-
sible. The fruitful conceptions of historical method, national develop-
ment, and the genius of primitive poetry, of which Herder became
the herald, were derived from or illustrated by his study of the
Greeks. The mainly Latin scholarship which he brought away
from the University Goethe supplemented by long and ardent study
of the Greek poets.2 Schiller's preoccupation with the classics is
manifest in his correspondence with Goethe and in his independent
fritical and aesthetic studies. All the great writers were the pupils,
friends, or colleagues of the great scholars, the Heynes, the Wolfs,
the Hermanns, arid lived and worked in an atmosphere not merely
of r-iassk-al culture, but of enthusiastic scholarship.

As mi<rht be anticipated, the relation of English writers to the
classics is more individualistic. English literature does not illustrate
the periods of European thought so clearly as does the literature of
France, and it is at no time so intimately associated with productive
scholarship as the literature of Germany has been. But if \ve accept
Macaulay's definition of the scholar, as one who reads Plato with his

1 Kont, .!., Lessing ft 1'A ntiquitt. Paris, 1899.

2 Thalmeyr, Goethe und das klass. Alterthnm. Leipzig, 1897

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 383

feet on the fender, the training of the English public school and the
dilettante culture of the universities has given to English literature
a larger number of scholars who are poets and poets who are scholars
than any other literature can boast. As Tickell says in his Life of
A ddison, an early acquaintance " with the classics is what may be called
the good breeding of poetry." Spenser, Ben Jonson, Milton, Addison,
Gray, Johnson, Shelley, Landor, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Swin-
burne, are only the most prominent names in a list that, by the stand-
ards of other literatures, might fairly be enlarged to include Dryden,
Pope, Thomson, Byron, and even, in a sense, Shakespeare, if Mr.
Churton Collins 1 is to be believed, and Keats. And in consequence
no other European literature is so rich in spontaneous and luxuriant
classical imagery, or in the exquisite reminiscence and adaptation of
classic phrase.

The detailed illustration of this belongs primarily to the editor
of the classics, the commentator on the English poets. Thence it
may be collected in monographs such as Professor Lounsbury's
inquiry into the learning of Chaucer, Mr. Moore's Scripture and
Classics in Dante, Professor Mustard's Classical Echoes in Tenny-
•svw. Such work is easily confounded with the trifling pedantry of the
old-fashioned parallel-passage-monger. Yet it may be redeemed
from this by judicious discrimination between incidental quotation
and spiritual influence, and careful observation of the distinction
between mere coincidence in human commonplace, and traits of
difference in resemblance that help to characterize both the model
and the copy.

In any case this despised detail is the indispensable basis of any
science of comparative literature that deserves the name. And the
critic of modern literature who neglects it exposes himself to strange
mishaps. He is liable at any moment to emend the text or discourse
on the typical significance of a passage which is a direct translation
from the Greek or Latin. He will hear a unique Elizabethan lyric
cry in a conceit versified from a Greek Sophist. He will taste the
inimitable flavor of Elizabethan euphuism in an antithesis borrowed
from Plato or Heraclitus. a " Gorgian figure " imitated from Isocrates,
an epigram translated out of Seneca or Lucan. He will discern the
moral progress of the age in a panvnetie letter compiled from Iso-
crates. Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. and the Pythagorean
verses; and note the symptoms of spiritual decline in a string of
cynical epigrams copied from Juvenal and Tacitus. He will detect
the distinguishing note of eighteenth-century Deism in a paragraph
borrowed from Cicero's DC Xatura Dcorum. illustrate the special
quality of Herrick's fancy by a couplet conveyed from Martial, and
pitch upon a paraphrase of .Eschylus to typify the romantic imagin-

1 " Had Shakespeare read the Greek Tragedies? " Fortnightly Review, July, 1903.

384 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

ation of Shelley. Such critics may well take to heart the warning
of Fielding: "The ancients may be considered as a rich common
whereon every person who hath the smallest tenement in Parnas-
sus has the right to fatten his muse. Nor shall I ever scruple to take
to myself any passage which I shall find in any ancient author to
my purpose without setting down the name of the author from whom
it was taken." Even Mr. Swinburne sees the personal genius of Ben
Jonson in scraps of the elder Seneca that found a way into his note-
book, and dogmatically emends as meaningless a sentence that is
an accurate rendering of a line of Euripides. Even M. Brunetiere
selects to illustrate how far the plasticity of Leconte de Lisle sur-
passes the art of Alexandria a passage directly translated from an
Epyllion of Theocritus. Even Symonds celebrates the one fine
tirade in the Misfortunes of Arthur without observing that it is a
version of Lucan. It would be pedantry to attach any importance to
items like these which might be multiplied indefinitely. But collect-
ively they point a plain moral to the student :

" 'Tis not for centuries four for nought
Our European world of thought
Hath made familiar to its home
The classic mind of Greece and Rome."

The general reader may enjoy literature in ignorance of these pitfalls.
But the professional interpreter and critic of literature must have the
acquaintance with the ancients, or a certain flair for imitation and
paraphrase, that will enable him, as Dryden says of Ben Jonson.
"to track his author in the snow." He cannot evade the task by
facile denunciations of the pedantry that spies upon the plagiarisms
of genius. It is not a question of plagiarism at all, but of inspirations,
origins, and sources. Nor may he dismiss the importunate topic with
the Gallic lightness of M. Lemaitre, who tells us the essence of ali
ancient authors is to be found conveniently potted in Montaigne.
Rather will he declare with M. Brunetiere that the chief desideratum
of systematic literary study to-day is a history of humanism, and a
history of Hellenism and the influence of the classics in Italy. Rome.
England, and (lermany. Such works will doubtless be written. The
history of classical scholarship is already brought down to the Renais-
sance in Saridys's admirable compendium. For a satisfactory treat-
ment of the larger theme, the history of the influence of antiquity, we
must wait. The preliminary labor of detail is only begun. The accu-
mulation and sifting of "parallel passages'' in commentaries and
monographs must go on. The history of every literary form or (]< nr<
must be studied with a devotion not less minute but more discrimin-
ating than that which has been bestowed upon the epic and the
drama. The fortunes of special literary motifs and commonplaces
must be curiouslv followed. The sources of each of the great modern.

CLASSICAL LITERATURE AND LEARNING 385

the influence of each of the great classic, writers must be traced back-
ward and forward through the centuries. There must be a multipli-
cation of such monographs as Tollkiihns' Homer und die Romische
Poesie, Comparetti's Virgil in the Middle Age; Rheinhardstottner's
Plautus and his Imitators, Stein's Sieben Bucher zur Geschichte des
Platonismus, Spingarn's Literary Criticism of the Italian Renaissance,
Thalmeyr's Goethe und das classische Altherthum, Bertrand's La Fin
du Classicisme et le Retour a I' Antique. Zielinski has sketched the in-
fluence of Cicero in the course of the centuries. Who will comprehend
for us in a similar survey the Aristotle of antiquity, of the Middle
Age, of literary classicism, of nineteenth-century scholarship and
political science? Who, supplementing the work of Greard and Volk-
mann. will show us not merely what Plutarch was to his own day, but
what he has meant for Montaigne, for Shakespeare, for Rousseau, for
Madame Roland, for Emerson? All this detail, however, though of
intense and curious interest to the specialist, will receive its true
significance only from the larger synthesis for which it is the indis-
pensable preparation. The pseudo-classicists of the eighteenth cen-
tury half seriously justified their slavish adherence to classical models
by affirming that to copy them was in reality to imitate nature. As
Pope says of Virgil: "Nature and Homer \vere, he found, the same."
from this superstition the philosophic historian of Hellenism will be
free. But he must and will recognize that classical literature collect-
ively has been to the modern world something more than a certain
number of particular books written by individual authors who lived
in a pre-scientific age, though to a literal and nominalistic apprehen-
sion it is obviously and merely that.

But viewed across the chasm of the Middle Age in its transfigured
historic detachment, its idealized totality, the art and literature of
antiquity has been felt as a great objective fact like nature, a com-
plete system of knowledge like science, the embodiment and symbol
of a spiritual and moral ideal like Christianity. And as the history of
our civilization could be written in relation to any one of these three
uTent facts or ideas, so it can and must be studied in the various
phases of its apprehension of classical antiquity as a whole. Such an
historic survey will have more than a merely scholastic or erudite
interest. It will confirm the salutary faith that the Hellenic inspir-
ation, though often transformed, never dies, that it persists amid all
change a permanent and essential constituent of the modern spirit,
that it remains to-day for our finest minds in Pater's phrase not an
absorbed element, but a conscious initiation. Across the gulf of the
centuries, undimmed by the mists and fervors of the Middle Age, un-
deflected by the prismatic splendors of our twentieth-century palaces
of art and science, the white light of Hellenism still pours unwavering
its purest ray serene.

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF THE HISTORY OF CLASSICAL

LITERATURE

BY JOHN HEXRY WRIGHT

[John Henry Wright, Professor of Greek and Dean of the Graduate School, Harvard
University, b. February 4, 1852, Urmiah, Persia. A.B. Dartmouth College,
1873; LL.D. ibid. (Hon.) 1901; LL.D. Western Reserve University (Hon.)
1901; student, University of Leipzig, 1876-78. Assistant Professor of Latin and
Greek, Ohio State University, 1873-76; Associate Professor of Greek, Dart-
mouth College, 1878-86; Professor of Classical Philology, Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity, 1886-87. Member and Past President of the American Philological
Association, Fellow and Councilor of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, Councilor of the Archaeological Institute of America, etc. Editor-in-
chief of American Journal of Archaeology; editor of A History of All Nations.]

THE comprehensive scheme of the organizers of this Congress for
passing in review the various branches of human knowledge — their
past achievements, their present conditions and relations, and their
future prospects — has provided for classical antiquity under five
fields of learning, in the group of sciences known as the Historical
Sciences, where the term " historical " and " history " are used mainly
in the old Greek sense of investigation. These fields are: the political
history of Greece and Rome; the history of Roman law; languages,
especially Greek and Latin; literature, especially classical literature;
and classical art.

Classical antiquity, the civilization of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, has left a record of itself in many ways. This record was
made by persons, living, breathing human beings, with a wide out-
look; hence it has a universal and a perpetual appeal to humanity.
The ancients recorded themselves, their lives, works, ideas, and ideals.
either collectively (or in smaller collective groups), or individuals
among them made the record. The collective record is found pri-
marily in all the institutions of the social organism (religious, political,
and the like), and in that great social institution, as Whitney used
to call it. language. — language as form and expression. The record
of the smaller collective groups or of individuals was made in the
various forms of individual or mainly individual expression, chiefly
in art. and in literature which is language as artistic form and content.

The ancient record is in large part lost, in large part blurred and
become difficult of decipherment. But much has been preserved.
either actually and immediately, or mediately and indirectly in the
tokens of influences on other civilizations; and by the use of methods
and instruments of ever-increasing precision in philological research
the difficulties of decipherment are nearly met. Thus by the aid of
hints that we have we can discover anew in some measure what we

PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 387

have not. For, as Terence 1 says, " there is nothing so difficult that
it may not be found out by searching."

Of the various kinds of record, that of literature, whether extant
or reconstructed, is much the most important. This is because litera-
ture is itself the very essence and exponent of whatever was most
characteristic and significant in the civilization of the ancients;
because it is the clearest and most intelligible of the records; because
it is the amplest. Indeed, without it all the other forms of record
are practically non-existent, or, if existent, are unintelligible. All
philosophy, nearly all history, nearly all the light on religion and
social institutions, are but the content of literature. The monuments
of art, though they speak a language all their own, gain new and
fuller meaning from the testimonies in literature concerning the art
and artists of antiquity. Language itself exists in amplitude and
variety only in the literature; indeed, in the case of the Greeks at
least, there is little of the language extant that is not literary, i. e.
marked by conscious art, even the rude memorials engraved on stone
or bronze being thrown into literary form. And the full character
and meaning of language, its range and power, are not revealed ex-
cept in the highly developed forms of literature. If all other kinds of
record were lost or made inaccessible we could still read in literature
alone nearly the whole story of antiquity, in all its beauty and
strength, though this might lack, to be sure, some elements of vivid-
ness and concrete reality that the monuments of art in particular
yield us. Yes, as Bacon says, "the images of men's wits and know-
ledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and
capable of perpetual renovation."

Extant literature, as has already been intimated, is the foundation
and chief substance of our studies. But extant literature is for several
reasons defective. In the first place, from it are absent many import-
ant constituents of the whole, the vision of which is the ideal of our
efforts. Not only arc the works of many great writers of antiquity
lost, and known to us only at second- or third-hand in quotations or
in scattered and obscure allusions, but even whole classes of litera-
ture have no adequate representatives in what has survived. Herein
how different the problem of the student of a modern literature from
that of the student of classical literature: the former is bewildered
by the wealth of his materials, from which he must choose in order
to draw his pictures; the latter is embarrassed by his poverty: at
critical points he often can make only a sketch, and that, too. a con-
jectural one, whereas the other gives us a picture rich in detail.
Then, too, in its transmission to our day, ancient literature has

1 Nil tarn dijf.cil cst quin quaerendo inuc«tig<iri possiet; which remind* one of
Chaeremon's

OVK ttTTiv ovSfv rwv tv a.i>6pu;irois on
OVK (v dv iiTovffiv f^fvicTKfTai.

388 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

suffered many mischances. The text in passing through the hands
of scribes either unintelligent or too intelligent has often become
something other than it originally was: it has been padded with
inept glosses; its meaning has been misapprehended, and the false
explanations that from generation to generation have gathered
about and over the text have beclouded the eye of the reader so that
he has not read the clear truth. He must, as George Herbert says,
"Copie fair what time hath blur'd."

And yet even these unfavorable conditions have had their good
effect. The fragmentariness and the perversion of the literary record
have ever stirred the scholar to earnest endeavor. They have evoked
the spirit of criticism, and have developed in the guild of classical
philologians methods of accurate research, methods that in time
have become models for all forms of historical inquiry as well as
of philological inquiry in other fields. Again: these conditions have
lent singular preciousness to every smallest item in the tradition.
Each little thing, — each sound, each word, each phrase, each idiom,
each thought, each turn,- — each littlest thing has become important
because of its possible significance in the reconstruction of the whole,
that great edifice, the House of Ancient Life. We love and study
the little because it is a member of the whole. Perhaps at times the
idea of the whole has been lost sight of, in the student's concentration
on the fragmentary and intrinsically petty. Of the scholar that
goes astray for such small things, let us say what Hugutio 1 said
in the twelfth century of a Latin verse, the writer of which had sinned
in the quantity he gave sincerus, "Lot it and its writer be erased
from the Book of Life, and be not enrolled among the Righteous
(Abradatur cum suo auctore de libro vitac ct cum justis non scribatnr).''

One who speaks upon the problems of classical literature finds be-
fore him avast field, in which scholars have been toiling for more than
twenty-three centuries, with varying ideals, aims, and methods, meet-
ing and solving problems of the most diverse character. At the earliest
period, in the times of the creation of classical literature and in the
times immediately subsequent when the speech in which literary works
were composed was still a living tongue, scholars were concerned
mainly with the interpretation of poets, with the explanation of obso-
lete words and of other obscurities. Then came an age of criticism and
of comprehensive learning, when the ancient texts were collected, class-
ified, edited, further explored and explained, the texts of prose writers
as \\ell as of poets, — an age of scientific scholarship, from the frag-
mentary remains of which we still have much to learn; then followed
an age of scholarship in the service of education, with its excerpts,
anthologies, its limited editions of classical authors, its handbooks
1 Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, p. 040.

PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 389

its compilations of compilations. Then supervened the Dark Ages,
when the lamp of pure literature, if trimmed at all, was trimmed for
the service of sacerdotalism, or, burning low in an alien atmosphere,
little drew the eyes of men: an age when literature was made sub-
sidiary, treated as a storehouse of materials for discipline in the arts
of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and not as a noble end in itself -
the auctores being slaves of the artes. These times were followed by
the Great Awakening, when little by little the full significance of the
ancient heritage dawned on men: at first, a period of literary enthu-
siasm, when the form of ancient literature chiefly engaged the atten-
tion of the educated world, and men sought to write like the ancient
masters; then, a period when the interest of scholars was turned
from the form to the matter, when the items of knowledge and wis-
dom buried in the ancient writers were disinterred, and set forth in
works and editions that are even to-day marvels of learning and
lore. Next followed an age of criticism, which was exercised mainly
en the texts of classical wrriters. "It was," as Professor Hardie has
said, " neither creative nor ardent, like the first [period], nor ency-
clopedic in its material knowledge like the second, but critical
and grammatical." It clarified the texts, healed corrupt places,
sought to establish canons of idiom, formulated the laws of meter,
discriminated with severe judgment the spurious and the authentic
in ancient literature. Finally, hardly more than a century ago, be-
gan a period of classical scholarship in which all the finer qualities
of the three preceding periods (since the Renaissance) are happily
combined and developed, — an age of searching criticism, of ency-
clopedic learning enlarged by the lessons of comparative grammar,
of history, of art and archaeology, and of enlightened literary en-
thusiasm and appreciation, an age of better methods in all depart-
ments of classical scholarship and of the coordination of these de-
partments into a single whole, so that one throws light on the other.
The outcome of it all is that we may to-day say to the wise student
of the ancient texts, what was said to Macrobius centuries ago:

mcliora reddis quam Icgcndo sumpscras.

The conception of the function of the student and teacher of
classical literature has thus varied somewhat from century to cen-
tury, ever gaining new and enriched meaning-. But I doubt whether
we have much improved upon the definition of this function as given
toward the close of the Alexandrian age and recorded by a commen-
tator on Dionysius the Thracian, the first of the venerable guild of
grammarians. The task of the ypa^ariKo^ or student and teacher of
literature, we are told, has four parts, — TO avayvwo-TLKov, "accurate
reading aloud "; TO etv/yv/rtKor, '''explanation "; TO 8iopOwTiK(>r, "correc-
tion of the text ''; and TO K/jm/coY. " criticism." i, c. mainly a?sthetic.

390 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

The first — /xe'pos dvayvwo-TiKoV — emphasizes the great truth that
ancient literature is almost without exception the spoken word
written, and that unless the word once spoken is heard again the
voice of literature loses many of its most significant notes. Not
only must there be correct pronunciation of single sounds, but the
unique cadences of ancient speech, so different from ours, must be
caught and reproduced. The book, the written page, the printed
word, must be made, as it were, to disappear; must not stand between
author and reader; the voice of the poet, the orator, the philosopher
in his conversation on high themes, must speak directly to the ear
and mind of the student. The second part — TO e^yvptKoV -
reminds us that it is the duty of the teaching scholar to remove all
the difficulties that lie in the way of complete and intelligent appre-
hension and appreciation, manifold as these difficulties are. The
third element of the scholar's function — TO SiopflumKoV — means
that the scholar must purify his texts, correcting them so as to bring
them as nearly as may be to the words originally spoken. The fourth
— TO KpiriKov — that he must judge the works he studies in their
larger relations, especially in the light of the standards, sesthetic
and ethical, that either have been set up by the achievements of other
masters, whether in classical literature or in other literatures, or
may be inferred by the philosopher from the constitution and normal
life of the human soul.

The problems that confront the student of classical literature
at the present time may be present problems either because they
are perpetual problems • — hence ever at hand — or because they are
peculiar to our present age, either newly arisen, or re-arisen, their
immediate demand upon us to-day being caused by conditions and
emergencies peculiar to these our own times.

In speaking of some of these "present problems," I have not kept
nor shall I hereafter keep distinct these two classes; nor will it be
possible to do more than hint at a few of the problems, whether old
or new, that call for a solution, or a better solution. These will be
taken, in what remains to be said, from the field of the history of
classical literature, and will have to do mainly with the demands
that may reasonably be made on the historian of classical literature.
And by historian of classical literature and the demands to be made
on him. I mean not only the writer of formal works on this subject,
but the classical scholar, investigator, and teacher who deals with
themes from or phases of the subject of the history of classical litera-
ture, and the ideals he should set before himself. In touching upon
deficiencies in present or past performance, and in sketching the
limitations as well as in extending the boundaries of our field, of
course many problems will be suggested by implication, though the
allusion to them will be brief and the treatment of them sketchy.

PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 391

The historian of classical literature has to do, to begin with, with
individual authors, with the literary creations of men who were once
alive and who spoke each to a particular audience. These men
or their work he makes real to himself, and as writer or teacher real
also to the world in which he himself lives. He is thus, in the first
instance, one who understands and appreciates his author, and, in
the second place, an interpreter.

As one who seeks to understand his author, he must first be able
to place himself at the point of view of the reader to whom the book
was originally addressed. The writings of the ancients, in spite of
their universal appeal, were not written for us; they were written
each for a particular audience, and it was that audience that most
fully understood them. Hence it is only as we can put ourselves in
the place of members of this audience that we can apprehend the
meaning of the message they received. This means, in brief, that for
the time being we must ourselves be the ancients, must know their
language as they knew it, — in its power, delicacy, and subtlety of
expression, — must be familiar with all the circumstances and
elements — social, religious, political, ethical — that conditioned
the production and determined the character of the literary works
in question; we must respond to every emotion that anciently
stirred: we must surround ourselves with the atmosphere spiritual
and intellectual that surrounded the original audience. How much
this means! It means, for us who live in a different age, a power of
keen and discriminating appreciation and an almost limitless learning,
vital and vivifying, in many fields, not in language alone, but also
in history, in antiquities, in philosophy, in art.

The student must also be able, in a way, to put himself at the
author's point of view; to realize vividly that the author was once
a living personality and individuality. This implies the amplest and
most sympathetic knowledge possible of the author himself, and of
all that will make him intelligible: the world of ideas in which he
lives, his characteristic habits of expression whether in his language
— in its vocabulary, grammar, and idiom, in its rhythmical flow,—
or in choice and arrangement of his material; recognizing above all
that every author is his own best interpreter, to be known only by
him who reads and reads and re-reads him time and again. Further-
more, enabled in the ways indicated to see and hear and understand
his author as he was to the men of his own day, the scholar must be
competent to place himself, for the most fruitful contemplation of his
author, at what we may call the universal point of view, the point of
view at once of common humanity stripped of its accidents, focused
on realities, and of the enlightened scholar and wise man who,
knowing in an organic way, like a master, the best and most signifi-
cant things that men of all times have achieved in letters, with these

392 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

compares and contrasts, and in the light of these passes judgment
on what the author of antiquity has done.

But the student of classical literature, if he is to be also something
of an historian of this literature, has a further function: he is the
interpreter of the ancient writer, his interpretation finding expres-
sion in formal works on literary history, or in monographic studies
of special topics, or in the comment that accompanies editions of
classical books, or in translations into the vernacular. The inter-
preter's first qualification for his task is of course the understanding
of the work he would interpret in the spirit and to the extent already
indicated. But it is obvious that besides this qualification he needs
others that are very different, such as thorough knowledge of the lan-
guage of interpretation, and a mastery of the art of interpretation,
which involves among other things a knowledge of the audience
to which the interpretation is to be made not unlike his knowledge
of the audience for which the work was originally intended, and a
power effectively to reach and move that audience. The work of the
interpreter of classical authors can never be wholly done. It must
be renewed from age to age, from generation to generation. The
authors remain, and perhaps their text reaches its final form, but
with the discovery of new material, with the invention of new in-
struments of research, the knowledge that gathers about them
grows apace, and the new knowledge throws things into a new
perspective, and brings out unsuspected relations. With all this
must come new interpretations, demanded not only by the newer
light, but also by the incessant though almost unobserved changes
in the media of interpretation, in the meaning and values of language,
changes in the aesthetic standards that regulate expression, but yet
more changes in the audience to which the interpretation is addressed.
It has been so in the past. Again and again the phenomena of the
ancient world, as these have shimmered before us in literature, their
spirit and significance, have been imperfectly grasped and falsely
explained. Antiquity sometimes has been understood solely in terms
of the times in which it was passed in review, just as the ancient
languages have been pronounced by students of those languages ac-
cording to their own vernacular, students who thought, forsooth, they
were speaking Latin or Greek. The scholars of the early Christian
Church, some of the leaders of the Renaissance, the motley crew
of neo-Pagans, have each and all had their own understanding and
interpretation of antiquity — how imperfect, how far from the
truth! Lack of sound and comprehensive knowledge and prepos-
session by subjective theory or fancy have caused the failure to
behold the truth. And yet even views that are only partially true,
or are dark, highly colored or distorted, or unsubstantial, have been
fraught with instruction. It is for these reasons and for others that

PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 393

the work of the interpreter of classical antiquity is never finished,
can never be finished. Authors will continue and must continue to be
edited, monographs must be written, and there will ever be calls
for new histories of classical literature.

The interpreter of the writings of the ancients — especially of the
great poets of Greece — must always have a happy task. His work
will have a universal appeal; in no other literature than that of
Greece has been so complete and so adequate .an expression of na-
tional life and ideals, in this case of the whole of the life and thought
of a people marvelously endowred passing in brilliant review before
us. Then too the Greek poets (as Aristotle has observed), in fact,
all great poets, express the Universal with penetrating and im-
pressive power: the individual is the speaker and mouthpiece,
but the message is from humanity to humanity. "The 'I' [of the
lyric poet]," says Tennyson, "is not the author speaking of himself,
but the voice of the human race speaking through him." "Der
vollkommene Dichter spricht das Ganze der Menschheit aus," said
Goethe.

There is another fine saying of Goethe's, quoted by Biese: "Lit-
erature [what Goethe elsewhere calls Weltlitteratur] is but a fragment
of fragments; of what has been done and spoken only a very small
part has been written down; and of what has been written down only
a very little has remained, and yet even this little shows so much of
repetition that we are impressed with the thought of how limited
are the soul and fortunes of man." A national literature, like that of
the Greeks, is but a part, a member, of the Weltlitteratur, and is
apprehended in its fullness only when so apprehended. Similarly,
Greek and Roman literature themselves, when each is considered with
relation to what makes it up — its several groups or kinds of litera-
ture, and within these the individual authors, and under each author
his own separate works, every one of these being (as Plato has
reminded us) a living organism — are but organic parts of larger
and larger units, the lesser being intelligible only in their relation to
the larger units, and the larger intelligible only when their relation
to their organic constituents is recognized. Hence the historian of
classical literature will do more than know and interpret the in-
dividual authors, and his history will be more than a collection of
notes and memoranda of this nature, arranged on a chronological
string. He is concerned with authors not alone as separate individ-
uals, but also — and primarily — in their relation to each other and
to their literary progcners; he is concerned less with static conditions
than with dynamic relations. Literature, a particular literature, as
an organism, has had an organic growth and development: it is
his concern to discover the origins: to trace the complex stages of
growth; to determine the modifying influences; to analyze each

394 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

successive form of literature and to study its inheritances as well as
its original features; to show how one movement of thought passed
into another, with the fitting modes of expression, how action and
reaction succeeded each other; in the case of individual authors to
ascertain and set forth their sources, — in the fullest sense of this
much abused word, — the great types according to which their
works were framed — how these types arose — and their modifica-
tion of the types; their special literary originals and the degree to
which they were dependent on these originals; their personal inno-
vations and their characteristic additions to the riches of literary
expression whether in art or in substance of thought. Literary
histories of this nature — or perhaps I should say studies in literary
history of this nature — are now beginning to be written. Founda-
tions for them have been laid in a more comprehensive and accurate
knowledge of some of the branches of literature and of some of the
authors, and the superstructure will arise as a matter of course. To
be sure, at times even in our day some of these attempts are for
obvious reasons foredoomed to failure: like those of a French ecclesi-
astic, who has recently undertaken to prove that Homer is but a copy
and travesty of the Bible: Is not Agamemnon's refusal to deliver
Briseis modeled on Pharaoh's denial to release the Israelites ? and
are not four children given to Agamemnon because Saul, King of
the Jews, had the same number? — the very difference in the sex
of the members of the two families — one son and three daughters
as against three sons and one daughter — being but a subtle proof
of this theory!

We have already briefly adverted to the problems that will con-
front the historian of classical literature, as, first, he studies the indi-
vidual work, then passes on to the author, then to a branch of
literature, and at last to the national literature either of the Greeks
or of the Romans. But these national literatures are, as we have
remarked, organic parts of what Goethe has called Weltlitteratur.
What — • we now inquire — - is the relation of the historian of class-
ical literature to the science of Weltlitteratur, which, for want of
a better name we call " Comparative Literature," and what are the
problems that arise from this relation?

As a science fundamentally historical, comparative literature
has exactly the same problems that we noted as arising in the study
of a national literature, though on a much larger scale, "and in
diffusion more intense" (as George Eliot says). But comparative
literature has something more; it has in fact some of the qualities
of what the makers of the programmes of this Congress might call
a Normative Science: it teaches us. or should teach us, the fruitful
doctrines of (esthetics and psychology as applied to literary creations.
The ancients constructed their canons of art of various kinds, not as

PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 395

a result of abstract metaphysical conceptions, but concretely from
a study of all accessible materials and models of the particular art,
whether of poetical criticism as by Aristotle, or of oratory as in the
tradition that emerges to view in the lesser writings (e. g.) of Dionysius
of Halicarnassus, or of plastic art as in the series of writings be-
ginning with Xenocrates and Antigonus of Carystus. But vast addi-
tions have been made to the wealth of literary expression since the
days of Greece and Rome, and these additions must be considered by
him who to-day would lay down the canons of universal literary art;
Aristotle, were he alive now, would be the first to recognize that no
theory of epic poetry would be complete that omitted Virgil, or the
Niebelungenlied or Dante, no theory of tragedy that failed to con-
sider Shakespeare and Moliere and Goethe. As Aristotle's theory of
the state was founded on studies of a vast number of special states,
Greek and non-Greek, — • a theory that he used effectively in the
criticism and illumination of the history of the Athenian and Spartan
states in particular, — so must every theory of literary criticism that
is to be applied to the elucidation of ancient literary history be
a comprehensive one and be based on a consideration of all that
deserves the name of literature, whether ancient, medieval, or
modern.

As an historical science comparative literature has at least these
three functions: (1) Comparison of similar forms of literature as
these are cultivated by different people, with different languages,
different traditions of all sorts, attention being drawn to resemblances
and contrasts: such as forms of the narrative, whether in the epos
or in romance, and the manifold forms of dramatic and lyric art.
Obscure passages in the history, within a given literature, of one of
these forms may receive something of illumination from the history
of it in another, though here an ignis fatuus has often been taken as
an authentic flame. (2) A second function is the study of the history
of the treatment of special literary motifs in different literatures,
motifs which often crop out absolutely independently in various
parts of the world, to the bewilderment of the scholar. (3) A third
function is that of tracing the history of the influence of literary
ideals and models, and of individual authors and individual works
belonging to one literature, upon the literature or literatures of
subsequent times; or, turned about, of making inquiries wherein
the varied phenomena of one literature are followed up to their
sources in another or in several others.

Obviously, in a derived literature, or in one whose elements are
to a very large extent inherited or borrowed, the necessity of tracing
these inherited or borrowed elements to their originals will be im-
perative, and of that form of activity may consist in large measure
the investigation of the historv of those literatures.

396 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

Such derived literatures are, to a greater or less degree, all the
literatures of Western Europe, after that of Greece. Latin literature
is, of course, original in some of its elements and qualities, but for
the most part, as of course I need not demonstrate in this presence,
it is an imitation or an echo of Greece. Hence the student of the
history of Latin literature will be vastly concerned with Greek
literature in order to understand adequately his own.

The student of Greek literature, for the purpose at least of ascer-
taining its originals, will have little occasion to make use of the
lessons of comparative literature; though occasionally even here
valuable hints may be received, e. g. on certain Semitic or Oriental
influences on Greek literature in and before the sixth century B. c.

Greek literature, as everybody knows, is marvelous in its origin-
ality — originality in forms and types of literature, in themes, in
treatment, in metrical and rhythmical expression, in adaptation of
word and phrase to thought — in all that makes up literature. The
student of Greek literature is drinking ever at the fountain-heads
of European literature. For some creations of Greek literature that
are lost in their original form and are found only in later imita-
tions or workings-over in Latin (or even in the Semitic tongues —
such as Arabic or Syriac) , the student of Greek literature may need
to follow down and examine the later productions — as for example
in reconstructing the Greek originals of plays of Plautus or Terence,
of lyrics of Catullus or Horace, and of many other books in Greek
prose or verse that exist only in later excerpts or abridged -trans-
lations.

It is at once vastly interesting and suggestive to trace the later
fortunes of Greek literature and of individual works, but this is a
•n-dpfpyov for a student of Greek literature; there is almost too much to
be done in Greek literature itself. We are less concerned, as distinct-
ive students of the history of Greek literature, with what it became
than with what became it! On the other hand, from the point
of view of the comparative study of the development of the forms of
literature, and of the history of identical literary motifs, as from that
of its universal philosophical lessons, the science of comparative
literature will be useful to the historian of Greek literature (as that
of comparative philology has been to the student of the history of
the Greek language), while from almost all points of view it is ab-
solutely essential to the student of the history of Roman literature,
and of all later literatures.

I have sketched, in meagre outline, the principles which the
historian of classical literature should follow in order to solve
the problems, new and old, that confront him. Have the demands
herein involved been as yet adequately met? To me there seems
very much to be done: first, in the successful application of all

PROBLEMS OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE 397

these principles; secondly, in the coordination of the items of know-
ledge already won; and thirdly, especially with reference to the
lessons obtainable from comparative literature, in ascertaining
many new and essential items of knowledge.

The mere statement of the principles has suggested obviously, in
large measure, the method of their application. The historian of
classical literature must above all be an artist; disaster and failure
will attend him if he allows his learning, or rather his mass of scien-
tific information, to confuse or obscure for him the simple and severe
outlines of his ideals, the clear manifestation of which is his aim.
His work in its final form must be marked by due proportion in all
its parts, and must be transfused by the vital spirit.

The most difficult, because the most comprehensive, task is of
course that of writing general histories of classical literature. From
the failure to apply in the right way all these great principles, the
perfectly satisfactory general history of classical literature has yet
to be written. On the other hand, the successful application of these
principles, in work on certain classical authors or on special branches
or topics in the history of classical literature, has often been made,
though in outline. It may be invidious to name names; but I
would recall, of German scholars of recent date, among the dead
only Bernays, Ribbeck, Rohde; among the living, Usener, Diels,
Wilamowitz, Hirzel. In the ascertainment of essential items of
knowledge, how much these men, and countless others, have ac-
complished ! And yet how much remains to be done ! I will not ven-
ture to draw up a list of desiderata, but will only call attention to
a topic or two. We lack, for example, for certain phases of Greek
literary history, careful compilations of all the available ancient
data that relate to them. With all the investigation of sources (in
the narrow sense of the term) that has characterized the last half-
century, there is still a sorry absence, in much of our work, of that
careful discrimination of primary, secondary, and other mediate
sources, through which alone sound conclusions can be drawn. Are
there not many dark places yet to be explored in the relation, c. g.,
of many Latin works to their originals? With the new light of all
sorts recently won, may not many a lost Greek play be more success-
fully reconstructed than has been possible in the past? Are the rela-
tions of certain of the Greek and Roman writers to their own times
so clearly apprehended as they might be? The history of certain
branches of literary expression need to be followed out, such as some
of those suggested by Ribbeck sixteen years ago: the forms and
principles of poetic narration from the Iliad down to Xonnus's
Dionysiaca, including the development of the epos, — mythic-heroic
and historical. — the narrative r/.u-os. the epyllion. and the idyll.
The history of the elegy or of the elegiac form of literary expression.

398 CLASSICAL LITERATURE

of tragedy, of comedy, of satire, of oratory, of the rhetorical writers
(to limit myself to works distinctively literary) suggests many a new
problem, besides the many already solved.

Numerous and vast as are these problems, they will not long re-
main unattempted and unsolved, though new ones, for the reasons
earlier given, must incessantly arise. The unity of spirit, in the bond
of peace, which to-day unites scholars, and the ampler provision for
the organization and promotion of research that has been made
of late by learned societies and by universities, will simplify and
advance the scholar's work as never before.

The wise and fruitful study of special topics will lead on to and
prepare for the more difficult knowledge of the classical authors as
personalities, delivering each his own message to his time and to all
time — and this again will yield, to him who seeks it in a right
spirit, a broader and deeper conception of humanity, of the meaning
and beauty and wealth of this our mortal life. Herein will be ful-
filled our highest desire : for, in the words of Goethe :
" Humanitat sei unser ewig Ziel!"

SHORT PAPERS

PROFESSOR W. S. MILNER, of the University of Toronto, presented a short
communication to the session on "The a/j.aprla of Aristotle's Poetics."

PROFESSOR FRANK GARDNER MOORE, of Dartmouth College, presented a paper
on " Rhythm in the Philosophical Works of Cicero."

PROFESSOR H. R. FAIRCLOUGH, of Leland Stanford, Jr., University, presented
a short paper on " Virgil's Relations to Grseco-Roman Art."

SECTION C — ENGLISH LITERATURE

SECTION C — ENGLISH LITERATURE

(Hall 1, September 22, 10 a. TO.)

SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR FRANCIS B. GUMMERE, Haverford College.
PROFESSOR JOHANNES HOOPS, University of Heidelberg.

THE RELATION OF ENGLISH LITERATURE TO OTHER

SCIENCES

BY FKANCIS BARTON GUMMERE

[Francis Barton Gummere, Professor of English, Haverford College, b. Burlington,
New Jersey, 1855. A.B. Haverford College, 1872; A.B. Harvard College, 1875;
Ph.D. Freiburg University, 1881; studied at University of Christiania, Norway,
and University of Berlin, 1887-88. Instructor in English, Harvard College,
1881-82; Head Master of Swain Free School, New Bedford, 1882-87. Member
of American Philosophical Society, Modern Language Association of America.
Advisory Editor Modern Philology. Author of Germanic Origins; Old English
Ballads; Beginnings of Poetry.}

ANY literature in the vernacular must always pay a heavy price
for that quality which may indeed insure it against neglect, but
which cannot fail to invite the charlatan and the unprofessional
patron. The accessibility of English literature is in vivid contrast
to the professional safeguards of such studies • — I take the late
President Porter's example — as quaternions; those forts and towers,
one ma}' be sure, shall never be " a joy of wild asses." But the abuse
of this accessibility is by no means confined to Baconians and other
lithe creatures who snuff up the wind of literary doctrine; scholars
themselves have not been free from blame. What Bernheim says l
of history is true in even greater degree of literature; the represent-
atives of other sciences think themselves justified in dealing with
literature from their own point of view, for their own purposes, with
their own methods, and without any special preparation within
the literary pale. They apply theories and formulas, which may be
valid for their own science, but which are inapplicable to the pro-
blems of literature until tested by the control of literary facts and
submitted to methods of literary research. In this relation of English
literature to other sciences, the scholar's one duty is defense; and
defense, obviously enough, lies in a rigorous demand for adequate
preparation, for exact knowledge of the English tongue in all its
stages, for acquaintance, in reasonable degree, with the sources and
the texts, and with their mutual relations as documents of literature.
1 Lrhrbuch dcr hi-storischen Methode, 1894, p. GS.

402 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Seven eighths of the current reproach of pedantry flung at modern
studies in English, at excessive zeal for linguistic problems, may be
said to spring from an unholy desire to talk about Shakespeare
and Chaucer without the trouble of finding out precisely what
Shakespeare or Chaucer means. But the English scholar has other
than defensive relations with science; he must not neglect the rela-
tion of literary facts to laws which psychology, ethnology, sociology,
have shown to be of permanent importance for literature itself,
precisely as the psychologist or sociologist must not too eagerly im-
pose these laws upon literature without due study of the particular
case. In certain brilliant researches, psychological and biological in
method, sociological in aim, M. Tarde, working on the lines started
by Walter Bagehot in his Physics and Politics, arrives at the formula
of invention and imitation, a formula which he declares to be of
quite universal validity. He then goes on to apply it to literature,
really with no more novelty in this general view of the case than can
be found, stripped of biological and psychological allusion, in a dull
paper about the same formula read by the younger Racine long ago
before the Academy of Inscriptions; but M. Tarde announces,
without due researches in literature itself, without due employment
of a literary method, that all great literature begins (debute) with
a great book, like the Bible, or the Iliad.1 Now, while M. Tarde 's
theory of the social process may be right, as opposed to Herbert
Spencer's theory about the development of the arts, it is nothing but
grotesque in this invasion of literature. Again, for the other instance,
a student of English literature, say in its development in the days
of Queen Anne, who should refuse to take account of the consider-
ations urged on social and psychological grounds by Bagehot himself
in his brief study of "literary fashion," would be darkening his room
against a welcome flood of light from the allied sciences. Some use
of these sciences is certainly desired; to determine it, one should
take into account the specific work in hand, the point of view and the
objective point, and one should also know something of the steps
by which scientific method in general, as well as particular results
of scientific research, have come into the alliance with literature.

First of all, it should be clearly understood in what function the
student of English literature appears; much of our current contro-
versy might be avoided if these lines of research were more carefully
drawn and the object of it were kept steadily in view. Passing by the
publisher's public, the mob of gentlemen who read with ease, and
coming to those whose attitude toward the subject is of importance
for other reasons than mere supply and demand, we may count three
types: the individual reader with valuable opinions, who notes clown
what M. Anatole France has charmingly called the adventures of
1 Lcs Lois de I'Imitation, p. 233.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 403

one's mind among books, — the irresponsible but genial critic; then
the responsible and professional critic, the critic of the schools; and
finally the man whom, for lack of a more specific name, we may
call the scholar. Montaigne, Sainte-Beuve, and Taine would perhaps
best impersonate these several functions on a high plane of achieve-
ment. The first is a literary free-lance, and his alliances cannot
concern us. For the other two, while it is evident that the critic is
frequently a scholar, in the best sense of the term, often a far better
scholar than the manufacturer of dissertations, and while there are
surely more bad scholars than bad critics, seeing that the critic is
anchored to his facts, while the scholar may drift over seas of erudi-
tion to no purpose whatever, none the less there is a very well-marked
distinction between them, and this distinction points imperatively
to a useful division of labor. It divides the critic's main task, which,
in Professor Saintsbury's phrase, is "the reasoned exercise of literary
taste," or, in other words, the assignment of values and the main-
tenance of a standard, from a task which is not so much the "bird's-
eye view," so heartily detested by Professor Saintsbury himself, as
a scientific study of facts in their whole range, and a search for the
principles and laws which govern the course of literature as an
element in human life. Everybody knows the distinction; but in
practice it is neglected to a most astonishing degree. Too often
scholar and critic are at odds, each thinking of his own intent and
imputing it to the other; and these barren disputes, waged back and
forth over quite familiar facts, could be settled offhand, or else dis-
missed as groundless, if only it were clearly understood that on one
side critical considerations are at stake and on the other side interests
of the scholar's larger but no more important research. To take an
illustration from the learner's point of view, Ward's English Poets is
an anthology on the great scale which could hardly be surpassed;
it was fitting that Matthew Arnold should write the introduction
for it, and that critics of the first rank should write the separate
appreciations. One hears it said that to read this book aright is to
understand the history of English poetry, — and no statement could
well wander farther from the truth. Here is no history of English
poetry, but rather a practical and admirable criticism; not because
long epics and all dramas had to be omitted, but because the history
of any body of national poetry, of any literature, is something
quite different from a synthesis of appreciations. For the critic the
sum of parts in a literature is vastly greater than the whole; for the
student of literature as a social element, the whole is vastly greater
than the sum of its parts. Let us take a still more obvious illustra-
tion of the neglect to keep in view the real object of research. The
dispute about literary types, not yet lulled to rest, loses its seeming
contradictions so soon as we separate critical from scholarly interests.

404 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Hennequin, like M. Tarde, ridiculed the notion of a type; and from
a critical point of view they were right in defying any one to combine
into a type of Touraine authorship such natives of the soil as
Rabelais, Descartes, Alfred de Vigny, and Balzac; while the late
Joseph Texte 1 was quite as successful, defending his views on the
making of cosmopolitan literature, when he challenged the critics
to detach the typical Scotsman, the typical northern peasant, from
their idea of Robert Burns. For Burns means one thing in the
scale of literary achievement, and he means quite another thing in
the scale of literary evolution; and the two meanings, while related,
must not be confused. The critic is right when he insists that the
sense of values in a work of art should not be merged into mere
questions of environment; the scholar is right when he protests that
discussions of artistic value, of personality, shall not cloud his view
of cause and effect working in long ranges of literary evolution. As
the critic deals mainly with the product and its maker, the science
outside of literature which most nearly concerns him is psychology.
Professor Dilthey's several essays 2 have called attention to this
application of psychology to the problems of authorship and the
individual in art, — an example that so far has had little following
in the study of English literature by am- consistently psychological
method. On the other hand, it is clear that the study of this liter-
ature as a social development, and as a whole, calls for help from
such sciences as sociology, ethnology, and anthropology, with history,
of course, as an inseparable ally. To trace back these two tendencies,
one toward an isolated and individual problem, and one toward
the problem of evolution in literature, is an interesting task; both
of them begin in the oldest critical studies. Xo doubt they can often
unite in one effort, and with the happiest result. — witness the per-
fection of that study of Villon made by the late Gaston Paris, and
many another masterpiece of the same kind. For the purposes of
this paper, however, they should be considered each for itself.

Before undertaking this task, it may be well to glance briefly at
an alliance of literature with scientific studies which concerns neither
critic nor scholar, but rather the poet himself. Professor Shaler has
recently called upon criticism to decide whether an imagination
trained by the quest of things scientific may not be fitted by such
training for poetic achievement, and has submitted certain interest-
ins dramas of his own making for the test. The answer will be of
considerable interest; for the assumption is quite different from that
other and qui'e familiar appeal which from time to time has urged

1 Defending also the milieu ; see his Jean Jacques Rousseau, p. xvii, ff.

- Xot.-ibly his linfrncje zum Studium der Jndiridualitat, Sitzungsber. der Berlin
Acad., 1896, i, 295, ff. The psychological school of criticism in Germany, mainly
concerned with Goethe, }\:\< done little so far of a comprehensive and positive
character.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 405

the poet to get his material and refresh his style from the results
of scientific discovery. In 1824 Sainte-Beuve noticed a book by
Ferdinand Denis, Scenes de la Nature sous les Tropiques, de leur
influence sur la poes.ie, — intended, as the critic says, to serve
poets and to "open new sources for their inspiration." This praise-
worthy cause, however, had been for some time the care of sundry
English writers who formed a little school of their own, and who,
while they failed in their practical ends, did no small service to the
cause of a more scientific study of literature. Dissenters by creed,
physicians, ministers, and the like by profession, they were cut off
from university training, and treated classical traditions with any-
thing but respect. Their actually scientific papers 1 gave place now
and then to a scientific discussion of literature. To this group be-
longs the credit of Aikin's somewhat tiresome essay, On the Appli-
cation of Natural History to Poetry;2 it suggests more modern
subjects for the poet and more accurate description for his method.
Take the "migration of birds," says Aikin, and the "calabash tree,"
and " that enormous gigantic serpent of Africa, which a poet might
employ with striking effect." Dr. Percivalurges 3 "the alliance of
natural history and philosophy with poetry," recommending even a
knowledge of medicine. Addison, in his deistic enthusiasm, had long
before advised poets to seek inspiration in these things; and even
Coleridge seems to have heard advice of this sort, probably from some
of his Unitarian friends. At any rate, he attended certain lectures
on chemistry in order "to increase his stock of metaphors." But the
Ancient Mariner relied on no such expedients; it was honest Erasmus
Darwin who made the supreme effort of this school, forgotten now
save for one title, the Loves of the Plants.4 Whatever the scientific
poet may do, and he may do much, the poetry of science has not
yet become the poetry of poetry.

It is the scientific spirit in literary studies which claims our atten-
tion here. Vico made a foothold for the precise formula and the
general principle; but more exact dealings with certain problems of
literature had begun before his day. Accuracy of observation, and
collection of related facts, took the field primarily in the study of
language as means of literary expression. Kircher — I suppose him
to be the man whom Archbishop Usher, talking with Evelyn in
August. IGoo. called a mountebank and cited as instance that the
"Italians" of that day "understood but little (ireeke" - Kircher
touches this exact method in his Musiirtjin Univcrsalix, a not quite
unreadable book; it correlates poetry with song, gives musical

1 Sen the Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester.

2 Warrington. 1777.

3 Moral and Literary Dissertations, Warrinffton, 17S4. the sixth essav.

4 Goethe's Metamorphose dcr Pjlanzni has more to say on the subject: Init it
is after all a tour de force.

406 ENGLISH LITERATURE

notes for the crowing of a cock, and is illustrated by pictures of the
ear. Similar illustrations, showing the invasion of literary criticism
by scientific minds, can be found in the anonymous De Poematum
Cantu et Viribus Rythmi, really the work of Is.aac Vossius who died
in 1673 as canon of Windsor. The Abbe du Bos. who knew the
book and who is himself so surprisingly modern in his conception of
his task, suggests for the student of literature a closer study of
phonetics. The extreme phase of this scientific method is doubtless
to be sought, in Marmontel's Natural History of Poetry Considered
as a Plant, the title of a section of his essay on that art.1 Beattie,
in an otherwise dull essay,2 would consider the physiognomy of
a land in relation to the character of its poetry, a task which
was undertaken for English literature only a few years ago by the
Romanes lecturer at Oxford.

Here, of course, the scientific spirit has called in actual science as
an ally in literature; and here too, very obviously, is a phase of that
long and famous discussion about the influence of climate. From
climate to social conditions is a short step. The older controversy
was begun in its modern form by Du Bos; but questions of the kind
go far back. Galen says that Posidonius taught this doctrine; 3 and
it was current in Plato's day. Du Bos, remarking that Fontenelle
suggested the idea and ought to have developed it, undertakes to give
proof for it; arguing from individuals to nations, and from a nation
to its literature, he makes out a fair case for physical environment.
The arguments grew warm, with the critics, as one might expect,
mainly in opposition. Blackwell, by his studies on Homer, out-
stripped Du Bos in enthusiasm for the idea; Dr. Johnson, in his life
of Milton, sneers at it. A temperate summary of the case occurs in
a book neither deep nor original, and now quite neglected, but valu-
able for its cosmopolitan note, Denina's Discorso sopra le Viccndc
flrlla Lctteratura, published in Turin in 1760, translated in 1771 into
English by John Murdoch in a small volume called An Essay on the
Revolutions of Literature, and republished not only twice in Italy, but
also in Berlin in 1784, under the auspices of Frederick the Great, to
whom it was dedicated; the author uses German as well as French
writings, and has a very modern sort of chapter 4 entitled "Influenza
dell' Inghilterra nella Letteratura del Continentc," — a neat supple-
ment to the still limited ideas of Du Bos on the scope of comparative
literature, and not without interest for the student of to-day. Like
the modern critic, Denina is inclined to lay more stress on the coni-

1 Po/s-ic, in vol iv of his Elements de la Literature, contributed to the Ency-
rlopidie.

2 Poetry and Music as they affect the Mind, in Essays, Edinburgh, 1776, but
•\vrittrn in 1762.

3 Gudeman, Sources of the Gcrmania, in Transactions of the American Philolog-
ical Association, xxxi, 108.

4 In the Naples edition of 1792, n, 230.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 407

parison of literature with literature and less on the results of other
sciences. He is sure that Du Bos rides the climatic hobby too hard.
But his protest, however mild, was unavailing. Montesquieu made
climate almost supreme, but brought the people itself into full view;
in time, Comte corrects the physical influence by the moral and the
mental, adding his famous milieu intellectuel; and at last Taine
comes to the full notion of sociological, ethnological, and physiological
environment as controlling factor in literature. Taine marks for
literature — by a happy chance, particularly for the study of
English literature — the culmination of a great movement in the
arts, in statecraft, and in philosophy at large, which everywhere
tended to find the source of things not in individual initiative, human
or divine, but in vast forces, cosmic law, working with absolute1
certainty and to ends of a consummate perfection. As men turned in
government from king to people, and in nature from a personal and
voluntary supervision to the great democracy of natural forces, so in
literature itself, art as well as science, one put the individual author
into the background and began to talk of the literature of a nation,
the poetry of a people. Literature as a whole loomed large in the
foreground and absorbed the individual product. Origins and be-
ginnings were eagerly studied; and along with this particular study,
helping it and helped by it, rose the new and yet unnamed sciences
with which we are now concerned. "Study the people" is the new
cry of an anonymous reviewer, probably Goldsmith himself, giving
advice to the poet; "study the people," repeated the scholars who
took special literatures in hand; and "study the people" was the
watchword of that school of thinkers in England and France who
founded the science of sociology. At these two last-named groups
we are now to look.

It was literary criticism, old as literature itself, which began the
new movement as part of that eternal discussion about the tests and
character of genius. Blackwell, Lowth, Hurd, Warton, Young, and
Robert Wood, the English group, Condorcet, Montesquieu, and
Rousseau in France, and, above all. the German Herder, drove crit-
icism from dusty library corners into the fresh air. This process,
so often described as a "'return" to nature, to medievalism, to sin-
cerity of heart instead of acuteness of mind. — the gist of Rousseau's
first discourse, — to savage simplicity instead of civilized duplicity.
— the theme of the second discourse. — was really a sociological
and ethnological extension of the timeworn discussion of genius in
the spirit of the great democratic- movement everywhere astir.
Lowth put the genius of Hebrew poetry, even of its figures anil
tropes, in the life of the Hebrew people: \\ ood. following Blackwell.
but with a saner conception of t'ungs. did a like service for Homer.
comparing Homeric "manners" with those of American red men;

408 ENGLISH LITERATURE

Sir William Jones, in one of two essays l added to his poems, pits
spontaneity and natural genius against the theory of imitation as
defended by the Abbe Batteux, and opens a significant view into
the literature of an old and distant people ; everywhere a transfer of
genius from individual to folk, nation, race. Young's essay, highly
rated as it is, has less novelty than one might suppose; Hobbes had
written to something of the same purpose, and St. Evremond,
exiled in England, had seen the great light long before Young; poetry,
he said,2 is the speech now of gods and now of fools, but rarely of
ordinary men. This, of course, is the claim for esprit, championed by
Du Bos, against Boileau's plea for common sense. All the threads of
this long controversy for genius and the people, nature, spontaneity,
were woven by Herder into his doctrine of natural, national genius,
and the history of humanity itself.

Parallel to this movement in literary criticism went the progress of
the new sciences themselves. In England, Locke and the grotesque
but incisive Mandeville, then Hume and Adam Smith, and, I am
fain to add, Lord Monboddo, along with the French school, gradually
made these new allies of literature into recognized sciences. Locke
invoked the reports of travelers, and advocated the study of "chil-
dren, savages, and idiots."3 The comparative method seized upon
modern instances. England's influence on France, French ideas in
PZngland, are constantly cited by this school. Mandeville, and, after
him. Hume and Adam Smith, use what would now be called statistics.
Mandeville, long before Rousseau set up a perfect savage, insists on
the savage as he is, and laughs at Sir William Temple's virtuous red
man as "fit to be a justice of the peace." Hume, though skeptical
about the influence of climate on national character, finds 4 that
the " rise and progress of the arts and sciences" are due to sociological
conditions rather than to personal initiative and imitation. Adam
Smith, however small the compass of his essays on this topic, is of
supreme importance; Dugald Stewart, indeed, his editor, thinks
that Smith really invented that "theoretical or conjectural history"
\vhir-h deals by scientific inference with the origin and growth of
things hidden in a remote past. As for Monboddo. while it may be
true, as Sir Leslie Stephen says, that he followed dull Harris in an
attempt to revive Aristotelian philosophy, what he really accom-
plish^! was his own. Gibbon on the steps of the capitol at Rome.
planning his great work, is matched by Monboddo moved to write
his Origin and Progress of Language by the perusal of a Huron
dictionary supplementing a book of travels among the American

"On the Arts commonly called Imitative," in Poems . . . from the Asiatic
Languages, Oxford, 177'-'.

: (Euvres M(-sl<'f-*. Tonson, 1709, n, 119, ff. "elf la Poesie."

3 Patten, De>.-cJr,pmf)if f,j English Thought, p. 15S.

4 Essays, ed. Given and Grose, I, 174, fT.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 409

Indians. The comparison is suggestive. Sociology, ethnology, —
Monboddo complains that only three "barbarous" languages were
in his time accessible, — and now anthropology, take the field. The
last named, one may say, was founded by Voltaire, Turgot, and their
followers, as well as the history of civilization so called; these
sciences, meanwhile, were made popular by Rousseau,1 precisely as
it was left to Herder to popularize the sociological study of literature.
From Herder to Taine is simply a progress of the alliance.

The great century of the sciences had hardly begun, however,
when a reaction set in, feeble at first, but gathering strength in certain
critical and philological quarters. A. W. Schlegel called the student of
literature back to his own ground, insisting — salutary work! —
on a critical knowledge of the subject, on profound philological
studies. Historical and comparative to a brilliant degree, Schlegel
nevertheless distinctly opposes the spirit of sociological combinations
and generalizations then invading literature. He refuses to lose the
author in his environment. Lachmann performed a somewhat
similar service in philology pure and simple; and the often admirable
work of Miillenhoff shows not only a praiseworthy concentration on
the literary problem itself, but a superfluously contemptuous atti-
tude toward the aids that were offered by actual ethnological and
sociological studies. The democratic movement came into disfavor
everywhere. Cosquin ridiculed the autonomy of the popular talc
and turned it over to the tender mercies of imitation — imitation on
a new and literal scale unknown before. Taine's own masterpiece
was hardly published before a goodly number of critics and scholars
were at work to throw down the main prop of his literary method, the
doctrine of the milieu; while all the old watchwords of the sociological
school came more or less into discredit. "Laws" and "forces" are
phrases that are as plainly obsolescent in some quarters as " provi-
dence " is obsolete. A very healthy reaction, to which all praise is due.
was meanwhile putting the real facts and the unquestionable problems
of literature into the foreground of investigation, and sending theories
of origin to the rear. The great doctrine of environment, the great
problem of evolution, are not exactly put away forever, but they are
certainly postponed to a more convenient season, or else relegated
to books 2 that make no pretense to exact literary research; while-,
for this research itself, the theory which now holds the field is that
convenient formula already named, the formula of invention and
imitation. Students of English literature consult Taine nowadays.
not because his theory is right, but because of his genius and grasp

1 A remarkable passage in Rousseau, Sur I'Originc, etc., ed. 1793, i, ">S, ff.. sug-
gests that two men, one rich and one wise, should circumnavigate the globe simply
in order to study the human race.

2 Posnctt and Letourneau, for example, are both scholars who really bclo-iLi
to another department of investigation.

410 ENGLISH LITERATURE

of significant facts ; for method, they follow rather such an historian of
our literature as Hettner, in his admirable volume on the eighteenth
century; his definition1 of literature — "the history of ideas, and
of their scientific and artistic forms" —is dominant over Taine's
famous triad. Of allied sciences, psychology is now the favorite; for
psychology is in demand with each of the two divisions of literary
research. The formula of invention and imitation is neatly halved.
To the critic goes invention; his old quest of genius, his old study
of the individual and responsible artist, is restored in full measure;
while to comparative literature, a new and lusty science, which
must ignore social forces and all such exsufflicate and blown sur-
mise, is assigned the glorified search for stolen goods, mainly, how-
ever, without imputation of unrighteousness in the theft, - — in a
\\ ord, the trail of imitation. The " history of ideas " and their " artis-
tic form " is a more dignified phase of the same task, but in a larger
scope; to trace ideas and artistic forms from place to place, from
time to time, glancing only as an incident of the way at environ-
ment and social influences, is beyond all doubt the present way to the
stars. Criticism, meanwhile, is taking good care of invention, and
is preserving genius from all popular contamination. In a word, the
relation of English literature to other sciences is now a relation
far more limited and reduced in the strictly professional domain
than was the case four decades ago, or at the opening of the preceding
century.

This reaction against sociological studies has, however, gone too
far. No science has ever rejected in mass its store of old achievement:
and while the extravagances must go. the mistaken method and the
too confident, too sweeping theory, ancient good is not all uncouth,
and the solid gains of those great scholars who fought the democratic
fight in literature shall not be flung away. Returning to the useful
division of labor between critic and scholar, one asks what is their
present attitude, in sober and rational survey, toward the sciences in
<]uestion, particularly toward sociology? What shall they reject,
and what shall they retain? It is clear that the monarchical school,
like the democratic, may run to an extreme; while the latter took
a poet entirely out of his own personality, and overwhelmed him in
a flood of influences, inheritances, movements, and things not only
figuratively but often literally in the air, the monarchical method
tends to surround the author with a hedge of divinity and psychology,
and to set up a theory of divine right in matters of art. Criticism
of the best class now begins to refuse recognition for this theory.
Bnmetiere, in his study of literary types as well as literary personal-
ities, is witness for a still lively relation between modern science and
the larger scope of criticism. His studies, however, border closely
1 Preface to fourth edition.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 411

on the scholar's domain; and there is as good evidence for the need
of a sane alliance with sociological theories in the unsatisfactory
results of those studies of authors which depend altogether on
psychological analysis; the sight of these inverted gentlemen diving
or burrowing into the alleged mind of a Goethe is not inspiring, and
Goethe himself would have been the first to recommend them a bout
with even sociological hard facts.1 Sainte-Beuve's way was far
more productive. And for the scholar himself, even Taine's way is
not yet abandoned; with certain smoothings and straightenings it
will still prove the best way. As the atmosphere slowly clears up,
it is seen that of all the host who have tried the task, Taine alone
came near to writing a real history of English literature; he did not
quite do it, — no; but only with him does one have the sense of a
whole literature in broad and general movement, yet without loss of
the sense of values and the delicate shading of the parts. To come
back to the old disconnected array of summaries and appreciations,
with more or less eloquence about the divinity of art, would be
suicidal. A recent historian of English literature has the air of intro-
ducing one to his club, and recommending the more important
members. This will never do. Suum cuique. The true history of
English literature should not be a series of criticisms, any more than
the criticism of some one English author should be a general history
and treatise on contemporary life, with a few apologetic individual
details. What is really needed by way of correction for Taine's method
is not only to reckon with the literary shortcomings of the work,
but to get a new and sound idea of environment and social conditions
from sociology in its modern form, and from history at its best.

Taine's most vulnerable point, of course, was his treatment of the
Early English period; he knew little about it, and, when he wrote,
little was known about it by anybody except the Germans. Here his
theory of the milieu was at its worst, simply because he combined
a ton of theory with two or three ounces of fact. The Englishman
of that early period, reasoned Taine, gorged himself with pork, or
starved on acorns, and drank oceans of beer; he fought incessantly;
he had no manners and few books; hence a literature of pork or
acorns, beer, clownishness, ignorance, and turmoil of fight, — a
literature which Taine read only in scanty excerpts of an inadequate
translation. But it does not follow that the modern historian should
give up Taine's sociological idea. He can well keep it, and practice
it. provided only that he cleave to his facts; and they are difficult

1 They seldom refer to their great master's advice:
Wer die Dichtkunst will verstehen
Muss ins Land der Dichtung gehen;
Wer den Dichter will verstehen
Muss in Dichters Lande gehen,
— which seems to cover the case.

412 ENGLISH LITERATURE

enough. The scanty remnant of literature read at first hand, he has
to put this into proper relation with its environments in order not
only to understand it, but to supply the omissions, and to restore, so far
as he can, the literature as it was in its whole range and expression.
Back and forth, between these scanty remnants of literary achieve-
ment and the baffling hints of history, he must fare, until he decides
just what this literature has to say for itself, — its proportion of
emotion and thought, its relation to classic remains, its proportion of
monkish isolation, and its measure of supply from contemporary life,
— and until he decides whether this life itself was of the noble, semi-
barbarian type which Grimm and Waitz and Freeman championed,
or that feudal complex of a few chieftains and a host of serfs which
certain sociologists now declare to have held the foreground of earliest
Germanic as well as English history. Ethnology is offered as an aid
in this study; but ethnology, so far as it parallels past stages of our
race with modern savage conditions, must be used with a caution
which borders closely upon abstinence itself. English survivals, on
the other hand, are of vast importance for early English literature and
life; and what the Germans call Culturgeschichte, and Professor Tylor
wrote without so expressive a name, but with a wealth of material
and consummate genius of exposition, is a science with which the
scholar in literature must maintain relations as intimate as may be.
And all this is in the spirit of Taine.

Students in English literature, however, are not mainly busied -
or at least, let us hope they are not — with the reaches of literary
evolution. At the farthest extreme from this task they work on the
trails of imitation, and trace the course of jest or theme or phrase in
its passage from land to land, from century to century, from author to
author. I have elsewhere expressed the opinion that this work, highly
valuable in itself and as a detail in larger tasks, assumes too much
importance when it makes itself the main business of comparative
literature and becomes a kind of vast bookkeeping for the settlement
of accounts as among the literatures of the world. As I hinted, behind
this mere barter are the mines, the mills, and the seeclfields of litera-
ture itself. Xo better corrective for the abuse, or at least superfluous
u.se. of comparative literature on these trails of imitation can be found .
as I believe, than an alliance with sociological interests. Studies
which take environment into account, and reckon with social condi-
tions at every turn, which grant that while the story may pass every-
where, yet the form of it and the expression of it belong to the time
and the locality as well as to the author's genius, these, combined
with analysis of the actual literary traffic, will go far to restore dignity
to literary investigation without impairing its exactness. Literature
is a thing of export and import; it is also a thing of growth, and
always stands in some connection with the society which produces it.

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 413

When the individual author is in question, other scientific influences
come rightly into play. Here scholarship, as one is forced to call it,
must lean heavily upon criticism and ask psychology for aid; here is
the field for doctrines not only of the intellectual process, of author-
ship in itself, but of heredity as well. What subtle influence plays
through the heredity of literature, passing from author to author
and from group to group, M. Brunetiere has told the world of crit-
icism, heretofore too eager for discoveries in individual genius, too
eager to write down invention as its master- word. But the significance
of groups and schools in authorship frequently remains hidden with-
out sociological help. In dealing with any school of the soft, which
has got its vogue in whatever way, there must be careful consideration
whether this vogue is due to the author or to certain social, national
conditions. It is probably right to connect the vogue of Shakespeare's
historical plays, on English ground at least, and in their own time,
with a demand for a glorification of England brought about by the
ruin of the Armada and by the new feeling of national importance. It
is also, doubtless, right to connect the recent outburst of historical
novels in America with a similar sense of national importance rising
steadily since the Civil War and leaping into prominence with the
results of the war with Spain. But the offspring of the one Spanish
war is not to be compared with the offspring of the other. There the
social forces ran far behind the literary power of execution, and in
Shakespeare's case the social parallel amounts barely to a detail; here,
so far as one can judge at short range, the social, national phase is
overwhelmingly important, and the books themselves, save possibly
in one or two cases, are merely of commercial importance. Of the two
facts regarded as literary phenomena, one is full of significance for
the sociological study of literature, and has no attraction for the
critic, while the other, interesting in a casual way on the social side,
is carried impetuously from any such point of view and is submitted
to the great court of literary achievement.

This division of labor is, then, evident enough as at least a partial
solution of our problem. The relation of English literature to other
sciences lies mainly in the need, for aid in the scholar's undertaking,
to study its evolution as a whole, to investigate its groups, its general
movements, and the influences which have determined its course.
The sciences which offer this aid direct arc those that deal with
society, with racial and national divisions, with the general history of
man on the earth. Criticism, on the other hand, seeking after values
and maintaining standards, has little use for these sciences save in an
indirect and casual way. It finds its warrants in its own material. In
individual psychology, however, it may have a valuable ally. For
both of the great interests, finally, scholarship and criticism alike,
history is an indispensable background.

414 ENGLISH LITERATURE

One science I have left altogether out of account. Psychology of the
people, demopsychology, whatever its name, has been lately revived
after a long sleep in the volumes of its almost forgotten journal, —
a sleep that seemed to be the sleep of death. But it is yet too form-
less, even in its modern shape, for satisfactory use. Including every
social achievement, politics, art, language, letters, it bids fair to be
a science of things in general; and till it is completed in that
perfection, sociology will comfortably serve our turn.

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY

BY JOHANNES HOOPS

[Johannes Hoops, Ordinary Professor of English Philology, University of Heidel-
berg, b. Rablinghausen, Germany, July 20, 1865. Gymnasium Bremen, 1876-
85; University of Jena, 1885; Freiburg, 1886-89; Ph.D. Freiburg, 1889. In-
structor in English, University of Tubingen, 1893-96; called to Heidelberg,
1896. Author of On Old English Plant-Names; Keats' s Youth and Juvenile Poems;
Forest-Trees and Cultivated Plants in Germanic Antiquity; and other works and
memoirs. Editor of Englische Studien; Englische Textbibliothek; and Anglis-
tische Forschungen.]

THE subject which was assigned to me for my address would seem
naturally to require a certain choice and limitation. The number
of problems with which students of English literary history are at
present occupied is endless; only the principal ones can come into
consideration for our purpose, and even among these a selection is
necessary, which must needs be of a subjective character: opinions
will differ as to the importance of different problems. Nor can
a solution of the problems discussed be attempted in the scope of
a lecture; only some suggestions can be given.

Significant problems present themselves in all periods of English
literary history. In Old English literature the Beowulf question still
awaits its final settlement. Some points, to be sure, are almost unani-
mously accepted to-day. So far as the historical basis of the Beowulf
epic, the age and the dialect of the manuscript, the scene of the
action, and the home of the saga is concerned, there seems to be an
almost general agreement; but as to locality, time, and mode of the
genesis of the Beowulf poem, as to its mythological foundation, the
author, etc., opinions at present still differ widely, and it surely will
be some time before the controversy about it will subside, if this will
ever be the case.

In Chaucer philology one important task is above all to be solved;
the establishment of a critical text. Meritorious as Skeat's great
edition certainly is by reason of its valuable introductions, notes,
glossary, and various readings — the text is treated too arbitrarily
and cannot be regarded as final. No doubt, the establishment of
a critical Chaucer text is particularly difficult: it is not only a task,
it involves a problem. But it must be tackled and will be achieved
some day. John Koch's critical edition of The Pardoner's Tale, lately
published, on the basis of the entire material, is an encouraging
attempt in this direction.

In spite of the thousands of books that have been written on
Shakespeare during the last two centuries, in spite of the legion of
authors, both learned and dilettante, who are still engaged in editing,
criticising, and commenting upon the works of the greatest British

416 ENGLISH LITERATURE

poet, there remain a great many questions unanswered, and new
ones crop up continuously that demand an earnest consideration. I
am not thinking of the famous Shakespeare-Bacon squabble, which is
nothing but a literary farce. Originated in the land of humbug, and
eagerly adopted by would-be scholars in the land of mists and in the
land of dreamers, it is still carried on by a set of people who may.
on the whole, be characterized either as amateurs with an enviable
superfluity of leisure ; as hysteric women with a sense for the mysteri-
ous; or as cranks, or as swindlers. It would be an encroachment
upon the reader's time to enter once more into a discussion of this
literary sea-serpent. But the origin of the Hamlet drama, the rainbow
character of its hero, the relation of the two Quartos to one another,
the personal allusions in the Sonnets — these and many others are
questions which still excite, and may Well excite, the curiosity and
sagacity of men of letters, and which continue to provoke new
attempts at explanation.

Yet it is none of these much mooted problems that forms the sub-
ject of my present paper. I rather beg leave to direct my readers'
attention to a few less known tasks, the handling of which appears
to me to be a thing of urgent necessity.

An important problem of this kind is a pragmatic history of
Oriental subjects in English literature. To point out the historical
facts which, in their turn, caused the ever-renewed interest of the
Occidental world in the Orient, the literary subjects which at different
times found their way into the European literatures, their significance
for the development of p]nglish poetry especially, and the numberless
channels and rills and veins through which they were spread, and
separated, and interwoven, and handed down from generation to
generation: such would be the task of the future historian who <lare.<
grapple with this difficult problem.

I venture a few unpretending suggestions as to the general history
of those Oriental influences in English literature.

The Bible, and especially the Old Testament, has always directed
the interest of the Christian nations to the Orient. It was indorsed
by influences of classical literature. Earlier than to other countries
of the West, the Alexander saga found its way to England, where as
early as the eleventh century we meet with translations of the Latin
Epistle of Alexander to Aristotle and DC rebus in Ori<nte mirabilibnx.
containing miraculous descriptions of the Orient and of that land of
wonders. India. To the same period belongs the Old English adapt-
ation of the late Greek novel of Apollonius of Tyre, from a Latin
version. The stories of .sea-voyages, .storms, pirates, and adventure.-
which occur in this novel seem to have rendered it particularly con-
genial to the Anglo-Saxon reader.

PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 417

An important part as intermediaries between the East and the
West was played by the Moors in Spain. From the tenth to the
twelfth century Cordoba was a centre of culture and arts and science
for the whole of Western Europe, and a large number of Oriental
books and literary subjects owe their introduction into the literatures
of the Occident to Moorish or Spanish authors. It was in Spain that
the converted Jew, Petrus Alphonsus, compiled the famous Discip-
lina Clericalis (1106) from Arabic sources.

The Crusades gave a fresh and lasting impulse to the interest in the
Orient in all countries, an impulse which can hardly be overrated as
to its importance for the literary history of Europe. The number of
tales with Oriental subject-matter or Oriental scenery now increases
rapidly. The Middle English story of Richard Cceur de Lion is a direct
product of this era of chivalrous romanticism and aspiring religious
ideals. The Book of the Seven Sages, together with the Disciplina
( 'lericalis, became a treasury of Oriental subjects for all European
literatures, headed by the French. It was from one of the many
French versions that this collection of Eastern novels was translated
into English early in the fourteenth century, under the title of The
Proces of the Sevyn Sages. The Lai of Dame Siriz, and the story of
Generydes are of Oriental origin, and Floris and Blanchefteure, The
Romance of the Sowdone of Babylone, Sir Ferumbras, Rowland and Ver-
nagu, and other novels of the Charlemagne cycle are more or less full
of Oriental elements. Like Richard Cceur de Lion and The Proces of
the Sevyn Sages, most of these poems are translations or adaptations
of French originals.

In the thirteenth century the court of Frederick II in Sicily, and
afterwards the North Italian city-republics, continued the relations
with the nations of the East, and were the centres of exchange for the
cultures of the Orient and Occident.

Pilgrimages and journeys to the Holy Land, too, had become
frequent since the Crusades. They were greatly encouraged by the
appearance in the fourteenth century of John Mandevillc7s Travels
in the Orient, a fantastic compilation which, written originally in
French, has come down to us in numerous versions both in manu-
script and in print, in the Latin. French, and English languages, testi-
fying to the immense popularity which this work enjoyed. All the
old legends of the Miracles of the Orient are here amalgamated with
much that is new about those fabulous monsters with which the
medieval fancy populated the mysterious East.

The relations with the Orient received a new and mighty impulse
through the victorious progress of the Turks and the Mongols in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the perpetual wars against
the Turks in the following periods. The glorious reign of Solyman
the Magnificent (1520-66) especially drew the eyes of all Christian

418 ENGLISH LITERATURE

nations to the Muhammadan people that, by conquering Constantin-
ople in 1453, had gained a firm footing on European soil. This gave
rise to an altogether new series of Eastern subjects: whereas the
older class of Oriental tales is of purely literary character (fables,
parables, fairy-tales, stories, etc.), the Turkish wars occasioned a
number of compositions, chiefly dramatic, dealing with characters
and events taken from contemporary history. The rule of Solyman,
the tragic death of his eldest son Mustapha in 1553, and the deeds
of his general Ibrahim, became favorite subjects of Occidental poetry.

As early as 1567 we find some Turkish tales. " Mohamet and Irene,"
" Sultan Solyman," and others, in Painter's Pastyme of Pleasure, and
in the French collection of novels Le Printemps, by Jacques Yver
(1572, translated into English by Henry Wotton in 1578), the story
of " Solyman and Perseda " is related. In 1581 a Latin drama, Solyman
et Mustapha, was performed ; in 1587 Marlowe produced his Tambur-
laine the Great on the stage; in 1592 the drama of Solyman and
Perseda, generally ascribed to Kyd. appeared, followed in 1594 by the
anonymous piece, Selimus, ascribed to Greene, in 1609 by Brooke's
Mustapha, and in 1612 by Daborne's A Christian turned Turk. In
1603 Knolles published his fundamental Generall Historic of the
Turks, which filled young Byron with enthusiasm for the Orient,
excited in him the desire of seeing the Levant with his own eyes,
and, according to his own statement, contributed toward giving the
Oriental coloring to his epic tales.

The above-named borrowings from Turkish history are almost
the sole Oriental subjects which can be pointed out in Elizabethan
literature. Only Greene's Penelope's Web (1582) and Marlowe's
Jew of Malta (ca. 1589) remain to be mentioned. Otherwise English
literature in the age of the Renaissance keeps remarkably aloof
from Oriental influences. Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson. save
for occasional isolated instances, show no Oriental features at all.
Antony and Cleopatra, in spite of its local background, is a Roman
tragedy. Classical antiquity and the great national tradition are the
commanding influences in English Renaissance literature by which
all others are overshadowed. The fact that England in those times.
as contrasted with the ensuing centuries on one side and the era
of the Crusades on the other, was comparatively little concerned in
the political events of the Orient, may also in part be responsible
for the lack of Oriental influences in the literature of the age.

In the latter respect a change was to take place soon enough. The
goal of all the great explorers in the epoch of discoveries had been
the land of gold and wonders, India, to the quest of which even the
discovery of America was due. During the sixteenth century, the
Indies had been in the hands of the Portuguese and the Dutch;
the foundation, in 1600, of what was later called the East India

PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 419

Company, however, marked the commencement of the conquest
of India by the English, which was gradually achieved during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A number of books of travel,
among them notably those by Linschoten, Hakluyt, Sandys, and
Purchas, apprized the British public of the men, manners, institu-
tions, and scenery of the newly conquered countries. But it was long
before the conquest of India became of significance also for English
literature. Fletcher's Island Princess (1621) and Dryden's Aureng-
zebe (1657) remained rather solitary specimens of poems with the
scene localized in India. Nor were the treasures of old Indian litera-
ture disclosed and made accessible until much later times. The
importance of the steadily proceeding conquest of India for English
literature in the next century and a half consisted principally in
keeping the interest of the English permanently directed toward the
Orient.

The countries east and south of the Mediterranean, from the old
Moorish dominion in Spain and Morocco to Persia and Turkey, still
continued to furnish the local background of the majority of poems
with Oriental subjects.

But to the sober zeal of the Puritans, with their strenuous religious
and social aims, the satiated, indolent, sensuous life of the heathenish,
Muhammadan Orient in general could not but be a matter of detest-
ation. It is, therefore, natural enough that in the first half of the
seventeenth century, as in the preceding Elizabethan ages, we find
but comparatively few works with Oriental coloring. Massinger, in
his drama, The Renegado (1624), created the type of the defiant
renegade wrhich was to become such a favorite figure, especially in the
poetry of Byron. Fletcher's Island Princess (1621) has already been
mentioned; Chapman's Revenge for Honour, Lord Brooke's Alaham
(1633), Suckling's Aglaura (1638), and Denham's The Sophy (1641)
belong to this period.

With the Restoration of the Stuarts, however, which caused
such a general revolution in the history of English literature, a golden
age of Oriental subjects began, occasioned partly by the historical
facts already mentioned, partly by literary forces — the influence of
French literature, and, coherent with it, the rise of the heroic drama.

In France the interest in Oriental subjects had been revived by
the novels of Madeleine dc Scudery. In 1641, her Ibrahim ou Vlllustrt
Bassa appeared, which contained an episode on Mustapha ct Zcangir.
It was dramatized by her brother Georges in 1643, and was translated
into English. Between 1649 and 1653 Artamene, on Ic Grand Cyru*.
was issued, followed in 1660 by Almahidc. All of these novels fur-
nished subject-matter for dramatic productions by English writers.
The heroic novel was succeeded by the heroic drama. Both novelists
and dramatists took their themes with conscious preference from

420 ENGLISH LITERATURE

civilizations remote either in space or time, in order to give to their
figures the dignity adequate to the character of their heroic poetry,
and at the same time to allow themselves a greater freedom in
composition. Besides classical antiquity, therefore, especially the
rulers and events of modern Oriental history were chosen as subjects
for novels and plays.

The same holds good for England where the heroic play was intro-
duced from France. It was Davenant who, in his epoch-marking
opera, The Siege of Rhodes, in 1656, took the lead in the new fashion
of Oriental dramas in England, taking for his theme the famous
siege, in 1522, of the island of Rhodes by Soliman the Magnificent,
who finally succeeded in conquering the fortress which had long
been gallantly defended by the Hospitallers. Davenant's example
was followed by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, in his drama Mustapha
(1665), based upon Madeleine de Scudery's Mustapha et Zeangir.
In Head's English Rogue (1665-80), a unique mixture of the picar-
esque and the traveling novel, the scene is also laid to a great extent
in the Orient. Then came the long series of Oriental dramas, both
ancient and recent, with which Elkanah Settle flooded the contem-
porary stage for thirty years (from about 1666 to 1694): _Cambyscs,
The Empress of Morocco, The Conquest of China by the Tartars, Ibra-
him the Illustrious Bassa (adapted from the English translation of
Mile, de Scudery's novel Ibrahim, ou I'lllustrc Bassa}, The Distressed
Innocence, or The Princes of Persia, The Heir of Morocco, a sequel to
The Empress of Morocco, etc. Dryden, too, wrote several dramas with
Oriental subjects : Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada
hy the Spaniards (1670), derived from Mile, de Scudery's Almahide;
Aurengzebc (1675), the Indian drama already referred to, and Don
Sebastian (1690). Crowne followed suit with Cambyses (1670) and
Darius (1688), Southern with The Royal Brother, or the Persian
Prince (1682), Banks with his Cyrus the Great (1696), on the model
of Mile, de Scudery's Artamene, ou le Grand Cyrus, Mary Pix with
Ibrahim, the 12th Emperor of the Turks (1696), and Ilowo, in his
Tamerlane (1702), tried his hand on the same subject which Marlowe
had handled before him. The title of Davenant's Siege of Rhodes
UTivo rise to several Oriental dramas or tales with similar titles:
Xcvil Payne's Siege of Constantinople (1675), Durfey's Siege of
Memphis (1676), Hughes's Siege of Damascus (1726), and, to con-
clude with the most famous, Byron's Siege of Corinth (1816).

This list of heroic plays dealing with Oriental subjects aims by no
means at completeness, but it will sufficiently show how immensely
popular themes of this kind were in the days of Dryden.

In the age of Pope. Oriental subjects disappear together with the
heroic drama. The Vision of Mirza and the Story of Sfialcm and
Hilpa, in the Spectator (no. 159, September 1. 1711 and nos. 584, 585,

PROBLEMS OF _ ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 421

August 23, 25, 1714), Young's Busiris (1719), Hughes's Siege of
Damascus, just mentioned (1726), Lillo's Christian Hero (1735), and
Mallet's Mustapha (1759), are the last stragglers. In France the
enchanted world of the Arabian Nights had already in 1675 made
its first entrance through de la Croix's specimens of translation, and
in Galland's classical rendering of Les mille et une nuits (1704-17),
a repertory of inexhaustible riches for Oriental subjects was disclosed
which was to become of great and fruitful significance for the de-
velopment of romanticism. Montesquieu in his Lettres Persanes
(1721), on the other hand, and Voltaire in his Eastern dramas and
novels (1732-48) opened a new epoch in the application of Oriental
themes by making them the background of their rationalistic philo-
sophical speculations, a movement which attained its climax and
conclusion in Germany with Lcssing's Nathan der Weise (1779).

Both currents reached England comparatively late. The rational-
istic bent has sporadic representatives in Johnson's Rasselas (1759)
and in Horace Walpole's anonymous squib, A Letter from Xo Ho,
a Chinese Philosopher in London, to his friend Lien Chi, at Peking
(1757), \vhich \vas written in the manner of Montesquieu's Lettres
Persanes, and in its turn gave rise to Goldsmith's kindred Chinese
Letters (1760), reprinted, in 1762, as The Citizen of the World. The
Arabian Nights, on the other hand, though fecommended to the
British public, in Galland's translation, by Addison in the Spectator
(no. 535, Nov. 13. 1712), had hardly any noticeable influence until
after 1760, when it gradually became an important element in the
development of the new romantic movement. Beckford's Vathek
(1786), so highly admired by Byron, is its first lineal descendant in
English literature.

In the mean time an entirely new departure in the Eastern in-
fluences affecting European literature was initiated by the final
conquest and opening up of India through the English in the times
of Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. To the ancients and in the Mid-
dle Ages the eastern border of the world had been the mysterious
home of wonders and monstrosities, and their conception of it had
been greatly colored by Christian ideas throughout medieval times;
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the countries of the
Mast had been haunted and partly conquered by adventurous con-
quistadores in search of gold and riches: the eighteenth century
had viewed the Orient through the spectacles of deism and rational-
ism: it was now for the first time that a really scientific investiga-
tion of the literatures, languages, laws, institutions, and manners
of the Oriental peoples was begun.

Of important significance in this respect was the restless activity
of Sir William Jones (1746-94), who, in 1772, published a volume of
Poems containing translations and adaptations of Arabian, Persian.

422 ENGLISH LITERATURE

and Indian poems, followed in 1783 by a rendering of the Arabian
Moallakat and of Kalidasa's Sakuntala in 1789. He was the founder
and lifelong president of the Asiatic Society. Through his and
Colebrooke's efforts, moreover, translations of Indian and Persian
books on law and philosophy were undertaken that added a literary
interest in India to the political.

The outcome of it was the rise of Oriental studies which pervaded
all the European countries, and which in Germany resulted in the
creation of such works as Friedrich von Schlegel's Sprache und Weis-
heit der Inder (1808), Goethe's Westostlicher Divan (1819), Riickert's
long series of Oriental poems and translations (from 1822 on), Platen's
fairy epic Die Abassiden (1834), Bodenstedt's Lieder des Mirza
Schaffy (1851), and others. Schopenhauer's philosophy was greatly
influenced by these Oriental studies, and the beginning of compara-
tive Indo-Germanic philology was one of the earliest consequences of
this new movement. In Denmark it gave rise to pieces like Oehlen-
schlager's Aladdin (1805), a dramatic fairy-tale from the Arabian
Nights. In France Chateaubriand (Les Martyrs, 1809, Itineraire de
Paris a Jerusalem, 1811, Les aventures du dernier des Abencerages) ,
Victor Hugo (Les Orientales, 1828), and others, owe much to this era
of Orientalism.

Its effect on English literature, too, was far-reaching. It so hap-
pened that the commencement of Oriental studies, in the sixties
of the eighteenth century, coincided with the beginnings of the
romantic movement inaugurated by Macpherson, Percy, Walpole,
Chatterton, as a reaction against the rule of rationalism. The Orient
with its wonders and mysteries, its legends and fairy-tales, its splen-
dor of colors and sensuousness, has always been particularly congenial
to romanticism; no wonder, therefore, that the adherents of the new
spirit soon turned to the East for inspiration in their poetry.

The revival of the interest in the Orient which now began in
England was furthermore nourished and deepened by political events
like Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt (1798-99), the Peninsular
War (1808-14), and the struggle for independence in Greece, events
in all of which England was most vitally concerned.

' In consequence of all this, a second period of cultivation of Oriental
subjects was opened in English literature, as different in its character
from the first as romanticism differs from rationalism. Beckford led
the van with his splendid Eastern tale Vathek (1786), already men-
tioned, which has with it all the fairy charm of the Arabian Nights.
Coleridge's gorgeous vision, Kubla Khan (composed in 1797),Landor's
Gebir (1798). and Southey's Arabian epic, Thalaba the Destroyer
(1801), came next. Almost all the leading poets of this great era
came under the spell of these Oriental influences, nearly all of them
treated Eastern subjects in their poems, the only exceptions being

PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 423

Wordsworth and Keats. The Peninsular War occasioned no less
than three poems dealing with the conquest of Spain by the Moors:
Scott's Vision of Don Roderick (1811), Landor's Count Julian (1812),
and Southey's Roderick, the last of the Goths (1814). In 1810 Southey
published his Hindoo tale, The Curse of Kehama; from 1813-1816
Byron poured forth in rapid succession his series of Oriental epics (The
Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, The Siege of Corinth),
which were devoured with delight by his compatriots; but by far
the finest sketches that Byron has given us of Oriental life and
characters are to be found in his Don Juan and Sardanapalus: a
figure like that of Haidee is so intensely Oriental in all her passionate
love and tender sensuousness that it has no equal in the Oriental
tales of English literature.

Moore followed the example given by Byron in his Eastern epics ;
Lalla Rookh (1817) is one of the most perfect attempts at imitating
the style and atmosphere of genuine Oriental poetry. Shelley, too,
did homage to the Orient in Alastor (1816) and the Revolt of Islam
(1818). Of Walter Scott's novels the two "Tales of the Crusaders,"
(The Betrothed and The Talisman, 1825), The Surgeon's Daughter
(1827), and Count Robert of Paris (1832), belong to our province.
One of the most brilliant specimens of Orientalism in the English
literature of this period is James Morier's Hajji Baba of Ispahan,
which beats Vathek in the fidelity of its descriptions and the vivacity
of its narrative, and has become one of the classical books of Eng-
lish literature.

Of the poets of the Victorian era, Tennyson borrowed the idea
of his Locksley Hall from Sir William Jones's English translation of
the Arabian Moallakat, and according to an acute observation by
Koeppel, even the solemn, majestically broad-flowing meter was
suggested by the cadence of the Arabian original as he read it in
Sir William Jones's translation. From the same current which caused
Goethe, Schlegel, Riickert, and Bodenstedt to study Oriental litera-
ture, sprang Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum (1853), and the
free adaptation of the Rubaiyat from the Persian of Omar Khayyam,
by Tennyson's friend Edward FitzGerald (1859), which in its turn
exercised considerable influence on the pre-Raphaelites and younger
bards, and is an abiding stimulus to the study and translation of
other Persian poets. Sir Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia, too, is an
outcome of the same movement. Of American authors Emerson
and Thoreau were deeply impressed by Oriental philosophy and
We Itan schauung.

All these literary works belong to the period that was initiated
by the English conquest of India and which may be termed the
period of learned study of Oriental languages, literatures, and institu-
tions. Rudyard Kipling's Indian tales, with their descriptions mostly

424 ENGLISH LITERATURE

realistic of human characters and nature painted from life, seem to
begin a new period in the history of Oriental subjects. And the rise
of the Japanese in the last decades and their successes in the present
time may perhaps result in giving another impulse to the literature
of the West, and may transfer the interest in the Orient from the
eastern border of the ancient Grseco-Roman world to the shores
of Cathay and the Land of the Rising Sun.

Let us now turn to another group of problems which challenge
the acumen of the literary historian, in the field of recent literature,
where everything is moving and developing, where literature itself
is busy with the solution of problems. It is an indispensable task of
the literary historian to grasp the main currents of modern literature,
to recognize and appreciate the problems with which it is engaged,
to understand and describe them in their origin and development,
and to contribute to their solution.

After the battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo, England had the
uncontested sway of the sea. The result was an enormous increase
of trade and commerce, but together with this unprecedented rise
of commerce and national wealth a certain narrow-minded utili-
tarianism and commercial spirit seized hold of the majority of the
British people and invaded even the policy of the Government. It
was the period of unlimited individualism, of the Manchester doc-
trine which had the command of British politics for several decades
of the middle nineteenth century. But in the second half of the
century two different reactions set in against this policy of utilitarian-
ism and individualism: the social or humanitarian and the imperial-
istic movement, which both had their reflection in literature.

The former is the older of the two. It ran parallel with, and was
antagonistic to, the free-trade movement of the liberal parties by
which it was only temporarily outstripped. The reform of 1832 had
principally fulfilled the desires of the middle classes; it left the
laborers unsatisfied. It was this feeling of disappointment in the
working classes that gave rise to the first utterances of a socialist
spirit in the Chartist movement. Among the first to recognize its
essence and importance was Carlyle, who in his books on Chartism
(1839) and Past and Present (1843) pointed out its significance and
made an attempt at a just appreciation of it. The ideas he puts
forth in these works are those of a strong opponent to the individual-
ist laissez-faire doctrine, and of an ardent believer in collectivism,
in this respect disclosing him as an adherent of the spirit of the
Middle Ages, for which he otherwise had little admiration.

If Carlyle's writings were more or less historical, economic, and
philosophic treatises, the new ideas were not slow to invade also the
field of belles-lettres proper. Strongly influenced by the Oxford

PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 425

Tractarian movement, Disraeli, in Sybil and other novels, advocated
the rights of the people from a social conservative point of view.
In decided opposition to the ascetic Tractarian spirit, but in pursu-
ance of the same general aim of ameliorating the condition of the
people, Kingsley, in The Saint's Tragedy (1848), Yeast (1848),
Cheap Clothes and Nasty (1850), and Alton Locke (1850) displayed
his ideas of Christian Socialism and muscular Christianity. Though
a promoter of trade-unions and cooperative societies, he has nothing
of a socialist radical in him. His novels exhibit a rare combination
of the stalwart bravery of the old Teutonic warrior with deep
Christian piety and humane social collectivism.

A long series of other writers cooperated in the same direction:
Maurice, Hughes, Thomas Hood, Ebenezer Elliott, Thomas Cooper,
Bamford the Weaver, and, last but not least, Dickens. They all in
their turn and in their respective lines contributed to the develop-
ment of the idea of social reform, to a greater acknowledgment of
the rights of the people by the governing classes, and towards a
reaction against the liberal Manchester school.

As time passed on the socialist doctrines by degrees consolidated
themselves to the present system, mainly communistic in character.
And here again some of the leading men of the purely literary world
were among the first to adopt the new ideas and impress them upon
the reading public. Inspired by Carlyle, Ruskin after 1850 imbibed
the social spirit. Socialism in his mind is strangely connected with
romanticism. He hated the nervous competition of the present
age, with its materialistic, commercial spirit and capitalistic organ-
ization of industry, he hated the modern division of labor which
reduced man to a machine, he had an innate aversion to engines and
factories, they disturbed his aesthetic sense, and he regarded their
introduction as the principal cause of the general discontent of the
laboring classes. In Fors clavigcra (1871-94) he called upon the work-
men of Great Britain to join him in order to save English country
life from the invasion of machinery. He longed for a return to
the primitive conditions of the Middle Ages where every artisan was
an artist. With all his sympathy for the social current, he had no
sense for the necessary development of things, like those people
of the present day who are unable to realize that the organization
of capital in the form of pools and trusts is merely the inevitable
reaction against the organization of labor and a necessary outcome
of the general economic development of our age. If Carlyle's social
opinions were deeply saturated with a strong moral and philosophic
sense, Ruskin's social theory may be described as an amalgamation
of socialist and aesthetic views.

Starting from Carlyle and Ruskin. William Morris, in his Utopian
romance, Xcws from Xowhcrc (1890). in his Poems by the Way (1S91),

426 ENGLISH LITERATURE

in his work on Socialism: Its Growth and Outcome (1893), and other
writings, developed more radical ideas. He, too, is a hater of large
cities; he, too, in a manner is an admirer of the Middle Ages, but
without feudalism, monarchy, and church. He preaches the aboli-
tion of the differences of classes, he demands higher wages, shorter
hours, more chances of amusement for the working people. His
ideal, like Ruskin's, was a blending of socialist and artistic elements,
and in his practical activity as an artist he tried to carry out Ruskin's
ideas of the mission of art as a means of refining and adorning the
every-day life of the people.

In the field of fiction, the American Bellamy in his Looking Back-
ward (1889) made an attempt at constructing an ideal picture of the
socialist state to come, and of late H. G. Wells has ventured upon
similar ground. In dramatic literature Bernard Shaw who, like
W. Morris, has also taken active part in the socialist movement in
a series of dramas full of cynical criticism, caustic satire, and grim
humor, attacks the present foundations of society with a view
towards a socialist revolution. Though in most of his pieces the
"tendency" is too obtrusive to make them enjoyable from an
aesthetic point of view, some no doubt exhibit a true dramatic spirit,
and have been successful on the stage.

On the whole, in surveying the part which socialism plays in
modern English literature, we receive the impression that though
it figures in belles-lettres rather more considerably than one might
at first expect, the influence which the literary representatives of
socialism have had on the reading public of Great Britain appears to
have been but small. Even Ruskin's powerful mind has hardly
been able to impress his socialist views upon any large circle of
educated English readers, seeing that socialism has after all gained
but a scanty influence on the political life of Great Britain and
America as compared with that of the Continental European states.
Far more important both in its political and its literary .significance
is the imperialist movement. The commercial spirit of the Manches-
ter doctrine reached its climax in the Little England movement of
the sixties, which through Granville and Gladstone even gained con-
trol of the practical policy of the Government, and which down to
the present day has its advocates in some prominent representatives
of the old liberal era, such as Goldwin Smith, with whom I had the
privilege of having a long conversation on the matter only the other
day. The radical postulate of this group of politicians and writers,
to get rid of the colonies and above all of India as soon as possible,
could not but. evoke a strong patriotic reaction which manifested
itself first in literature, then in politics.

And here again Cnrlyle is the leader. In the same impetuous
manner in which he combated individualism in internal politics, he

PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 427

waged war upon the commercial spirit and utilitarianism in foreign
politics, his friend Tennyson effectively aiding him in the language
of poetry. The first work, however, in which the claims of a Greater
Britain were deliberately opposed to the adherents of Little England,
was Charles Dilke's Greater Britain (1st ed. 1867, new ed. 1890),
which exercised a deep and far-reaching influence on the public
opinion of England. The new spirit soon showed itself also in politics:
in direct opposition to the demands of the Little Englanders, Beacons-
field, when he came into office, endeavored to bring about a closer
union between England and India. It would appear that he had the
somewhat fantastic idea of winning Syria and Palestine for Eng-
land and of founding a continuous Oriental empire under English
control from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Bengal — a scheme
with which he resumed a dream of Lord Byron's, whose ultimate
idea in going to Greece and sacrificing his fortune, his poetry, yea,
his life, to the cause of Greek rebellion was to lead the modern Greeks
through battle and victory to the border of India, and thus to be-
come a second, an English Alexander! Beaconsfield could not carry
out his ambitious plans, but he at 'least succeeded in persuading the
Queen to assume the title of Empress of India (1876), an event that
was in so far important as it was the first official manifestation of
the idea of a British Empire.

The further development of the imperialistic movement in England
was principally influenced by historical events of extreme significance.
Up to 1860 England's command of the sea was practically uncon-
tested; after that date several new nations sprang up which before
had almost been des quantites negligeables for English foreign policy.
Germany and Italy were consolidated into national states of the
first order, and Germany particularly soon entered upon a very close
commercial competition with England, so that at the present day she
is her most dangerous rival. France recovered with an astounding
vitality from the blows which the war of 1870 had dealt her. In the
United States a field of almost unbounded possibilities for commercial
and industrial enterprise opened after the crisis of the Civil War, and
with the marvelous growth of their industries, the rapid increase of
their population and wealth, their national importance grew from
year to year and resulted in their abandonment of the traditional
Monroe policy and their first effective interference in European
politics on the occasion of the Spanish War. Russia built a navy and
made menacing progress in Asia toward the frontier of India. Lastly,
Japan, too. joined the number of the Great Powers and became
a serious rival of the European nations in the trade and commerce
of the far East.

All those events which have taken place in the course of the last,
forty years could not but deeply impress the mind of the English

428 ENGLISH LITERATURE

people, and create, by way of reaction, a wave of national pride and
patriotic enthusiasm which culminated in the desire for a closer union
of the mother country and the colonies in the shape of an imperial
federation. A number of prominent writers, both in prose and in verse,
greatly contributed in making this idea popular. Froude in his Oceana
(1886) portrayed in vivid pictures the greatness and expanse of the
empire to the eyes of the British people, and Sir John Seeley, in his
lectures on The Expansion of England (1883), brought home to the
hearts and minds, first of the Cambridge students, and then of a wider
public, the necessity of an imperial union, and helped largely to foster
and spread the new idea among the professional classes. What
Seeley and Froude did in prose essays and addresses, Kipling expressed
in poetry and fiction. His warm and vivid sketches of Indian life
and manners went a long way towards creating a new interest in
India among the British public, while the powerful outburst of patri-
otic feeling in collections of poems like The Seven Seas, etc., which
indeed is sometimes not far from chauvinism, touched kindred strings
and found a rejoicing echo in the hearts of thousands of his country-
men. Nor was he the only patriotic singer in the field: the Boer War
especially produced quite a series of poems of a similar character.
Alfred Austin, the poet laureate, Swinburne, and others, being among
those who chimed in with the author of The Barrack Room Ballads and
The Seven Seas. All these writers paved the way for that chief polit-
ical representative of imperialism, Joseph Chamberlain, whose ambi-
tion it is to become the Bismarck of the British Empire.

America, too, was not slow to respond to the appeal of the imperial-
istic spirit which in point of fact seems to pervade all nations at
present. Here again the men of letters had a considerable share in
the spreading of the new ideas. It was the epoch-marking works of
Captain Mahan above all that prepared the public for the far-sighted
and ambitious foreign policy which was inaugurated by President
McKinley and his counselors, and continued by the present Govern-
ment.

Besides these political currents there are several of a purely literary
chanu-ter. One of the most remarkable features of English poetry
he second half of the nineteenth century is the predominance of
rmal, u-sthetieizing tendency.

in the iige of Scott and Byron the material interest, was greatly
predominant in poetry. The descriptions of nature and of plain and
simple human conditions in Wordsworth's poems are conveyed in an
unpretending, sometimes even prosaic language; in Southey's and
Scott's works, it is the story itself and the culture-historical back-
ground; with Byron it is passion and the general view of the world;
it is philosophic and a-sthetic speculation with Shelley that form the
essential features in their poetry respectively and claim the reader's

PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 429

principal interest. With some of them indeed, as especially in the
case of Shelley, form and matter are almost equally balanced, equally
prominent, but in none of them is form domineering.

This prevalence of matter, of contents, is still stronger in the tend-
ency of Carlyle's works, which indeed in a manner are hostile to all
poetry. Resulting partly from the tradition of Scottish Puritanism,
partly from the influence of German thinkers, a rigid moral standard
is here set up for judging literature, and aesthetic aims are made sub-
servient to ethics. In the outward garb of Carlyle's writings, too,
form is entirely subordinate to matter; his capricious language has
deservedly been reprimanded for its impossible imitations of German
models, though it should never be forgotten that underlying this
rough and rugged surface there is an elementary force of mind and
character in the Sage of Chelsea which has impressed its stamp upon
the literature and the thought of a whole age, and it is an unjust
exaggeration when Gosse compares Carlyle to an ill-tempered dog
that barks at mankind, "angry if it is still, yet more angry if it
moves."

The same combination of deep thinking with outward formlessness
recurs in Browning, who adds dramatic power and subtle psychological
analysis to the moral strength of Carlyle. Striking and original
though his poetic images frequently are if judged singly, his language
in general is the reverse of formally beautiful.

Although both Carlyle and Browning lived till the ninth decade of
the nineteenth century, literature in the second half of this century
was on the whole rather characterized by a trend towards refinement
of form. In many respects this was directly antagonistic to the style
of Carlyle and Browning, and derived its inspiration from such lofty
singers as Shelley, or perhaps even more so from romanticists like
Coleridge and especially Keats, who endeavored to teach mankind
the lesson that " Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know," and in whose poetry the significance
of matter decidedly yielded to the beauty of form.

The victory of the formal element this time was not. as in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, achieved by classicism, but by
romanticism. Tennyson was strongly influenced by Keats, but in
Tennyson as in Shelley, and, for the matter of that, also in "Words-
worth, contents and form are harmoniously balanced. It was espe-
cially Ruskin. the apostle of beauty, and his friends the pre-Raphael-
ites. to whose work this triumph of form was largely due. Starting as
he did from the ethical standpoint of Carlyle, which he retained in his
views on social policy, Kuskin at the same time supplied what was
lacking in Carlyle by adding the aesthetic principle to his view of the
world. He thus became the leader and adviser of the younger gener-
ation of poets.

430 ENGLISH LITERATURE

The latent influence of Coleridge and Keats is noticeable every-
where in this new movement. As in the poetry of Keats, the material
interest in the poems and pictures of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
and their congeners is generally small. The continued repetition
of similar motives and the perpetual reiteration of the same frail,
hectic, morbid characters would needs have a monotonous and tiring
effect, if not counterbalanced by beauty of form, which was therefore
elaborately cultivated.

This instinct for formal beauty in poetry attained its maximum in
Swinburne, who, together with Pope and Byron, is perhaps the most
marvelous formal genius in English literature. His productions are
conspicuous for a wonderful word-melody, and he has not unjustly
been termed the musician among English poets, but the value of his
creations is lamentably impaired by his irresistible inclination toward
sacrificing sense to form. In an epic poem like The Tale of Balen the
interest in the story is entirely overshadowed, the discriminating
faculty of the intellect is almost lulled asleep by the continuous
jingling of melodious words and alliterative or rhymed phrases; the
reader does not even get a clear conception of the poetic pictures
which form such a prominent feature, for example, in the plastic
poetry of Keats.

And it is similar in painting, with which poetry is indissolubly
connected in the work of the pre-Raphaelites. In the pictures of
the first pre-Raphaelite painters, there was at all events variety and
interest of subject. Burne-Jones is typical for the predominance of
form. His figures are to a great extent conventional, monotonous,
tiresome, the effect of his pictures being principally due to the
beauty of lines and color. In the paintings of Burne-Jones the
transition to the decorative is clearly visible; the increased emphasis
is laid upon the decorative element, in the natural course of events
led to a preference for the industrial arts, which were successfully
cultivated both by Burne-Jones and by William Morris, and which,
principally through the merit and efforts of the latter, have witnessed
;i ne\v era of their development in the last decades.

English literature had once before seen a period when the formal
element had the sway over poetry; it was in the age of classicism, the
age of 1 )ryden and Pope. As in those times, so at the present day, we
find closely correlated with it an ascendency of French influence in
England \\liich again i.s not restricted to the formal si'le alone.

From 17'.).~> to 1850 the heroes of German literature had exerted
a far-reaching influence on the English world of letters, and Carlyle
had been its enthusiastic apostle. According to the natural law of
change the taste of the public became gradually satiated, and grew
tired of it. Now it happened that while the interest in German litera-
ture faded slowly away, and the level of German poetry itself was

PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 431

decidedly declining, French literature witnessed an era of remarkable
brilliancy: the age of Balzac, Victor Hugo, Me*rimee, Dumas, Sainte-
Beuve, Musset, Gautier, Augier, Baudelaire, Sardou, Zola, Daudet,
Maupassant, etc. It was also perhaps not without significance that
the French court under Napoleon III occupied a leading position in
Europe similar to that which it had had in the great age of Louis
Quatorze. Thus it seems natural enough that the interest of the
English public in French literature and life should have conquered
the position which in the first half of the century had been occupied
by the interest in Germany.

The French influence manifests itself in different directions: it is
not restricted to the formal side, the elegance of the language and
terseness of expression, it is also conspicuous in the matter of tend-
ency, and in this respect both the romantic and the realistic schools
have fallen under the spell of French writers. Neo-Romanticists like
O'Shaughnessy (An Epic of Women, 1870, Lays of -France, 1872,
Music and Moonlight, 1874, Songs of a Worker, 1881), John Payne
(A Masque of Shadows, 1870, Intaglios, 1871, Songs of Life and Death,
1872, Lautrcc, 1878, New Poems, 1880), and Th. Marzials (A Gallery
of Pigeons, 1873), wrote under the influence of Victor Hugo, Gautier,
and the decadents, such as Banville, Baudelaire, and Bertrand. On
the other side, novels, like those by Thomas Hardy, George Moore,
and George Gissing (who, in spite of a recent utterance of Mr. Wells,
is after all essentially a realist), would be simply incomprehensible
without Guy de Maupassant, Zola, and other French authors.

In criticism, too, French influence is very prominent. Since Ruskin
and Matthew Arnold most English critics, c. g. Swinburne, Saints-
bury, Gosse, and others, have shown a decided preference for the
French school of thinking and feeling.

A further striking characteristic of English literature at the present
day is the almost entire lack of dramatic poetry of high standard.
The effects of the blow which the Puritans inflicted on the English
drama in 1042 have never been wholly overcome. The theatre is
still regarded in many quarters, even among the educated classes in
England and America, as an amusement of lower rank, or rather
people fail to recognize the educational value of good stage perform-
ances. There are no city or court theatres as in Germany, where the
stage has long since been officially acknowledged as a source of refine-
ment and higher education. Irvine's endeavors in this direction have
so far been unsuccessful. Private theatres, however, naturally favor
modern sensational pieces which insure full houses.

But the lack of high-class dramatic poetry in England and America
may find a further explanation in the general growth of commercial
life, which causes a certain prosaic sobriety in the tastes and interests
of the people. There is no such lively sympathy with literary ques-

432 ENGLISH LITERATURE

tions as there was, e. g., in the eighteenth century. The astounding
development of sport, moreover, since the beginning of the eight-
eenth century, absorbs the entire interest of wide circles of the people
in the hours of leisure and dulls the capacity for amusements of a
more refined sort. The public that does attend theatrical perform-
ances wants to be amused rather than educated ; hence the preference
for corned}7, farce, pantomime, operetta, and melodrama. Various
attempts to raise the level of the stage have been without result.
To-day it is an undeniable fact that most good book-dramas do not
succeed on the stage, while those pieces that attract the public are
generally poor poetry.

Creditable work, to be sure, has been done by the late Oscar Wilde,
or by living authors like Stephen Phillips arid Bernard Shaw, but
they could not be called first-class dramatists. Paolo and Francesca
no doubt is full of dramatic vigor, but it is a single scene stretched
out into a drama. Candida and one or two other pieces of Shaw's
have been successful on the stage, but his work on the whole is ham-
pered by a tendency to doctrinairianism. The fact remains that since
Sheridan England has not had a dramatic writer of first rank.

Lyric and epic poetry suffer from the same misfortunes. Epic
poetry indeed has never occupied an important place in English
literature. But at present lyric poetry is unpopular in England, as,
for that matter, it is in Germany, where the drama is a favorite with
the public.

All literary interests of the English public to-day are absorbed
by the novel and the magazines and newspapers. They furnish the
intellectual daily food of thousands of people. Reading, like stage
performances, must be light and amusing to insure the relish of the
public. But the English novel seems to have passed its culminating
point, and there is reason to hope that we may witness sooner or later
a revival of the other kinds of poetry like that which followed the great
age of English novelists in the eighteenth century.

Those would seem to me to be some of the burning questions that
claim the interest of the historian of English literature. A vast
amount of work has still to be done before all these1 problems will bo
adequately treated, and there is a wide field of work for scholars both
on this side and the other side of the Atlantic. A considerable part
of this work will fall to the share of American scholarship, which is
progressing with such astounding rapidity.

SECTION D — ROMANCE LITERATURE

SECTION D — ROMANCE LITERATURE

(Hall 8, September 22, 3 p. m.)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR ADOLPHE COHN, Columbia University.

SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR Pio RAJNA, Institute of Higher Studies, Florence, Italy.

PROFESSOR ALCEE FORTIER, Tulane University, New Orleans.
SECRETARY: DR. COMFORT, Haverford College.

EVOLUTION OF THE STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL
LITERATURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

BY PIO RAJNA
(Translated from the Italian by courtesy of L. Cipriani, Ph. D., Chicago University)

[Pio Rajna, Professor of Romance Languages and Literature, Institute R. Stud.
Superior!, Florence, Italy, since 1883. b. Sondrio, Lombardy, Italy, July 8,
1847. D.Litt. cum laude, University of Pisa, 1868. Professor of Latin and Greek
Literature, Royal Lyceum of Modena, 1868-72; ibid. Royal Lyceum at Milan,
1872-73; Professor of Romance Literature, Accademia R. Scientifico-litterario,
Milan, 1874-83. Member of Royal Academy of Science of Turin, corresponding
member of Accademia della Scienzia della Crusca, Accademia dei Linei, Dante
Society, Cambridge, Mass., Modern Language Society of America. Author of
The Sources of Orlando Furioso ; The Beginnings of the French Epic ; Treatise
on Colloquial Language of Dante, etc.]

IN order to account for the evolution of the study of Romance
medieval literature during the nineteenth century, I begin by placing
myself at the starting-place, and I look backward. What had been
done until then?

It is imperative to keep well in mind that, for the Middle Ages, there
is a profound difference between Italy and the other nations whom
language makes her sisters. For the latter, archaic literary productions
are withered branches of the tree; for Italy they constitute the very
trunk. The contrast, less great in the Iberian Peninsula, where there
is no break between the old and the new, is most marked in France,
where a distinct literature was formed by the older phases, of which the
southern one had indeed the characteristics of a foreign literature.

The causes are manifold, but one stands out overwhelmingly.
Neither France nor Spain (I call the whole peninsula Spain) had the
privilege of a Dante. And the finish of Petrarch, the mellowness of
Boccaccio, soon took their place beside the genius of an Alighieri.
Thus the fourteenth century had not yet closed when Italy already
possessed a literature which could rightly be called classical. And it
remained classical even when a second period followed the marvelous
productiveness of the first.

Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, were subjects of constant admiration.

436 ROMANCE LITERATURE

And this admiration brought forth a study that took all forms
permitted by the capacity of the times. Nor was this study restricted
to the greatest authors. Thanks to them, even the lesser, indeed the
least of writers, were studied, especially after Tuscany had set up its
ancient language as the standard tongue.

At the end of the eighteenth century Italy knew her remote past
as well as her near past. I cannot indulge in details; but in order to
measure the work done, it suffices to recall that Italy had already
produced the Storia of Tiraboschi, an exposition of ordered and ascer-
tained facts that can hardly be surpassed. Nor did Italy stop here.
Having in the beginning a knowledge, later regained, that other
kindred people had forestalled her in the vulgar tongues, and that
their example urged her on, she glanced beyond her boundaries.
The De Vulgari Eloquentia is filled with the conception of the unity of
the Romance nations in literature as well as in language. And in the
second half of the sixteenth century the Eloquentia was worthily
matched by the sketch of the history of Roman poetry with which
Giovan Maria Barbieri intended to preface a treatise on the Art of
Rhyming.1 The most important place, next to the Italian, is here
held by the Provencal lyric; and to this all care was always, and by
the nature of things had to be, particularly turned. Do not let us
exaggerate the result of this care. No real tradition of Provencal
doctrine was ever established. Every scholar had, so to speak, to begin
anew. The fact is nevertheless noteworthy enough ; and the Trouba-
dours owed to this Italian care the preservation of many and many
leaves in their laurel wreaths, and owed to it also that these leaves
kept more or less green.2

In Spain the national spirit was never lulled, and remained ever
faithful to certain ancient ideals. The name of the Cid particularly
has never ceased to make all Spanish hearts beat. They certainly
beat, even in the fifteenth century, when a new art more refined and
less spontaneous, the acquaintance with Italian models, and human-
istic studies, made them look down contemptuously on those "ro-

1 Unluckily this work stopped here; and this first book was published, as is well
known, more than two hundred years later by Tiraboschi, under the title, perhaps
somewhat exceptionable, Dell' origine dclla poesia rimnta. Modena, 1790.

• The harsh words that on this subject burst from the irritated lips of Logrand
d'Aussy in his introduction to the Fabliaux, Paris, 1779, p. iv, do not sound dis-
agreeable to Italian ears: " D'un autre cote les Troubadours Provenoaux ont laisse
apres <>ux, jo ne sais trop pourquoi, tine renommee. qui a ebloui tout le monde:
non qu'on se soit laisse abuser par les eloges prodigues dans le temps a ces tristes
Chansonniers, ou qu'on ait 6t6 seduit parlours Uuvrages; mais 1'Italie dont ils
furent les maitres, et ou les introduisit 1'arh'nite du langago, s'est plu & immor-
taliser leur memoiro; et telle fut 1'origine do leur grande et trop heureuse for-
tune. La reconnaissance de deux ou trois Ecrivains colobres les a satire's de 1'oubli.
On les a cru de grands hommes parce que Petrarque et le Dante les chant erent; et
aujourd'hui que pen de gens sont en 6tat, ou pltitot que personne ne conceit 1'idee
de verifier ces panogyriqiies trompetirs, adopt eg sur parole, 1'opinion de leur
merite proYatit tellemont, memo parmi les gens instruits, qu'il n'en est aucun qui
ne les croie les peres de toute notre Litterature moderne."

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 437

mances 6 cantares de que las gentes de baxa e servil condicion se
alegran."1 But this art, this knowledge, this culture, powerless to
produce anything vital, became fatal to the preservation even of what
preceding centuries had produced, and which they themselves had,
besides, hardly cared to make widely known. Indeed, was it not pos-
sible to lose even the certainly precious collection of the poetical
works of an ingenious prince, who flourished as late as the first half
of the fourteenth century, of Don Juan Manuel? And it is due to the
contempt of the ancient style, that the history of the Amadis is still so
obscure.2 The national spirit that I spoke of continued nevertheless
to expand greatly. The sixteenth century produced "romances"
lavishly, which exalted, vilified, lamented ancient deeds and persons,
although not restricted to these subjects alone, preluding thereby the
most fertile theatre, which sprang also from the most intimate fibres
of the Spanish people. But we would gladly give up this new wealth
in order to recover, more numerous and in better shape, the humble
popular models which we now laboriously seek amongst that luxuri-
ant growth. It wrould, however, be absurd to blame any one. Let us
rather praise Spain for having preceded other nations in the gen-
eral review of her literary past. This she did with the two Biblio-
thecae of Nicolas Antonio, of wThich, if the Nova is a mere dictionary,
the Vctus, which here alone concerns us, has the order if not the
connection of history. It is true that what followed was not worthy
of such a beginning. We have a mere outline in the Origencs (which
come down to the times of the author) de la Poesia caslillana of Ve-
lasquez, published towards the middle of the eighteenth century; 3
and the Mcmorias of Sarmiento are rich, but a jumble.4 But Spain
makes up for this, and surprises us again with the Colcccion de Poesias
Castcllanas anterior es al siglo XV of Sanchez, which began to appear
in 1779, in which collection the Cid, amongst other things, first saw
the light.

The neglect of medieval literature was nowhere so great as in the
country in which it had been incomparably the most fertile, that is in
France. Nowhere was the voice of the past so completely stifled by
the mutable present. Only the historians, the Romance of the Rose,
and certain Romances of the Round Table, escaped oblivion. As for

1 " Prohomio e carta quel marque's de Santillana onvio al Condestable de
Portugal con las obras suyas," sect. ix.

2 Observe Hie title at the beginning of our Oastilian text: '' Aqm comienza el
primcro libro del esforzado e virtuoso caballcro Amadis, liijo del Rev Perion de
Gaula, y de la Reyna Elisena; el cual fu<5 corregido y emendado por el honrado e
virtuoso caballero Garci-Ordonez de Montalbo, regidor de la noble villa de Medina
del Campo, e corregiolo de los antiguos or'm'malos, que estaban corruptos e eom-
puestos en antiguo estilo por falta de los ditVivntr-s escriptores; quitando muchas
palabras superfluas, c poniendo otras de mas polido y elegante estilo. . ."

3 Malaga. 1754.

4 Metniiriafi parti la lu'sforia dc la pncfu'a >/ pnrtns cspnTwleft. They were published
in 1775. ihree years after the death of the author, by whom they had been com-
posed Jong before.

438 ROMANCE LITERATURE

some of their Carlovingian brethren, they could hardly be recognized
in the new garb they had been compelled to don. The songs of the
Troubadours had ceased to be heard as soon as their authors had been
laid in the grave; and amidst the Italians who moved amongst these
tombs was seen only one Frenchman, attracted by the example of our
countrymen,1 namely, Jean de Notredame; and he would better have
not been seen there, either. Let us rejoice that the southerner, Notre-
dame, roused, as I believe, the very different northerner, Fauchet.2
But Fauchet, and his rival and co-worker Pasquier, had no follow-
ers; 3 and the seventeenth century, which was then beginning, turned
minds more than ever from the early literature, creating a new
one inspired by other ideals, which rose to heights that appeared
even loftier than they actually were. Thus ignorance was united to
contempt.4 And ignorance and contempt would have continued till
the Lord knows when, if at that same time scholarship had not ac-
quired, even in France, a vigor not seen before, and if from beyond
seas and rivers a prejudice-destroying wind had not begun to blow.
To scholarship, as well as to the related natural sciences, every sub-
ject is worthy of study. And study becomes imperative whenever
scholarship aims at a complete and connected, that is historical,
knowledge and presentation. This happened even in regard to the
order of things which concerns us in the times we are going back to,
exactly the period in which the idea and the need of a literary history
took shape. Therefore popular medieval literature had to be placed
beside the Latin in the Histoire Littcraire, which, after a long pre-
paration by himself and others, Dom Rivet began to publish in 1733.
with the intention of carrying it from most remote to modern time?.5
The place granted the medieval popular branch would not have been
so great if the execution of this grand work had remained in Bene-
dictine hands. In the twelve volumes due to Dom Rivet and his im-
mediate followers, popular literature has a smaller share than the date
of 1 107, which we reach, would demand. The Benedictines felt no
<rroat liking for this literature, though they were extremely suscepti-

1 Tliis appears as well from general reasons as from the book itself: dedicated
to Calherin" de Medici, brought to light (the author says) by the request of four
Lr'iiil' in TI, t\vo of whom are Italian, and by one of these1 two published in Italian
• printing of the, French original was not yet cotnph ted.
•In t gives ''les noins et sommaire des oeuvrcs, de rxxvn Poetes Francois
van) i'an Mrrr." Xotredame's troubadours were seventy-six.
vain jusqu'ici," Dom Rive-twill say regretfully, "deux de nos auteurs

i! xvi >ieele out fraie la voie" (Histnire littcraire de la France, i, ii).
•au's verses. '' Durant les premiers ans," etc., are too universally known

de la fin

4 P,r,i

to be iron- t!;aii mentioned here.

5 Vol. vi. p. 1."): ". . . Quant aux Italiens en particulier, tin de nos Seavants,
qui a beaucoup travaille sur 1'origine denotre langue, assure que le famrux Horace
a pris d'-s Romans Franeois la plupart de s"s nouve]Ie$, et Petrarque, et les autres
Poe'tes Ilaliens. out pille les plus beaux endroits des chansons de Thibaud Koi de
Xavarre, de (lace I'rulex, du Chatclain de Couci, et des vieux Romancicrs Fran-
cols."

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 439

ble to the gratification national pride gained or seemed to gain from
it. They did not appreciate its importance, so that in volume vu,
which nevertheless marks a remarkable progress, Dom Rivet, even
for a monument as important as Boethius, limits his quotations to
nine lines of the fragment made known by the Abb6 Leboauf, and
this "pour etre moins a charge a ses lecteurs."1 A higher degree
of sympathy and intelligence appears in the dissertations gathered
and published in the volumes of the Histoire and Memoires of
the Academic Roy ale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.2 And one of the
Academicians, La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, spent all his long and
industrious life within the recesses of the languages, the literatures,
the history, of medieval France. It is noteworthy in him that he had
no sectional preferences, and was the first northerner who turned to-
wards the south, so that from his material, when he had given up all
hope of elaborating it, came forth the Histoire litteraire des Trouba-
dours of the Abb£ Millot,3 faulty indeed, yet better than its fame.
His broad patriotism contrasted with the narrow patriotism of Le-
grand d'Aussy, who, in his introduction to the Fabliaux ou Contes
du XIIe et du XIIIs siecle, published soon after,4 and owing their
birth still to La Curne,5 inveighs, for the greater glory of the litera-
ture of the langue d'oil, against "ces tristes Chansonniers " of the
south.6 Overlooking this pettiness, we can call the introduction of
Legrand the most notable review of old French literature which we
find in the eighteenth century. Quickened with an eager love of its
subject, it is the fruit of much reading, which Legrand d'Aussy con-
tinued,7 in preparation, I think, of his promising history of French
poetry, broken off by death.8 It is greatly significant, however, that
the author deems it necessary to publish the Fabliaux, not in the orig-
inal text, which nothing forbade his accompanying with a translation,
but translated, abridged, applying, though improved, the method
followed for other compositions in the Bibliotheque des Romans.'"

1 p. xxxi.

2 Already in the second volume, which jointly with the first contains contribu-
tions from the period 1701-1711, we have rich ''Discours sur quelqucs anciens
Poet es et sur quelques Romans Gaulois pen connu," by Gnlland (pp. 673-6S9).
Here Gnlland, establishing himself exclusively on MSS. in the possession of Fou-
cault, gives information about authors, "dont le nom et Irs ouvrages out este in-
connus a Ui Croix du Maine et a Fauchet." In the same volume there is a notice
on the }'ic tie. Christine de Pisan ct de Thomas dc Pisan son pcrc " (pp. 704-71-1).

3 In 1774.

4 1779-1781.

5 Vol. i, p. Ixxxix: " Je dois ;\ M. de Sainte-Palaye les premiers materiaux aver
lesquels j'ai commence cot Ouvruge, et qui m'en out inspire le projet. . . . Le
possesseur genereux de ces richesses litteraires me les a abandonnees . . ."

6 See p. 4IU, note 2.

7 It may be seen about how many works he ^ivcs information in the 5th volume
of Notice* (t [-'.rlra'ts dc Maniiftcritx dc In l!ili/>/>/l!<' !/>/<'. formerly du l\m, and later
Nationalc. The volume bears the date of " Apr. 7": 179S— 99.

8 Ills death happened on the Cth of December, 1SOO; just when the century
also was coming to an end.

9 A Bihliothrquc of ancient French novel-; onlv, quit0 different from that of
Trcssiin had been planned much earlier by La Curne de Sainte-Palaye: " Si je puis

440 ROMANCE LITERATURE

The example given thirty years earlier by Barbazan, instead of urg-
ing him on to follow the same path, turns him from it. France did
not yet seem ready for the publication of original texts.1 Neverthe-
less as early as 1742, one year before being received at the Academic
des Inscriptions, Levesque de la Ravaliere published the Poesies du Roi
Thibaut de Navarre. 2 This is indeed a swallow that brought no summer.
I have reached the end of my retrospective review. What I shall
add to this will concern more the future than the past. As we have
seen, much had been done in Italy, not much elsewhere. France stood
in the very rear, although she had labored more than Spain ; and this
was because of the vastness of the task. Yet, both where much and
where little had been done, things had to be done over. It wras the
least of evils that methods of investigation must be more rigorous, or
rather that the critical rigor used by some in certain cases should be
used everywhere. This would be accomplished per se, in consequence
of a normal progress. But the greatest needs were of a different kind.
Greater depth and breadth of thought were requisite. Not the mere
connection, but the intimate relation, the very life of facts was to be
laid bare, so that scholarship should be the means, not the end.
And, on the other hand, that taste, breaking its fetters, should acquire
a full aptitude to appreciate the beautiful wherever it might appear,
independently of traditional prejudice, the drama, with the scare-
crow of the three unities, is at hand to illustrate better than any
other kind. This was no venture into unknown regions. Few centuries
have thought as much as the eighteenth, to which none can deny the
legitimacy of the title of philosopher, which it assumed (how often was

me flatter d'avoir affaibli la prevention on quelques personnes pourroient etre
que la lecture des Romans de Chevalerie e"toit une lecture aussi ingrate et inutile
quo frivole et insipide; qu'il me soit permis de souhaiter que quelques gens de
Lettres se partagent entre eux le peniblc travail de lire ces sortes d'ouvrages,
dont le temps detruit tous les jours quelques morceaux, d'en faire des extraits,
qu'iis rapporteront a un systeme general et uniforme. . . . On pourroit ainsi
parvenir a avoir une bibliotheque generale et complete de tous nos anciens Ro-
mans de Chevalerie, dont la fable, rapportee tres-sommairement, renfermeroit ou
le detail, ou du moins 1'indication de ce qui regarde 1'auteur, son ouvrage, et les
antres auteurs du temps dont il auroit fait mention. On s'attacheroit par pre-
ference a tout ce qui paroitroit de quelque usage pour 1'Histoire, pour les Genea-
logies, pour les Antiquites franchises et pour la Geographic: sans rien omettre de
ce qui donneroit quelques lumieres sur le progres des Arts et des Sciences. On
pourroit y conserver encore ce qu 'il y auroit de remarquable du cote de 1'esprit et de
Tin volition ; quelques tours delicats et naifs, quelques traits de morale et quelques
pcns<'"s ingi'nieuses." Thus speaks I/a Curne in the remarkable " Memoire concer-
narit la lecture des anciens Romans de Chevalerie," Histoire de I' Academic Royale
di-fi /n.vrription.o et Indies Lettres, xvu, 797-798. Nobody will deny that this design,
oxprf ssfd on the 17th of December, 1743, is worthy of note. Consider how much
it anticipates facts.

1 p. ixxxvii: " Ce n'est pas connaitre les Lecteurs Francois que de leur presenter
un par'-il travail. Aussi 1'ouvrage est-il resto inronnu, et il est meme ignore des
Gens dc Lcttrfs." RffiVct that even La Curne had contented himself, in 1752,
with publishing in translation Aucassin ct Nicolctle. In that form it had good
luck, and was reprinted in ] 7">G and 1760.

2 M. clc- la Ravaliere had had special reasons of an historical nature for taking
interest in those poems.

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 441

the phrase "esprit philosophique " and its reflections on the
although in taking this epithet the eighteenth century intended to
identify itself with Voltaire, and we confirm the epithet by reason
of Vico and Kant. And in seeking the intimate cause of things,
thanks to the scientific method bequeathed to it by its predecessor,
the eighteenth century had gained its training. Then it had brought
all nations into closer contact, and had carried even into the realm
of literature the need of universal knowledge and representation.1
This contact, even though only mechanical, prepared exchange and
reciprocal action. And the general tendency was here of more con-
sequence than one of its specific determinations: the falling of the
barriers that kept England unknown to the Continent. The know-
ledge of Shakespeare was of capital importance; and not much less
important in the present, lasting besides in its results, was the bring-
ing to light of the pretended poems of Ossian. Palates gained new
strength from this unaccustomed food, the efficaciousness of which
was all the more helpful because it did not lend itself to true and
proper imitations. Hence a return to more normal conditions en-
sued.2 All this and more the eighteenth century offered; but unfor-
tunately in a state of aspiration, of preparation, of semi-conscious-
ness. And causes existed without the ensuing effect. Therefore the
same judgment can come from Andre's and La Harpe : Andre's, the
author of the audacious work which purports to be "A critical
history of the vicissitudes that literature has suffered amongst all
nations " (literature means to him, besides art in every form, all
that knowledge can grasp), "a philosophic image of the progress it
has made from its origin to the present times in all its branches in
general, and in each branch in particular" ; and La Harpe, the man
wrho knows nothing and sees nothing beyond the Greeks, the Lat-
ins, the French of the century of Louis XIV and the period which
immediately followed. Hearken to this judgment: " Neither Shake-
speare, nor Jonson, nor Vega, nor Castro, nor Calderon, nor all the
English and the Spanish poets together, suffice to counterbalance
the dramatic merit of the great Corneille." These are the words of

1 More even than by the bulky works of Quadrio and Andre's, which recur to the
mind of every one, that want is efficaciously demonstrated by other works of small
size; as, for instance, the Discorso snpra Ic ricende dclfa Lcltcratura (ill-used by
Baretti) of Carlo Denina. It was published at Turin in 1701; and transformed
itself into the " Five Books'' (Vicende drlla Lettcratura : Libri cinque), dedicated
to Frederick the Great of Prussia twenty-three years afterwards.

2 Normal conditions, whatever the cause, appear in Logrand d'Aussy. "Kh!
pourquoi pas?" he exclaims (p. iv, note), after referring to Fletiry, who a hundred
years earlier, in the Trait/': du Choix et dc la Mcthodcdes Etudes, ch. ix, had acknow-
ledged that among the ancient poets there were '' des gens d'esprit, et qui pour IP
temps avoient dc la politesse": "Les Arts, les Sciences, la Legislation, tout ce qui
est le fruit de 1'expcVience et du temps etait encore informe, il est vrai, mais ce que
donne la nature, 1'esprit, la sensibility 1'imagination, sont de tons les siecles et de
tons les pays, et ne tiennent que par le plus ou moins de gout aux connaissances
aquises."

442 ROMANCE LITERATURE

Andres ; 1 but if they did not take too much scholarship for granted,
they might be those of La Harpe.

To the nineteenth century is due the credit of turning semi-con-
sciousness and aspirations to full self-knowledge, and of uniting
brooks and torrents into one great flood. A scarcely definable in-
fluence is traceable even here to the French Revolution, awful
storm, as we are apt to figure it, which, however, cleared away an
unbearable sultriness, and which, whilst it strewed the ground with
branches and trunks, revived the energy imprisoned in the soil. It
certainly stands between two ages which it renders vastly different
one from another.

But a foreign nation shared in a singularly large degree in the work
which we wish to survey: the German nation, which was led to fulfill
this office by a chain of circumstances, beginning with the very fact
of her being foreign ; a condition which might at first appear a diffi-
culty. This would have been an obstacle if the Germany of the eight-
eenth century had not purposely thrown all her windows wide open,
so as to look out on every side, and so that light and air might pour
in from every direction. The apparent disadvantage was thus
changed into the immense advantage of feeling for any literature,
for any single literary product, an interest determined only by
intrinsic reasons. That universality was set up as a principle was
due largely to the fact that, from a literary point of view, Germany
may be considered a new nation, just then traversing its classical
period. In this universality the simple and popular, to which,
through natural disposition and through historical motives, the
nation had always remained alive, shared to such a degree as often to
become a governing criterion. And to this, sometimes fused with it,
sometimes distinct, was coupled the love of national subjects. This
did not in the least prevent Germany from attaining great vigor of
speculative and scientific thought, which penetrated everywhere,
quickened everything, even scholarship, and for which the univers-
ities were fertile and marvelous workshops. It is, therefore, easy to
understand that the first history of modern literature, in which the
knowledge of facts and aesthetic considerations were on a par, should
be Germanic. Certainly Frederik Boutenvek, who published eleven
volumes from 1801 to 1819, 2 and in a deliberate succession correspond-
ing to an organized plan, passed from Italy to Spain and Portugal,
:tnd from there to France and England, ending up with Germany, did
not carry away a mere mass of information from his Romance teach-
ers. He conceives his history as a " Geschichte des asthetischen
Geistcs und Geschmacks,"3 and in "Geist" and "Geschmack" we

1 Vol. i, p. 423, in the original edition of Parma.

: Geschichte dcr Pocsic und Beredsamkcit seit clem Ende d?s dreizehntcn Jahr-
hvnderts.

3 See at the very beginning the general preface at the head of the first volume.

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 443

easily recognize the "esprit" and the "gout" which were so dear to
the minds and the lips of the French of the eighteenth century.
Let us recall that Montesquieu, author of the memorable Esprit des
Lois, undertook to write an essay on taste for the Encyclopedic.
But the taste of Bouterwek, though not always faultless, is not pre-
judiced, like that of the French, whom he blames for taking from the
century of Louis XIV the standard of judging all that had been done
previously.1 It is a pity, therefore, that in this work Provencal litera-
ture is omitted, and a small share allowed Old French, although the
reason for this is easily seen. It is to be found in the insufficiency
of preparatory studies,2 rather than in the circumstance that nomi-
nally (only nominally) the work began with the end of the thirteenth
century,3 or in the conviction that others had sufficiently covered the
ground in the encyclopedic collection of wrhich this history of litera-
ture formed a part.4 The scarcity of the work done by others, and
the difficulty of seeing for himself, did not deter Bouterwek from
putting together a history of Spanish literature, that for a long time
remained the only one worthy of the name.5

He was no German, indeed, he, who, going back to its origin,
changed his family name, Sismonde, into "Sismondi." He was
from Geneva and was familiar with the German and the English
tongues. His abode in different countries, his varying occupations
even, had contributed to increase the breadth of thought in a pre-
viously well-disposed intellect. And this breadth was increased by the
influence of Coppet: wonderful intellectual forge, where French and
German hammers, handled by the robust arms of Benjamin Constant,
of Wilhelm Schlegel, and of many others, in the presence of and with
the incitement of Madame de Stael, — the very synthesis of the
revivified and of the revivifying France of the eighteenth century,
— strove with each other in striking sparks from the iron they
unceasingly hammered. In 1811, before an audience amongst whom

1 Vol. v, pp. iv-v.

2 Ibid. p. vi: " Mochte doch endlich einmal die poetische Litteratur der
mittleren Jahrhunderte in ihrem ganzen Umfang " — France only is here meant

- " einen ihrer wiirdigen, also auch der provenzalischen und altfranzosischen
Spracho miichtigen und init den alten Handschriften hinlanglich vertrauten
Geschichtschreiber finden! "
:! See p. 440, note 1.

4 Vol. i, p. v: "Die Geschichte dieser Morgendammerung hat aber schon Hr.
Eichhorn in seiner Allgemeinen Geschichte der Cultur und Litleratur der neueren
/?wropaebenso lehrreich, als ausfiihrHch erziihlt." It was Eichhorn, chiefly known
as Orientalist, who conceived the plan of the encyclopedic collection. "II ne
semhle avoir eu qu'vme connaissance superh'cielle des litteratures des langues
moclernes," Hallam will say, relating to this (Jeschichte der Cultur, in the Prpface
to the Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven-
teenth Centuries. (Xot having the original text at hand, I am forced to quote from
the French translation of Borghers, Paris, 1830.)

5 It was not by means of a most copious equipment of notes joined to the text
in the German translation by J. A. Diexe (Geschichte der spanischen Dichtktinftt,
Gottingen. 1769) that the work of Velasquez could become what it had not been
in the beginning.

444 ROMANCE LITERATURE

were also many girls, Sismondi undertook to paint a picture similar
to the one of Bouterwek ; and out of this half-fulfilled task grew his
work, De la litter ature du Midi de I' Europe. This work seeks to
present facts, not to go in for original research. It owes much to
Bouterwek, and acknowledges it. Being published when little
yet was known, it fell into serious errors. But it is the work of
a thinking mind. It served well to diffuse among the Romance
people a critique which is human, not national; which feels the need
to grasp much in order to comprehend; which goes deep, which soars
high. We feel the air of Coppet.

When publishing, Sismondi could, for the Italian literature, take
advantage of the Histoire Litteraire de I'ltalie of Ginguene, which
likewise grew out of a course of lectures, given in 1802-03, 1805-06.
I note the fact of this genesis which is repeated not a few times (even
the oral exposition of Old French literature on which Marie Joseph
Chenier ventured about this time,1 was much praised), because it
certainly served to give literary history more connection 2 and to
enrich it with other material than mere facts. But it is not due to this
alone 3 that the history of Ginguene, which cannot so far as scholar-
ship goes be compared to Tiraboschi's, has far more life, and proceeds
from outward considerations to inner ones. Time and environment
certainly cooperated with great efficacy. And the very phenomenon
of a Frenchman who takes upon himself to describe the vicissitudes
of a modern foreign literature proves the change in the times. Nothing
similar had, if I do not err, ever happened before.

Ginguene" goes back to the beginning, and this leads him to follow
even the phantom of a powerful Arabic influence, a phantom fol-
lowed with better reason by Andres,4 and which was afterwards to be
called up afresh by Sismondi and not a few others. And he dwelt
quite a little on the Troubadours. He followed untrustworthy guides.
Yet during the short span of life still granted him (he died in 1816),
he took upon himself "The Troubadours" in the Benedictine His-

1 The course of lectures on this subject by Che'nier was held in the years 1806-
1807. And the lectures regarding the Fabliaux and Novels were published also.

2 Consider how things appeared to the mind of Dom Rivet when he was under-
taking his grand work (vol. I, p. xxii): "En lui donnant le titre d'Histoire, parce
qu'il est plus commun et qu'jl la rigueur toute narration peut porter ce titre, il
sembleroit pcut-etre qu'on y dut donner une histoire suivie et continuee, telles que
sont les autres histoiresordinaircs. . . . Mais il n'en est pas de 1'Histoire literaire
conime de 1'Histoire de 1'Kglise, par exemple. . . . An contraire dans 1'Histoire
Lit/'raire, oil les faits sont independents les uns des autres comme il le sont dans
1'Histoire de la vie des Saints, on ne peut gueres la bien traiter qu'en la divisant
par litres ou articles, dans lesquels on raporte de suite ce qui regarde un Auteur,
avant de passer a un autre." In all this truth arid error are mixed together.

3 The first volumes only correspond to courses of lectures. It is true that, once
on this track, it was natural to go on in the same manner.

4 Andre's had had predecessors; among whom Barbieri (see p. 434, note 1) had
been perhaps the most ancient, and also, I think, the most notable for his method of
reasoning. Consider his chapters iii and iv.

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 445

toire Litteraire,1 intrusted to the Institut in 1807. It was a happy
decision to resume, after forty years, the noble enterprise which had
been breathing its last since the death of Dom Rivet, who first con-
ceived it. The Histoire Litteraire never had been, and never succeeded
in being, a true history. And it was not made one by the Discours
sur I'Etat des Lettres which preface every century, " discourses " that
have besides the inevitable fault of condensing into a synthesis things
not yet analytically known.2 It always remained a "bibliotheca"
even after abandoning the mechanical device of chronological order
by dates of death. There is besides this no difference between it and
the volumes entitled Notices et extraits de manuscrits, which the
Academic des Inscriptions began to publish in 1787, and where in the
fifth volume we already find ample space given to Old French. In
arrangement only is there a difference from the Manuscrits }ranc.ais
de la Bibliotheque du Roi, which later came from Paulin Paris. But
this lack of organism permitted an almost absolute liberty of move-
ment, which turned out most useful. It is due especially to this that
the Histoire Litteraire has increased remarkably the knowledge of
French literature in the vulgar tongue, which in this phase began to
occupy a far greater place than it had ever occupied before. And
with this progress, what had been done did not satisfy. Hence
delays and journeys backward, which, if they destroyed even the
shadow of an historical plan and resulted in not reaching far into
the fourteenth century after one hundred years of labor, neverthe-
less came near enough to the ultimate goal.

The awakening which showed itself would have rejoiced Legrand
d'Aussy.3 Nor would he have considered unreasonable the reprint
which Meon made of the Fabliaux of Barbazan.4 Meon would surely
have rejoiced his heart with the Roman de la Rose, 1813, with the
addition to the Fabliaux, 1824, and the Roman du Rcnart, 1826; and
he would have been delighted with Roquefort, who in his Glossairc de
la langue romane, 1808, offered a tool useful for the reading of texts.5

1 A. Duval says of him in his necrology at the head of volume xiv: "II se
r^serva la partie de 1'ouvrage on 1'on doit traitor des pottos franeais et des trouba-
dours des XIIe et XIIIe siecles: il £tait prepare a ce travail par les recherches
qu'il lui avait fallu faire sur la litterature Romane, qui out line grande influence
sur la litterature italienno, dont il s'occupait dopuis si long-temps."

2 Speaking of himself Daunou says, vol. xvi, pp. vi, vii, that in composing the
"Discours" about the thirteenth century, "on a reconnu combien il etait difficile
d'esquissor ainsi le tableau de la litterature de tout un siecle, avant d'avoir pu
en examiner les productions. Ces exposes seraient plus complets et moins in-
exactes," if, instead of preceding, they should follow.

3 See p. 437, note 7.

Fabliaux, vol. i, p. ii : " Les catacombos de nos anciens Poet.es, dans lesquels per-
sonne n'est encore descendu, ou qu'on n'a families que fort supernciellement, offrir-
aient a des travailleurs intolligens et courageux plus d'une docouverte pareille a
faire; et je croirais avoir bion merite des Lettres si mon oxemple animait t\ cette
laborieuse entreprise, des mains plus habiles quo les miennes."

4 The edition of Barbazan came out in 17;">6; that of Me"on in 180S.

6 Subsequently Roquefort published the Poesies of Marie de France. The dedi-

446 ROMANCE LITERATURE

Little by little the literature of the " langue d'oil " awoke from
its centuries of sleep: and we can say that the literature of the
" langue d'oc " arose and walked. Francis Raynouard, mature and
well known in other lines, was prompted by love for his native
region to give himself up to his studies with great zeal; and this zeal
proved very fruitful. It is a grievous error for the French to con-
sider him the founder of Romance philology. And the title of
Gramma/ire comparee, which was read for the first time on one of his
volumes,1 and which Raynouard owes to Frederick Schlegel,2 no
longer misleads any one. The author lacked scholarly training; 3 but
the lucid choice of Provencal texts which he edited, and the Lexique
Roman on which he labored so long, constitute an imperishable work.
A comparison with the contemporary Parnasse Occitanien enhances
the merit of Raynouard's work far more than it diminishes its
originality. The difference is seen in the effect. The Parnasse Oc-
citanien had none; 4 the works of Raynouard became known in France
and abroad, and everywhere (unfortunately accompanied by erron-
eous ideas) they spread a knowledge of the Provencal. Even our
Giovanni Galvani owed them much,5 although his incentive to work
in this language came, not from them, but from his ancient fellow
citizen Giovan Maria Barbieri and from Francesco Redi. Italian
tradition had not ceased to work.8

cation to de la Rue boars the date of 1819, while most of the copies bear on the
title-page " 1832." The book was not easily sold.

1 Tome sixilme, contenant la Grammaire comparee des langucs de I' Europe latine,
dans lews rapports avec la langue des troubadours. The date of this volume is 1821 .
And the verb " comparer " appears often in the text. In the same way appears in
it '' comparaison."

2 As known, he was the first who spoke of " vergleichende Grammatik," in the
memorable book Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, Heidelberg, 1808,
p. 28. However, it was not from this book, but from conversations with the
author and with his brother William, both his friends, that the inspiration must
have come to Raynouard.

3 " Raynouards arbeiten scheinen mir nur bis zu einem gewissen punct lobens-
werth," declared Jakob Grimm to Diez (Zeit. /. roman. Philol., vol. vi, p. 501). And
J)icz in return: "Was Raynouard betrifft, so stimme ich Ihrern Urtheile bri: die
vornehme Halturg des Verfassers scliadet dem Werke erstaunlich; er sagte mir
s"lbst. or habe nicht mehr geben wollen, als was er nicht selbst vorstanden habe,
das Qbrigo sci unverstandlich und des Abdrucks nicht worth — und so vormisst
man moiirore wichtige und bei don Troub. berufone Liedor. Seine Litteratur-
k'-nntnisso in diesem Fach sind mir selir zweideutig, ich glaube, er ist boi Millot
stehon tr- bliohon" (Ibid. vol. vn, p. 486.)

4 Dii /.. in January, 1826, seven years after the publication, had not yet been
able to get it. He received it shortly after from Grimm.

5 I \<~ acknowledges it speaking, " Ai Lottori " of his Osservazioni sulla pocsia de'
Trm-rtftiri. Modona, 1829, p. 7: " Le Oprre del ch. Raynouard sono per le mani
di tutti. ( -d io non che ne fugga, ne desidoro anzi il confronto, e me gli confcsso
discepolo c iiin.-simo ammiratore." Those words would bear us farther than the
truth, if th"v had not as corrective a letter which Galvani wrote in the last years
of his life to Pietro Bortolotti, and which has been printed by Bertolotti in the
Notizic iritnrno nlla ritn cd alle opere di Mans. Celestino Caredoni, and reprinted by
Antonio Masinolli in the Xotizie intornti alia vita cd alle opere of Galvani himself,
Modena, 1874. p. 10. In that letter Galvani relates, with many particulars, the
origin and progress of his Provencal studies.

8 Therefore Cavedoni also, as an offset of Galvani, proceeds from the Italian

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 447

Of Romance philology proper, as we understand it now, Raynouard
can be considered the godfather, not the father. Its father was
a foreigner. And what could he be but a German? The German
scholar, young or old, was in the condition of an agriculturist expert
in agrarian chemistry, provided with all instruments invented by
modern mechanics, who undertakes to cultivate a soil whose previous
workers had been satisfied to use old manners, old spades, and old
plows. Uhland is an eloquent example of this. Ludwig Uhland
was a youth of twenty-three when, in 1810, having gone to Paris
for the study of laws, he got deep into the study of French medieval
literature, turning at once to the MSS. Having returned after only
eight months, he published, in 1812, a paper Ueber das altfranzo-
sische Epos,1 a beacon of light in the heavy darkness. This light shone
only for the Germanic world. The Latin world continued for some
time to confuse, as had been done until then, distinct things, and
to speak of "Romances of Chivalry" as one genus subdivided into
three species: Carlovingian romances, the Romances of the Round
Table, Amadis and its family.

The value of his example is increased by the fact that Uhland was
above all a poet. A poetic soul and poetic skill were also found in
Frederick Diez, his junior by only seven years. Nor did he prove
wanting in these qualities when he turned to the Spanish " romances,"
either in reviewing the Silva de romances viejos of Jakob Grimm, or
the Sammlung Spanischer Romanzen of Dcpping, or in publishing
the Altspanischc Romanzen in his own translation.2 Spain was of all
Romance nations the one which exercised the greatest charm on
Germany.3 She exercised this charm through her ballads, Herder

tradition; Cavedoni, whose dissertation Dclle accoglienze e degli onori ch' cbbero
i Troratori Provenzali alia Corte dci Marchcsi d'Este neJ sec. XIII (in Memorie dclla
Rcnlc Aecademia di Scienze, Lcttere ed Arti di Modena, vol. n, pp. 2GS-312) can be
called a standard work. Very curious is the way in which the propagation hap-
pened. We know it from the letter quoted in the preceding note.

1 In the review Die Musen, which La Motte Fouque had begun to publish at
Berlin. In the review itself this writing could not easily be seen; but it was
reprinted in Uhland's Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage, vol. iv,
Stuttgart, 1SG9, p. 327 ff.

• It is to be noted that the Altspanische Romanzen tiberscizt ron Friedrich Diez,
which the title-page assigns to 1818, belongs in reality to the f firmer year. See Zcit. f.
roman. l'hilol.,vo\. iv, p. 583, and compare vol. vn, p. 4SI. As to antecedents which
did not leave the silence of home, see Stengel, Erinnerungsworte an Friedrich
Diez, Marburg, 1883, p. 23. note 1, and Diez-Reliqiiicn, Marburg, 1894, p. 1.

3 Hear Bouterwek, preface to vol. in, p. viii: " Nur dann aber werdeich glauben,
diese Geschichtsbiichei in der Ilauptsache nicht umsonst geschrieben zu haben,
wenn sie mitwirken, die spanische und portugiesische Litteratur unter uns in
Aufnahme zu bringen; empfangliche Gemiithrr fiir sic innigst zu interessin n;
und, wo moglich, zu veranlassen dass der deutsche Geist durcli diese schonen Tone
von Siiden her zu neuer Selbstthatigkeit bclebt werde. I) e u t s c h e s G e m ii t h
und spanische Phantasie in k r a f t i g e r Vereinigung, was
konnten die nicht hervor bringen?" The spaced words are in the original printed
in larger letters. The first who led his countrymen to the Iberian peninsula was
Dieze. (See p. 441, note 5.) What the conditions were in his time, is said in the
preface: ''Bey der eifrigen und mannigfaltigen Bemiihungen. die Kenntniss der
auslandischen Literatur unter uns zu verbreiten, ist die spanische noch sehr

448 ROMANCE LITERATURE

being the principal promoter of their study; through her theatre;
through her history even. Italy had her share, however, in Diez's
mind; 1 and a preponderant share soon fell to Provence, largely
owing to Raynouard, whose Choix the attention of Diez was first
directed to by Goethe.2 Raynouard furnished materials and tools;
William Schlegel, who would have become a Provengal scholar of
great merit if his many-sidedness had left him time for it, was an
inspiring power. Well fitted out, Diez went to Paris in 1824. And
he performed a miracle greater than the one performed by Uhland.
For was it not a miracle that three months' stay sufficed to per-
mit the composition of such classic works as Die Poesie der Trou-
badours and Leben und Werke der Troubadours? He had preceded
them by a dissertation Ueber die Minnehofe, which proved to be
a challenge to Raynouard, who had treated ex-pro fesso of the same
subject. David met Goliath and slew him. He showed that the
pretended feminine law-courts, which it was claimed had, during
the Middle Ages, held jurisdiction in matters of love, solving prac-
tical and poetical questions, had grown out of misunderstandings
and deceptions. But Goliath and his followers pursued their way
as if nothing had happened. The talk about "Courts of Love"
in the anti-critical sense of Raynouard continued. And, indeed, in
a time very near to us, in the South of France, the extreme was
reached of restoring to them a semblance of life, which still holds
out.3 They remained a symbol par excellence of the environment in
which lived the Troubadours,4 whose art was called by the ana-
chronistic designation of "gaya sciensa," first used by the over-
rhetorical academy of Toulouse, when gayety had in truth vanished.
The two expressions — gaya sciensa, cours d'amour — can serve as
a touchstone: when they are heard, modern criticism has not yet
penetrated.5

weniger, oder vielmehr gar keiner Aufmorksamkeit gewurdiget worden. Man lebt
nicht allein in einer ganzlichen Unwissenheit derselben, man ist auch noch so
gleichgiiltig. dass man sich nicht einmal die Mlihe giebt, zu untersuchon, ob sie
unsere Achtung verdiene, ja man ist wohl gar so ungerecht, sie ohne Priifung
schlechterdings zu verachten."

1 As early as 1819 he wrote many pages on the translation of the Rime of
Petrarch published by Karl Forster, and many others on another translation, viz.,
that of Orlando Furioso by Karl Streckfuss. See Friedrich Diez's Klcinere Arbeiten
und Ttccensinncn, hrsgg. von H. Breymann, Munich, 1883, pp. 17-38.

2 The fact is attested by too good an authority (see Stengel, Erinnerungsworte,
p. 22, note T), to be doubted. Of the work of Raynouard, when in 1818 Diez
visited Goethe, only the first volumes were published.

3 The first Cnur d'amour was held by the " Fclibres" at Carpentras, the 15th of
September, 1891. An account of it can be found in the Revue Fclibrtcnne, vol.
vii, 251 ff.

4 A. Meray gave the title La vie au temps dot Coiirs d'ammir (Paris, 1876) to the
book which should serve as a counterpart to his Vie. au temps des troun'rea.

s Therefore gaya sriencia could he heard also from the lips of Diez, when, in
1820, he gave an account about the first volume of the Choix and about the Obser-
vations sur la langue et la literature provenrales of Schlegel (Klein. Arb. u. Recens,
p. 39).

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 449

After this first period Diez took up especially linguistic investi-
gations. He meant to do for the family of Romance languages what
Grimm had done for the Germanic family; and he succeeded to an
unparalleled degree. Just through this he became the founder of
Romance philology, that needed indeed a solid foundation. For
linguistic studies can, from their very nature, be converted into
pure science more easily than literary ones. But even for the latter
a knowledge of the structure and the history of the language is of
inestimable value. This Diez himself proved every time he returned
to the realm of literature. His last return, worth mentioning for
the subject, is in the little book, Ueber die erste portugiesische Kunst
und Hofpoesie, of 1863.

Diez was an exquisite fruit of the Germanic tree, not an isolated
phenomenon. Therefore we find him surrounded by a whole pleiad
of other scholars, amongst whom he will only gradually take the place
of leader and master. Here wre shall find Bekker, whom his quality of
classical philologian shall not deter from joining Uhland in his
studies in Paris, from printing the very first Chanson de geste
(which by chance was in Provencal version) , from bringing to light
with the Bonvesin de la Riva monuments of our Italian literature,
rich in varied dialects; here also Ferdinand Wolf, vigorous pion-
eer in the researches, still faulty in many respects, in the rhythm-
ical and musical forms of the Middle Ages; * here Witte, who will
acquire the leadership in Dante studies; here a swarm of other
editors of texts and investigators. And a younger generation will
grow up by the side of the older one. And we shall have Bartsch with
his Peire Vidal — an important example of the extension of the crit-
ical method in reconstructing texts — with the most useful Provencal
and French chrestomathies,2 with abundant writings and public-
ations. We shall have Theodor Miiller, Conrad Hoffmann, and a
multitude of others beside. And always greater will become the
place which Romance philology has, from the very beginning, been
allowed to take, by their very liberal rules, in German universities.
And the labor of the instructors will be strengthened by the coopera-
tion of the students, who will produce an infinite number of doctors'
dissertations, frail twigs taken singly, not to be broken when gathered

1 Utbcr die Lais, Sequenzen und Leichc. Em Bcitraq zur Gcschichte dcr rliyth-
mischen Formen und Singweisen der Volkslicdcr und dcr volksmossigen Kirchcn-
•und-K-unstlicdcr im Mittelalter. Heidelberg. 1S41 .

2 " Texte critique" Genin had named in the title itself his edition of the Chanson
de Poland : and to that name might also have aspired, with more reason, perhaps,
the edition of the same poem that in 1851 Theodor M filler printed and suppressed.
But from these and other attempts to the J'cire Vidnl the distance is great. The
good-natured system practiced by Ilaynouard had besides been already con-
demned by Diez in his preface to the Pcesi<' dir Troubadours, p. xi: "... War ees-
•/.\\ wlinschen gewcsen, dass der Verfasser die wichtigsten Lesarten, nicht eben jedo
nichtssagende Variante, seinem Texte untergelegt und so den Leser an der Critik
hatteTheil nahmen lassen, ein Punkt, der fiir die gelehrte Benutzung der Werke
von entschiedener Wichtigkeit ist.''

450 ROMANCE LITERATURE

in a bundle. Even in this domain Germany will show the compact
ranks that have rendered her victorious in war, in politics, in indus-
tries, as well as in science generally.

Let us cross the Rhine. They have not idled, indeed, in France
since we have left her. How could they idle, when, to the natural
increase of the movement that we have seen in its beginning, was
added the fact that the free literary tendencies of the so-called
"romanticism" grew and took shape? It is not without significance
even for us that this movement was due especially to a Germanic
impulse, and significant also, in its nebulosity, is the designation
itself, which, whether we will or not, takes us back to the pure Middle
Ages.1 The attraction of the Middle Ages grew mo re intense, and with
it the attraction of all that which, though belonging to modern times,
had preserved a flavor of the Middle Ages.

We can therefore imagine what an echo answered the eloquent
word of Villemain, when, from his chair in the Faculte des Lettres,
he opposed to the mean criticism of the eighteenth century a criticism
winged like an eagle, a human taste to the narrow taste which had
ruled so long. In Villemain Madame de Stael is continued and
completed. The historical sense which permits the appreciation of
lasting beauty through changeable conditions is wide awake.2 And
Villemain will speak of Shakespeare, of Provencal literature, of Old
French, of Italian, of Spanish. And from a chair more solemn than
the one from which, a few decades earlier, the high priest of the
criticism of his time declared "monstrous and full of queerness" the
Divine Comedy, granting it only many scattered beauties of style

1 Remember how the word " romantique" is defined by Madame de Stael, who.
"Si ... n'a pas tout a fait invente le mot, . . . 1'a popularise" (Sorel, Mmr,
de Stai'l, in the collection Les grands (crivains fran^ais, p. 171): "On prend quel-
quefois le mot classique comme synonyme de perfection. Je m'en sers ici dans une
autre acception, en considerant la poesie classique comme celle des anciens et la
poesie romantique comme celle qui tient de quelque maniere aux traditions
chevaleresques. Cette division se rapport e egalement aux deux ores du monde:
celle qui a precede I'etablissement du christianisme et celle qui 1'a suivi.'' (Ibid.,
p. 172.) Did perhaps this passage of the general preface of Bouterwek (vol. I. p. iv)
influence her? ''Die erste Poesie in neu-europaischen Sprachen 1st die ' frohliche
Kunst' (fjnj/d .snVnrtfl) der Troubadours, und die erste Prosa nach dem Aussterben
der lateinischen Volkssprache die romantische in den R ittergeschi eh ten aus
dfr let /ten Halfte des dreizehnten und der erst en des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts."
Another passage of Houterwek in the preface to the History of French Literature,
(p. vi i.v-ufd in 1X00. s<>ems noteworthy to me: "... die iibrigen Wcrke . . .
aus denen man den r <> m a n t i s ch e n G e i s t der altfranzosischen Poesie in
sein.- n Ireilich nicht so eleganten, aber in einem hoheren Sinne poetischen Erfindun-
gen und Ai usseruniren lernen konnte, grossten TlieiU in Handschriften verborgen
gebliehen sind." The author puts himself in evidence, by the different way of
printing th" tv.-o words that are here of interest to us.

2 Cnurx rlr Ijtti'rntnrr jranrnise. Tableau d>i di.r-liiitii'nic fit'clc, vol. in (1S20\
p. 1S7: " Kst-ce que toutes ces bizarrerit s fie 1'imagination grecque n'auraient pas
ete vraiment intolerable* pour le bon gout du xvn" et du xvin'' sieele? Faut-il
decirler cependant que ces fantasques inventions etaient absurdes. ridicules. ( t
qu'il n'y a p:is un etat de societe. un c'tat de 1'imagination humaine ou e< s chos«s
puissent avoir leur grandeur, leur energie? Faut-il nier meme qu'elles n'ai<-nt une
beaute duralile, pour qui saura les comprcndre par cette imagination qui se rend
contemporaine de toutes les epoques?"

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 451

and expression " that might be vividly felt by the author's country-
men, arid even some fragments of general beauty sufficient for the
admiration of all nations," 1 he ended the study of Dante by calling
him not only the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, but "a poet
whose sublime and spontaneous verses will never be forgotten as
long as the Italian tongue exists, as long as poetry is beloved in the
world." 2

Villemain could speak of Dante with first-hand knowledge; but the
greater part of the medieval domain wras for him (nor does he at all
hide this) 3 an unknown country. Hence it is all the more noteworthy
that he should enter there to stay.4 Far different is the case of a man
for whom towards the end of the very year that Villemain ventured
on these shores, 1830, a new chair of Litterature Etrangere had been
founded in the same Faculte des Lettres.5 "Have you not known
in Paris. Fauriel, the editor of the popular songs of Greece? He
is one of the pleasantcst Frenchmen I have ever met, and at that
time" (in 1814) "he did much in Provencal, possessing accurate
copies even of MSS. in the Vatican, and intending to publish some
longer narrative compositions that Raynouard docs not mention at
all." Thus Jakob Grimm wrote to Diez in 1826. 6 "Oneof the pleasant-
est Frenchmen " ; let us add, in genius of the richest, and, perhaps, also
the greatest scholar amongst them. And how well within him the
powers of the mind, which transformed into living forces the heavy
food of erudition, answered to profound goodness! Consider Fauriel,
such as Sainte-Beuve has known how to paint him with his magic
palette,7 look at him as he shows himself in his letters, and then try

1 La Harpp, Cours de Litterature ancienne et modcrne, in the "Discours sur
1'etat des Lettres en Europe, depuis la fin du siecle de Louis XIV " (vol. iv, p. 178.
in the edition of 1817). La Harpe means, in his own manner, to exalt the influence
exercised by Italy at the end of the middle ages : "... Ces deux hommes furent le

Dante et Petrarque: 1'un, dans un poeme d'ailleurs monstrueux et rempli d'ex-
travagances que la manie paradoxale de notre siecle a pu seule justih'er et pre-
coniser, a repandu une foule de beautes de si'.yle et d'expression qui devaicnt ("ire
vivenient senties par ses compatriotes, et memo quelques morceaux assez gene-
ralement beaux pour etre admires de toutes les nations . . ."

2 Cnitrs de Literature francaisc, Littirature du moyc.n age, vol. I, p. -110: ''C'est
dans ce melange de sentiments si divers, d'inspirations si opposees. que s'est forme
le plus grand poete du moyen age, ee poete dont les vers suhlinn s et nalurels no
s'oublieront jamais, tant que la langue italienne sera conservce, taut que la poesie
si'i-a eherie dans le monde."

3 Ibid., p. 1: "Jusqu'a present, je parlais de choses que je connaissais assez
bien. . . . Maintenant, je vais parler de choses que je sais a peinc, que j'apprcnds
a inesure que je les clis."

4 The importance of the subject is proclaimed in the " Avertissement des
editturs": "Pour la premiere fois, dans une chaire publique de France, on aura
cssaye" d'expo<cr le developpement simultane de plusieiirs litteraturos qui sont
sorties de la meme sourc<\ qui se toucli;iient dans l"iirs eommencemcTils. (pii se
sont souvc nt rapprochees dans leurs procres, i t <|iii n'ont cesse de communique!1
ensemble."

5 I should be glad to know that in this fart Villemain had a part. IT" was at the
time a member of the Royal Council of Public Instruction, and could exercise a
great authority.

6 Zeittn-l>r. j. roman. PJiilol.. vol. vr, p. 501.

7 Portraits contcmporains, vol. iv.

452 ROMANCE LITERATURE

not equally to admire and love him, as Alessandro Manzoni admired
and loved him with his whole soul. I find a resemblance, 'striking
in every respect, between Fauriel and him who would surely (and
how much more worthily!) have spoken to you in my place, if he had
not been taken from us before 'his time. He shared with Gaston
Paris an unquenchable thirst of knowledge. This thirst led them
in great part to the same sources: classical languages and literature,
modern literature, Romance and Germanic, the literature of the
Middle Ages, linguistics, which in Fauriel's time had hardly begun,
and popular poetry; and Fauriel accomplished what Paris only
longed for.1 He mastered two Oriental languages: Sanscrit (which,
together with Chezy and Frederick Schlegel, he introduced among
the French) and Arabic. And if Gaston Paris knew Russian,
Fauriel knew the Bask language, and moreover Celtic, which might
make him the object of special envy. I regret to break off this com-
parison without exhausting it.

Averse, as much as -any one ever was, to notoriety, Fauriel had
communicated but little to the public of his persistent and manifold
studies, of his intense meditations, when, almost sixty years old, he
was installed in the chair of the Faculte des Lettres. From thence
he spoke, and this was his principal mode of publication. In 1831
and 1832 he lectured on Provencal poetry; in the two following
years on Dante, of what preceded and prepared him, of the lin-
guistic history of Italy. And the habit of writing his lectures per-
mitted, sooner or later after his death, these courses at least,
amongst many he had held, to be published in book form.2 They
are as rich in thought as in fact, and can still be valuable to whoever
runs no risk of being carried away by certain aberrations. They con-
tain yeast for many a batch of bread. The most noteworthy thing in
Fauriel, and that which shows him essentially modern, is his vivid
curiosity concerning origins. With this, and to the strong liking
which, from earliest youth, he had felt for simple and spontaneous
poetry, was allied his intense interest in epic poetry. He had
studied (and this means that he compared) the Indian, the Persian,
and the Germanic as well as the Greek monuments. And he was
well acquainted with Wolf's ideas concerning Homeric poems.3
What a pity that, being a southerner, he was soon attracted more
by the literature of the langue d'oc than by that of the langue d'o'il,
and that the very nature of his chair made him persevere in this to
the end! The consequence of this was that, instead of studying

1 SOP the note of my commemorative speech on Paris in the Atli deHa R. Acca-
dcmin dell a Criisca, " Adunanza pubblicn del di 27 dicembre, 1903," Firenze, 1904.

2 The one. in 1S47, under the title Histoire de la Poisie Provencale ; the other,
seven years later, Dnnte ft Irs Origines de la Lnnyne ci de la Literature italiennes,

3 See what is said by Mohl in the Histoire de la Poisie Provenrale, vol. n, p. 223;
and a short note of mine in the Romania, vol. xiv, p. 402.

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 453

French epic poetry where it really was, he studied it where he imag-
ined it to be. But he again shows depth of thought and sharp
insight by the importance he gives this kind.

Fauriel's pretensions to claim the epic poetry of France for the
southern region 1 awoke the eager opposition of Paulin Paris, a youth
who, imbued with the spirit (I do not say with all the ideas) of the
Romantic School, had vowed himself to the literature of the langue
d'o'il. He so well understood the value of the epic that he began the
publication of a collection of texts concerning it, a collection which
would certainly have deserved to harbor the highest product, not
only of its kind, but of all the literary French Middle Ages. The
Chanson de Roland saw the light through the efforts of one of the other
scholars and exhumers of old texts, who had by this time grown
numerous. But amongst all who then wandered through the halls and
recesses of the old and no longer silent castle, none can contest the
leadership with Paulin Paris. Therefore when, in 1853, a special chair
for Old French literature was founded in the College de France,
Paris was rightly called to occupy it. This foundation is in itself
as eloquent as possible. And the Minister to whom it was due soon
afterwards accepted, and consecrated with a decree, the plan of pub-
lishing integrally, at the expense of the Government, all that could
be unearthed of the " Anciens poetes de la France." Nothing less!
It was the plan of dreamers. And practical reason soon took it upon
itself to restrain this daring. But nothing more characteristic can
be imagined. Now, we all see, France is wide awake. Nor is it to be
feared that sleep may fall upon her again. Nothing need be feared,
especially for the epic, to which an enthusiast, who has wept hot
tears over the Chansonde Roland,3 has devoted himself. Leon Gautier
will have no peace until the Chanson has been introduced even into
the secondaty schools.

Let us look upon the other Romance nations. Italy, as we know,
did not have to do, but to complete what had already been done, and
to do better. I hastily pass over the school of the Purists, amongst

1 His ideas on the subject, which to a certain extent were later on by himself
recognized as faulty, had been soon after published; and something of these ideas
had already leaked out even before he mounted the chair. Villemain, Litterature
du moi/cn CH/C, vol. i, p. 245, note.

2 Detailed information we receive from Gautier. Epnp<'cs francaiscs, 2d ed., vol. n.
p. 736. The wish for a wide publication of ancient French (epic) texts, was, I think,
expressed for the time in the 6th volume of the Ada Sanctorum Maii (col. 811) of
the Bollandists, published in 1688. Quotations from poems of the cycle of "Guil-
laume au Court nez'' that occurred in Catel's Ifi.^toirr dcs Comics dc Tolose, gave
there occasion to say :'' De Francica . . .veteri lingua fortassis non male merere-
tur qui eiusmodi poemata proferret in lucem.'' The wish, it is seen, comes from
foreign lips. In like manner the Italians, as early as the sixteenth century, had
conceived the design of publishing the Provcneal poets; and they had done moiv
than conceive the design. Certainly there were some who were unequal to th:>
enterprise they longed for; but that cannot be said of Barbieri, about whom see
Giornale di Filologia Romanza. vol. m, p. 3(>, note 1.

3 Epopees fran^aiws, vol. n, pp. 733, 734.

454 ROMANCE LITERATURE

whom stood first Cesari, who dreamed of the resurrection of the
language of the fourteenth century. But many devoted themselves
to the research, the illustration, the publication of old texts, with
more temperate ideas, even though usually not exempt from the
whim of the " Testi di lingua." And for us none is so worthy of being
pointed out as Vincenzo Nannucci, author of the excellent Manudle
della Letter atur a del primo secolo, which appeared in 1837. Xannucci
follows the Italian tradition even in having his eye continually upon
the Provencal, with which he makes continual comparisons. Ever
increasing ardor and richness of content are found in the Dante
studies, that receive a worthy banner in the Discorso sul testo della
Divina Commedia of Ugo Foscolo, which was brought forth in a land
of exile. Dante and their country — their country enslaved and
awaiting freedom — become inseparable loves for all elevated
minds, for all generous souls: Rossetti, Troya, Balbo, Tommaseo,
and I know not how many others. And even outside of Dante, neither
mere erudition, nor the consideration of form according to old con-
ceptions, any longer satisfy: one demands thought. More steeped
with thought than any that had preceded it amongst us is the
Storia d die Belle Letter e in Italia of Emiliani-Giudici. Foreign streams
descend to render fruitful our fields. Not to speak of Ginguene.
Sismondi, Villemain, Fauriel, Ozanam who succeeded Fauriel in his
chair, act upon our scholars and gradually educate the generation
that will come forth later. Even the German action is felt. Biondelli
follows on the tracks of Bekker, and begins amongst us the public-
ation of old dialect-texts, governed by scientific principles. German
pollen of quite a different kind falls upon a southern flower, and
produces an exquisite fruit, with a flavor all its own: the aesthetic-
psychological criticism of Francesco de Sanctis.

In the Iberian Peninsula the German action produced since 1S28
the plentiful Romanccro general of Augustus Duran. But fruitfulness
could not be expected from a country at once upset and depressed
by civil, political, and religious conditions. No wonder, therefore,
that Spain should to a great extent learn the history of her own
literature from a translation of Bouterwek,1 and later from the far
larger work published in English by George Ticknor. a son of the
United States, the first who can be said to enter, and with no small
honor, into this studium of ours, Ticknor was often assisted by one
of his future translators. Pascual de Gayangos. who notably increased
the Spanish version, and who afterwards gave to the important
Biblioteca de A'Ktorcs Espaftoles. undertaken by courageous editors.

1 A Spanish translation of the parts concerning Spain was undertaken by
J. Gomez cle la Cortina and X. Hugalde y Mollinedo. A first volume was published
at Madrid in 1S29; but the publication stopped there; and it was a pity, because
in the form of notes the extension of the original work had been much more than
doubled by the translators fpp. 107-273).

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 455

a collection of Escritores en prosa anteriores al siglo XIV, which cor-
responds to the poetical collection of Sanchez. The task of providing
his country with an indigenous history of literature, which, in scope
and in abundance and accuracy of information, should leave he-
hind all foreign histories, was undertaken by Jose Amador de los
Rios. And we shall not, on account of the impatience occasioned
by his wordiness and useless talk, deny him the deep debt of gratitude
to which he is entitled. Almost as a compensation Spain simul-
taneously offers us Mila y Fontanals,1 a Catalan, it is true, in whom
sobriety almost reaches the degree of dryness. He was one of those
privileged minds, knowing the right road by a kind of instinct, with-
out needing a guide. The book De los Trobadores on Espana
was already written when Mila became more or less acquainted
with Diez; 2 and entirely original, notwithstanding the almost pain-
fully careful review of all his predecessors, was the book on the
Pocsia hcroico-popular castellana, worthy of being called a real sur-
prise, and to whose power is due all the best that Spain has produced
since then.

I have been led to mention a publication of 1874. But in general my
review aimed to stop at about I860. Indeed I could not speak of the
period that followed on account of the overwhelming abundance of
the material. Yet here the question is not one of reviewing special
studies, but rather of pointing out how the present conditions have
been reached.

The freedom and unity of Italy, the prevalence which liberal
sentiments have gained almost everywhere, the relaxation of hinder-
ing religious restrictions, and. very happy circumstance, the un-
dreamed-of facility of communications at homo and abroad, have1
begun to change the aspect of Europe, and have prepared still
further changes. Science had the will and the power of being uni-
versal to a degree it had never reached before. Ascertained doctrines
became known, methods of ascertaining grew familiar. And ( lermany
was in our study, as well as in many others, directly and indirectly,
teacher. — Germany, which had done much to perfect the singularly
efficacious critical, historical, comparative method which was used on
words, on things, on thoughts. Special merit was acquired by certain
men in this "propaganda," and it will be a mere debt of justice to
single out two : Adolph Mussafia. and. surrounded by a far larger num-
ber of proselytes, (Jaston Paris. But men could have done far less
without suitable tools ; and a wonderful inst rumeut of unity was found
in the reviews, thanks to which monographic work grows, within
the minds of the readers, into a whole. It was a memorable day.
therefore1, when Adolph Ebert. assisted by Ferdinand Wolf, started

year. 1M V

456 ROMANCE LITERATURE

the Jahrbuch fur romanische und englische Literatur.1 The paper of
Edelstand du Me"ril on La vie et les oumages de Wace had the first
place in it. And French names were plentiful, nor was the Italian
and Spanish collaboration entirely lacking. Exhausted in strength
the Jahrbuch brought forth the vigorous Romania, and the Zeitschrift
fur romanische Philologie can also be called its posthumous daughter.
The foundation of the Romania marks in a certain way the Romance
emancipation from Germanic guardianship. And there certainly was
no need of a guardianship, where Gaston Paris and Paul Meyer, his
worthy competitor and comrade, were to be found. But this emanci-
pation did not prevent the continuation of harmony. And the
esteem in which Germany held her former ward is also shown by the
numbers who crossed the Rhine to listen eagerly to the spoken
word. In the first decades of the century for Uhland, Bekker, and
Diez, Paris was comprised in its libraries. Since 1870 the German
students have frequented the College de France and the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes no less than the Bibliotheque Nationale.

The Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, imagined, coordinated,
and in no small extent also carried out by Gustave Grober, shows
how wonderfully and usefully productive the industriousness of
the period to which I wish to refer has been. This is an ency-
clopedia of which, a century ago, not a single chapter could
have been written. Together with literature it takes in languages
and other things too. Together with the middle age, the modern
age. But how much space our subject-matter occupies in it! There-
cognition for the literary order of those medieval rights that one had
long been compelled to recognize for civil and political history really
constitutes one of the characteristic features of the culture of the
nineteenth century. It is plain to all now that not even what follows
can be fully understood without going back to the sources. Likewise
it is now clear that we cannot judge of one region without considering
the others with which it has connections. Hence a privileged con-
dition for France, standing first in time and productiveness, and
against which we come up on every side. And by this, the single
histories of literature are changed; in the first place French literature.
Examine the one produced under the direction of Petit de Julleville,
or 1 he more succinct one of Suchier and Birch-Hirschfeld, and compare
it, lot us say, with the work of Xisard, which comes only a few decades
earlier,2 and what a difference is scon, in some places more, in some
less distinctly (for much still remains to be done), for Spain and

1 Already in 1846 L. Herrig and H. Viehhoff had begun to publish the Archiv
fur das Studium der neunrrn Sprarhen und Literaturen, still alive and prosperous.
But it was not their purpose to give special attention in it to Romance medieval
literature; nor is the scientific value of the Archiv in its ancient phases to be com-
pared with that of the Jahrbuch.

2 The first of the four volumes of Nisard was published in 1845; the fourth in
1861.

STUDY OF ROMANCE MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 457

Portugal ! For reasons we know, the history of our literature has had
to undergo less change; but look at the work of Bartoli, unfortunately
too soon broken off; consider that of Gaspary; imagine an under-
taking of this kind accomplished by D' Ancona and Carducci, who
have carried so many stones to the building, and a vast contrast
with the past will always show itself.

We have seen strangers and natives attend the exhumation of the
Romance Middle Ages. A post of honor is due to Germany. Little
by little other nations followed. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Russia,
even tiny Finland (not to mention Roumania, Romance herself)
have rendered distinguished services to Romance philology. It is
singular that, outside of Dante studies, England has kept apart,
notwithstanding the manifold appeals of her own literature, of her
language, of her history. But what the mother failed to do, the
daughter did instead. Amongst you Romance philology has attained
a truly conspicuous place. And the uncertainty of the first steps is
followed by a surer gait, pledge of a precious cooperation in the
fulfillment of a task which can hardly be considered half finished.
And the mother country is rivaled in what concerns Dante, the
true sun of medieval literature, just as the literature of France is its
star-studded sky. Your most famous poet, Longfellow, lovingly
undertook to render the Divine Comedy into his own tongue. Nor
has the fear of comparison deterred other valiant souls from renew-
ing the attempt. A Dante Society exists, and is usefully active here.
The richest Dante collection gathered until now is found in this your
American land. A greeting, therefore, to you from the country of
Dante, from his own native city!

PRESENT PROBLEMS IX THE FIELD OF- ROMANCE
LITERATURES

BY ALCEE FORTIER

[Alcee Fortier, Professor of Romance Languages, Tulane University of Louis-
iana, b. June 5, 1856, St. James Parish, Louisiana. Student at University
of Virginia. Xew Orleans, and Paris. Litt.D. Washington and Lee Univer-
sity; Officier de 1' Academic d'Instruction Publique du Cambodge; Cheva-
lier de la Legion d'Honneur. Professor of French, Boys' High School, Xew
Orleans, 1878-79; Professor of French, L'niversity of Louisiana, 1880-84;
and Tulane University, 1884-94. President of Modern Language Associa-
tion of America, 1898; American Folk-Lore Society, 1894; Athenee Louis-
ianais, Louisiana Historical Society; Catholic Winter School of America.
Member of the American Historical Association, American Dialect Society,
International Phonetic Association, State Board of Education, President of
the Board of Civil Service Commissioners, Xew Orleans. Official delegate from
the United States to Congress of History, Paris Exposition, 1900 ; member
of the Congress of Higher Education, Paris Exposition. Author of many
books, Louisiana Folk-Talcs; Louisiana Studies; Histoire de la Littf'raturc
fran^ai.^c ; Pn'cis de 1'Histoire de France; A History of Louisiana, etc.]

I FKKL greatly honored to have been invited to read a paper before
this Congress of scholars, but I fear that I acted with rashness when
I accepted the invitation of the committee. The subject assigned,
the "Present Problems in the Field of Romance Literatures," is too
vast to be treated in its entirety, and to do it full justice it would
require the learning of Friedrich Diez or of Gaston Paris. These
two great professors were philologists in the highest sense of the
term, and to them Romance philology meant not only the study of
grammar, but also of literature, of civilization. Diez had a preference
for literary subjects, and published in 1820 an important work on the
Lives and Pottri/ of the Troubadours. His masterpiece, however, is
his Grammatik dcr Romanischcn Sprachcn, of which the first edition
was published in 1<S3G. Gaston Paris also had a high literary taste
and was a worthy member of the French Academy. He was at the
same time an accurate student of language, and his edition of
Lti \'i< <h >7. J/'.H'N served as a model for subsequent scientific
criticism. Literary ability and taste and high scholarship in philology
in il> re>tricted sense are a rare combination. Dante wrote his treatise
l)> r/ij/i/ir/ i 'in/lit /itiit. and this work i< interesting as being the first
written about the philology of one of the Romance languages. Yet
it is the Dirina ( 'mntiK did. that has given immortality to the won-
derful bard of Florence. On the other hand, Raynouard's literary
works, his tragedies, are completely forgotten, while his comparative
grammar of the Latin languages has placed his name next to that of
Diez among the founders of Romance philology, in spite of his error,-

PRESENT PROBLEMS IN ROMANCE LITERATURE 459

ecus statement that Provencal was the link between Latin and the
languages derived from it.

In science we are far above the men of antiquity, whether we
include in the term science the study of language or of the natural
sciences, but we cannot claim any superiority over the ancients
in letters or in art. At the very dawn of history the mind of man
seems to have been as vigorous as in our own time, and the genius
of Homer, Virgil, Apelles, and Phidias is not surpassed by that of
Dante, Shakespeare, Moliere, Hugo, Goethe, Raphael, and Michael
Angelo. The artistic feeling, literary genius, is the direct gift of
God to a great man, who will produce immortal works, provided he
labors sufficiently and cultivates his genius. The knowledge of science,
however, is the heritage of centuries, and each generation enjoys
what the preceding one has bequeathed to it. The discoveries of
Pascal and Newton will never be lost to the world, and the bulk
of knowledge will go on increasing down the ages. Literary works
remain also, but they are not dependent upon one another for their
existence. Dante did not need Homer to enable him to produce his
masterpiece, and Homer, long before Dante, produced a work as
great as the Divina Corn-media. Archimedes, on the other hand,
could not have done the work of our modern scientists, and they,
in their turn, are generally indebted to their predecessors for some
principle on which their discoveries are based. If, therefore, we speak
of the highest works of literature, we find among them but few pro-
blems to solve.

It is. however, interesting to study the forces which have influ-
enced men of genius in some parts of their works. The creative
instinct was theirs as a divine gift from the very beginning of their
career, and they did not owe to their predecessors that essential part
of their works which has given them immortality. Let us. neverthe-
less, endeavor to discover the sources of the minor parts of great
literary productions. We shall, in this way, understand better the
workings of a great mind and obtain a more accurate knowledge of
I he character and disposition of the author. Ilo\v interesting it is.
for instance, to study in Moliere 's works what that extraordinary
man owed to French, Spanish. Italian. Greek, and Latin models,
and what he owed to his wonderful observation of the living man.
There are. therefore, many influences and tendencies which affect
greatly the mass of literature, and we shall endeavor to discuss some
of those problems.

The teaching of the Romance literatures in the colleges and uni-
versities of the United States is one of the most serious problems
which we have to solve. For a number of years higher instruction
in our country has lie en dominated by the German methods. The
splendid work done by the German universities attracted to them

460 ROMANCE LITERATURE

many American students, who acquired there the true scholarly
spirit, that is to say, rigid accuracy and thorough dissection of a
subject. The influence for good of German scholarship on American
professors was incalculable, and raised to a high degree the standard
of teaching foreign literatures. Before this introduction of German
methods both the teaching and criticism of literature were too vague,
too dilettante. The attempt had been made to cover too much ground
in a limited time; whole periods were gone over, and the principal
authors in those periods were studied in a general way. This wras
changed by the introduction of the German method in graduate
work, and it was thought better to study in detail one author or
one work, to endeavor to ascertain all possible facts concerning the
author and the work. This rigid scientific method was first applied
to Romance philology in the United States by Professor A. Marshall
Elliott at the Johns Hopkins University, and he has rendered thus
an immense service to American scholarship.

Professor Elliott was also the founder of the Modern Language
Association of America, which has been one of the principal factors
in the development of higher education in the United States and in
the diffusion of the scientific spirit, I'esprit universitaire, on which
so much stress was laid in 1900 at the Congress of Higher Education
in Paris. At the first meetings of the Modern Language Association
there were many discussions about methods of teaching modern
languages, but soon the Association declared as its opinion that the
chief purpose of teaching modern languages in the United States
was to impart the culture obtained by the study of their literatures.
This did not mean that the training acquired by the study of lin-
guistics was to be abandoned, but it indicated the idea of the Asso-
ciation that the literary spirit should be attended to more than it
had been in the past. This expression of opinion on the part of the
Modern Language Association of America was very important, and
the result was that, in our secondary schools and our colleges, much
more extensive reading has been done, and therefore a better know-
lodge of literature has been obtained.

In University or graduate work the effect has been felt also,
but to a lesser degree. The rigid, accurate work of German scholar-
ship was carried to an extreme, and the study of literature from an
icsthctic point of view and for the purpose of culture had been very
much neglected for a number of years. There has been lately a
reaction, and a great demand for a broader and more artistic study
of literature has arisen. For many years I have been convinced that
the problem could be partly solved by introducing into our American
universities some of the French ideals, some of the French art and
culture. This could only be done if a sufficient number of Americans
were to study in France and be permeated with the French feeling

with regard to literature. There should be a combination of the
German painstaking accuracy and of the generally superior apprecia-
tion of art in literature of the French. This would produce admirable
results in American universities.

For a long time there were few students from the United States
in France, for it was very difficult to obtain the French Doctor's
degree. It is to Mr. Harry A. Furber, of Chicago, that Americans are
indebted for the possibility of obtaining the degree of " Docteur de
PUniversite"," which corresponds to the German "Doctor of Philo-
sophy," without being obliged to fulfill all the requirements de-
manded of French students. We should encourage our young men
and young women to go to France for the study of the Romance
languages, in order that we may have later in this country a better
appreciation of the Romance literatures. This would be felt, not only
in the colleges and universities and by the students there, but almost
immediately by the general public. The scholars who would have
acquired in France, or under instructors animated by the same
ideas, the French taste for literary art, would write reviews and crit-
icisms which would have a great influence on the people who read
journals and magazines. In this respect let us say that the opinion
of the American public with regard to French life, as seen in many
novels, is entirely erroneous. It should be the duty of American
students of French literature to correct this false impression and
to show that nowhere in the world is family life nobler and more
respected than in France.

A professor in an American college assumes a great responsibility
when he attempts to direct his pupils in the study of the Romance
literatures. In most of our colleges the teacher of literature is also
the teacher of the language in which that literature is written, and
he should try to teach literature when he teaches the reading of
the language. It is, therefore, interesting to see how much reading
is done in our institutions of collegiate grade. Professor Henry
Johnston Darnall, of the University of Tennessee, has calculated most
patiently from catalogues the number of pages read in undergraduate
French courses in twenty colleges in the following Southern States:
Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The largest numbers were 3772, 2991, 2705, 2516, and 2100. The
smallest number was 423, and the average was 1795. The courses
were generally of two years; some were of three, and very few of
four. We should endeavor to raise the average number of pages read
to at least 2500 in two years. This can be done by giving parallel
reading, from the first year, ascertaining by an examination, either
written or oral, whether the work assigned has been well done. As
given in the catalogues the texts read seem to have been judiciously

462 ROMANCE LITERATURE

chosen, and represent authors from the seventeenth century to the
twentieth.

Out of the twenty Southern colleges referred to thirteen offer courses
in Spanish, generally of one year, and six have short courses in Italian.
It is evident that there is great room for improvement in the study
of the Spanish and Italian languages and literatures in our Southern
States. Judging from the catalogues, the courses in the three prin-
cipal Romance literatures, French, Spanish, and Italian, in the large
universities in the North, in the East, and in the West are very
extensive, both in the undergraduate and in the graduate depart-
ments. In undergraduate classes it is not possible to give to the
students a thorough understanding of the literary merit of a work,
unless the course be of more than two years' duration. Beginning
with the third year the professor should often have his students
read the text in French. Spanish, or Italian, without translating it
into English, and asking questions about the text, which should be
answered in the language studied at the time.

In graduate work some of the larger American universities offer
good courses in literature, but thus far the apparent result obtained
has not been very satisfactory, as there has been little work of a high
order done by American scholars, students of American universities,
in literary criticism of the Romance literatures. More attention
should be given in our higher institutions of learning to this import-
ant branch of study. There should be close seminary work of the
masterpieces themselves, and also of the works of the great European
critics, among whom the French stand so high, from Sainte-Beuve
to Taine. Brunetiere. Faguet, Doumic. Lemaitre. and IVllissier.
Utmost attention should be given to make the students feel the
artistic, aesthetic, eternally human spirit which pervades all the
masterpieces in literature.

The study of literature can only be complete when it is supple-
mented by the history of the people, political, social, and economic,
and by the study of the fine arts. It is impossible to understand
a number of the greatest works written in the Romance languages
without knowing thoroughly the history of the countries where lived
the authors of those masterpieces, and an appreciation of the beauti-
ful works in painting and in sculpture helps to understand art in
literature. Were it possible I should like to see the students of
Romance literatures appreciate also the masterpieces of the great
musicians. They should, while studying Lamartine and Hugo. Dante
and Petrarch. I. ope <le Vega, and Calderon. visit the great museums
of art in Kurope and in this country, and go often to the theatres to
hear admirable operas. The study of literature should be scientific,
that is to say. literary works should often be analyzed critically;
it >hould be. above all. testhetic. so that we might

PRESENT PROBLEMS IN ROMANCE LITERATURE 463

enjoy completely the art of the author, as well as the subject which
he treats. There is no better way to understand the Romance litera-
tures than to make a comparative study of them. There are not
enough works like Villemain's Coursde Litterature Frangaise, where he
compares so well the masterpieces of different literatures, especially
those of the eighteenth century.

I present to this Congress as one of the most important problems
in the field of Romance literatures the study of those literatures in
the United States and in other countries. I might have expanded
considerably a subject which I consider extremely important and
entirely pertinent to my theme, as it concerns the diffusion of the
Romance literatures in foreign countries by the help of the higher
institutions of learning. Very efficiently, too, may this diffusion be
carried out by courses of lectures given by men eminent as critics
or as authors, such as the courses so happily inaugurated by Mr.
James H. Hyde, of New York, for the French Circle of Harvard
University and for the Federation of "PAlliance Francaise" in the
United States. It would be very fortunate if similar courses were
established in Italian and in Spanish. In many parts of our country
there could be found audiences which might appreciate lectures
delivered in these languages.

In speaking of the Romance literatures let us remember that it
is not only in Europe that they flourish. Although Spain has lost her
colonial possessions in America, she has left her impress on millions
of men in the New World, and there is an interesting Spanish litera-
ture in Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America. In Brazil also is
to be found a literature which had its origin in Europe, and writers
not unworthy of the land of Camoens have written works of merit
in the Portuguese language. Professor Elijah Clarence Hills.1 of
Colorado College, has given the following list of some of tin1 Spanish-
American writers of the nineteenth century: Chile. — Miguel Luis
de Amunategui, Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna, Jose Taribio Medina;
Colombia. — Miguel Antonio Caro. Jorge Ysaacs; Rufino .lose
Cuervo; Cuba, — (Jertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda. Jose Maria
Heredia, Joaqnin Lorenzo Luaces; Ecuador. — Juan Leon Mera,
Jose J<>a<[iiin de Olmedo; Mexico, — Jose Joaqui'n I'esado. .Manuel
Carpio. Juan de Dios Peza, Manuel Actifia: Nicaragua. — Ruben
Dario. Jose Batres y Montofar; Peru. — Felipe Pardo y Aliaga;
Argentine Republic. — Olegario Motor Andrade: Uraguay, — Zor-
rilla de San Martin; Venezuela, — Andres Hello.

It would be very interesting to note what has been the influence of
the literatures of the former mother countries on those of the eman-
cipated colonies, and to ascertain whether the latter have exerted
any influence on the works of the Spanish and Portuguese authors.
1 Colorado Col lose Studies. June. 1904,

464 ROMANCE LITERATURE

There is no doubt of the influence of the European writers during the
periods of the Spanish and Portuguese dominations and for some time
after the independence of the colonies, just as we can trace the
influence of English literature on the works of American writers.
After colonies have become independent, there soon arises a literature
more or less national and with interesting local color. How far have
the European writers been influenced by it, and would it not be a
way to renew to some extent the literatures of Spain and of Portugal?
Some time ago there met at Madrid a congress of delegates from the
Latin- American republics. Would it not be advisable to hold such
congresses at stated times, either in Spain or in the different states
of Spanish America, in order to expand the scope of Spanish lit-
erature and make it more world-wide, plus mondiale, as the French
say?

There has been a large immigration of Italians into South America
and into Louisiana. They have newspapers of their own, and they
continue to make use of their language as a mother tongue for
two or three generations. Have they produced any literary works
written in Italian, or is it likely that they will ever produce any,
and how would it be possible for Italian writers to encourage
that production? Is there any Italian literature outside of Italy ?
I could wish my learned colleague, Professor Pio Rajna, to answer
this question.

It is well known that in Canada there is an important native
French literature which comprises history, poetry, and fiction.
Some of the Canadian writers are known in France, and their works
have been rewarded by the French Academy. The tenacity of the
French-Canadians in keeping as a mother tongue the language of
their ancestors is indeed wonderful. Although Montcalm fell in 1759,
and Canada has been British from the capitulation of Montreal in
1760, the descendants of the men of that time still love France and
the French language, and have produced an extensive French litera-
ture. Should the Canadians be influenced in their works by the
French authors, or should they evolve a national literature? I read
not long ago, an article in a Canadian magazine in which the author
said that the Canadians should not look to France for their inspira-
tion, but should make their literature suit their own local conditions.
There is a groat deal of truth in this statement. Let there be local*
color, and let local patriotism animate the writers in Canada, but
let thorn always continue to study the groat works in French litera-
ture, especially contemporary works. Separated from the former
mother Country for a century and a half, the Canadian language has
not, us a rule, the true characteristics of modern French, and will
lose thorn more and more in the course of time, if the Canadian
authors do riot continue to make a close study of modern French

PRESENT PROBLEMS IN ROMANCE LITERATURE 465

literature. If they choose to evolve a literature of their own, written
in a language which will differ considerably with time from modern
French, it will be an interesting experiment. They are numerous
enough not to have to fear their being absorbed by the British ele-
ment of the population, and their literature will ever continue to be
written in French, although their language will contain many dia-
lectic differences from the French of Paris. The Greek of Asia Minor
was not wholly the Greek of Athens, and the French of Belgium
and of Switzerland is said to be not always the French of Paris.
These remarks about the Canadian French literature are not meant
as a criticism, for I have the highest admiration for the courage and
perseverance which the French-Canadians have displayed in pre-
serving the language of their venerated ancestors, and I admire
also greatly many works of their literature. I merely wish to state
an interesting problem concerning one of the Romance literatures.

In Louisiana we have also a native French literature of merit.
It dates from the year 1779, when Julien Poydras wrote a short epic
poem on the conquest of Baton Rouge from the British by the
heroic young governor of Louisiana, Bernardo de Galvez. We had
in 1814 a tragedy in classic style, Poucha-Houmma, by Le Blanc
de Villeneufve; and later several interesting plays of the Romantic
School, such as Les Martyrs de la Louisiane, by A. Lussan, and France
et Espagne and Qui perd gagne, by L. Placide Canonge. In history
we have the works of Gayarre and of Debouchel, and in poetry
several works which may be compared favorably with some written
by the best French writers. Our poets seem to have been inspired by
the romantic history of Louisiana, by its stately river and its pictur-
esque lakes and bayous, by its mild climate and luxuriant vegetation,
and by the beauty and grace of the women. We have, therefore,
more poems written in Louisiana than any other kind of literary
works, and we honor greatly the names of our poets in the past,
Adrien and Dominique Rouquette, Dr. Alfred Mercier. L. Placide
Canonge, Alcxandre Latil, Dr. Charles Testut. Mine. Kmilie Evershed,
Oscar Dugue, and Dr. Charles Delery. We have had few novels,
but these are interesting and have a pleasant local color, such as
Mine, de la Houssaye's Pouponne et Balthazar, Dr. Alfred Mercier's
L' Habitation St. Ybars, and George Dessommes's Tante Cydcttc.

The problem in Louisiana is more difficult to solve than in Canada.
The French-Canadians are numerous, while the Louisianians of
French origin are in a minority in their state. They are loyal Ameri-
cans, but. like their Canadian brethren, they are sincerely attached
to the country and to the language of their ancestors, and they still
have an important daily newspaper and a native French literature,
not so large as before the Civil War, but very interesting. The pro-
blem of maintaining the French literature of Louisiana was partly

466 ROMANCE LITERATURE

solved when Dr. Alfred Mercier founded in 1876 the "Athe'nee
Louisianais," a literary society whose publications contain many
important contributions, and which comprise several large volumes.
As this admirable World's Fair is held to celebrate the centennial
of the cession of Louisiana to the United States, you will allow me
to call your attention to the exhibit of French Louisiana in the
Department of Anthropology and History of the Exposition. There
you may have an idea of the French literature of the oldest state
formed out of the immense province acquired by the United States
in 1803. It is a literature influenced principally by that of France,
but which contains nevertheless some works influenced to a high
degree by local surroundings.

The French language in Louisiana will long continue to be spoken
as a mother tongue by many thousands of persons, and local French
literature will continue to be produced, because the writers are
animated by the purest feelings of filial piety, and are entirely dis-
interested. They know that their works written in French will be
read by few persons outside of Louisiana, and they have no idea
of pecuniary gain. The Creoles of Louisiana, that is to say. the
white descendants of the French, although they know the English
language and are in no wise hostile to it. consider the French lan-
guage as much their own as it is that of the native Frenchmen. It
forms part of their inheritance as well as the traditions, the names,
and the blood which their fathers have transmitted to them. They
have produced works written in French just as naturally as they
have spoken the language which they learned at their mothers'
knees, and have never thought of being rewarded by the French
Government for an act which is a simple expression of hereditary
feelings. They are pleased, however, when their brethren in France
send them tokens of remembrance in the form of affectionate letters
from distinguished statesmen or authors, or when these eminent
men come in person to express their fraternal feelings. The Creoles
of Louisiana, although they are thoroughly loyal to the American
Union, are highly pleased to see. when they go to France, that they
arc not considered as strangers in the native1 land of their ancestors.
The "French Family," la Famillc Francaixe. as it has often been
expressed so admirably by M. Louis Herbette. of the '" Conseil d'Etat."
should maintain close bonds of affection all over the world, and it
should be thus with the Italian, the Spanish, and the Portuguese
families. Jn this way the development of the Romance literatures in
foreign countries might be greatly encouraged.

Let no one think that love for the language, the literature, and the
country of the ancestors will ever prevent the descendants in the
United States from loving above all the land of their birth. Study
the historv of the French Creoles of Louisiana, and vou will see that.

PRESENT PROBLEMS IN ROMANCE LITERATURE 467

from the year 1803 to our days, no men, no women have ever been
more patriotic Americans. Whatever was the native land of our
forefathers, however much we wish to preserve our family traditions,
we are all in this country sincerely attached to the American system
of government, to our American political institutions, which are
based on the Anglo-Saxon principles of individual liberty, upon which
Washington and his collaborators founded our American Repub-
lic. I hope that my colleagues at this Congress will pardon this
apparent digression from my subject, but as I speak before a cos-
mopolitan audience, I wish to be thoroughly understood when I say
that a native American may work with enthusiasm for the de-
velopment and diffusion of the Romance literatures in the United
States, and yet remain entirely loyal to the Constitution of the
United States.

One word more on this part of my theme, and I shall pass to another
phase of it. One of the most important influences in America for the
study of an interesting Romance literature and for its production
is the Federation of "PAlliance francaise" in the United States,
founded in 1902 by Mr. James H. Hyde. The Association has been
very successful, and comprises societies in all parts of the U/nion and
25,000 members. Many college French circles arc affiliated with the
Federation, and the continued success of this large organization will
contribute to solve the important problem of how to encourage
the study of the French language and literature in the United States.
Is it not possible to establish Spanish and Italian societies, like the
Federation of "1'Alliance francaise," to bring together the different
Spanish and Italian groups scattered over the United States, or
may not the example of the Federation be followed in Mexico and in
South America? Nothing certainly would be more beneficial to the
development of the Romance literatures on the whole American
continent.

In studying the problems in modern French literature I cannot
do any better than to base some of my remarks on the very important
article published by M. Gustave Lanson, in August. 1900, in the
Revue dc Synthcsc Historique. Many of these problems would pre-
sent themselves to any careful student of French literature, but
M. Lanson has stated them with such clearness and with such
a scientific method that I shall follow to some extent his pre-
sentation of problems which I have often mentioned in my own
teaching of French literature, but with far less scientific accuracy.
M. Lanson is highly endowed with I'cxjirtt tun'r< rsitaire.

The historical method should be applied to literary criticism, that
is to say, the biography of the author and the history and ana-
lysis of his works should be studied simultaneously, and not as if
the one was independent of the other. The works form part of the

468 ROMANCE LITERATURE

life of the author and are explained as a development of that life,
especially in the French authors of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. The work of Rousseau, Voltaire, Mme. de Stael, Cha-
teaubriand, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Musset, and many
other writers, can be understood only by studying them at the
same time as the events which inspired them, and also by study-
ing the social and historical forces produced in the lifetime of the
writers. One of the most important problems, therefore, in the field
of Romance literatures is the study of social and historical forces
in those literatures, and I wish to repeat here a few ideas which
I expressed in 1898 in my address delivered as President of the
Modern Language Association of America: 1

"It is true that all mankind is animated by the same psychical
forces inherent in humanity, and that a great work of art, whether
produced by a Homer, a Virgil, a Dante, a Shakespeare, a Calderon,
a Moliere, a Goethe, is permeated with the same broad human feeling,
but each man is bound to reproduce in his work the effect of the
civilization to which he belongs. That civilization is largely an
inheritance which the individual enjoys by the mere fact of being
born in a certain atmosphere; but as civilization means development,
new historical and social forces are constantly being brought to bear
upon the individual and modifying his ideas. There are, therefore,
three great causes which mould the mind of the individual: (1) the
fact of being a man, which gives him ideas and sentiments common
to all men; (2) his birthplace, which impresses upon him the civiliz-
ation of his country; (3) the historical and social forces produced in
his own lifetime. . . .

"M. Brunetiere says that the principal influence in literature is
that of works upon works. That influence is certainly very important,
but it is not the principal one. So many forces have contributed to
the civilization of every country and to the development of every
literature that it is very difficult to say which one of these forces
has been the most active and the most fruitful. If a great writer has
produced a change in the civilization of his time, that change is never
so complete as it might appear, inasmuch as the writer must reflect
some ideas common to his race, to his country, and to all men.
Again, admitting that the personal influence of one man had pro-
duced a change almost complete on his epoch and on the literature
of his time, that influence of an individual becomes a social force
and reacts on other individuals, who may, in their turn, impress the
stamp of their genius on civilization and on literature. Historical and
social forces are. therefore, continually brought into contact with
forces apparently entirely personal and literary, and there is a per-
petual reaction of the one class of forces on the other."

1 Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America for 1898.

PRESENT PROBLEMS IN ROMANCE LITERATURE 469

The three great sciences auxiliary to literary history are biblio-
graphy, lexicography, and the preparation of texts. M. Lanson
says that bibliography has lately made great progress, but that
there is still lacking a general bibliography of French literature.
The same remark may be made about the other Romance literatures.
There should be also complete bibliographies of works of individual
authors, of the different literary ages, of the principal magazines
and reviews, of publishers and printers of the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries. Catalogues of the libraries of writers
are also very important, such as those of Montaigne and of Racine,
made by M. Bonnefon; for, "those inventories," adds M. Lanson,
"at a time when the use of public libraries was almost unknown,
help us to know what books were read by the great writers, what
were their instruments of labor and their tastes." Good lexicons
of special writers, such as that of Moliere by Livet, are needed, and
also good dictionaries of the different Romance languages. The
dictionary of the French language by Darmesteter, Hatzfeld, and
Thomas is admirable, and similar works should be produced for the
Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese languages.

Bibliographies and lexicons are useful tools to the student of
literature, but accurate texts are indispensable, and the publication
of incdits has added greatly to the literary treasures of nations and
to the better knowledge of the character and disposition of authors,
whose letters and memoirs have been discovered and given to the
world. However unsavory it may appear to some persons, the recent
publication of the letters of Alfred de Musset and of George Sand
has made us understand better the complicated problem of Lui ct
Ellc and of Ellc ct Lui. There is no more fruitful theme in the field
of Romance literatures than the proper preparation of texts and
the publication of incdits. The study of medieval French literature
\vas only possible after Paulin Paris had published in 1832 his
edition of Bcrtc aux grands picds, and the admirable Chanson dc
Roland, the witty Avocat Path din, and other interest 11112; works of the
Middle Ages, could be fully appreciated only when good critical
editions were published by distinguished Rouuince scholars in
luirope and in America. The field is here immense ami is yet hardly
explored, in spite of the excellent work of Gaston Paris. Paul Meyer,
Grober, Suchier, Schuchardt, Pio Rajna, A. .Marshall Elliott, H. A.
Todd. Adolphc Cohn, and many others.

The biographies of writers are so important for a proper under-
standing of their works that no pains should be spared to produce
accurate biographies, which should be psychological as well as nar-
rative, and many biographies considered complete thus far should
be rewritten. It is important, in many cases, to determine exactly
in what province of a country a writer was born. Michelet , in the

470 ROMANCE LITERATURE

second volume of his History of France, presents to us a striking
tableau of the characteristics of each of the provinces, and gives
an admirable explanation of the influence of local causes, of topo-
graphy and geography, on the genius of a nation and of a man.
Great social and historical forces were at work at different epochs
in the different provinces of France, Spain, and Italy, and the Ro-
mance literatures and civilizations are the result of all these forces.
I wish to mention here as a model of complete and accurate bio-
graphy the work on Honor at de Bueil, Seigneur de Racan, by Pro-
fessor Louis Arnould, of the University of Poitiers. Several works
of this kind have been published lately by laborious and distin-
guished scholars.

Just as historical legends are destroyed by our modern historians
who base their statement of facts upon well-authenticated documents,
so are legends in literary history destroyed by modern critics, whose
methods are scientific and exact. Let not criticism, however, be-
entirely mathematical, let the critic appreciate always the aesthetic
element in literature. Like the historian of political events, he should
be accurate and yet understand the interest, the poetry, always
inherent in humanity. If the artistic element in a literary work is
to be destroyed by criticism, then, in my opinion, that criticism is
false. As an example of useless, and, I may say, of harmful minute-
ness in criticism, I may mention one of the discoveries of a modern
iconoclast. I read, sometime ago. in a French magazine that M.
Edmond Eire had proved that Graziella was the daughter of a shoe-
maker, arid consequently that the incidents of Lamartine's excursion
to the Isle of Procida wore all invented by the great poet. It was
well known that the Confidences and Raphael were not accurate
autobiographies, and that their value consisted in the knowledge
which they gave us of the feelings of Larnartine, of his ('tat d'am< .
at certain periods of his life. Of what interest, therefore, is it to us
to know who was Graziclla? The charming girl created by Lamar-
tine is much more interesting and real than the .shoemaker's daugh-
ter discovered by M. Bin'. The former makes us understand the
poet's feelings much better than the latter. In our studies of the
Romance literatures let us endeavor to discover all erroneous state-
ments made by writers, but let us tise our judgment with regard
to publishing discoveries which are useless to our knowledge of men
and of works, and which may, in some degree, destroy the poetic-
illusions of the readers of the works. When M. Birc, however, proves
to us that it Avas materially impossible for Chateaubriand to have
visited the countries Avhich he describes in his Voyaycs en Ai)it'rique
and in his Munoircs d'Outre-tombe, he does a useful Avork, bec-ause he
discoA'ers the sources from Avhich Chateaubriand has drawn his
descriptions.

PRESENT PROBLEMS IN ROMANCE LITERATURE 471

The study of the sources is one of the most important problems
in the field of Romance literatures, and although a great deal has been
done in that direction, the work not yet accomplished is still im-
mense. The literary relations between France, Italy, and Spain,
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were very close, and are
an interesting subject to investigate. Also the influence of England
and Germany on French writers, principally in the first half of the
nineteenth century. Excellent works have been written on these
subjects by Messieurs Brunetiere, Morel-Fatio, Jusserand, V. Rossel,
and J. Texte, but comparative literature is almost a new science,
and a great future awaits the scholars who will devote themselves to
it. The influence of Ibsen and Bjornson, of Mickiewicz and Tolstoy,
of the Scandinavian and Slavonic literatures, on the Romance litera-
tures is itself a broad and important field to explore, one which
presents many interesting problems to solve.

M. Lanson's article on Modern French literature is so exhaustive
that I have used it partly as a text for my commentary on that
subject, and I shall recapitulate briefly a few of his statements. He
recommends that correct and critical texts of the great writers be
published and says that there hardly exists a single scientific edition
of the texts of the nineteenth century. The history of comedy in its
transformations has not been written, and there should be a his-
tory of lyric poetry, of epic poetry, and a history of history. The
history of the genres is yet very incomplete. Strange to say, the his-
tory of Latin influence on French literature in the three classic
centuries has not been written, and that of Greek influence very
inadequately. The problem of the origin of French romanticism has
not yet been solved, and the eighteenth century is not well under-
stood. The genealogy of a writer and his physiological tempera-
ment should be studied in order to understand better his biography
and his psychology. The most interesting problem, however, is
to determine which are the really great works produced in the nine-
teenth century. The above observations may be applied in general
to the literatures of Spain. Portugal, and Italy, as well as to that of
France.

Although French literature was considerably influenced in the nine-
teenth century by English and German writers, it exerted in its turn
a great influence on foreign literatures, especially on the Italian and
the Spanish. The modern literatures of Spain and of Portugal have
exerted little influence in France, but that of modern Italy is better
known and appreciated. The works of Leopardi. Fogazzaro, Matihle
Serao, Edmondo de Amicis, Giovanni Yerga. and Ada Xegri are said
by French critics to be popular and to have exerted a beneficent
influence, while Gabricle d' Annunzio, whose genius is much admired
in France, is viewed with some distrust. M. de Yogu'e. in 1S95. saw

472 ROMANCE LITERATURE

in his works a "Latin renaissance," but M. Joseph Texte1 said of him:
"The influence of d' Annunzio is one of those which we do not
wish to see our France feel too deeply." Each one of the great Latin
countries has its own individuality, its own genius, but they have
all in common many traits which they have inherited from ancient
and splendid Rome, and one of the important problems in the field
of Romance literatures is to endeavor to bind by a closer intellectual
bond people whose languages and civilizations are principally Latin.

In this paper I have not yet mentioned the Catalan, Roumanian,
Rhaetian, and Provencal literatures. Important problems may be
found there, but I have no time to study them. I wish, however, to
call attention to the interest which lies in a study of Catalan litera-
ture and of its influence on Spanish literature and even on Spanish
politics. The felibrige in France is also very important from its literary
as well as from its political aspect. The works of Mistral, of his pre-
decessors, and of his friends, have not only a literary value, but
are important with regard to the effect which they may produce on
the question of decentralisation. Of like effect may be the novels
which describe provincial life, such as those of Ferdinand Fabre,
Andre Theuriet, Emile Pouvillon, and Rene Bazin.

Political questions have always exerted a great influence on liter-
ature. A great change was brought about in Spain by the French
Revolution and by the struggle against the Napoleonic invasion; and
such poets as Espronceda, Nunez de Arce, Campoamor, and Zorrilla;
such novelists as Juan Valera, Pedro Alarcon, Emilia Pardo Bazan,
and Armando Palacio Valdes; such dramatists as Echegaray and
Perez Galdos, are the products of the literary renaissance which
began after the fall of Napoleon. But the most important force in
the development of Spanish literature would be the development
of the educational system of the country. Education is not general
enough in Spain or yet in Italy. Republican France, since 1870, has
given a great example to her Latin sisters and has made wonderful
progress in public education. It will be interesting to note in a few
years what have been the results on literature of the present policy
of the French Government concerning congregational schools. The
influence of parliamentary democracy is an important subject to
study. lias its establishment been the cause of pessimism in litera-
ture or not? In Italy also political history has exerted a marked
influence on literary history, and the establishment of the kingdom of
Victor Emmanuel and the loss of the temporal power of the Pope
have given rise to interesting problems in literature as well as in
politics.

1 Petit de Jullevillc, Histoire de la Langue et de la Literature franraise, volume
vin, p. 695.

PRESENT PROBLEMS IN ROMANCE LITERATURE 473

The dominant trait in the Romance literatures at present is more
individuality, less enslavement to schools and their supposed rules
and precepts. There is, in general, a broader human feeling, a well-
marked interest in things common to mankind, and this feeling is
evidenced by the presence at this Congress of Arts and Science of
distinguished men and women from all parts of the world. Let
each one of us cherish above all the land of his birth, the land where
reside those dearest to him, but let us all unite in a common love for
the noble thoughts contained in the great literatures of the world,
among which are to be found, in a position of well-deserved honor
and dignity, the Romance literatures.

SECTION E — GERMANIC LITERATURE

(Hall 3, September 23, 10 a. m.)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR KUNO FRANCKE, Harvard University.
SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR AUGUST SAUER, University of Prague.

PROFESSOR J. MINOR, University of Vienna.
SECRETARY: PROFESSOR K. D. JESSEN, Bryn-Mawr College.

THE INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE
ON GERMAN LITERATURE

BY AUGUST SAUER
(Translated from the German by Prof. Robert S. Woodworth, Columbia University)

[August Sauer, Regular Professor of German Language and Literature, University
of Prague, since 1891. b. Vienna Newstadt, Austria, Oct. 12, 1855. Graduate,
University of Vienna, 1876; Ph.D. ibid. 1877; University of Berlin, 1877-78.
Substitute Professor, University of Lemberg, 1879-83; Special Professor, Uni-
versity of Graz, 1883-86; ibid. University of Prague, 1886-91. Member of the
Imperial Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Society for the Advancement of German
Science, Art, and Literature in Bohemia and Prague. Author of Concerning
the Iambic Pentameter of Lessing's Nathan; Studies in the Philology of Goethe
(with Minor); Portrait of Women from the Golden Age of German Literature; and
many other works and papers on Germanic literature.]

METHODOLOGICAL questions are capable of two sorts of treatment.
One can make a survey of the whole complex of problems and
exhaust all the possibilities. Or one can point out the best manner
of treatment by means of an example specially fit for the purpose.
It is in no spirit of contradiction to the philosophical spirit which
conceived the idea of this World's Congress and called it into life that
I choose the latter of these two ways, arid seek to fulfill the task
assigned me — that of showing the relations of German literature to
foreign literature — by tracing this connection in the case of two
authors who have hitherto been considered as very far apart from
each other. I mean by this choice to give strong expression to my
conviction that the slow and toilsome work of detailed research can
never be avoided in the life of science. Everything depends, how-
ever, even in such work, on gaining the broadest possible outlook
and never losing one's feeling for the great whole.

The longer the span of history we survey, in a national literature,
and the more different national literatures we follow in their origin
and development, the more the history of all literature appears to
us as a single organism, the separate organs of which stand in closest,
most indissoluble connection with each other, while even the smallest

478 GERMANIC LITERATURE

component parts exert a mutual influence. Thus there is reared,
on the foundation of the separate sciences of the national literatures,
a general or comparative science of literature. Such a science was
foreshadowed and sketched in outline by far-seeing thinkers even
a century ago ; it was further shaped with varying success by their
followers; to-day, though still vague in aim and uncertain in method,
it is of great promise for the future, especially in such a field as
America, where so many languages and literatures meet, and whence,
indeed, has sprung one of the more successful of recent investigators
who have devoted themselves to this branch of literary history.

Dependence on others as models and standards is a matter of
course, a natural and necessary condition. Every author, even he
who seems most original, must first of all have fought his way from
dependence to independence. Writers inherit from their predecessors
the richest treasures, without will or codicil. Even a writer who has
long seemed so eccentric and pathological as Friedrich Hebbel is
gradually seen to have a truly organic place in the regular develop-
ment of our composition and style. The same work of art belongs to
the most varied lines of development. Philosophy of the world and
of life, idea and tendency, matter and motive, technique and present-
ation, style and language, — each has its own line of development.
Originality in one direction does not exclude dependence in another;
a poet, a work, may on one side open up a fresh line of development
while on another side standing at the close of an earlier line. Myriad
crossings of the different lines are possible.

The history of a people's literature is an almost uninterrupted suc-
cession of culture borrowed, influences received, stimulus felt from
other literatures. When one people is culturally, socially, and polit-
ically superior to another, and at the same time in close geographical
contact and lively intercourse with it, the weaker, younger, more
primitive people is wholly surrendered to the intellectual influence
of the more advanced. In such a transfer of culture, involving the
passing over from one people to another of their philosophy of life
and of the world, their social structure, technical achievements,
morals, and customs, it may happen that the art of the one people
is simply transplanted to the new soil. The dependence of the new
literature is very marked, sometimes amounting to complete lack
of originality; the new shoot does not count for anything in the
development of the world's literature. The foreign literary works are
circulated and read in their original tongue, they are abbreviated
and excerpted, annotated and paraphrased; translations, imitations,
and a freer working-over of the matter into new form follow; the
material, motives, and characters that have been taken over are
changed and remodeled, at first sparingly, but later with greater
and greater freedom. The first thing to become nationalized is the

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 479

language and mode of expression, after that costume and scene,
finally the thought and tendency. The national character does not
take possession of the whole at once; it may even show itself first by
what it rejects, by what it finds uncongenial in the foreign literature.

It is not always the most important works of one literature
which exercise the decisive influence on another. A writer may be of
more importance for the history of a foreign nation than for his own.
A work little prized by men of its own language may thus become the
cornerstone of a new literature.

In connection with such a transfer of culture, permeating the whole
life and thought of a people, the points of agreement between single
works or authors have of course little significance; the important
things to notice are the deviations from agreement, even the slight-
est and most in detail — the displacements and distortions; what
the new writer omits, overlooks, ignores, misunderstands, avoids,
perhaps parodies or travesties. The growing independence is first
revealed by negative signs.

In times of strong dependence on foreign culture, it is already
a proof of a high grade of independence in an author, if, believing
the foreign influence excessive or even hurtful, he seeks to break
away from it, and to open the way for the influence of some other
literature more closely related to the spirit of his own people. Though
substituting one dependence for another, he at least changes the
literary centre of gravity.

Culture can also be borrowed from peoples far distant in time or
space. Dead literatures can wake to new life, and in their renaissance
exert a new and mighty influence. Or it may happen that a litera-
ture voluntarily subjects itself for a time to another apparently
remote from it, as when an exotic style of composition becomes the
fashion.

Besides these universal inundations of culture, single fields of
literature, single forms of composition, are exposed to inroads more
limited in space and time. While one sort of writing is flourishing
in full independence, another sort may simultaneously, and among
the same people, be completely subject to the influence of foreign
models. The number of literary subjects and motives is not very
great; the forms of composition have, during the course of thousands
of years, been only slightly widened in scope; even the metric
forms, the turns of style, the figurative means of expression, are
confined within certain limits. They preserve their identity even
when their connection with the literatures is dissolved; they become
diffused.

Single authors also, like mighty conquerors, undertake invasions
of the fields of foreign literature. Usually it is the strongest intellects
which, in isolation, separated from their native literature, — or, it

480 GERMANIC LITERATURE

may be, as its representatives, — rule upon foreign soil. Often the
tyranny narrows down to the rule over a single work, but sometimes
it maintains itself for centuries.

As applied to the methods of historic investigation, the preceding
considerations go to show that the important task is not the detec-
tion of such influences — by collecting parallel passages, making
lists of allusions, counting up what one author has borrowed from
another, pointing out reminiscences, or even discovering plagiarisms.
Rather is it the main thing, when once this relationship, whether
plain or obscure, is established, to utilize the fact for understanding
the characteristics of the writer influenced, for determining his de-
gree of dependence, for estimating the proportions of the ingredients
in the resulting mixture, and for indicating as exactly as possible
the point at which a work, an author, a literature achieves a rela-
tive independence, the point where the personal, subjective, original
comes to light, where the national character frees itself from the
chrysalis, and rises, splendid and radiant, into the air.

In this regard, one urgent demand to be made on our discipline
is a prompt right-about-face. Dozens of researches are seen to be
at the least superfluous, if not utterly on the wrong track. One
couples together two names from a national literature or from the
world's literature, without asking whether the connection is suffi-
ciently close to make its investigation worth the trouble. One over-
looks the fact that certain foundations lie, unavoidably and as a
matter of course, at the basis of certain periods of literature, and
that in such cases the more precise determination of details is of
no consequence. One fails to see that in the study of each writer
it is only necessary to consider certain central authors who have
influenced his development in essential and decisive points, and
without whom the younger author's work would have been incon-
ceivable. But the real disease of this sort of researches is that they
picture the influence of one author on another much too externally
and mechanically, while they conceive the highly complex creative
process in far too simple terms; they degrade the individual author,
till he is made to seem the helpless prey of vultures swooping down on
him; they interpret a work of art as they would a machine produced
by the joint efforts of many unthinking laborers; they do not even
see that the influence of one work often excludes that of another,
or that the most important question is whether a given work of art,
known, perhaps, to a writer for a long time, was actually occupying
his attention so strongly at a definite moment that it could exert an
influence on a newly arising work of art germinating within him at
that moment; they do not see that they must know the order in
which different works impressed themselves on the author in a
stimulating and life-giving fashion.

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 481

How necessary it is to bear all these points in mind will be shown
in the following discussion by an example. It is an example of the
influence of an apparently remote literature upon an author, in
whose case foreign influences have not previously been suspected.
The particular example chosen seems here all the more in place,
because it deals with the influence of North American literature
upon a German writer, a countryman of my own, with whose works
I have made myself familiar by years of careful study.

Adalbert Stifter, a son of the German Bohemian Forest, sprang
suddenly into fame in the early forties of the last century by the
publication of his Studies; criticism scattered its incense before
him, no less an authority than Eichendorff was the first to grasp his
epoch-making significance. For a time he had great vogue. His later
works, however, did not meet with the same success; an unjust
enemy, with whom he was not equipped to fight, arose in the inex-
orable Hebbel, who thought to annihilate him with savage attacks.
After a period of unobtrusive influence in narrower circles, he has
come again into general and still increasing favor. It is only the
history of nineteenth-century literature — a study which is still in
its beginnings — that could make nothing of him. A few thoughtless
catch-phrases, such as that regarding Stifter's lack of passion, have
been passed on from one book to another. An otherwise valuable
book on German fiction of the nineteenth century omits entirely the
name of the author, who has given us in his Nachsommer one of
the most intimate and original of German romances. The authority
of a Nietzsche was needed to compel the indifferent to attend to him.
In Stifter's home, to be sure, no such impulsion was required. As is
the case with all German stocks and fragments of stocks that are
politically separated from the mother country, the home literature
in Austria has a hearty recognition and its history is zealously
cultivated. The best Austrian story-writers of the present day attach
themselves to Stifter and esteem him highly. He is honored as one
of the noblest of native artists. An extensive biography of Stifter
from the hand of an enthusiastic supporter (Alois Raimund Hem)
has just appeared, a work of years of loving industry. Eager collectors
care for the preservation of his paintings and drawings, autographs
and letters, for the storing of which a Stifter-Archive has been
founded in Prague. The ''Society for the Advancement of German
Science, Art. and Literature in Bohemia" is publishing in its Library
of German Authors of Bohemia a complete critical edition of his
works.1 Vigorous young blood is entering zealously into the study.

1 Bibliothck dcufscher Schriftsteller aus Boluncn. Vol. 11: A. Stifter, Si'imtlicht
Wcrkc, 1 vol., Xtudi<n, 1 vol., herausgegcbon von A. Sauer (my introduction to
this volume has several points of contact with the present lecture). — Bibliothek,
vol. 12 : A. Stifter, Sumtliche Wcrkc, vol. 14, Vcrmischtc ScJtriftcn, 1 vol.,
herausgegeben von A. Horcicka (Prag, J. G. Calve).

482 GERMANIC LITERATURE

The Hebbel revival finds a necessary counter-weight in a Stifter
revival.

Stifter has been hitherto regarded as one of our most independent
writers, a true product of our soil, peculiar to us more than any other.
He sprang from a district which then lay far from the channels of
trade, where wood, cliff, and heath meet, where a bit of the primeval
forest still remains in Europe. A knotty, primitive type of man,
not unlike the old frontiersman of America, there struggles hard for
his scanty living. They are hunters, wood-choppers, and the like.
Odd and original characters are not lacking among them. There
depth, inwardness of soul, thrive in hardy strength, leading at times
to taciturn hardness, but occasionally also to a dreamy thoughtful-
ness and to poetic talent. The legends and traditions of his forest
home sounded around Stifter in childhood. His education in one of
the worthiest of the Austrian convent schools confirmed him in his
native Catholic view of the world, which became his unshakeable
conviction. Not till late in his career did he exchange the painter's
brush for the pen of the writer. Practically unaffected by all the good
or evil movements in the spirit of the times, he entered literature
when nearly thirty-five years old, or about 1840, the very year in
which Friedrich Hebbel appeared, and two years after two spirits
kindred to his own, Eduard Morike and Annette von Droste-Hiilshoff ,
had published their epoch-making collections of poems. Like these
two, he shows the opposite tendency to that of ''Young Germany,"
like them he unites in himself all the healthy elements of Roman-
ticism, without falling to the grade of a weak imitator or gleaning
epigone — all three are Romanticists after the Romantic move-
ment. Once more the heart won the victory over the intellect,
enthusiasm over enlightenment, idyllic peace over the so-called
"Movement-literature"; the poet free from politics, free from time,
won the day from the poets of the times, the political lyricists, the
tendency dramatists, the writers on current events, who, like smug-
glers, misused fiction as the "dark-lantern of ideas." At the very
moment when the manifesto of the Halle Yearbook against Roman-
ticism was scoffing even at its love of nature and enthusiasm for
the woods, there arose in these sensitive artists the best interpreters
of nature and the woods, their truest worshipers and most inspired
prophets.

His first Studies 1 (The Condor, The Field Flowers, The Fool'x
Fort, Great-grandfather's Map} show Stifter following the same path
as Joan Paul, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Tieck. The Heath Boy,2 written
in the tone of an Oriental legend, proves him for the first time
a master of nature description. In his own home, familiar to him

1 Der Kondor, Die Feldblumcn, Die Narrenl/urg, Die Mappe des Urgrossvalers.

2 Dcr Heideknabe.

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 483

from childhood, he discovered the fairest object of his poesy. In
the Mountain Forest,1 finally, he became, more decisively than
Wilibald Alexis or Charles Sealsfield, the real founder of provincial
romance in Germany.

As an historic narration from the days of the Thirty Years' War,
the Mountain Forest is in line with the Walter Scott tradition;
but the historical matter is sketched only in a slight and almost
shadowy way. Real historical studies were scarcely made by the
author; the truth was rather that the legends of his native region
afforded him the stimulus. The whole action is suitable to the present
day, or else to a land of fable. Legends and parables are inserted;
the legendary tone is preserved throughout. The women arc pictured
as fairy forms; the hero, a natural son of Gustavus Adolphus, seems
a legendary prince; in eternal youth and beauty the form of the dead
floats before the eyes of his loved one. Like a legend, too, is the end
of it all ; the survivors grow preternaturally old. No one ever learned
of their death.

The story is attached to a ruin near Stifter's home, which the people
called a haunted castle. In the story it is peopled and alive, a home
full of a noble civilization and high culture. But the wood to the
west of it he describes as the virgin forest untouched by civilization,
the action of the story being for it merely a rapidly passing episode.
On the shore of the lake, where the characters of the story built
a blockhouse, the seed of the forest is sown again, and every trace
of human footsteps disappears.

With great artistic power the author brings the fortunes of his
characters, the weal or woe of their loves, into intimate relation with
the course of nature, the cycles of day and year, the life of the forest.
He pictures the dark and gloomy aspect of the forest, the sublime
loneliness of its measureless extent, the stillness, the silence of it, and
then, too, the tones that enliven it; he shows it in its splendid sum-
mer attire, and in the icy garb of winter; all its colors, tints, and
shades he seeks to reproduce. He makes the wood a thing of life, with
a soul, he illuminates it with love and goodness, he regards it us
the most magnificent of the Creators works, as a church, a temple,
a cathedral. The forest makes one good and reverent, innocent and
childlike, it assures outward and inward peace. A glorification of the
forest, a hymn to its beauty and power, which are like1 those of
paradise.

\Vilh such a child of heath and wood, who in one of his first letters
describes a stroll through the primeval forest, and pictures the
spectacle of the wood flaming by night in the storm, as he himself had
experienced it, where is there opportunity for any foreign stimulus ?
Yet it is present. In his descriptions of nature he is a pupil of Jean

1 IIwJucaM.

484 GERMANIC LITERATURE

Paul. He emulates Tieck and other Romanticists in his descriptions of
the forest loneliness. Lenau's wood-pictures were well known to the
Austrian writer. The meadow-lark's song is heard simultaneously in
Annette's "Heath-pictures." The splendid descriptions of wood
and heath in Charles Sealsfield's novels can scarcely have been
unknown to Stifter. He could not indeed have known that the great
anonymous writer was an Austrian, a son of the Sudetic country,
and thus his closest compatriot. Many points of agreement in their
diction can be explained from their community of origin; for instance
the Czech influence, which is seen in both, though more pronounced
in Sealsfield than in Stifter.

Lenau and Sealsfield received the inspiration for their descriptions
of nature in North America; Lenau during his unlucky visit, which
afforded him so little satisfaction, Sealsfield during a long residence,
which made him an American citizen and a spirited adherent and
admirer both of the scenery and of the politics of North America.
The longing for distant lands and for the New World was felt also by
Stifter, and transferred by him to the characters of his tales for youth.
In youthful excess the pupil of Klopstock cries out in one of his
letters: he would fain, arm in arm with his future lover, throw
himself into Niagara Falls (1837). The artist in the Condor sails
across the Atlantic Ocean. In Field Flowers America is not simply
the land of the hero's dreams; the action of the prologue is partly
on American soil; Emil passed two years in America, and relates
how in a forest he had nursed back to health a strange dog. The
poetically gifted "Heath Boy" travels to Palestine, Egypt, and into
the Desert. Ronald, the Swedish prince, is lured on by a glittering
city, by the limitless wilderness of the new land. The North American
literature of that time cannot therefore have been unknown to
Stifter.

With Washington Irving (1783-1859), his brother-in-law, James
Kirke Paulding (1779-1860), and James Eenimore Cooper (1789-
1851). the native literature of North American .soil made a triumphal
entry, in the third decade of the nineteenth century, into the world's
literature. A new domain of literary material was discovered, a new
world opened to view; Chateaubriand had only partially raised the
curtain before it. The applause of the European reading public was
unexampled. In 1823 translations of Irving began to appear, in 1824
those of Cooper; in the same year W. Alexis translated Paulding's
novel. Kotiinf/sr/ifirk the Long Finn. The esteemed publishers Saner-
land in Frankfort-on-the-Main produced Cooper's and Irving's
complete works in many volumes, and combined the American fiction
of Paulding and of Dr. Bird into a Library of the Classic Authors of
North America, (ioethe read Cooper's novels with interest and

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 485

admiration, and praised them publicly; Grillparzer, visiting him,
found him just reading the Sources of the Susquehanna. Morike
read with his family in 1848 Cooper's sea-tales and was much pleased
with them. In a somewhat regretful note in his Outlines the statis-
tician of our literature, Karl Goedeke, attests the enormous popu-
larity of the Cooper novels from recollections of his owrn youth. The
innumerable imitations of Cooper in the German language have
never yet been catalogued.

Literary history cannot assign to Cooper's novels an extremely
high rank. He is a gifted but weak imitator of Walter Scott, who
simply had the good fortune to discover, in the romance of the sea and
of the Indians, a fresh, unhackneyed store of material. Borne con-
trasted the active life and mighty events and deeds of his novels with
the inaction of the heroes of German fiction. Sealsfield's criticisms
still hold good: Cooper exaggerates and idealizes beyond measure.
In his portrayal of the Indians he is far surpassed in truth by Seals-
field; so also in the ardor and magnificence of his descriptions of
scenery. With all his enthusiasm and high-flown passages, he still
remains in reality sober. His novels fairly drip with moralizing. But
he knows well how to group strong, rough, glaring effects, how to
tell a story in an absorbing and even exciting way. The strong
charm of the matter of his novels brings it about that selections
from his works have a greater effect on youth — even to the present
day — than the originals themselves. Cooper injured himself chiefly
by the great bulk of his writings. Impelled by success he let himself
be carried down a declivitous path, took up one period after another
in the life of his Leather Stocking, and had to admit himself, in the
prefaces to his later books, how hard it was to make the same charac-
ters appear in four or even five works without repeating or contra-
dicting himself too much. This precipice Cooper by no means escaped.
His imitations of himself became weaker and weaker. As an artist
he stands far below Stifter, though he exerted a powerful stimulating
influence on the younger man.

As far as 1 can see, Stifter never mentioned Cooper's name in his
works or letters, just as he never speaks of the other mental pabulum
which he may have taken in, in the way of entertainment, during
his early years. But it is a safe assumption that he knew all five
of the Leather Stocking novels, and that their hero had long been
a cherished and familiar character in his mind from the three older
novels (The Pioneers, 1823; The Last of the Mohican*. 1820; The
Prairie, 1827), when the appearance of the two final novels (The
Pathfinder, 1840; and The Dcerslaycr, 1841), the German translations
of which followed immediately, perhaps even in 1840, kindled the
fire anew within him, nourished his just-awakened desire for literary
production, and caused the imagination of the young poet to boar

486 GERMANIC LITERATURE

fruit. These hastily got up German translations, which bristled
with un-German idioms and constructions, must be made the basis
of our study, since Stifter undoubtedly had them before him. It is
scarcely probable that he had read the novels also in the original,
as he seems not to have had a mastery of English.1

An accident led my honored co-worker in the editing of Stifter's
works, Professor Adalbert Horcicka of Vienna, to the detection of
a number of resemblances in subject-matter between the Mountain
Forest and the Deerslayer. At my suggestion, Mr. Karl Wagner,
student of philosophy in the University of Prague, then undertook
a minute comparison of Stifter's book with the Pathfinder and the
Deerslayer, and I myself extended this study to all the five novels.
On account of the close connection of the whole cycle, and its many
repetitions of motives, language, and even definite expressions, it is
impossible to determine surely in detail and in every case what
particular passage may have had its effect on Stifter. The relation
between the two authors appears most strongly and clearly, as far as
regards the substance, in comparing the Mountain Forest with the
Deerslayer.

In this novel Cooper unfolds a picture of the hazardous hunter-
life, a life which also forms the background of Stifter's narrative.
Old Tom. in his earlier years a notorious freebooter, enters on a late,
and. as it seems, loose sort of marriage with a woman of high birth
and checkered past, the mother of two daughters; he goes west and
leads a hunting-life in idyllic fashion. For a home he constructs
a log house, which for better protection against enemies he locates
in a large lake surrounded by the forest. At the beginning of the
action, the unfortunate wife has long been buried in the lake, and
a son laid to rest beside her. but in the memory of her daughters.
Judith and Hetty, she still lives as their illuminating genius. So
also, in the Mountain F\>re*t, the mother of Johanna and Clarissa has
long been dead, her name is not even mentioned in the story, while
Felix, the brother, is made a very secondary personage.

The attention, here as there, is directed to defense against an
approaching enemy. The Swedes are preparing an expedition against
ihe upper Danube country; their goal is not really the storming of
the castle — just as. in Cooper, a war between the rival French and
English is expected in the West, the first forerunners of which appear

1 T make my citations from the following: volumes of the Sauorland comply-to
edition: !)[< .\nsi<(Utr, (,(lir die Qucll'-n >!c.v Sitzquchannah , 2 Auflaire. 1S3S.
~2 Tf ilc. D<r I.ff-f/ flu- ^f<l|;il;^^^<r. F,ine Krzahhing aus dom Jahre 1757. Aus dem
Knelischen ul)<r.Mt/t von Heinrich Dorinc. 4 Auflage, 1845. 2 Teile. l)i<:^t<pp(.
F.ine Krzal.lur.tr. 2 Auflatre. 1X40. 2 Teile. DerPfadftndKr,odcrderBimun^ee. 1MO.
3 Teile. l)cr Hirsrlifi'tfltrr. Kin Unman. Aus dem Knjjlischen ubersetzt von < >. von
Czarrunvski, 1M1. '.} Teile. [The citations from the Deerslayer and Pathfinder, in
the Ki:£rli--li version ff this paper, are often taken directly from the original.
- Translator. 1

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 487

in the form of the dreaded Mingo Indians, who really undertake
the plundering of the castle only because it is good booty, lying acci-
dentally in their way. Help comes to Old Tom, thus surrounded with
impending dangers, in the person of an acquaintance and hunting
comrade, a rough man, superhumanly strong, called Hurry Harry,
who sues in vain for the love of Tom's elder daughter, the wondrously
beautiful Judith, even as the knight from Upper Austria sues for
Clarissa's love. Judith has formerly been in love with an English
officer, Warley, as Clarissa has loved the Swedish Prince Ronald.
Gregory I regard as the parallel to the Deerslayer himself.

Almost all of this cycle of Cooper's novels start out with some
sort of a forest journey. In the Deerslayer, the two hunters press on
through the wilderness, in order to reach the lake and floating Tom.
The same situation is more fully worked out at the commencement of
the Pathfinder, where the four characters likewise reach a "windrow "
in the forest, in which the fallen trees lie "blended like jackstraws,"
and from which they enjoy a sublime prospect over the measureless
expanse of woods. "An exclamation of surprise broke from the lips
of Deerslayer, an exclamation that was low and guardedly made,
however, for his habits were much more thoughtful and regulated
than those of the reckless Hurry, when, on reaching the margin of
the lake, he beheld the view that unexpectedly met his gaze." A
gentle exclamation of astonishment escapes also from the maidens
at the sight of the broad surface of "glistening water, over whose
bosom the soft image of the moon floated like a lazy cloud." The
lake in Deerslayer is called " Glimmerglass, seeing that its whole
basin is so often fringeel'with pines, cast upward from its face; as if
it would throw back the hills that hang over it." In a pregnant
passage in the Lost of the Mohicam, the "sparkling streams" are
spoken of with great emphasis. Glimmer, shimmer, glitter l arc also
favorite1 and oft-recurring words with Stit'ter. The whole lake scent1
in Stifter is like that in Cooper; the changes which lie has introduced
into the geographical relations of Blockeiistein Lake can be explained
as results of this literary influence. The equipment of the forest house1
in Stifter is closely patterned after that of the castle in Cooper,
even to the padlock and to the fortification with palisades2 —a.
wholly superfluous fortification in ca>e of a building standing on dry
land. In the arrangement of both houses, great precautions are
taken against fin1, .lust as. in Stifter. the furnishings an1 surprisingly
comfortable, so also \ve read in Cooper: a single1 glance1 sufiiceel to
show that the house was inhabited by females. Most clearly do the
rafts in Stifter betray their foreign origin. Old Tom, for the sake of

1 "Glimmern. sehimmern, flimmern."

2 Later, Stifter uses "Pflocke" as the equivalent of " Palirfrfaden'' in the
translations of Cooper, " Pfe.il er" is also employed.

488 GERMANIC LITERATURE

protection against the bullets of enemies, had erected a sort of
blockhouse on a smaller scale upon his ark — commonly designated
as boat (Boot] or scow (Fdhre), once, however, as raft (Flosse},
although besides it genuine rafts were present. On a primitive raft
of blocks of wood, a seat was made for Hetty. In the corresponding
descriptions in Stifter a contradiction has crept in; at the beginning
one raft carries an elevated framework with seats for the company,
but later on both rafts carry " bullet-proof houses." The exaggerated
precautions that are taken to keep the raft always at a suitable
distance from the shore likewise recall the American novel. And when
old Gregory, after shooting at a hawk, laid his gun down along a
tree-trunk, and waits to see the unfamiliar noise fetch the animals
up out of the water, this too sounds like an Indian trick, so many
of which are described in Cooper. The inaccessibility of the strongly
fortified spot is strongly emphasized; so far aside from human
traffic does it lie that no path, no footprint, no trace of one, can be
spied. This tautology recalls the importance of spying out enemies
in Cooper's novels. Yet, in case a hostile band should wander into
this wilderness, Gregory knows of a cave, some hours distant up
among the highest rocks, to which he only knows the approach;
there he can hide the girls till the danger is over, even as Cooper's
characters often find refuge in caves. Also in the equipment of the
two lake colonies there is much that is similar. When the sisters,
in great anxiety about their paternal house which can be seen glisten-
ing in the hazy distance, examine it from the "block stone" through
a telescope, old Gregory struggled hard to comprehend the enchanted
thing, which was quite inexplicable to him. So, too. in Cooper the
little company in the lake make observations with the telescope on
the castle when it was visited by the enemy; the wonder and curiosity
are painted in the same colors. In the Pioneers, also, a telescope comes
into use. Stifter 's employment of the telescope cannot be called
an anachronism, as it was already in widespread use by the middle
of the seventeenth century.

In these similar settings goes on, both here and there, the idyllic
life of the sisters, at first disturbed only, at rare intervals, by some
beast of the forest. "Low and tremulously, but earnestly and
solemnly," Hetty sings in the quiet of night; her spirit consoles
itself in the prayer of simple faith. So also the tones of Clarissa's
harp "penetrate the sleeping midnight air like a sweet heart-throb."
As between the two sisters, Clarissa strongly recalls Judith in her
chief traits. Of a singular, dark-eyed beauty, Judith has an un-
conquerable love for bodily ornament, as appears especially in the
unpacking of the old chest, descended from her mother. In like man-
ner the two sisters in the mountain forest feel first delight and later
shame at this "girlish weakness," as they put on their finest clothes

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 489

and view themselves in the mirror. Judith puts on most eagerly
the red brocade, taken from the chest, in order to impress her naive
friend, but must content herself with a reproof from him; and later
she wears it again, when, driven by her love, she goes into the enemy's
camp, in order to free her loved one from the hands of the Indians,
who, thirsting for revenge, have condemned him to death. It is
expressly said of her: "A charming creature! And she looked like
a queen in that brocade dress." Clarissa, too, goes to meet her former
lover in all her finery and in her most beautiful dress (a velvet also),
"so that she was like a noble lady, who is brought to a king's feast";
and the author assigns a similar motive for her action: "There is
something in woman's finery and festive clothes that keeps you at a
distance; it is the court dress of their souls; and even the old son of
the forest, who had never seen any jewels except those of morning
in the fir trees, felt himself oppressed and almost subdued by Clarissa's
beauty." And Ronald begs her to lay aside the "stiff finery," as
Deerslayer begged Judith. The latter is taken with a tender love,
delicately portrayed by the author, which by degrees fills her whole
heart; but she is cold in her expression of it, as she is oppressed with
remorse on account of her earlier relations with Warley. Clarissa
as well regards her love for Ronald as a sin, but finally gives herself
entirely up to it. The mutual love of the two sisters is also similarly
portrayed by the two authors. Johanna is like Hetty, especially in
the unconscious awakening of her love. Cooper likes to bring
women of high birth or culture into his novels; and bringing in two
sisters is quite typical of him, and of Stifter as well (Field Flowers,
Two Sisters) ; the very similar pair of sisters, Cora and Alice, in the
Last of the Mohicans, may have hovered before Stifter's mind in
many passages.

In comparing Gregory with the Deerslayer, their difference in
age need not be too strongly emphasized. In spite of his youth,
and though he is on the warpath for the first time, Deerslayer is
yet a mature man in thought and action; and Gregory, though
standing at the utmost limits of advanced age, is as enthusiastic
and fond of adventure, and toys as much with plans for the future,
as Deerslayer. Young Deerslayer is already compared with the most
experienced veterans; he speaks earnestly and solemnly, acts with
dignity and respect, and is called Straight Tongue. The contrast-
between his youthful years and his prudent, circumspect bearing
and carefully weighed words impresses even the Indian, who says
of him: " My brother has two scalps — gray hair under the other. Old
wisdom — young tongue!" or "Young head — old mind"; "Young
head — old wisdom."

Both Gregory and Deerslayer have grown into unity with their
forests: "This is grand! — 't is solemn! — 't is an education in itself,

490 GERMANIC LITERATURE

to look upon," says Deerslayer. "Not a tree disturbed even by red-
skin hand, as I can discover, but everything left in the ordering of
the Lord, to live and die according to His own designs and laws!"
To him, as to Gregory, settlement seems a desecration of the virgin
wilderness! "The woods are never silent," says the Pathfinder, "if
one but knows how to interpret their voice. I have wandered through
them alone for many days, with never a longing for company. And
as regards conversation, there is no lack of varied and instructive
talk, if one but understands the language." Gregory, too, goes
rather into the forest than to vespers or to the public-house, and he
begins " gradually to hear the talk of the wood, and his senses were
opened to understand its signs, and they were all words of splendor
and of mystery and of love concerning the great Gardener, whom he
often felt he must behold, wandering somewhere among the trees."
The poetic gift, with which Cooper so often endows his heroes, is
Gregory's also. Deerslayer is called "a man of strong native poetic
feeling. He loved the woods for their sublime solitudes and for the
impress that they everywhere bore of the might and wisdom of their
Creator. He rarely moved through them without pausing to dwell on
some peculiar beauty that gave him pleasure, though seldom at-
tempting to investigate the causes; and never did a day pass without
his communing in spirit, and this, too, without the aid of forms or
language, with the infinite Source of all he saw, felt, and beheld."
Gregory's former hunting-comrade praises him in these terms: "The
wonderful thoughts were unfolded from his heart even in those days,
like the flowers of some exotic spring . . . and it often seemed as
if one were reading from some beautiful old book of poetry. Many
jeered at him, and against them he closed the fountain of his words
as with a stone." And in another place: "His whole course of
life, his very soul, he had moulded after the teachings of the forest;
and in turn he so harmonized with it that he could not be thought of
in another setting. Thus he made himself and the wilderness appear
to the eyes of his proteges in such wondrous enchanted form and
nature that it began to speak to them, too, while they seemed to
themselves to be always floating in the midst of a fairy-tale." The
''traditions and legends" of his people influence him as they do the
young Deerslayer, who is averse to all book-learning and rejects all
metaphysical hair-splitting.

But Cooper did not picture his son of the forest — the Pathfinder,
the Deerslayer, Hawk Kye. Leather Stocking, etc. — simply as a
young and vigorous man, but also followed him through his later
life; he makes the representative of inherited right, of remorseless
truth and of faith, when pressed by the always advancing settlers
and pioneers, the bringersof innovation and destroyers of the forest's
majesty, retreat in proud self-command to the west; and conducts

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 491

him in the Prairie to the furthest bounds of old age, till the splendor
of eighty-seven winters dims his eye, and he goes, calm and self-
possessed, to meet his death.

Stifter portrays his Gregory at his first appearance as an extremely
old man with waving, snow-white hair. His large, true, sagacious
eyes contrast strangely with the two snow-white arches over them.
On the hard cheeks lay sunburn, age, and health. " A noble simplicity
and goodness was stamped on the whole man." "A comrade of the
noonday heat and of the storm, a brother of the rock," he is called.
The woodsman, the huntsman, the son of the forest, formerly so keen
and daring a hunter, now he is a little weather-worn, and wears
some of the "dignity" l of nature ("dignity," a favorite word of
Cooper, as for example in this passage of the Pioneers: "with the
bearing and dignity of an emperor"). The baron has immoveable
confidence in him.

The Pathfinder is pictured as a man of admirable qualities. Always
the same, of single heart, honest, fearless, and yet prudent, in every
honorable undertaking the first, in his peculiar way a sort of prototype,
as one might conceive Adam before his fall, — not, however, that he
was completely sinless, — full of native tact, that would have done
credit to the best education. " His feelings seemed to have the fresh-
ness and naturalness of the woods, in which he passed most of his
time." His fine, unerring sense of right is perhaps the most distin-
guished trait in his moral composition; his fidelity is firm as the
rock that no storm can shake, treason is for him an utterly impos-
sible thing. His blamelessness, self-devotion, and disinterestedness
are often praised.

Stifter saw his human ideal reali/ed in this character. In the
preface to his Motley Stones.2 where, in opposition to Hebbel, he
sketches the programme of his philosophy of life and of art, he says:
"A whole life full of righteousness, simplicity, self-control, reason-
ableness, efficiency in one's sphere, admiration of the beautiful.
joined with a calm and cheerful death, I hold to be great: mighty
storms of passion, fearful irruptions of rage, the lust for vengeance.
the inflamed spirit that strives for activity, demolishes, alters, destroys,
and in the excitement often throws away its own life, 1 hold to be
not greater, but less, since these things are. in my eyes, the outcome
of single and one-sided forces, as are storms, volcanoes, and earth-
quakes." He had to imitate' Cooper, because in essential convictions
he was in agreement with him.

This venerable, prudent ranger or hunter with his serious moral
traits, whom men like to call "the old/' is reproduced trait for trait
in Gregory, with his experience and wisdom, his foresight and cir-
cumspection, his prolix garrulity, with nearly all his views, lie is
1 " Ansttmd." 2 Bunte Shine.

492 GERMANIC LITERATURE

the Indian Leather Stocking in the garb and manners of a European
woodlander; he, however, preserves many typical details of his
original, even to his favorite position. Whereas the other characters
support themselves but seldom on their gun or lance, Leather
Stocking leans always and everywhere on his famed and feared
"long rifle," from which the Indians have given him the nickname,
"la longue carabine"; — cool at the critical moment, at another
time thoughtful and dreaming, motionless as a statue; in this
position he gazes after the departing friend; in this position he stands
even at the deathbed of his friend. It might be called his identi-
fying mark. Often the situation is described at length: "He
leaned on his rifle, and his sinewy fingers squeezed the barrel, some-
times with such violence as if they would bury themselves in the
metal"; or, "they stood on the narrow shore, the Pathfinder leaning
on his rifle, the butt of which rested on the pebbly beach, while
both his hands grasped the barrel at the height of his shoulders." In
the critical scene of the Mountain Forest, the four principal characters
form a group quite in Cooper's style: "The old hunter stood lean-
ing forward on his rifle, like a statue, no fibre of him betraying what
might be in his mind. . . . After some seconds of silent emotion,
the group gently dissolved." The illustrators of the Mountain Forest
have preserved this scene.

Gregory, like the ranger in the Prairie, is completely filled with
recollections of the past; he lives, as does the other, in the circle of
those whose grandfathers he has known. The hearty affection which
he has for his two proteges, as he had earlier for the baron's son
and for Ronald, whom he loves as a father, finds repeated parallels
in the life of Leather Stocking. The Pathfinder is attached with
a fatherly love to Mabel. " In this moment the whole honest, manly
affection of Pathfinder showed clearly in his features and his glance
at our heroine, equal to the love which the tenderest father feels for
his favorite child." When a very old man he goes to the Indians, to
seek a son in Hardheart, whom he loves without measure; when
Hardheart's life is threatened, his eye follows every movement of
the tomahawk with the concern of a real father.

Stifter makes Gregory disappear into the darkness of the forest:
"An old man, like a phantom, was still seen once and again walking
through the wood, but no man can tell the time when lie still walked
there and the time when he walked there no more." Even so the Path-
finder disappears at the close of the novel that bears his name: "and
he was lost in the depths of the forest. Neither Jasper nor Mabel
ever l>eheld the Pathfinder again." As an unknown hunter, in strange
dress and unusual bearing, and with a new name, he emerges Inter in
a distant place before them, only to disappear again from their field
of view.

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 493

For the rest, the opening and closing scenes of the Mountain
Forest, both of which are enacted in the ruins of Wittingshausen,
recall the close of the Deerslayer. Judith is separated from her lover;
" fifteen years had passed ere it is in the power of the Deerslayer to
revisit the 'Glimmerglass.' . . . They reached the lake just as
the sun was setting. Here all was unchanged ; the river still rushed
through its bower of trees; the little rock was wasting away by the
slow action of the waves in the course of centuries; the mountains
stood in their native dress, dark, rich, and mysterious; wrhile the
sheet glistened in its solitude, a beautiful gem of the forest. . . .
From the point, they paddled the canoe towards the shoal, where
the remains of the castle were still visible, a picturesque ruin. The
storms of winter had long since unroofed the house, and decay had
eaten into the logs. All the fastenings were untouched, but the seasons
rioted in the place, as if in mockery at the attempt to exclude them."
Everything is desolate and dilapidated. "From all these signs it
wras probable that the lake had not been visited since the occurrence
of the final scene of our tale. Accident or tradition had rendered it
again a spot sacred to nature."

The greatest agreement is shown in Cooper's and Stifter's de-
scriptions of scenery. Each pictured his land as the land of marvels.
Both depict the forest, the primeval forest in its untouched virginity,
in its silence and calm, in its sublimity and greatness, as it came
from God's hand. The feeling of sublime loneliness awakens in
their heroes the thought of God's nearness. "So it is in the woods,"
says Pathfinder, " there are moments when God seems to walk
forth in all his might, and then again a calm reigns far and wide, as if
his eternal spirit had peacefully laid itself down to slumber." Even
so Stifter gives his heroes the deep feeling of inward piety. Both
authors array themselves on the side of nature, against the all-
uprooting culture. Both are conservative spirits. Both lose them-
selves gladly in the stream of nature. Here again their agreement
in detail can be explained from the likeness of their fundamental
convictions. In the before-mentioned preface to the Mot lei/ Stones
we read: "The breezes of the air. the purling of the water, the
growing of plants, the verdure of the earth, the brightness of the
sky. the twinkling of the stars. I hold to be great; the magnificence
of the thunderstorm, the bolt that cleaves houses, the whirlwind
that devastates the fields, the mountain that spews forth fire, the
earthquake that overwhelms the lands. 1 hold not to be greater
than the above-mentioned appearances. 1 even hold them to be less,
since they are but effects of much higher laws." So Cooper also
prefers the gentle mobility of smaller things, the quiet majesty
of all that is really groat and powerful; for Deerslayer, love dwells
in the forest, in the dew on the grass, in the twigs of the trees, in

494 GERMANIC LITERATURE

gentle rain, in the clouds that hover over the blue sky. the birds
that sing in the bushes, the cool springs in which he slakes his thirst,
and in all the other noble gifts that God's providence affords.

Stifter's whole romance of the woods is foreshadowed in Cooper,
— the sublime solitude of the wild, the solemn stillness and cheerful
calm. An atmosphere of pure morality issues from the high, gloomy
vault of verdure, from the colonnades and porticoes of the forest.
The forest never deceives, "for it is governed and controlled by a
hand that remains always unshaken." The "quiet charm of nature,
the impression of profound calm and undisturbed solitude" subdues
men. The landscape as pictured by the two writers is almost the
same, a fact that no longer surprises one who has had the opportunity
of comparing the scenery of eastern North America with that of
Stifter's home. Cooper as well as Stifter speaks of dark hemlocks,
"quivering aspens and melancholy pines, white birches, firs, and
maples." The psychological process is to be conceived about as
follows. No doubt the mysterious witchery and charm of the woods
had enthralled Stifter's soul from his youth; but Cooper's example
first led him to give expression to these beauties. The tongue of
the silent admirer of nature is loosed by the eloquent foreign author.
Soon the pupil surpasses the master. Cooper's stock of words and
figures, in his descriptions of landscape, is very limited; we find
almost all of his favorite expressions in Stifter again, but they are
modified and developed into greater richness. The woodland glade
is in Cooper "a sort of oasis in the solemn obscurity of the virgin
forest"; the little spot where the forest house stands, in Stifter. is
a "warm, sheltered oasis"; the forest is called a "luxuriant oasis":
Gregory is designated as the "jewel of the wilderness." or. with
a biblical allusion, as the "voice of the desert." Cooper takes refuge
gladly in citations from other writers; Stifter, more self-dependent,
can draw from his own spring of poetry. Cooper is more prolix
and circumstantial; where he requires a whole sentence ("It was
principally covered with oaks, which, as is usual in the American
forests, grew to a great height without throwing out a branch, and
then arched in a dense and rich foliage") Stifter can express the same
in a single epithet, " high-trunked." Both give life. soul, personality
to nature. In Cooper a half-fallen giant of the forest leans so far
over the surfare of the water as to make care necessary in avoiding
its limbs. In the first version of the Mountain Forcxt, Stifter calls
a tree a "grandfather," or speaks of the grandchildren and great-
grandchildren of an unusually large tree. In Cooper a beech and
a hemlock lean together "as loving as two brothers, or, for that
matter, more loving than some brothers." In a more fully developed
scene in Stifter the slender stocks of the pines stand in company
and gossip when a breath of wind comes by. the old maple stands by

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 495

itself and reaches out with its long arms into the air, the bushes,
berries, and vines are pushed, like children, to the sides and into the
corners, so that there may be room in the middle for the guests.
Cooper likens some young trees, with few branches, to grenadiers
standing as sentinels; and Stifter, in the Heath Village, still more
drastically compares the locusts to Haiducks, in pale green uniform.
Everywhere in Cooper we meet dead or dying trees. Keep good hold
of your arms, — so reads a passage in the Pathfinder, • — • but lie as
still as the corpses of dead trees. In the Mountain Forest, "here and
there lies the skeleton of a fallen tree/' or one sees along the further
shore of the lake, "the old, whitened trunks lying in horrible con-
fusion," or "fringing the dark water with a melancholy, white
abattis." And once more Stifter simplifies in a way that gives greater
strength and effect, when he remodels Cooper's "disabled trunks,
niarking the earth like headstones in a graveyard," into the plastic
"tree-graveyard." The thought of gravestones is suggested also to
Sealsfield's mind by the stumps left where wood has been cut.
Stifter, however, is conscious of the difference between his landscape
and the tropical landscape of Sealsfield, when he says in a compari-
son: "Grandly beautiful as a youthful heart, resting in the fullness
of poetry and imagination, growing luxuriantly, resplendent as the
tropical wilderness, but also as unconscious, as uncultivated, as
rough, and as exotic as it."

If, in accordance with the preceding, we admit the marked de-
pendence of Stifter on Cooper in the conduct of the action, in the
characterization of the persons, in the description of the landscapes,
and in many other points, we may also find a parallel between the
two writers in many details, in which, however, the younger would
have1 had no nerd of another's; suggestion. For example, the import-
ant, episode of the hawk is quite exactly prefigured in Cooper; and
the similarity of the descriptions is the more striking, because the
conversations connected therewith contain related motives.

.Many figures and turns of expression, also, that are common to
the two writers, cannot be ascribed to mere accident. Stifter's
•'imagination attuned to witchery" ("Zauberphantasie ") recalls
the "witchery" which the Indians spy everywhere. As "witchery"
appeal's in the Mountain Forest, so Cooper's other favorite word
"magic" comes to light in the Ilt-atfi Yili<'<j<\ Cooper and Sealsfield
put everything in a pictorial or picturesque way. and often use com-
parisons drawn from painting; Stifter would naturally have been
led to the same thing by his talent for painting and his occupation
with it. The plastic arts lay further from his bent and knowledge,
and when, therefore, he compares (ireu'ory to a statue, and the two
sisters to two faultless statues of marble, we are reminded of the
countless similar comparisons in Cooper: " like a dark, proud statue ";

496 GERMANIC LITERATURE

" she resembled a statue, in which the artist intends to represent pro-
found and silent attention"; "she was like a dumb statue of child-
like love"; "like the model for a nude and beautiful statue of skill
and strength "; "marble could not be colder nor more motionless ";
"like to many lifeless statues," etc. The "Apollo of the wilderness,"
in the Deerslayer, reminds us of a comparison in the Heath Village,
where the author drops for the moment the prevailing biblical and
Oriental tone of the story: "like a war god."

The Indians in Cooper's stories love comparisons with animals:
high as the eagle, swift as the stag, and many others; and they
like to compare women to animals or flowers: Hist is the Wren of the
Woods, Hetty the Drooping Lily or the Woodbine Flower, Judith
the Wild Rose, a Huron girl a little slender birch, etc. Gregory
turns his eyes, like two eagles, towards the girls: "They are two
beautiful wood-flowers." Johanna's little white hand drops, like
a dove, among the rocks of Gregory's fingers.

A close relationship is shown by the following two passages. From
the Deerslayer : " The tramp of the warriors, as they sprang from the
fire, was plainly audible; and at the next moment, three or four of
them appeared on the top of the ridge, drawn against the background
of light, resembling the dim shadows of the phantasmagoria."
From the Mountain Forest : " These were the only words spoken by
the company regarding the singular betrothal, which had glided past
on their meadow like some strange phantasmagoria." Not only is
the sameness of the figure striking, but the contrast between noise
and noiselessness is similar in the two passages.

Cooper is fond of the expression: "There are always some who
think . . . and others who think," a turn of expression that 1 have not
yet observed in Stifter. But it is in a very similar vein that Gregory
says, while relating the legend of the aspen: "There are here two
opinions."

In the first composition of his works, Stifter thoughtlessly takes
over, from the bad translations of Cooper, foreign words, which
more- rare subsequently leads him to change to corresponding Ger-
manized expressions; for example " Hauptcorps," later not very
happily changed to "Hauptschlachthaufe."

Thus these Indian stories made fertile the European author's
imagination, made his observation keener, awakened his feeling for
style, and influenced his language. As if on a long and distant
journey, lie was carried through strange, far-off, untrodden regions, in
a mad medley of unheard of adventures, in a different world. And
hence ihe old familiar ground at home seemed often strange and
weird to him, as if lighted by another and paler sun: "It is a wild
jumble of torn strata, Consisting of nothing but coal-black earth, the
dark death-bed of a thousand years of vegetation, on which lie

INFLUENCE OF NORTH AMERICAN LITERATURE 497

many isolated globes of granite, like white skulls rising from the
ground, laid bare, washed and worn by the rain." Does not this
sound as if taken from an Indian romance?

Whether Stifter read also Cooper's sea-stories is a question that
is not answered. Slight reminiscences of them may be indicated —
since Stifter was unacquainted with the sea and quite unlikely of
himself to think of figures drawn from naval warfare — by his com-
paring the scene of his narrative to a secluded bay of the sea, and
by his speaking of "island summits of a submerged melody," or of
a "squadron of thoughts."

In summary, we can say: A German writer of inborn poetic
gifts, genuinely rooted in his native soil, was intoxicated, in his early
years, by exotic stories of adventure, which had been borne across
the sea from far North America, and which were then among the
most widely read of entertaining literature. His religious and artistic
development then took a direction quite independent of the foreign
author, but similar to his. When in riper years the spring of literary
production suddenly broke forth in him, new works of the old friend
were the means of furthering and accelerating the creative process
and giving it a definite direction. The invention of a plot was, all his
life, Stifter's weakest point; but to his aid comes an author who is
one of the richest in matter in the world's literature. The represent-
ation of a foreign landscape, not unlike that of his home, awoke in
him the slumbering remembrance of the impressions of his childhood,
and helped him to discover the most precious side of his talent, that
of painting nature in words, which he had previously done only in
colors. Through Cooper's influence, a mediocre painter becomes an
eminent writer. The foreign divining-rod conjures ever new treasures
from his native endowment. The literary stimulus unites with his
close acquaintance with his own land and with the painful experiences
of his own heart. What was foreign and what was individual fused
most intimately to form a fresh and worthy literary work, which
seemed to spring, as if from a fountain, out of the innermost being of
its creator, and which has always counted as his most original
production: a noteworthy example of the close and fruitful contact
of two authors, two literatures, two hemispheres.

THE PROBLEMS AND METHODS OF MODERN HISTORY
OF LITERATURE

BY JACOB MINOR
(Translated from the German by Professor E. Bagster-Collins, Columbia University)

[Jacob Minor, Professor of German Philology, University of Vienna, b. Vienna,
April 15, 1855. Studied, Vienna and Berlin. Professor of German Literature,
University of Prague, 1884. Author of N euhochdeutsche Metrik, and other not-
able works and essays.]

IT is one of the youngest sciences on which I have the honor to
report at this world-congress. For although its beginnings reach down
deeper into the past, it is itself hardly more than a hundred years old.
Indeed, the really scholarly treatment of the subject is younger still
by half a century. For throughout the eighteenth, and even in the
first third of the nineteenth century, the leading ideas emanated
from men who did not really belong to the science, but who were
firmly established in the literature of their own time. From this stand-
point they attempted to throw search-lights into- the past, although
even the best and greatest of them had only a general idea, concep-
tions only measurably accurate, regarding this past. Lessing, Herder,
Schiller, Humboldt. and the Schlegels, however great their influence
for our science, belong very largely to literature, because the main
part of their activity and the entire weight of their personality was
devoted to its service. From the days of E. J. Koch, literature was
thought to be amply provided for by bibliographical compendiums,
that contained, in addition to titles of books, meagre biographical
sketches and brief statements about material and content. It was
called "Literary Biography." Later the science of history took
up literature, and erected to it in the work of Gervinus a great
monument, which, alas, was intended also as a mausoleum. For its
author did not think that our literature would have a future; in his
opinion it had spent itself in the "classical period" and it would
now at the best lie fallow for some time. There followed after the
historians, the philosophers and a:\stheticists; and what was done
by the followers and the opponents of the Hegelian school in our
subject is perhaps to-day no longer sufficiently known and appre-
ciated. In the field of the literary-historical monograph, at least, the
recently deceased Haym, although his lifcwork of course extended
over the whole of the second half of the nineteenth century, stands
unequaled both in extent and depth of attainment.

The philological follows the philosophical period, and although not
unchallenged and unshaken, it has stood its ground and will continue

MODERN HISTORY OF LITERATURE 499

to do so, provided its representatives understand how to avoid nar-
row, pedantic ideas and theone-sidedness of method that have always
been the greatest danger to philology. The philological method was
transferred to our science simultaneously from classical philology and
from the study of older German literature; for Lachrnann and his
followers, as you are well aware, had first employed the strict philo-
logical method in this latter field. Even in modern literature it at
once yielded excellent results, as if as a foretaste of the future: Lach-
mann's edition of Lessing was the first edition of a modern High Ger-
man writer planned in accordance with philological principles. Still, it
was not until the seventies that W. Schcrer tried to carry out strictly
the method of the Lachmann school in the field of modern literature.
1 am speaking of things that I myself sawtakc root and grow. Yet the
development lies far enough in the past to admit the possibility of a
critical judgment. The chief advantage that the philological method
had at the outset was a hitherto unheard-of accuracy and minuteness
in scientific work. The student no longer contented himself with
arranging a rich material en -masse under general aspects or accord-
ing to leading topics; he tried to work through it even to the smallest
detail, and based far-reaching critical results upon the establishment
of a single date, or upon the discovery of an obscure personal char-
acteristic, or upon a striking parallel passage. A large amount of
ingenuity and acumen was exercised in this way by Schcrer and the
most talented among his disciples. It was only slowly and gradually
that the dangers which beset this, as every other path, dawned upon
his followers. Even to-day there is great lack of clearness in regard
to these matters, anything but complete agreement, and his atti-
tude towards these questions is one of the chief problems to occupy
the mind of every literary historian, perhaps not in his abstract
thought, still practically in the concrete cases of his daily work.

1 once read a statement of a prominent natural scientist that every-
thing great that was done in the last century in the natural sciences
was due to the transference of the method from one science to the
other (for example from chemistry to medicine, etc.). I doubt whether
this statement would apply with the same definiteness to the mental
sciences, for in the case of these it depends, I suppose, less upon
typical agreements than upon individual differences. We appear.
however, to comprehend the dangers of the principle still less when
we are dealing with a transference from the unsafe and uncertain
to a field of greater safety and certainty. We shall probably always
comprehend less how the people of ancient and medieval tinic.-
1 hough. t and felt . and consequently ho\v they wrote, than how Goethe
or Kleist or Grillparzcr composed. We shall always determine merely
hypothetical]}* how the author of the Bacchac regarded as a man the
rites of Dionysos. Yet the fact that the poet of the second part of

500 GERMANIC LITERATURE

Faust, in spite of its Catholic mythology, did not profess Catholicism,
might easily shed more light upon Euripides than it can receive from
him. At the very outset, then, one would think that a safe method
would find its firmest basis of support in modern literatures. Indeed,
I see the time coming when both classical and medieval philology
will no longer despise consulting modern philology. It must surely be
admitted that a critical method will be developed most highly and
keenly where there is the greatest need, that is, where, compared with
the large masses of material of modern literatures, a more meagre and
incomplete material requires supplementing. Experience appears to
me already to confirm two different facts. In the first place, the
correct method, as well as the choice of the cleverest means always
depend upon the subject, and any one simply deceives himself if he
believes that he can attack huge masses of material of modern liter-
ature in exactly the same way as the older philology. And sec-
ondly, that the method, which is, after all, only a means to an end,
must not unawares become the chief end in itself, so that the work
is finally less a matter of investigation of the subject than of clever
experimentation with the method. It cannot be denied that in our
science opposite the left wing, composed of those that simply rum-
mage about stupidly and thoughtlessly in the masses of paper, there
stands a little band descended, for the most part, from the older
school of literature, that feels so secure in possession of the one
and only method, that it believes it can guess the exact knowledge
of a subject. A method, however, without a subject is just as incon-
ceivable as form without content. Every subject demands its own
peculiar method of treatment. Accordingly , a method cannot be trans-
ferred any more from one subject to another than from a teacher to
his pupil, except in so far as it belongs simply to the mechanism of
the science or mere technique. It is correctly stated in the ten rules
formerly laid down by Lehrs and Ritschl for classical scholars : " Thou
shalt not speak the name method vainly." And Feuerbach cried to
the Hegelians who had become fossilized in the method of their
master: " What is method? Method is genius. Whoever does not
possess genius has no method. To have a method means never to
let the subject become master, but always be its master, to be in the
subject above the subject. What is Hegel's method? Hegel's spirit,
Hegel's individuality. To adopt Hegel's method means, strictly
.speaking, aping Hegel. The true method must be one's innermost,
most real .self. "

One of the chief means of philological criticism is the parallel
passage, which in itself always deserves consideration and always
proves something. The question is only, what and how much does it
prove? If one wishes to read into Schiller's verse, " Das Leben ist der
Outer hochstes nicht " (Life is not the highest of possessions), the

MODERN HISTORY OF LITERATURE 501

fundamental idea of the classical period, the union of antiquity with
Christian asceticism, and sees a world-wide gap between Schiller's
time, to which this line belongs, and the joy of living of Young Ger-
many, he has overlooked the fact that this same Schiller lets his
Mortimer say, "1st Leben doch des Lebens hochstes Gut " (Life is
after all the highest possession of life); and again that this same
Mortimer looks upon life as the only possession of the bad man. Or
when another refers the sentence from Schiller's Tell, " Der Starke ist
am machtigsten allein" (The strongman is mightiest alone), to Fried-
rich Schlegel's Alarkos, "So starke Seelcn sind allein am starksten"
(Such mighty souls are mightiest alone), and finds in Schiller's whole
conception of Tell a product of the romantic tendency of the times,
he forgets that Schiller received this isolated, non-political Tell from
Goethe, who had sketched his plan long before the Alarkos, and
that even Ibsen's Enemy of the People ends with a similar thought,
which he certainly borrowed neither from Schiller nor Schlegel.
Not blind worship, but sober critical treatment of parallel passages,
that are as plentiful as blackberries in modern literature, is one of
the most difficult problems of modern philology, and, because of the
more easily accessible and richer material, can be heard with profit
perhaps even in the Babel und Bibcl controversy, or if it deals
with the latest attempt to explain the Norse Edda from ancient
models. On the other hand, one must be just as careful in assert-
ing the dependence of, or the derivation from, as in asserting the
originality of anything. One puts a finger on a passage and cries out :
"Only Goethe can have said that." In a conversation, Scherer once
said to me that the verse "Die Windc schwingen leisc Fliigel" (The
winds swing gentle wings) was truly "Goethe-like'' because of the
powerful endowment of natural phenomena with life expressed in the
verb, that no poet except Goethe, or at least, no poet before Goethe,
could have written it. Later, however, I read even in old Lichtwehr
in the fable Der Wind and der Komct : "'Die Nacht schwang ihre
feuchten 1'liigel " (The night .swung its damp wings), and in the Lied
an. die Frende (The Song to Joy) by I/: "Die Frcude .schwingt uni
sie die giild'nen Fliigel" (Joy swings about them her golden wings),
and, "Die Finsternis schwingt ihre tragcn Flugel" (Darkness swings
its lazy wings). Even in dealing with such a strikingly original
genius as II. von Klei.st such mistakes are not uncommon. The
beautiful picture of the cherub passing through the night, whom the
races of men, lying upon their backs, regard with wonder, in which
the clever biographer thought heivcogni/ed most vividly, as a favorite
picture of the poet, the individualizing concreteness of Kleist, is
nevertheless taken from the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliit. If
one also compares with Goethe's statement that Kleist always tried
to produce confusion of the feelings, the phrase, " ' Yerwinv rneiii

502 GERMANIC LITERATURE

Geflihl mir nicht!" (Do not confuse my feelings), one should not
forget to add that the same turn of expression is found more often
still in the works of the gentle Eichendorff, who does not know feel-
ings of such a nature.

Such experiences have made us more circumspect in daring to
jump at uncertain general conclusions because of an isolated parallel
passage. We are no longer astonished at such wild flights, nor do we
regard them as particularly daring. We believe the words of Goethe:
" The mistake of weak minds is that in reflecting they immediately go
from the particular to the general, instead of seeking the general in the
whole." We should likewise bear well in mind what Goethe said about
hypotheses in general: "Hypotheses are scaffoldings that are placed
in front of a building, but are taken down after the building is fin-
ished. They are indispensable to the laborer, only one must not
mistake the scaffolding for the building itself." Yet how often
philologians in the last decades have mistaken the scaffolding for the
building itself! How often they have fitted together a scaffolding by
eliminating or combining elements logically contradictory or homo-
geneous, and on this they have then undertaken their investigations,
the results of which were naturally only valid for this scaffolding but
not for the structure itself. Neither the beginning nor the end in
philology will be readied by leaps and bounds hypothetical in char-
acter. Only the one who starts from the safe mean and goes either
forward or backward step by step will approach nearer the goal
behind and in front. And even though he himself does not reach it.
still, he will have paved the way for others on which they, too, in
turn will get a little farther.

We have recently been devoting especial attention again to the
art of interpretation. We are no longer so readily contented with
the simple logical understanding of the text; we give closer attention
to the context and to the situation through which the poet or his
character speak. We look more critically to see whether the word is
to be taken in a broad or narrow sense, in a real or figurative meaning.
The attempt, at one time the fashion, to understand everything in a
pregnant sense, or word for word, has greatly misled Fauxt criticism
particularly. " Warum musstest du inich an den Schandgesellen
>chn:jeden? '' (Why fetter me to the felon-scoundrel?) cries Faust to
the Kan lopirit . and from this, the far-reaching conclusion has been
reached that Mephistophelr.s did not originally appear in Goethe's
Fau.-t-drama as the devil, but as a servant of the Karthspirit. The
fact is. we are really dealing with a form of wranirling with the divin-
ity, current in all languages, in which the human being fixes the
blame and n sponsibility upon higher beings for what he himself
has committed under their very eyes.

In our dav the auxiliary sciences have reached an astonishing

MODERN HISTORY OF LITERATURE 503

degree of perfection. Much has been done, especially, in the way of
critical editions. It has been shown, however, by the monumental
Weimar edition of Goethe, that the adoption of principles applic-
able to classical and older German philolog}^ by no means suffices,
that we must seek our own way for our differently constituted tasks.
It would be desirable in this field to have greater uniformity in plan,
arrangement, and printing, whereby the utility and convenience of
our critical editions would be decidedly improved. A great deal of
self-sacrificing and unselfish work has been given to bibliographies,
reprints, and recently to indexes. This deserves hearty thanks,
although we do not believe that the powers of the present gener-
ation should be tired out and exhausted, in order to serve and help
future investigators. Research and accessory apparatus always
accompany each other; they aid each other mutually. Even at the
risk of making mistakes, the impulse to carry on research must be
kept constantly awake and alive. A generation of mere makers of
critical texts, etc., would make such work the end in itself, and only
produce more men able to do such work, but not investigators.

The principle of the division of labor holds good in our subject,
as well as in all other subjects involving mental activity. Large
numbers of people seek work in our province. The German and Aus-
trian universities are filled beyond measure; they put every year
hundreds of new and vigorous workers in the field. It is well to
raise again the question, with Lichtenberg, whether the making of
books is after all the real purpose of study, and whether it is not
a nobler task to study in order to know, than to study in order to
write. Certainly all the foars with which men like Roschcr in their
time regarded the growth of seminars at the German universities
have not been groundless. They feared from them the nurturing of
premature and pretentious book-making, that lowers the students to
a more vehicle of propaganda. It is certainly neither a very healthy
nor a normal condition, when, in a subject like ours, which pre-
supposes years of wide rending and deep study, the veriest youngsters
take the lead, and write books involving such an astonishing mas-
tery of material that it would require twice the years of the writer
to possess any real knowledge of all the hooks cited and discussed.
Less would often mean more here: a question-mark left standing,
a little uncertainty, some missing detail, would often be more con-
vincing than the painful neatness that can only be attained by
perusing, consulting, collecting, etc. All of us. the older even to
a larger degree than the younger, lack the time and leisure for the
extensive and collective reading of the uTcat writers and whole
literary periods. As a rule, too much is read ad hoc, for a definite
purpose, and often for a predetermined result. Unbiased first-
hand impressions arc wanting, impressions that ought to form the

504 GERMANIC LITERATURE

real basis of every profitable research. As a rule, there is also too
much investigated, and that too hastily, and there is too little
simply described; indeed, the ability to describe, the art of analysis,
is in a serious decline among the younger generation. Yet this gift
of artistic reproduction will always be counted among the indis-
pensable qualities of the literary historian.

It is also useful simply to realize the limits that are set to the
principle of the division of labor in the history of literature. Certainly
the natural scientist does not need to repeat all the experiments and
calculations that have been made by his predecessors; not even the
historian is required to read over all the sources that his predecessors
have already exhausted. Still, no disciple of our science can be spared
the task of beginning his work with the reading of the chief works
of every period of literature, although these have already been read
and discussed by countless others. Hence a good part of our time and
energy will always be spent in the reading that we share in common
with others, and only a relatively smaller portion will be left to us
for what we claim as our special field of research. Moreover, we must
add to this the fact that even the results attained by others by no
means carry with them the same conclusive proof that they do, for
example, among natural scientists; for they calculate with uniform
weights and measures, which we unfortunately do not possess. For
instance, I cannot, for one, accept unreservedly another's inves-
tigations of the sources, as the physicist accepts the calculations of
another. Our conception and point of view of the subject are widely
different.

The theory of our weights and measures should by rights be con-
tained in the study of style, meter, and poetry. But the active inquiry
that one would expect docs not exist with respect to these funda-
mental subjects. Our zealous special historical investigation of litera-
ture willingly relegates these matters to the more or less happy power
of observation, and puts the results, rather unsorted and unarranged,
upon the market. Particularly the theory of style lies almost entirely
fallow, and no one has undertaken for a long time to reduce the huge
collections of material that are scattered in critical, editions and
monographs to principles such as II. Paul succeeded in formulating
for grammatical material. "While the highly developed study of gram-
mar has long since been based upon the living language and the dia-
oiir iheory of style still depends upon book-language, although
)articularly in the individual use of the language that the aud-
aecent and melody, play the decisive role. Kven to this very
phrase like "das ist f/nt. das ist sclii'in," depending upon mere

•arallelism and gradation, is explained as an anaphora, although

is not onlv unempha.sized. but often almost van-

>site accentuation, "das ist gut, das ist schon."

MODERN HISTORY OF LITERATURE 505

undoubtedly is an anaphora. It is a difference, to be sure, not not-
iceable to the eye, but only to the ear. The style of a sentence
containing a few paltry, absolutely unaccented interjections is still
regarded as "excited" because of statistical summarizing, whereas
a single strongly accented interjection throws a dozen weaker ones
in the shade. Prosody has been far more intensively cultivated, to be
sure, but only by a small group of men whose results are not accepted
by the large majority of literary historians. In the long run, however,
it will not be possible to construct statistical tables about accents
before having a clear understanding of what accents mean; to explain
questions of quantity from the nature of sounds and syllables,
whereas the same word of course is employed by one and the same
poet, and in the very same kind of verse, now this way, now that;
or to infer directly, because of the various kinds of unstressed syllables,
that it must be another poet, or at least another period of the poet,
even though it can be seen from the dated manuscript of the Wal-
purgisnacht that Goethe used on one day theses of one syllable, but
on the next theses of several syllables, simply because the thought
required a more lively movement of the verse ; or finally, to shake one's
head at the placing of a stressed syllable in an unstressed position,
because we not only sing but also read " Heil dir im $iegeskranz."
In addition to force we have also learned now to take into account
pitch in a verse, and here in America investigations have been
begun to determine the melody of language by means of physical
instruments. Careful observations of the rhythm and melody of the
spoken not the written language of the sentence, and not the separate
word, will enable the study of meter in the future to base its ob-
servations less upon a lifeless theory of statistics than upon sound,
just as the poet composed his verses according to hearing. In this
way, the theory and practice of prosody, so long at variance with
each other, will become reconciled. Even in the study of poetry
attempts have been repeatedly made in the last decades to make
use of the inductive instead of the deductive method. Some have
wished to reconstruct it upon a scientific, others upon an ethno-
graphic-anthropological, and a third upon a psychological basis.
But here also the leap over intermediate terms of hypotheses will
hardly lead us back to the origin; only that path will that starts
out from the safe mean, by tracing step by step and ordering the
rich detailed observations, of which even here there is no lack.

Latterly, the need has been set forth energetically and from differ-
ent quarters of advancing beyond the limits sot to purely philosoph-
ical treatment of the history of literature and of coming in contact
with other branches of knowledge. Accordingly, much has been said
of the comparative study of the history of literature, without, how-
ever, the same idea being everywhere associated with the expression,

506 GERMANIC LITERATURE

or anything essentially new coming to light. Surely all scientific study
of literature is in the last analysis based upon comparison, and it is
not the broader (here international) sphere of activity, but only the
unique method that can claim the name of a new science. Others
have desired to bring the history of literature into closer relations
with psychology than in their opinion the philologians did. Thus far.
however, it has not resulted in anything more than a very superficial
transference of what is well known to be a very heterogeneous
psychological terminology. A more successful attempt was made
here in America by our honored chairman in considering German
literature from a social-psychological aspect, and of showing the
change from subjective and individual to universal phenomena and
periods. The youngest, as yet hardly sufficiently investigated phase,
is the medical, more accurately stated, the neuro-pathological and
the psychiatrical treatment of the great literary figures, to which we
already owe, alas, the sick Goethe and the healthy Kleist.

You see, we are not in need of means or ways, nor is there any
lack of work or workers. And we can make use of them! For a great ,
broad field only little cultivated lies before us: the whole of the
nineteenth century! Our science, it seems to me, has too long re-
stricted itself to a comparatively narrow area, and time and again
treated the same periods and the same personalities. Even science
requires change of matter for its welfare. There is such a rich ma-
terial here at hand that the eager and talented workers which
America has of late years placed in the field are heartily welcome.
So let us offer our hands across the great ocean with the motto -
Viribus unitis!

SHORT PAPERS

PROFESSOR A. R. HOHLFELD, of the University of Wisconsin, presented a short
paper on "Hebbel as a Literary Critic."

PROFESSOR JAMES TAFT HATFIELD, of Northwestern University, read a paper
on "More Light on the Text of Goethe."

PROFESSOR M. D. LEARNED, of the University of Pennsylvania, presented a paper
on " The German Impulse in American Literature before 1800." In calling atten-
tion to the fact of the general recognition of the part which German culture has
played in American thought and life during the nineteenth century, it had not
been so thoroughly understood that the German influence was a stimulating force
in our literature during the eighteenth century : the speaker said that in the last
decade of the seventeenth century Boston and Philadelphia each could boast of
a great scholar of the universal type of knowledge which was characteristic of the
countries of western Europe, — Cotton Mather of the Bay Colony, and Francis
Daniel Pastorius of Germantown. An interesting parallel could be traced between
the two men. Both were well versed in the learning of the time; both were prolific
writers; both possessed that encyclopedic bent which was characteristic of the
intellectual life of the old world; both were devoted to the intellectual and moral
interests of their respective communities; both had a command of various lan-
guages, — Pastorius of as many as seven, and Mather of at least four. The intro-
duction to Mather's Magnolia is most strikingly like the title-pages of Pastorius'
Bee-Hive. It must have been a great " feast of reason and flow of soul," could these
two men have come together in personal converse.

At the same time that Cotton Mather was forming the plan of his Magnolia for
the New-English colonists, Pastorius was writing a vastly larger work for his
children and those who should come after him. This book of Pastorius, entitled
Bee-Hire, is a far more erudite work than that of Cotton Mather, and is the first
known attempt at an American encyclopedia. The mammoth size of the Bee-Hire
with its million words, and the more or less private character and purpose of the
work, have prevented it from coming into print to the present day. Although it
remains unprinted, it is nevertheless a noteworthy monument not only to the
German industry of Pastorius, but to American literature as well.

The following works by Pastorius were printed in English: Pastorius' Primer
(published in Philadelphia about 1700: Seidensticker), Henry Bernhard Rosier,
William Daris, Thomas Rutter, and Thomas Bowycr, four boasting Disputcrs of this
World briefly rebuked; printed and sold by Wm. Bradford of The Bible in New
York, 1697. (The writer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, signed his name on page 15.)

Franklin's travels in Germany in 1766 in company with the distinguished
Dr. Pringle,and his direct contact with the great German scholars at Gottingen,
must have enriched his knowledge and quickened his interest in the Fatherland
of the Germans whom he had left at home in the province of Pennsylvania. That
he had an open eye for German conditions is apparent iiom his later writings,
particularly his pseudo-diplomatic documents written during the American
Revolution, The Dialogue between Britain. France, Spain. Holland, Saxony, and
America, and the letter From the Count de Schaumbergh to Baron HohcndorJ com-
manding the Hessian Troops in America.

Many other illustrations were given by the speaker of German influence in
literature of the eighteenth century and particular attention called to the growing

508 GERMANIC LITERATURE

interests in America in things German after the Revolution, as attested by many
publications. A short bibliography of works exhibiting the German influence in
American literature closed the paper.

A SHORT paper was read before this Section by Professor Otto Heller of Wash-
ington University on "Ahasver in der Kunstdichtung." He said in part that
there is hardly another literary theme so pregnant with motives, moral, philo-
sophical, romantic and fantastic as the legend of the Wandering Jew. Accordingly
it would be difficult to find any theme that poetry and fiction have so often seized
upon. The modern versions, so far as they have any claim to be taken seriously,
have yielded one and all to the attraction of the story's latent psychological
possibilities, and, pressing beyond the crude facts presented in the chap-books,
have introduced some adequate reason for the fateful crime of Ahasverus. The
probable originator of this variation was Goethe, who imputed to the culprit an
originally loyal disposition towards the Saviour and explained the sacrilegious
act as the culmination of mistaken patriotism. Among the writers of the nine-
teenth century there are even those who openly side with Ahasverus as a man
innocently punished, or, at any rate, one suffering far beyond his deserts. Some
writers mirror in the story of the defiant Jew their own resentment of divine
despotism. On the other hand, there are many proofs of a desire to harmonize
the cruel judgment with the Christian belief in the infinite mercy of the Son of
Man, which pious intent leads to the postulation of an educative purpose in the
curse.

On its mythographical side the subject is generally thought to have received
exhaustive and final treatment. The speaker called attention, however, to two
extremely ancient legends pointed out by a Japanese Orientalist as analogous to
the story of the Wandering Jew, which bid fair to overthrow the existing the-
ories as to the origin of the saga. Professor Heller then surveyed the present
status of research concerning the evolution of Ahasverus's character in modern
literature. He deplored the defectiveness of the bibliography of the subject and
showed that no great amount of critical scholarship has as yet been brought to
bear on a study of the varied conceptions of the " Evil Wanderer" type.

In the second part of his discourse Professor Heller proceeded to dispel some
prevailing errors of opinion regarding the Ahasverus literature. Not in France
has the figure of its hero shown the greatest multiformity, but in Germany and
England. The surprising number and great importance of English Ahasverus
versions have heretofore not been properly appreciated. The poems by the
Scotchmen Aytoun and Buchanan for perfection of form and significance of con-
tent must be reckoned among the noblest works inspired by the theme. Yet in
the existing German treatises they are not even mentioned. The belief that the
venerable wanderer is rarely caricatured is contradicted by a sufficiently long
list of satirical and humorous versions. In conclusion, the most recent contribu-
tions to Wandering Jew literature are enumerated to show that the theme still
continues to agitate the poetic imagination.

SECTION F — SLAVIC LITERATURE

SECTION F — SLAVIC LITERATURE

(Hall 8, September 21, 10 a. m.)

CHAIRMAN: MR. CHARLES R. CRANE, Chicago.
SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR LEO WIENER, Harvard University.

PROFESSOR PAUL BOYER, Ecole des Langues Vivantes Orientales,

Paris.
SECRETARY: MR. SAMUEL N. HARPER, University of Chicago.

AMERICAN INFLUENCES IN THE SLAVIC LITERATURES

BY LEO WIENER

[Leo Wiener, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, b. July 26, 1862, Byelostok, Russia.
Studied at Minsk, University of Warsaw and Berlin. Assistant Professor of
Modern Languages, Missouri State University; Teacher of Modern Languages,
New England Conservatory of Music, 1895-96; Instructor in Slavic Languages
and Literature at Harvard University, 1896-1901. Member, Modern Language
Association. Translated Tolstoy's complete works, edited History of Yiddish
Literature, etc.]

LIKE all the great nations of the world, the United States has
variously exerted an influence upon nineteenth-century thought
among the nationalities of Europe, especially upon Russia and Bul-
garia. This influence has proceeded from a great number of sources,
some of which can be easily traced, while others, though equally
or even more effective, naturally escape the investigator's scrutiny.
In the second half of the century American literature in its repre-
sentative authors became known to Europeans, to be translated,
and partly even imitated. Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, Walt Whitman,
Longfellow, have palpably influenced, not only German and French,
but also Russian, Bohemian, and Hungarian literatures. This source
can always be easily discovered, as the translations give evidence of
the interest in American literature, and the imitations arc generally
too obvious to admit of any doubt. Somewhat less apparent are
the obligations of the European literatures to American thought as
proceeding from scientific works, political, philosophical, sociological
treatises and school-books, for the reason that scientific ideas are
rapidly disseminated, and cross and recross continually, so that
the first source is very soon lost sight of; this effacement is still
further aided by the fact that the literary form of such treatises.
which more than anything else betrays the borrowing, is of but
secondary importance. Thus, though we arc positive of the in-
fluence of the Unitarian writers, Channing and Parker, upon Hun-
garian writers as well as upon the Russian Tolstoy; though we

512 SLAVIC LITERATURE

know of translations and discussions of the philosophical writings
of William James, of the sociological writings of Henry George, and
of many others in several of the Slavic languages, it is by no means
so easy to trace their further effects upon the contemporary thought
of the nationalities among whom they have appeared.

Still less capable of an exact valuation is the influence exerted by
individual Americans who have come in contact with foreigners and
have by their personal activities turned people's attention to the
intellectual pursuits of the New Continent. Of these champions of
Americanism there has been no lack, especially in the second half
of the nineteenth century. An energetic consul, or other person in
the diplomatic service, may have directed the energies, not only of
individuals, but even of whole nationalities, upon what they deemed
to be American ideals: such, for example, was the activity of Still-
man, whose memory lives among the Cretans and the Greeks, and
that of Eugen Schuyler, who, besides his keen interest in Russian
affairs, is hailed as the real author of the articles of St. Stefano, by
which Bulgaria obtained its independence. Such also is the activity
of those missionaries, and Americans in general, who have estab-
lished schools for natives, from Spain to India, to serve as seminaries
of ideas current in the United States. The importance of these
schools is still further enhanced by the fact that a certain number
of the pupils educated in them have come to America to complete
their education, after which they have returned home, still further
to increase the influence of American ideals. One of the most potent
factors of this kind has been Roberts College in Constantinople,
which has trained a whole generation of men from all the countries
of the Balkan Peninsula.

This latter activity of the American School Board brings us to
another factor, to which, more than to any other, several nationalities
owe their incipient literary impetus — the activity of the missionaries
abroad. At the present time the missionary work has fallen into the
hands of mostly half-educated men who arc in search of lucrative
positions, and arc willing to risk the religious propaganda of their par-
ticular denomination in distant lands. By their religious fanaticism
or narrow-mindedness they now are gaining a rather unenviable
reputation abroad; but in the first half of the nineteenth century
the missionaries were for the most part college-bred men and women,
whose chief desire was to carry American education abroad. Thus,
while Americans surreptitiously aided the Greek Revolution in the
first quarter of the century, and Dr. Howe was actively connected
with the revolutionists, the missionaries stationed in Greek territory
were busy printing pamphlets and gospel extracts in the spoken
idiom, and these were at that time almost the only accessible text-
books in the Greek schools. Thus the printing-press at Malta became

of great importance for Greek schooling, and later, when peace was
reestablished in Greece, Capodistria duly acknowledged the import-
ant part played by American missionaries in the primary education
of Greece.

A certain amount of importance is also to be attached to the
ubiquitous American traveler, who since the end of the eighteenth
century has visited all lands, invariably seeking the highest places,
meeting kings and dignitaries, and never failing to leave behind him
some reminder of his native home. Such influence, in the case of
Russia, we find in the memoirs of Poinsct, who in the beginning of the
nineteenth century not only cultivated Alexander I's acquaintance,
but also instructed him on American affairs. This tendency of
Americans for more than a century to penetrate distant countries
lias led to an American interest in foreign matters which often is
greater than it is at home. Thus we shall soon see that Slavic liter-
ature as a whole was made the subject of study in America long-
before it had gained recognition elsewhere, and thus we sometimes
get a native influence which, after having been active in America,
has come back to affect the native mind.

Nor do the above-mentioned sources exhaust all the possibilities
of American influences upon the thought of European countries.
There are also the general subtle influences of the so-called American-
ization of Europe, that is, the introduction of social and commercial
methods, of sports and school ideas, of newspaper and periodical
methods, all of which leave behind them an effect upon literature,
which, however, is seldom traceable. The great historical events
in America have never passed unnoticed in Europe, and the effect
of the American propaganda for the abolition of slavery has been,
for example, the creation of a similar anti-slavery literature in
Russia, the very liberation of the slaves taking place contempo-
raneously in Russia and in the United States. Tar more powerful
has been the influence of the American Revolution at the end of the
eighteenth century; the part it played in hastening matters in France
has lately been discussed by a French scholar, but the still greater
influence upon the affairs in other countries has not yet been inves-
tigated.

1 have so far indicated the sources that must be consulted in a
study of American influences upon the intellectual pursuits of any
given nation or set of nations. 1 shall now try to apply this pro-
cedure to the investigation of American influences upon the Slavic
literatures.

The most peculiar relation of America to a Slavic country is that,
to Bohemia, for it is Bohemia of all tin1 Slavic countries that has
exerted an important influence upon the American mind. The Hu>site
movement, itself a reflex of the \VyclitIite movement in Lngland, had

514 SLAVIC LITERATURE

led to an interest in Bohemian affairs, which persisted in Great
Britain and also in America until the middle of the seventeenth
century. Thus the pedagogical work of Komensl%y was appreciated
to such an extent in America that in 1642 Winthrop, the former
governor of Massachusetts, who met Komensky in Holland, proposed
to him that he should proceed to America and take the rectorship of
Harvard College. Nothing came of it, but it is a remarkable fact that
the American pictorial school-book, which was first suggested by
Komensky, has slowly become the standard of most of the readers of
the world. Xo influence can be directly traced that proceeded from
America to Bohemia, though with the large Bohemian immigration
into the United States it must be assumed that American ideas are
largely responsible for the woman question and other related ideas,
which are so prominent there. In literature the direct influence has
proceeded from France rather than from the United States, though
the poet Sladek has translated Longfellow, and Vrchlicky shows
that he has been impressed by Longfellow, with whom he has much
in common.

Similarly, none but indirect literary influences may be discovered
in the smaller groups of the Slavic languages, the Serbo-Croatian.
Slovenian, and Ruthenian; but the Slovak, which has for half a
century been separated from the Bohemian, has of late come pecul-
iarly under the influence of America. The emigration from the
Slovak districts of the Carpathians to the United States has become
so great that the literary activity is now centred in Xe\v York,
rather than in Turocz St. Marton, and even the literary men at home
write mainly for the American market. For this reason the American
influence upon Slovak is now quite perceptible. The Polish language.
in spite of the traditional relation between Poland and America
through Kosciuszko. has never come very much under American
influence, though many of the American prose writers and poets
exist in a Polish translation. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that
Sienkiewicz, soon after his literary career had begun, came to
America to join Madame Modjcska in her colony in California.
Here his American sketches were written, and the foundation was
laid for those larger works upon which his reputation mainly rests.

The two countries which owe most to America are Bulgaria and
Russia. Bulgaria, in fact, though now in every way independent of
any direct influence, is a foster child of the United States, ^'hen
Flias liiirirs. the American missionary for Greece, found it impossible
to continue his work after King Otlio prohibited any but Orthodox
schools, lie repaired to Smyrna in 1S3S. and here among other things
devoted his. attention to the printing of Bulgarian tracts and parts of
the Bible. Though there existed probably a dozen short tracts in
a mixed Bulgarian and Church Slavic dialect, this was the first time

AMERICAN INFLUENCES IN SLAVIC LITERATURES 515

that Bulgaria possessed a printing establishment and that the spoken
Bulgarian was regularly used in pamphlets and in the Bible. These
works served for a time as the only text-books in the few schools
that were then established. A few years later American school-books,
such as a geography, were translated into Bulgarian and issued
from the same press. These were hailed with delight, and served
as a valuable addition to the scanty Bulgarian literature by which to
educate the younger generation. At about the same time Fotinov, a
school-teacher who came under Riggs's influence and who aided him
in some of the translations, started the first native periodical, which
was based entirely on a similar Greek periodical — the labors of the
American missionaries for the Greeks. It is from this periodical
that Bulgaria dates the beginning of its literature proper, and in 1894
the fiftieth anniversary of this periodical was celebrated throughout
Bulgaria. It is also interesting to note that in the same year, 1844,
Riggs published a brief Bulgarian grammar, the first of the kind.

In the sixties a new activity was developed by the American
missionaries in Bulgaria. Schools were established, American
school-books were translated, and special text-books, among them
a Bulgarian grammar, were written by the missionaries. Meanwhile
the Bulgarians emancipated themselves entirely from their foreign
tutelage and regained their independence, this time again at the
instigation of an American, who, as mentioned before, wrote out
the Bulgarian constitution and had it accepted at St. Stefano. The
missionary schools now do not exert any appreciable influence in
the Balkan Peninsula, since the Government schools have entirely
superseded the denominational establishments, but Roberts College
still supplies a fair number of educated men to Bulgaria. At the
same time a number of young men come every year to the United
States to pursue their work in American universities, and these
carry a still more powerful American influence back to their native
country.

The most significant fact in the history of Slavic studies in the
first half of the nineteenth century was the publication, in 1S:">4, in
1 tie A no" over Rcricir, and later in book form, of the Historical View
of the Languages and Literature* of tJie Slavic Xatioiix, by "Talvi."
the wife of Professor Robinson of Andover. Previous to th:it time
Slavic studies were strictly confined to the Slavic countries, and the
outside world knew only something of the Servian folk-songs, with
which Grimm and Goethe had become acquainted. Kven in the
Slavic countries the interest had not gone beyond narrow scientific
circles, and a history of Slavic literature was not yet to be thought
of. There existed, indeed, something by that name, written by the
Bohemian Dobrovsky, but that was merely a bibliographical sketch.
It was Professor Robinson, the husband of the gifted scholar who

516 SLAVIC LITERATURE

went under the pseudonym of "Talvi," who saw the importance of
such a work, and prevailed on her to write it. This book for a long
time remained a standard, and did much to acquaint the world at
large with the literatures in the Slavic countries, especially with their
folk-lore.

Naturally, the greatest direct influence of America is discovered
to be upon Russia, which, more than any other Slavic country, has
been thrown into contact with the United States. The prowess of
American arms was the first thing to attract Russia's attention to
America, in the reign of Catherine II, and Paul Jones, who had done
so much for the navy of the United States, was called by the Empress
to Russia, to serve as an admiral in her fleet. But also the scientific
achievements and the political life of the new country beyond the
sea were well known in Russia. It was not Franklin's general re-
putation alone, but his particular discovery in the electricity of
the atmosphere, that attracted attention in St. Petersburg, since
contemporaneously with him a similar activity was developed by
Lomonosov, who may easily be called the Russian Franklin. In
what way exact information reached the enlightened circle of men,
of whom Xovikov and Radischchev were the most representative,
we do not know, but it is quite certain that Radischchev 's Journey
from St. Petersburg to Moscow is, as regards political and social ideas,
to a great extent inspired by his intimate knowledge of American
matters. Indeed, he several times refers to the United States. And
when this extraordinary literary production, in which an advanced
liberalism, including even the liberation of the serfs, fell into the
hands of the Empress, she condemned the book, as she deported the
author, on the ground that he "praised Franklin/' though Franklin's
name is not mentioned in the production.

In the beginning of the nineteenth century the intercourse between
the United States and Russia was at its height. The large import-
ations of Russian raw materials into America brought a number
of American vessels, mostly from Salem, to Russian shores, and
with them came a long procession of travelers, who constantly
importuned Mr. Adams and the other men in the diplomatic service
of the United States to be presented to the Emperor. The Emperor
\vas only too willing to meet these men from across the sea, treating
them frequently as his equals. AYe have an excellent picture of Alex-
ander from one such traveler, Poinset. to \vhom the Emperor offered
tiny commission in the Russian service he would be willing to take.
How welcome Americans were at that time, we see also from the fact
that Nicholas's aide-de-camp was an American. Emperor Alexander
expressed his admiration for the United States to Poinset by saying
that if he were not the Emperor of Russia he would like to be a
citizen of the United States. He also requested the American consul

AMERICAN INFLUENCES IN SLAVIC LITERATURES 517

to provide him with a draft of the American Constitution, and Jeffer-
son sent him this. It is not unlikely that the American Constitution
was well known to Speranski when he drew up a constitution for
Russia. This still demands investigation. The Emperor's friendship
for the United States caused him in 1812 to offer his mediation
between England and America. Meanwhile, too, the enthusiasm for
Russia was so great in the United States that Alexander's victory
over Napoleon was most elaborately celebrated in Boston, Philadel-
phia, and Georgetown. This interest, independently of the oppo-
sition to Napoleon, had been systematically evoked in the American
press by Eustaphieffe, the Russian consul in Boston, who persistently
enlightened the public on Russian affairs and even wrote in English
an elaborate, though insipid epic, Demetrius. This Eustaphieffe
played quite an important part in Boston society, and, it seems,
became quite Americanized.

There were also other Russians who visited the United States.
Among them was one Poletika, who wrote one of the first books on
America. This book was written in French and attracted attention
even in the United States, where it was translated into English.
This man's name does not appear in the list of those who took part
in the Decembrist revolt, but as other Poletikas did take part in it,
it is fair to assume that this acquaintance with American affairs
existed among the Decembrists, and, in all likelihood, was also a
determining factor in their revolt.

So scant is the information on American influence at that time
that all the inferences must rest on circumstantial evidence alone.
Thus it is also difficult to determine the personal influence of the
many Americans who apparently stood on a footing of friendship
with Russian literary, or at least intellectual, men. Such a man may
have been W. D. Lewis, who lived for a long time in St. Petersburg,
knew Russian, and was so much interested in Russian literature that
ho translated some poems of Neledinski-Mclotski. Dmitriev. Der-
xhavin. Pushkin, and Krylov, during the lifetime of these poets, and
had them published in America. These are the first translations
from the Russian into English, some of them antedating the trans-
lations of Sir John Bowring. In the introduction to a small collected
volume of his translated poems. The Hakrhesnrian Fountain, and
Other Poems, published by him in Philadelphia in 1849. he speaks
of his early friendships in Russia, and so it is not unlikely that he.
together with other Americans resident in Russia, exorcised a personal
influence upon the men who in one way or another identified thorn-
selves with the literary movement.

A second stage of American influence upon Russian thought
began with the abolition literature, which in America culminated in
Harriet Beccher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and in Russia brought

518 SLAVIC LITERATURE

the peasant to the front in literature, for during the fifties and early
sixties, and even later, the peasant is the chief subject of the novels
and even of the poems of the time. Turgeniev's Sketches of a Hunts-
man are an example of this class of literature, but it is Grigorovich
who with his sketches of peasant life earned for himself the title of
the Russian Beecher Stowe, which at once bears witness to the
American influence upon the Russian literature of the time.

Since then the best American authors have been translated into
Russian, and Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, and others are known
to even- literary man. But not one Russian author, indeed no author
of any foreign country, has come so entirely under the influence of
American thought as Tolstoy. From his earliest writings until the
present he has reproduced the advanced ideas of the United States
to his Russian people, and, on account of his great popularity, to the
world at large. Tolstoy has been directly and consciously influenced
by a great array of American writers, and of these he distinctly
mentions Garrison, Parker, Emerson, Ballou, Channing, Whittier,
Lowell, Walt Whitman, Henry George, and Alice Stockham. With
most of these, however, he became acquainted at a comparatively
late date, after his religious ideas of his so-called second period,
since 1880, had been formulated by him. But there is sufficient
evidence on hand to show that even at a much earlier period he
stood, if not under the direct, certainly under the unconscious,
influence of individual Americans and American thought. One
such influence dates back to the beginning of peasant literature,
and Tolstoy's love for the peasant, as shown in his earliest works,
was in line with the tendency of the time. It cannot be ascertained
at present whether Tolstoy had read any American authors before
1868. For that year we have the explicit statement of Eugen Schuyler
in his reminiscences, that Tolstoy received through him a number
of American school-books, if nothing else. Schuyler, with his usual
perspicacity and interest in Russian matters, went in that year to
Yasnaya Polyana. to meet Tolstoy, whose reputation was not fully
established at that time even in Russia. Tolstoy had just begun his
pedagogical career, and Schuyler procured for him a number of
American books, and in the pedagogical articles written by him in
the next few years, and in his readers, we find unmistakable influ-
ences of American methods. So, too, all his articles on progress and
culture, in which he assumes a negative attitude, smack of similar
productions in certain periodicals in the United States. The farther
he proceeded in his religious and sociological writings, the greater
became his indebtedness. If in the Krcutzer Sonata we only surmise
some American influence, we are certain of it in the epilogue to the
same, where it becomes evident that the medical writings of Alice
Stockham and others of that character were well known to him.

AMERICAN INFLUENCES IN SLAVIC LITERATURES 519

The indebtedness of certain passages in his Resurrection to Henry
George, whom he even mentions by name, are too obvious to need
any proof. If we know by inference that Tolstoy's religious ideas were
to some extent affected by Parker and Channing, we are quite certain
that in his The Kingdom of God is within you he is directly under
obligation to the American non-resistants, Garrison, Ballou, and the
Quakers, whom he does not fail to give the credit for their influence
upon him. To this may be added his occasional mention of some
American author, of whom he seems to cherish Thoreau most. But
to none of these, it seems to me, is Tolstoy more akin than to Walt
Whitman, with whom, in spite of the vastest difference of tempera-
ments, he shares the broadest conception of the brotherhood of man.
Such, in brief, are the influences that have for a century been exerted
by American thought, not merely literature in the narrower sense,
upon the literary movement of the Slavic countries, especially upon
Russia. Much still remains to be done in this practically untouched
field, before the exact indebtedness to the United States can be
ascertained. On the other hand, we can now begin to speak also of
a Slavic influence upon America, such as, for example, has been ex-
erted by the Russian novel on some of the American writers. This,
too, would form an interesting subject for investigation.

RUSSIAN AND STUDIES IN RUSSIAN

BY PAUL BOYER
(Translated from the French by Mr. Samuel N. Harper, University of Chicago)

[Paul Boyer, Professor of Russian Language, School of Oriental Languages, Paris,
since 1894. b. Cormery, Indre-et-Loire, France, March 11, 1864. Studied at
the Universities of Paris, Leipzig, Moscow; Licencie" in letters, Paris, 1886;
Fellow, University of Paris, 1888; Mission to Russia, 1889-90. Assistant Pro-
fessor at School of Oriental Languages, Paris, 1890; member of the Committee
on Historical and Scientific Works, 1897. Member of Linguistic Society of Paris
(President in 1901), Geographical Society, Paris, Society for the Study of
Modern Languages and Literatures, Paris. Author of divers translations from
Russian into French; On the Accentuation of the Russian Verb; French edition
of The Finnish Population of the Sources of the Volga and Kama, by J. Smirnov;
Manual for the Study of the Russian Language.]

IN the programme of this Congress, the comprehensive synthesis
of which seems to embrace all contemporary learning constituting
the sum of human knowledge, a special place has been reserved for
Slavic studies under the head of Slavic Literature. I beg to be
permitted (and I ask it particularly of the eminent chairman of this
meeting, whose authority is based on so many services rendered to
the cause of Slavic studies in this country) to understand this
name of Slavic Literature in a slightly special meaning, a meaning
it does not ordinarily imply.

Literature, in the proper sense of the word, is the study of the
written and oral works through which the spirit of a people manifests
itself, and it is also the study of the men who were their authors.
I want to speak to you not of these works, nor of their authors, but
of the verbal instrument which the authors used for their compo-
sition, one of the most supple, delicate, and perfect that has ever
been wielded by human genius. And since preeminence among the
Slavic literatures belongs, if not by right of seniority, at least by
right of incontestable superiority, to Russian literature, I wish to
talk of Russian, of the language of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgeniev, Dos-
toievski, and Tolstoi, examining with you the distinctive characteris-
tics of its development in time and in space, indicating its present
state, endeavoring to show what can be predicted as to its future, and,
at the same time, determining what we have a right to expect from
Russian studies.

(1) Limited to the question of origin, the linguistic definition of
Russian can be formulated as follows: Russian, under its three aspects
of Grcnt Russian, or Russian, properly speaking, of Little Russian
in Galicia, Hungarian Russia. Bukovina. and the Ukraine, of White
Russian in White Russia. i> an Indo-European language. It forms
the second of the three groups into which the Slavic languages are

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN 521

divided. The first, or Southern group, comprises Bulgarian and its
Macedonian dialects, Serbo-Croatian (Servia, Old Servia, Bosnia,
Herzegovinia, Montenegro, the Serbian colonies of Macedonia, Croatia,
and Slavonia, the southern comitats of Hungary, Dalmatia, part of
Istria), Slovenish (with Laybach, capital of Carniola, and Sjubljano
as centre), and finally Old Slavic, also called Church Slavic because
it was the language of the first Slavic translations of the Scriptures.
The Old Slavic died out at the end of the eleventh century, and is
not, as has been falsely believed at times, the common ancestor of
the modern Slavic idioms, but a sister language. It is precious on
account of its antiquity, and beyond doubt originated in Saloniki,
the city of the two Slavic apostles Cyril and Methodius. It re-
sembles the Old Bulgarian enough to justify excellent linguists in
designating it by this name. The third, or Western group, comprises
Polish and Kachoubish (dialect spoken to the west and north of
Danzig), Czecho-Moravian and Slovakish (Bohemia, Moravia, and
the northern comitats of Hungaria), Lusatian,or Serbian of Lusatia,
and finally Polabish, or Slavic of the inhabitants of the Baltic coast,
a language dead since the seventeenth century.

As for the importance of Russian among the other Slavic lan-
guages, it can be measured by the number of people who speak it, that
is, by more than eighty millions (for Russian, Little Russian, and
White Russian taken together), while the different Southern Slavic
languages are spoken by not over thirteen millions, and the Western
Slavic languages by hardly more than twenty millions.

But, when the origins of Russian have been explained, when, after
examining Russian by itself, there have been noted certain facts of
linguistic preservation, which, from the point of view of phonetics
or accentuation (movable accentuation) as well as of morphology or
syntax, show Russian to be one of the Slavic languages which has
persisted most scrupulously faithful to the common Indo-European
model, the essential features which contribute to determining its
personal character have not been exhausted. One feature particu-
larly deserves to be brought to light, and. because of its persistence
through centuries, to arrest the attention. Since the moment when
Russians appear in history until the present hour, the continued
extension of their language has been assured by the continued
progress of their colonization. The history of the Russian language is
in measure only one of the aspects of the history of Russia itself;
step by step the language has followed the colonist. We will indicate
rapidly the principal stages of this progress and examine what were
the consequences of this mode of propagation from a strictly linguistic
point of view.

In the ninth century, when Russians positively entered into his-
tory, the lower valley of the Dnieper was the centre of their dominion.

522 SLAVIC LITERATURE

They came from the west, from the plains that stretch from the foot
of the Carpathians to the lower Danube. But neither the sedentary
settlements, of which Kiev was the most firmly established, nor their
political and commercial bonds of federation, checked the tide.
While certain of their tribes pushed on toward the north and north-
east, into Finnish territory, others, with an energy just reaching its
acme in the ninth century, pointed toward the south. But soon, at
the end of the tenth century, the resistance of the Turkish hordes
(Pechenegs, Ouzes, and later the Polovzi) obstructed the road toward
the south. A backward movement, more powerful each day, began
toward the north and northeast, a movement which even the inva-
sion of the Tatar-Mongols, in the thirteenth century, did not com-
pletely check. Moscow, destined to become the centre of gravity of
Russian dominion, was built in the very midst of Finnish territory.
The founding of Nizni-Novgorod established Russian supremacy over
all the valley of the middle Volga. This irresistible tide of movement
toward the east went on with a remarkable continuity during the
entire modern epoch; Kazan and Astrakhan, these two strongholds
of the Tatars, fell, the first in 1552, the second in 1554. Then, while
the movement toward the south was again taken up and assured
by the free outlaws of the Cossack countries, the conquest of Siberia
continued, a task of centuries, which, in spite of the great work of
colonization accomplished in the nineteenth century, is still far
from completion. Finally, in the nineteenth century, came the con-
quest of the Caucasus and the penetration into Central Asia.

Carried on by this irresistible impulse, this Drang nach Ostcn
(eastward movement), the Russians, as they gradually became more
involved in the great events of which Europe was the theatre, had to
turn also toward the west. The empire of the Tsars broke up Lithuania,
conquered the Baltic Provinces, divided up Poland, and occupied
Finland. But, although an uninterrupted current of immigration
always followed the victorious advance of their armies toward the
east, the smallest part of this current could not be turned toward the
west. The Russification of the kingdom of Poland is only a term; it is
in units that the few families of Russian peasants settled in Lithuania
and in the Baltic Provinces should be counted. The rigorous measures
by means of which the Government of St. Petersburg has lately
thought to "assimilate" the Grand-Duchy of Finland seem destined
to prove a complete failure.

It is therefore by the continuous movement of conquest and col-
onization that the Russian language has spread over the vast area in
which it is spoken to-day, from the large rivers of the north, tribu-
taries of the Arctic Ocean, to the Black Sea and the Kirgiz Steppe,
from the valley of the Dnieper to the Pacific. It is precisely to this
particular mode of propagation that Russian owes one of its most

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN 523

essential characteristics, the one which, at the present epoch, can be
considered its distinctive feature: the remarkable unity of its pro-
nunciation, forms, and syntax.

Without doubt, each of the three Russian tongues developed from
the single original trunk has preserved its independence. Little
Russian, the existence of which is attested as early as the twelfth
century, has not become confused with the Great Russian; ostracized
in Russia, it has persisted in Galicia and Bukovina. Although the
development of White Russian seems to have been more backward
(thirteenth to fourteenth centuries), it continues to be the spoken
language of the peasants of White Russia. But if one considers Rus-
sian in the proper sense of the word, the Russian of which the Moscow
form justly passes as the purest model, one cannot but be impressed
with the marvelous unity of its pronunciation, forms, and syntax.
This docs not mean that there are no Russian dialects; indeed, it has
been possible to classify them, and that not without valid reasons,
in two large series, the dialects of the north and those of the south.
But in the complete table of the different Russian parlers (specific
forms of local speech) , nowhere are such numerous and marked oppo-
sitions of color to be found as, for example, in French or German
parlers.

One might be tempted to explain this remarkable unity by the
geography of the country. The large plains of eastern Europe and
northern Asia, in which there is so little elevation that certain river
valleys are confounded, scarcely favor, it would seem, the forming of
dialects. This reason is in no wise convincing, and nothing authorizes
us to believe that geography has had so decisive an influence in the
development of a language. History alone, we have said, suffices to
explain this phenomenon of unity in a language spoken throughout
such a vast, extent of territory. The language is one because it has
been spread by conquest and colonization.

Moreover, whenever historical circumstances have been the same,
the same linguistic phenomenon has been observed. Romance
scholars admit that in the third century of our era, Latin, carried
into all the Roman world by conquest and colonization, did not yet
present any of the dialectical features, which, developed in the course
of time, were to become the essential marks of the different Romance
languages. The same Latin was spoken in the Gauls and in Spain, on
the Danube and on the Po. Littoral Arabic owed its surprising unity
to the Mussulman conquests. Spanish as spoken in America does nor
know the dialectical differences which class the Spanish of the Iberian
Peninsula into various parlers. Finally, if it be permitted to add this
feature of resemblance to so many others which, with too much
readiness sometimes, have been pointed out between Russia and the
United States, let one compare the expansion of the English language

524 SLAVIC LITERATURE

over the prairies and through the forests of North America to that
of the Russian language over the steppes and through the forests of
eastern Europe and Siberia. Certain peculiarities of local pronuncia-
tion, certain eccentricities of vocabulary, do not mean that your lan-
guage is not remarkably one, from New York to San Francisco, from
Alaska to Texas.

In its continued march toward the east, a linguistic Drang nach
Osten which went side by side with the political Drang nach Osten,
Russian collided with two groups of languages, the Turkish languages
spoken by the Turkish hordes of the southern steppes and the Tatar-
Mongols who invaded Russia in the thirteenth century, and the
Finnish languages spoken ^by the different Finnish populations which
the Russian colonists ousted as they progressed. It is interesting
to note the effects of this double contact. They reduce themselves to
very little, as we shall see.

From the Turkish languages Russian has borrowed a considerable
number of words, almost all substantives, referring either to political
and civil life (zalovanije, jarlyk, etc.), or to domestic life and in par-
ticular to dress (khalat, sapog, basmak, etc.). But these words are
not more numerous than those already borrowed or those that have
since been borrowed from Germanic and Romance languages. There
is nothing comparable, for example, to the afflux of French words
into English following the Norman Conquest, or even that of Osmanli
words into Bulgarian.

The influence of the Finnish languages, since it exerted itself with
more continuity, might have been more profound, and we might be
tempted to exaggerate its importance. We might, for instance, not
be content with pointing out the incontestable borrowing of words,
but presume to explain, by this same influence, certain general facts
which, in reality, have their similarities in the Finnish languages:
the maintenance of the y (a hard and broad i) beside i (a soft and
short i) when this distinction between the two qualities of i disap-
peared at an early moment in the Southern Slavic languages; the
non-expression of the verb to be in the present tense (on doma, on<'<
dftltri'i): the construction of the instrumental used as a predicate (on
It'll nnzni'iccn korolnn). But if it is true that the sound y exists in
Finnish languages, it is no less true that it has been maintained in
Poli-h as in Russian, and there could be no question of Finnish influ-
eric" in Polish. The other two facts alleged are not more convincing.
The non-expression of the verb to be in the present tense seems to have
had its point of departure in the coexistence of the two forms of
the adjective, the determinate and the indeterminate form (noxyj.
ni'irajd. n^rojc. beside ,nor. nov/'i , n<'>ro}. The construction of the
instrumental used a- a predicate is very clearly explained by con-

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN 525

structions in which this case is found with one of its proper values :

kurica sidit nasedockoj ; on uze dbddcat' let starsinoj, etc.

The conclusion can therefore be drawn that the Russian language
has not been appreciably altered by its contact with Turkish and
Finnish tongues. This preservation of the integrity of its own proper
form confirms what was said above in regard to its unity as well as to
its general fidelity to the Indo-European model definitely abandoned.

(2) This Russian language, which presents to the linguist an interest
equal to that of Sanskrit, Greek, or Lithuanian, of wrhich Merimee
said, "It is the most beautiful language of Europe, Greek not ex-
cepted," while Turgeniev wishes to see in it the most certain token
of the genius of his nation, — are we well acquainted with its present
state? Has a complete inventory of its resources been made? Have
the treasures of its vocabulary been collected? Have the multiple
forms of its morphology been determined? Have the rules of its
syntax been analyzed? Without failing to appreciate what has
already been accomplished along these lines, it is permitted to express
one's surprise that there still remains so much to be done.

A well-known Manual, already thirty years old, but, by four suc-
cessive editions, brought to a point of perfection which seems difficult
to surpass, the Handbuch dcr Altbulgarischen (Altkirchenslamscheri)
Sprache of A. Leskien, has determined, in an extremely epitomized
form, the distinctive features of Old Slavic phonetics, morphology,
and syntax. The works of A. Vostokov, I. Sreznevski, P. Fortunatov,
A. Shakhmatov, and A. Sobolevski permit a faithful reconstruction of
the successive stages of the vocabulary and grammar of Old Russian.
But the present state of Russian has not been analyzed with any such
mastery or minuteness.

If you ask a Russian book-dealer for a dictionary of his language
in his language, he will offer you only works that arc out of print,
and have become rare. The Dictionary of the Academy is over half
a century old (the edition of 1867 being only a simple reprint of the
original edition of 1847). The Dictionary of Dal is more modern,
the dui'able testimony of a considerable effort, but little solicitous of
accentuation and morphology. The very distribution of the subject-
headings, where alphabetical order lias been sacrificed to derivation,
often makes its handling most difficult.

Or. supposing you to be more interested in "'up-to-date" Russian,
the book-dealer turns your choice to the more recent unfinished
works, the date of completion of which it is still premature to foretell.
The new Dictionary of the Academy was begun in 1891 under the
direction of J. Grot, continued from 1897. on a considerably enlarged
plan, too enlarged perhaps, by A. Shakhmatov. The republicatiou
of the Dictionary of Dal was recently undertaken by J. Haudouin de
Courtenay. In other words, the balance-sheet of Russian lexicography

526 SLAVIC LITERATURE

at the present hour presents dictionaries that are old and out of
print, and unfinished dictionaries (the Dictionary of the Academy
does not go beyond the compound words of which za is the first
element; the new edition of the Dictionary of Dal is at the letter s).

Phonetics are of no value except in so far as they examine sounds,
phonemes, in the course of their successive evolution in time. The
principal facts of Russian phonetics therefore found their expression
in works dealing with the historical grammar of Russian, the authors
of which have been designated above. But the same cannot be said of
Russian morphology. The excellent grammar of A. Vostokov, so
often reprinted (1st edition, 1831; 12th edition, 1874), of which the
classical grammars used in Russian schools are only more or less
faithful abridgments, is not sufficient to explain the forms of the
present parler. When the old Buslaiev, only a few months before
his death, presented me with a copy of his Historical Grammar (1st
edition, 1858; 5th edition, 1881), the first part of which, entitled
"Etymology," exposes in three distinct chapters, (1) Sounds and
Corresponding Letters; (2) The Formation of Words or Derivation;
(3) The Inflection of Words or Morphology, — he added with a charm-
ing simplicity: "Above all, do not make use of my chapters on
derivation and morphology. They are antiquated, like their author,
and are no longer of any value." For want of a comprehensive
work it would be useful to consult the notes and corrections added
by Roman Brandt to the Russian translation (by Shliakov) of the
morphology of the monumental work of F. Miklosich, Vcrglcichende
Grammatik dcr Slavischen Sprache (the morphology of the Little
Russian and Russian languages appeared in the third part of the
complete Russian translation, Moscow, 1886). The work itself of
Miklosich could not be used in its original form, the indications
given being, for languages other than the Slovenish and Serbo-
Croatian, much too untrustworthy.

Russian syntax has had the advantage of an exposition made in
a work that can justly be termed a masterpiece. The Syntax of
Buslaiev, the second part of his Historical Grammar (see above),
has deserved, since its appearance, this qualification, and time has
not diminished its merit. This book, however, is open to a serious
reproach. Its author does not distinguish, in the different facts
which he analyzes, between those that properly belong to the regular
development of the language, and those that were artificially intro-
duced by way of borrowing and have not even outlived the authors
who had given them right of asylum. Too often he persists in jus-
tifying a construction for which he seeks, in the history itself of the
language, an impossible genesis, when this construction is only one
of the varieties of what has been termed lomonosovshchina. An
example is the instance of the infinitive construction in Russian.

STUDIES IN RUSSIAN 527

Buslaiev's book, therefore, is not one that can be used without a cer-
tain mistrust. Among the works of A. Potebnia, most profound and
ingenious studies, the Papers on Russian Grammar (2d ed. Kharkov,
1889) should be mentioned in the first rank. But perhaps they are
defective by that very excess which the author considered a merit.
It would be better at times to find in them less psychological ana-
lysis, less "philosophy of language," and more simple description
of facts and their interpretation, their explanation being sought in
the history of the language rather than in the general laws of the
human mind. Something of this same excess is found in a recent
work of one of the best students of this master, the Syntax of the
Russian Language of Ovsianiko-Kulikovski, an incomplete work,
which beside the problems solved gives decidedly too much space to
problems to be solved.

The number of problems stated and not solved in Russian syntax
is very large. In any page of a contemporary Russian writer it is
probable, it is certain, that you will find a construction, a fact of
language, the explanation of which, however near it may be, has
not yet been given.

Should we mention the dictionaries and grammars written by
foreigners for the use of foreigners? The number is large; the quality
is seldom more than mediocre. Only two exceptions, perfectly
justified, moreover, should be made in the one as in the other field.
In the matter of dictionaries, above the level of all others we find the
excellent Russian-German dictionary of J. Pawlowsky (3d edition,
Riga and Leipzig, 1900), of which one of the merits is that in more
than one place it completes Dal; arid also the very convenient and
original Russian-German pocket-dictionary of Mieskowski (collection
Feller, Leipzig, Teubner). There are also two grammars of praise-
worthy conciseness, both recommending themselves by the correct-
ness of their doctrine as well as by their practical character: the
Kurzc Russische Grammatik of Professor Oskar Asboth (1st edition,
Leipzig, 1888) and the very original Russische Grainmatik of E.
Berneker (collection Goschen).

We see what still remains to be done in the vast field of investiga-
tion which the study of the Russian language presents. The tasks are
numerous and can be coped with only by the joint effort of Russian
and foreign scholars. Russian is a language which prodigious rich-
ness of vocabulary. suppleness of inflection, and variety of syntactical
forms make one of the most difficult; without doubt it is. of all the
principal languages of the globe. Chinese excopted, the least easily
accessible. This would present less of a disadvantage if Russian
were one of those languages which have, so to speak, only a lin-
guistic interest, if Russian, like the Lithuanian for example, were
only interesting on account of the antiquity of its forms, precious

528 SLAVIC LITERATURE

for the reconstruction of the past evolution of one of the aspects of
the Indo-European languages. But Russian is other than that. It
is from now on, and will remain in the future, one of the most im-
portant, one of the cardinal languages of humanity. In the preface
of a justly celebrated book Sir Charles Dilke said that the future
was for three languages, Chinese, English, and Russian. Arithmetic-
proves his statement; it is something to have the law of numbers,
the weight of mass, on one's side. Some fifty millions speak German;
some fifty millions speak French; in a few years the number of
those speaking Russian will be double that figure. The future of the
development of Russian is immense. The vicissitudes of the present
war are only an incident. Of what importance are a few thousand
square miles more or less to a state that measures its dimensions by
halves of continents?

And the same can be said of the Russian language that Anatole
Leroy-Beaulieu, in the preface of the English translation of his
book I'Empire des Tsars et les Russes, has written of the Russian
power :

"Whatever the future may bring, whatever the results of the
Tsar's policy, domestic and foreign, may be, whether Russia is
weakened or strengthened thereby, whether the sovereign's authority
is shaken or confirmed by it in the end, one thing is certain, and
that is that this huge country will remain, in any event, one of the
three or four great states of the globe. It will, in our hemisphere,
balance the United States in the other."

SECTION G — BELLES-LETTRES

SECTION G — BELLES-LETTRES

(Hall 3, September 24, 10 a. TO.)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR ROBERT HERRICK, University of Chicago.
SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR WILLIAM HENRY SCHOFIELD, Harvard University.
PROFESSOR BKANDER MATTHEWS, Columbia University.

THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES

BY WILLIAM HENRY SCHOFIELD

[William Henry Schofield, Assistant Professor of English, Harvard University, since
1892. b. Brockville, Ontario, April 6, 1870. B.A. Victoria College, University of
Toronto, 1889; A.M. Harvard University, 1893; Ph.p.ibid. 1895. Ecole des
Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1895-96; Universities of Christiania and Copenhagen,
1896-97; Master of Modern Languages, Collegiate Institute, Hamilton, Ontario,
1889-92; Resident Fellow, Harvard, 1893-95; Traveling Fellow, tfo'd. 1895-97;
Instructor, Harvard, 1897-1902. Author of Studies on the Libeaus Desconus;
Essays on Medieval Literature; English Literature from the Norman Conquest
to Chaucer. Translator of Sophus Bugge's Home of the Eddie Poems.]

BELLES-LETTRES! Perhaps, Ladies and Gentlemen, you know
exactly what this term means. If so, you have me straightway at
a disadvantage. For when, not long since, I was invited to address
this International Congress on "The Relations of Belles-Lettres" (to
other manifestations of human thought), I found myself unable to
define satisfactorily these the main words of my proffered theme;
and much subsequent inquiry has shown me to be not singular in this
uncertainty. So great, indeed, is the variety in connotation of belles-
lettres in the minds of those who employ it, that one is led to believe
that in the interest of precision, for the sake of a clearer understand-
ing of what it but vaguely suggests, the term is one we should do
well to abandon.

When the French speak of "les religieux," they usually refer to
monks of the Roman Catholic Church; but to most of us "the
religious" has no such limited application. It may be that belles-
lettres means still in France what it meant in the eighteenth century,
— the cult of the classicists, advanced by appropriate ceremonies
in the salon. But surely it does not mean this to us. Those who
arranged the programme of this Congress did not intend to have
a section devoted to the consideration of "polite and elegant litera-
ture" in the ordinary sense of this dictionary definition, any more
than they desired to institute a section of Society to discuss the rela-
tions and problems of the "smart sets" in the many countries of the
world. By belles-lettres they undoubtedly meant what we are now

532 BELLES-LETTRES

disposed to call simply "literature/' writings not planned primarily
to convey information, but to arouse sensations of beauty, writings
whose virtue is to awaken to new life.

The term "belles-lettres" envelops us with the atmosphere of the
beau monde; it smacks of spice and sweetmeats; it has the aroma of
concocted scent; it instills the sentiments of the dra wing-room; it
suggests curtsies and cushions, snuff and point-device; it demands
as concomitants of its being luxury and ease; it is exclusive in its
appeal. We prefer the term "literature" because, without restriction,
it offers its riches to all in need, because it is the noble helpmeet of
democracy. Its fragrance is of the outer air, its graces those of nature
herself. Its beauty is not of the sort that merely kindles the fancies of
the polite; it rejuvenates the hearts of all mankind. We now speak
of literature as of religion in a larger sense than our ancestors: we
acknowledge both universal in inspiration, though diversified in
creed, found in all lands, in all ages, in all degrees of civilization, alike
in essence, varying only in revelation, in understanding. We discover
fundamental agreement the universe over in literary standards be-
cause of the common human emotions that make the whole world kin.

The spirit of literature, moreover, does not lodge in books alone.
It did not arise with print or parchment or rune or hieroglyph. It
arose the first time that one human being consciously strove to convey
feelings to another in words chosen to create a desired effect. The
spirit of literature found expression long before any instrument of
record was used to body it forth. By this spirit even the commonest
of folk, who strive not to fathom its agency, nay. can hardly spell its
name, the simplest of people that tread the earth, are profoundly
stirred, for it is the spirit of their poetic tradition, the soul of their
imaginative life.

Speaking of the charming songs of Roumania that Mile. Vacaresco
first collected and rewrote, that accomplished lady remarks in her
preface: " Avant de m'etre reveles ils ont plane sur la vie des genera-
tions sans nombre." "Planer sur la vie" —truly an expressive
phrase! "Planer" -how can it be rendered in English speech?
One must use a sentence in default of a satisfactory single word. This
poetry in Roumania. like popular literature in every land that is
a permanent power, "filleth all round about and will not easily
away."

But you say: "We are not concerned with this primordial force,
with what you are pleased to call the spirit of literature. That is as
intangible as the electric current that propels our cars and gives us
heat and light. Pray, treat the embodied forms in which it appears."
A reasonable request, in truth, at which one cannot demur! Yet
not now would I attempt to enumerate in systematic order the vari-
ous literatures of civilization, or to state the conditions of their rise

THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES 533

and flourishing. That were at any time a lordly enterprise and here,
plainly unsuitable. Let me but comment briefly on certain aspects
of literary study and literary creation that may be viewed among
us with too little discernment of their rich significance.

Many of those who would subscribe themselves students of belles-
lettres neglect deliberately — whether it be from affectation, or lazi-
ness, or from pure ignorance, one cannot always tell, but in any case
deliberately neglect — sometimes openly scorn — the writings of
their direct progenitors in earlier times. Most lightly they pass over
nearly all the centuries of the Christian Era to the time of the Renais-
sance, as if forsooth the spirit of literature had been absent from the
earth this long while, when the people lived simply, and only returned,
like an Arthurian knight from the happy Otherworld, at a call to
engage in tilt and tournament. "Go back behind the Renaissance! "
one often hears students of our literature remark. "What is the need?
Well, perhaps for the sake of Dante and Chaucer — but behind them
again? There is surely no behind that one who is interested only in
'art for art's sake' need bother about." And I have marveled at
the singular unwisdom of such men's attitude, at their folly in thus
limiting their powers to judge and appreciate adequately the periods
of their o\vn special predilection. Do they disdain knowledge of the
earlier periods because they have it not themselves, or are they
actually blind to the advantage of it? No one who can speak with
knowledge but will affirm that he has never found any study of any
period of any literature useless in the investigation of any other.
The more one learns of ancient and medieval conceptions, the better
one seems to understand those of one's contemporaries. The more
familiar one becomes with works written in French. Italian. Spanish.
Portuguese, and Provencal. — works in (iernian, Scandinavian,
Dutch, and Celtic, not to mention the classics, — the more enlight-
enment one possesses for the elucidation of the best productions in
one's own native tongue. The more definitely conversant one is with
the facts determining past phenomena in the history of any literature,
the more confidence one may feel in a forecast of its probable future.
Formerly the literature of the so-called Dark Ages was thought
to consist merely of a few pedantic treatises in barbarous Latin.
Now a happy tendency is becoming manifest to consider as far more
valuable than these artificial documents the wealth of embryonic
poetry once instinct with the people, and partially preserved in ar-
tistic form. In such early indications of the common thought and
feeling, we must. I believe, seek the primal quality of each nation's
originality, the determining spirit of its belles-lettres. Students will
be more helped to a proper understanding of what literature really
is by examining its development in periods of communal effort than
in those marked bv the swav of ureat individuals.

534 BELLES-LETTRES

The literature of the Middle Ages differentiates itself from that
of later eras by certain notable characteristics: it is in the main
anonymous, and static in type, impersonal in attitude, and inter-
national in scope. A recognition of these attributes should affect
not only the method of its study, but the judgment of its merit. It is
a mistake to consider the productions of any one country in the
Middle Ages apart from those closely connected with it, for the
vernacular literature in all lands of Western Europe was then of very
similar origin and kind. It is misleading to pick out a few individual
writers whose names happen to be preserved, and romance about their
personalities, for even had we details about their environment and
careers, these would be found comparatively unimportant in deter-
mining the real significance of their work. Medieval literature is
largely a record of society at large and not of its separate members.
It evinces in one form or another the tastes, the sentiments, the
needs of the whole nation. Nor yet of one alone, but of the several
nations that belonged to the wide province under the control of the
Church of Rome. France was then the centre of Western civilization,
and at Paris were established the general canons of art, and the ac-
knowledged standards of literary achievement. The fashions of Paris
had a predominant influence on the writings of England for several
centuries, and under their influence our literary styles were almost
wholly transformed from what they had been in Saxon times.

Gaston Paris has convincingly shown that the Middle Ages form
an epoch essentially poetic. It had few great poets, but it created
or perpetuated a vast supply of poetic thought. Especially in the
domain of fiction, — than which no imaginative production has ever
exerted greater force, — its achievement remains unsurpassed.
Many and fine are the literary conceptions for which the poets and
painters and musicians of our own time are indebted to the Middle
Ages. In some instances modern writers have ennobled ancient
Themes by treating them in maturer style. But often it is the charm,
the spell of the past that is the power in their works most efficacious
still. Only by knowing the facts of development in each separate case
can our judgment of poems be fair. When art has alchemized base
metal into gold, we should give all credit to the art. But when the
fourdation of the artist's experiments is gold, as it was with alchem-
ists who of old beguiled many to their own advantage, then this
Trut li should not be kept dark. We rejoice when we see poetic thought
heightened in effect by the art of (lie poet; \ve see how a single man
of genius can remodel old material immensely to the increase of its
value. But we shall do well not to forget that he began where others
left off; that some, moreover, of the greatest poems of the world are
but the exaltation of valuable ideas previously existing in the rough.
Therefore 1 would plead for a study of the elements as essential to

THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES 535

an understanding of the product. The underlying force is the vitality
of art.

But pray do not credit me with insufficient appreciation of what
we call style in composition. Style, on the contrary, is a virtue to
which I am keenly susceptible. It is, I recognize, as manners to men
- the outward and visible sign of good breeding. But for all that one
may esteem courtesy and gentleness in one's associates, and lament
their lack whenever it appears in one's own demeanor, it is clear that
the world is better served by virility and earnestness, if a choice must
be made. Fine feeling and delicacy are noble attributes of any man,
but they are not to be equalized with native vigor and moral might,
when it becomes a question of achieving a great task. Thus it is that
I regard as just the critics' demand for evidence of strong elemental
emotion in a work before they are willing to stamp it as great litera-
ture. I dread ever the blighting sway of conventionality, the preval-
ence of art that is "tongue-tied by authority." I lament the spread
of good taste if it means that literature is to become ansemic, colorless,
sapped of personality. Admirable is the force of restraint where there
is something to hold back, great is the virtue of control when it
regulates passion. An earnest writer strives to free himself of pre-
judice, and to avoid excess; he rids himself as best he can of self-
sufficiency, and conceit; he is ready to learn of every one who has
before wrought well in the domain of imagination; but all to this
end, that his personal powers may be the more effective, that he may
clarify his individual vision, and, being true to himself, promote the
general good. What we need in literature is character, — more than
refinement, more than intellectuality, more than passion, —charac-
ter, that unifies all three, yet mounts higher to the majesty of wisdom.

Toward what are known as the "fine points " of style, I feel almost
as Bacon felt toward "ceremonies and respects": ''to attain them it
almost suffice! h not to despise them; for so shall a man observe them
in others, and let him trust himself with the rest. For if he labour too
much to express them, he shall lose their grace, which is to be natural
and unaffected. . . . How can a man comprehend great matters, that
breaketh his mind too much to small observations?1' Few, in fact,
are the words required to sum up the law and the prophets of the
highest literary creed; and details of command are good only as
sign-posts of wise direction to travelers already in the way of truth.

We hear a great deal of empty talk nowadays about "art for
art's sake." This once pregnant phrase is now so bandied about
by the glib and the facile, so wrenched to suit private inclination,
that it has no clear and definite meaning. To some critics it seems
to justify petty desire to dismiss as worthless everything that does
not accord with their own preference, to minimixc the merit of
careful stuclv, to crv franticallv. "'Out! harrow! and wevlawav!'

536 BELLES-LETTRES

at the bare sight of a specialist near their Chaunticleer's yard; it leads
them to be vainglorious in ignorant disdain. Such critics forget
that to be merely entertaining is to be hastily dismissed; they for-
get that, while a superficial knowledge of many things is a strong
armor to a man with a profound knowledge of some one of them,
he who wears it without individual power may soon be as ridiculously
overthrown as the threatening clay-giant Mokkurkalfi whom Thor
befooled and, at a single blow of his mighty hammer, tumbled down
on the dismal plain. Again, some young poets are persuaded by the
phrase to write only to please a select company of congenial spirits,
particularly to win applause by the display of cleverness which only
the initiated can enjoy, and thus are deluded to their own harm.

"Art for art's sake,'' otherwise considered, advises the critic
to regard the works of which he treats no more as a show-case of
rhetorical devices, or as a specimen of metrical structure, than as
a corpus vile for linguistic dissection, or as an illustrative manual of
historical and social conditions. He is admonished by it that a great
poem is more than words and phrases and facts and examples,
curiously conjoined to test his sensitiveness or erudition; that on
the contrary it is a living thing in whose creation was motive, in whose
soul is aspiration, in whose heart is feeling, in whose mind is under-
standing.— a living being with a peculiar character which is its
force.

"Art for art's sake" advises the poet to write with purely ideal
aim, with eye single to untarnished truth, intent on showing forth
the faith that is in him without fawning or fear. By it he is admon-
ished to exalt in his composition whatsoever things are honest, just.
pure, lovely, and of good report, and to scorn any compromise with
imperfection. It keeps before him the highest standard of a book,
that it shall be a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

We are agreed that our present concern is only with imaginative
literature. This, you remember. L)e Quincey distinguishes from
unimaginative literature, as the "literature of power" —opposed
to that of knowledge; and Pater makes clearer the contrast by this
addition: "In the former of which the composer gives us not fact,
but his peculiar sense of fact, whether past or present, or prospective,
it may be. as often in oratory." Accepting Do Quincey's definition,
lot u= proceed to examine certain of the relations in which literature
may exert power.

Had I time I mi.trht dwell on the intimate relation? of "belles-
lettres" with the "beaux-arts." and po;nt out superficially how many
beautiful paintings, sculptures, and embroideries, how many monu-
ments of architecture, were inspired by literary conceptions; or.
rice rervn. how often various products of fine art suggested genuine
works of literature. More profoundly. I mijrht endeavor to formulate

THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES 537

certain fundamental spiritual laws of "fine" creation in general,
from which it would appear that all good achievements of this kind
result from one and the same impulse, — to manifest and evoke
beauty, — and that the medium is the least significant thing in a
consideration of its permanent power. I might dwell upon the
influence on one another of men diversely trying to interpret beauty ,
on the stimulus and restraining value of their intercourse, on the
enlightenment that comes to each by understanding his fellow's
struggles and triumphs. All this would be worthwhile — but here
we must pass it by.

The relations of literature to philosophy and religion would need
a man of much more learning in those fields than I possess to show
forth worthily, and he would require, not a few paragraphs in a
popular discourse, but a large volume of intricate reasoning, to make
the situation clear. Naturally it would not be necessary to determine
the service of books that systematize theory, or promulgate dogma;
for such works belong not to pure literature, but to that of science.
But to inquire into the value of imaginative suggestion and vivid
statement as an aid to religious and philosophic contemplation,
— the power of words to create an atmosphere in which men become
sensitive to exalted impressions, — that would be helpful to every
one who recognizes the tremendous influence of some great writing
on his own spiritual life.

And how separate literature from education? More and more,
education is being encouraged as a factor of social progress. School
and college are now receiving in large measure the public patronage
that once was the honor of the church. University men are looked
to for light on most of the problems of national life. They set the tone
of public thought. Fortunately, there is no student but desires
acquaintance with great books. No one in the best collegiate circles
is more envied than he who can communicate to thought that pecul-
iar transfiguration of expression which is called the literary touch.
The general appreciation of his work is like the response of those
who. seeing a man act nobly, rise up with instinctive recognition of
his superiority, to applaud character so capable of doing good.
Virtue of speech is as incommunicable by command as nobility of
character, but it can be inculcated by intercourse with those who are
eminent for it, and the desire for its possession is common to all
who think. Thus men are led to read the best books as they are
led to associate with the best of their fellows, for they perceive
that virtue goes out of each superior being when he is touched, and
that sympathetic association awakens dormant ideals to life.

On the relations of literature to history and nationality I should
like to dwell a little longer. In general, history is the record of a
nation's deeds, while literature is the outcome of its thoughts. If

538 BELLES-LETTRES

one stops to consider the matter, one is surprised to see that a fine
literary work has very seldom made history, as is sometimes said,
except indirectly, and not at the period of its composition. Litera-
ture may reflect history, echo it, explain it; it may be the mirror
of prevailing sentiment, the sounding-board of contemporary ideas,
the key of extant emotion; but it is not the foundation of the feelings
it exhibits. Is it, then, without influence on history? Certainly not.
If it does not move the present, it establishes it, to move the future.
Thus, itself the outgrowth of conditions that were effected by pre-
vious Avriting, it becomes a force for new conditions destined to
develop another product, and start it again on a career of influence.
While history gradually unfolds itself, literature unifies its evolution.
Literature is a mighty power to conserve and perfect a nation's
experience. It contributes solidarity to public sentiments and ideals.
It procreates patriotism. Through it a people takes cognizance of
itself.

Consider, for example, the influence of a notable history of the
fourteenth century, — a biography that falls within our domain
because the author, we perceive, was not scrupulous to convey
fact so much as his peculiar sense of fact: I refer to Barbour's Bruce.
John Barbour in writing his story of Bruce had clearly before him
the lives of the illustrious "Xine Worthies" of the world. He knew
in full the romantic tales of Julius Caesar, Hector, and Alexander,
of Joshua, David, and Judas Maccaboeus, of Charlemagne. Arthur,
and Godefroy de Bouillon; and he deliberately distorted history to
fashion for his hero a career that would make him a suitable associate
of these ancient warriors. He represented Bruce as constantly
mindful of their exploits, as prompted, encouraged, and kept from
mistake by their example, as delivering addresses and exhortations
t o his troops in their manner, as displaying principles of honor,
courtesy, heroic courage, and perseverance in their similitude. He
made him the exponent of all the finest qualities of character that
his prototypes had displayed. In the tales of the Nine Worthies. -
imaginative history for the most part, almost entirely fable. — men
of all stations in the Middle Ages found examples of virtue which
'lefermined their actual conduct in daily life; arid the influence of
these medieval narratives is not dead yet. Barbour took advantage
of the emotions of his time to ennoble the standards of his country-
men. Magnifying their experience by bringing it into the light of
celebrated comparison, he perpetuated as ideals of the Scottish nation
those principles of conduct that many generations of literary men
had agreed upon as the most worthy of applause.

Somewhat similar is the way in which the fame of William Wallace
was established by the minstrel Blind Harry, or by whoever it was
that wrote the poem in which he is eloquently exalted. And the

THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES 539

spirit that these poems infused into contemporary Scots remains still
the source of their descendants' pride. Centuries after its composition,
Robert Barns wrote of the story of Wallace: "It poured a tide of
•Scottish prejudice into my veins that will boil along there till the
Mood-gates of life close in eternal rest." Surely no historian can leave
such literature out of consideration in estimating the bases of Scot-
tish nationality. Is it not, then, literature of power?

We should do well to seek more in history the influence of popular
legends, — old poetic imaginings that have fostered love of country,
tightened racial ties. It was no vain appeal that Bjornson made to
his countrymen when he justified their patriotism by singing of the
"saga-night that has spread dreams" over their land. Such dreams
in general possession yield the secret of that common social impulse
which is a nation's strength. Through literature is often made mani-
fest the halo of a nation, which, representative of its spiritual glory,
commands reverence and devotion.

It is, nevertheless, difficult to generalize about the immediate
relations of literature to national movements. There seems no fixed
rule apparent. With the exception of some orations, the American
Revolution was neither preluded nor followed by any literary works
<if note, while the French Revolution presents a situation exactly
the opposite. Wherein lies the difference? What has this country
lost by the absence of an oracle of its former spirit? What has France
gained by the concern of its writers with the form of its government?

Some historians are disposed to calculate the greatness of a nation
by the number of great men it has produced, and the method is not
to be wholly blamed. Great men are but the mouthpiece of great
spirit, and that is usually the spirit of their time. We are justified
in denying unusual uplift to the spirit of a nation when it reaches
to no superior heights in sifted individuals. Grant that the originality
of a people is not to be measured by its records in letters alone, but
in the other arts as well, in social and intellectual progress, in the
advancement of civilization variously apparent; yet an age when
literature is weak, when it is frivolous, cheap, and insincere, rot to
say vulgar or depraved, is an age which the future historian will
find it hard to call great, no matter how proudly that age may have
vaunted itself on a high general level of education, or a prosperous
mediocrity of culture.

It is appalling to consider how little direct influence literature has
as literature on the multitudes that embrace our civilization. Frankly,
if we had any way to discover how many of the eighty million
American citizens read books with any concern for them as works
of art. with any conception of what makes them good or bad in the
eyes of the trained, with any power to discriminate on their own
behalf, we should probably be ashamed to state the results of our

540 BELLES-LETTRES

research. Nor is it probable that conditions in this regard are much
worse here than elsewhere, though undoubtedly in older countries
books of polite literature are more sure of an extensive sale. In the
whole world the number of people who can and do appreciate litera-
ture as such is a very small minority of the population. This, to be
sure, does not signify much to those who believe that literature
is only for the elite, that it is a luxury for the refined, and debases
itself when it goes to minister to the lowly of intellect and taste.
But there is another view, the view of the democrat, who proclaims
all men free and equal in the domain of letters, free to produce,
free to enjoy, free to understand. And those who have most at
heart the sway of ideals in the world have the greatest eagerness
to enlighten the masses to comprehension of what literature means,
not by telling them about its charm, but by revealing to them its
quickening power, as they can be taught patriotism by the consider-
ation of a patriot, or fair play and uprightness by observing a con-
spicuously "straight" man, a man of honor. It behooves writers
seriously to inquire why their appeal is so limited, to see how far
their failure to move many is due to a mistaken vision. I enter-
tain no foolish notions with regard to a large increase of reading
among the working classes. There are millions of men who by reason
of their occupation, if for no other, will always be deprived of the
chance to read at all. But I should like to have every one, if possible,
surrounded by an atmosphere of imaginative thought, so pervasive
that somehow they must feel it, and, being led to observe those
who see and hear more than they, wittingly or unwittingly yield
subservience to its power.

Good literature is a wholesome stimulant to the man in private as
well as to the citizen in public. Yet now, when it is most needed, in
this age of intellectuality, there is a pitiful lack of writings that
serve to refresh the heart. While in conversation the other day with
an economist, I asked him how much he read books that had no direct
bearing on his professional work. "Very little," was the reply. "Nor
can I say," he added, "exactly why. I know I need greatly the
strength that literature affords, but I do not seem to find anything,
in contemporary production, at least, that supplies my need." Now
if this man had really sought and not found, if he had read and
was unrewarded by increase of courage, not renewed in inner life,
then it is a great reproach to present works of literary art. Such
a man as he needs props, — Matthew Arnold remarked wisely that all
men need props, — and these he had a right to claim that litera-
ture should afford him. Formerly the Bible was deemed a sufficient
prop for all men in their every spiritual emergency. But more and
more the educated are seeking other support in the crises great or
small that dailv arise. Verv different are the books that serve us as

THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES 541

individuals, for very different are our wants. But we have a longing
for beauty; we all crave the uplift that comes from contemplation
of the ideal.

You will recall how a chanson de geste concerning Charlemagne and
Roland and Oliver and those who fell at Ronceval stimulated the
host of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. It helped
to make them brave. You will recall how Wolf e repeated Gray's Elegy
beneath the battlements of Quebec the night before the memorable
struggle of Abraham's Heights. It helped to make him calm. You
will recall how Robert Bruce sat all day long at the difficult pass of
Loch Lomond and read aloud to his followers the Old French story of
Ferumbras, and how the Lord gave his assailants might in their peril.
It helped to hold their courage at the sticking point. You will recall,
perhaps, the fascinating picture of the British king Bademagus in
his chair of ivory, and how he heard the minstrel harp of Orpheus so
sweetly that he was moved with great emotion and no one dared
speak a word. It distracted him from his grief. You will recall the
scene of the old Norse monarch Sverrir on his deathbed, as he lis-
tened with glad eagerness to the heroic sagas of his ancestors and
kin, recited one after another to animate his heart. Thus he was
strengthened for his approaching end.

There is, in truth, no circumstance in which literature will not
serve, whether it be to increase joy or diminish sorrow, to heighten
courage or evoke tenderness, to stimulate in action or soothe in re-
pose, to give one in life wisdom and in death serenity. Literature is
the consolation as well as the inspiration of humanity, an eternal
spring of refreshment which never is far off, the water-brook for
which the soul of every life-traveler panteth, like the hart, when he
is will-of-his-way.

How, then, will the course of literature be guided aright? What is,
or should be, the purpose of literary criticism, the role of professors
of belles-lettres?

We have at Harvard a chair of belles-lettres, which since the death
of James Russell Lowell has had no occupant. Why for these thirteen
years past has it remained vacant? Ask this question of the members
of the Corporation, and they will probably give as a chief reason that
they know of no one quite fitted for the place. And in this opinion
they seem to be right. In truth, it is not by learning or fidelity that
one can gain the power to occupy suitably any such chair. One
does not fit one's self apparently, but is fitted by nature, or fate,
or God, or whatever one may term the hidden power that rules our
being, to sit in this high seat, this " siege perilous." and not be con-
founded. For ideally the professor of belles-lettres should be the
qualified spokesman of vital literary opinion, as the poet-laureate of
Britain should utter in convincing phrase the deep emotions of his

542 BELLES-LETTRES

land. Poets-laureate have at times been chosen who were unable
to maintain the dignity of their lofty office, but it is a common feeling
that a weakling in the post is worse than none at all.

Now Lowell took the Smith Professorship of Belles-Lettres with
general commendation of the propriety of his appointment. If some
have felt inclined to demur at the fidelity with which he performed
the routine of his position, no one has ever denied his fitness, by
nature and training, for what he was called upon to do, even as all ad-
mit that Tennyson's choice as poet-laureate merited public applause.
It is well, then, to inquire what qualities Lowell possessed that led
the wise to seal his election with open marks of approval. In the first
place, he was not only a gentleman (in the best sense of that fine old
word — a man of gentle, courteous instincts, of careful cultivation
and dignity) — he was also a scholar, in both the ancient and the
modern way.

This point I should like to emphasize. Xo one can read Lowell's
letters or essays without becoming aware of the fact that he had
large learning at his command. But if any one desires further
confirmation, he will examine the books of Lowell's private collec-
tions that are now possessed by the Harvard Library. These are
numerous and varied. They are not confined to productions of any
one period. The poet himself declares, for example, that he had read
every work of Old French literature available to him. And examin-
ation of his own texts (for he bought everything) shoAvs that he read
them with scrupulous pains, not in the superficial way that Tair.e
might have adopted, but with the conscientiousness of Gaston Paris,
to whom every fact had significance, who was not content to gen-
eralize on the basis of mere casual knowledge, who left no avenue
unapproached to seek out the truth in its fullness.

And Lowell read to make use of the knowledge he thus acquired.
He matured his opinions with the intent to set them forth. This fact,
too, I would emphasize. I am aware that there is a foolish importance
attached to publication nowadays. Every young student is encour-
aged to get into print, whether he have anything new to say or not.
And it is too often forgotten that a man may Avrite reams and not
have one tenth the ideas of one who has been absolutely silent to the
world at large. But even as music is not music, or poetry poetry.
until it is composed, even as a building is not a building before it is
erecte<"l. so ideas demand publication to be capable of estimate.
Publication, of course, can be achieved in other ways than by written
books. A professor may most potently publish his ideas by word
of mouth. But where there is no evidence of a teacher's influence
either by its effect on the personally taught or the impersonally
wrought upon, we are justified in believing that it is a thing of
nought.

THE RELATIONS OF BELLES-LETTRES 543

Lowell had good taste, and his phrases please the sensibilities of
the refined. He was thorough in research, arid his judgments stand
the test of careful scrutiny. Yet another quality of his publication is
perhaps more notable. It has all-inspiring force. Himself enthusiastic
in study, he brought others to understand its charm. Ready to
restrain, he was still more eager to encourage. Not content with the
consideration of the past, he inquired into the future. This also I
believe it was his duty to do as professor of belles-lettres. For of what
other use is the acquisition of knowledge than to revivify it and put
it to better service? Odin, the wise God, sent out two ravens abroad
into the world, and welcomed them back with news. Hugin and Mun-
nin, these ravens, symbolize Thought and Memory, coequal, both
needed in Odin's mature counsel. But to what end should this counsel
serve? Clearly, to anticipate the future for the common good. The
ideal professor of belles-lettres is wise in determining tendencies —
to this purpose, that the bad may be kept hidden and the good given
cheerful countenance. His chief consideration must be coming accom-
plishment, that it may be rich in fulfillment of apparent promise or
possible good chance. He must, by his knowledge of what has been,
be keen to perceive the best of what may be, ami keep the eyes of
others open to dangers likely to overcome the unwary, teach those
whom he can influence to discriminate between the meretricious and
the honest, between the vulgar and the fine, between the ephemera!
and the permanent, between artifice and art.

" Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream
dreams." said the prophet. Here we have, as it were, the creators
and the critics of literature. The critic indicates the course of past
developments; the creator takes the lead to form the new. The
st udent'of literature makes stable standards, which he who is destined
to replenish the treasured store of ideal art struggles to fulfill.

Belles-lettres! Yes. beautiful indeed are the letters that reveal
nations and individuals to themselves, and stir them to noble en-
deavor. There will, it is evident, be no great literature worthy of
America until its citizens, once again as clearly as of yore, perceive
the firm basis of its national life. how andwhy these States are United.
Are they united merely for the advantage of reciprocal trade and
mutual protection, only by reason of propinquity, or convenient pur-
chase, or warlike conquest? These are not bonds of much strength.
If there is no underlying community of race, or tradition, or history
among its members, by what shall they be kept one when factiors
arise, when local or class interests threaten to disturb the paths of
peace? By nothing vital, so far as one can see. except a sympathy of
moral life, a sympathy of ideals. And here above all literature has
the high privilege to serve. Men of letters have the power to keep
clear the vision without which the nation shall perish, Theirs is the

544 BELLES-LETTRES

duty to glorify truth and make it worshiped of the people. They
can touch the hearts of all fellow citizens to a common response, and
surprise them to the full realization of a common love.

We hear of La douce France and Bell' Italia, of Gamle Norge and
Merry England, of the Vaterland and the Emerald Isle, and such
literary phrases as these suffice to arouse intense patriotic emotion.
We are now in a land that preeminently deserves the title "free," and
freedom as here newly conceived and enacted may well be the burden
of a new nation's song. Let our writers renew the best imaginings
of their fathers; but let them also open their eyes and see afar off:
let them descry the land of hope.

THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES

BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

[Brander Matthews, Senior Professor Department of English, Columbia University,
since 1903. b. February 21, 1852, New Orleans, Louisiana. A.M. Columbia,
1874; D.C.L. University of the South, 1899; Litt.D. Yale, 1901; LL.D. Co-
lumbia, 1904. Lecturer in English, Columbia University, 1891-92; Professor
of Literature, ibid. 1892-1900; Professor of Dramatic Literature, ibid. 190CMD3.
One of the organizers of Authors Club, New York, The Kinsmen, American
Copyright League, The Players, Columbia University Press, National Institute
of Arts and Letters, and also member of the Century Association, New York;
Athenaeum and Savile Clubs of London. Author of various novels, volumes of
short stories, and critical studies.]

IT is a characteristic of the arts that their vocabulary must needs
be less exact than the terminology of the sciences, because the mate-
rial of the artist is ever the varying emotion of his fellow man. In the
language of the library and of the studio there can be no words like
horse-power and foot-ton, the content of which is precise and rigid.
Wit and humor, for example, classic and romantic, the fancy and the
imagination, — these are pairs of words that a writer may employ
almost as he pleases, but always at his peril, since there is no cer-
tainty of their conveying to his hearers the exact meaning with which
he himself has charged them. It is in vain that the dictionary-maker
seeks to differentiate accurately the one from the other, for he cannot
hope to control the personal equation of every user' of the language.
Indeed, the dictionary-maker is often ready enough to confess his
difficulty, and to admit, for instance, that belles-lettres has a somewhat
indefinite application, synonymous sometimes with the humanities
in general, and sometimes with works of the imagination in poetry
and the drama, in fiction and in the essay. He tells us also that the
term includes chiefly the study and criticism of literature; and that
it concerns itself mainly with literature regarded as a fine art.

Here in this Congress of the Arts and Sciences, Sections have been
set apart for the discussion of the literatures of each of the leading
languages, ancient and modern: and to the Section of Belles-Lettres
has been confided the consideration of literature as a whole, — of
literature as an art, — of literature pure and simple, distinguished
not only from linguistics, but also from literary history and literary
biography. — of literature as it transcends the boundaries of any
single tongue and as it appears in its comparative and more cosmo-
politan aspects.

546 ' BELLES-LETTRES

There is no disguising the difficulty of any attempt to survey the
whole field of literature as it is disclosed before us now at the opening
of a new century; and there is no denying the danger of any effort
to declare the outlook in the actual present and the prospect in the
immediate future. How is it possible to project our vision? To foresee
whither the current is bearing us? To anticipate the rocks ahead and
the shallows whereon our bark may be stranded? And if it is not easy
to suggest the problems that are pressing for solution, it is harder
still to hint at an adequate answer to them.

But one reflection is as obvious as it is helpful. The problems of
literature are not often merely literary; and in so far as literature is
an honest attempt to express life, — as it always has been at the
moments of highest achievement, — the problems of literature must
have an intimate relation to the problems which confront us insist-
ently in life. If we turn from the disputations of the schools and look
out on the world, we may discover forces at work in society which are
exerting also a potent influence upon the future of literature.

Xow that the century in which we were born and bred is receding
swiftly into the past, we can perceive in the perspective more clearly
than ever before its larger movements and its main endeavor. We
are at last beginning to be able to estimate the heritage it has left
us and to see for ourselves what our portion is. what our possessions
are. and what our obligations. While it is for us to make the twentieth
century, no doubt, we need always to remember that it was the nine-
teenth century which made us; and we do not know ourselves if we
fail to understand the years in which we were moulded to the work
that lies before us. It is for us to single out the salient characteristics
of the nineteenth century. It is for us to seize the significance of the
striking advance in scientific method, for example, and of the wide-
spread acceptance of the scientific attitude. It is for us again TO
recognize the meaning of that extension of the democratic movement .
which is the most striking characteristic of the past sixscore years.
It is for us, once more, to weigh the importance of the intensifying
of the national spirit and of the sharpening of racial pride. And
finally it is for us to take account also of the growth of what must
be failed cosmopolitanism, that breaking down of the hostile barriers
keeping one people apart from the others, ignorant of them, and
often contemptuous.

Here then are four legacies from the nineteenth century to the
twentieth : first, the scientific spirit; second, the spread of democracy ;
third, the assertion of nationality; and fourth, that stepping across
the confines of language and race for which we have no more accurate
name than cosmopolitanism.

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES 547

II

"The scientific spirit," so an acute American critic defined it
recently in an essay on Carlyle, — who was devoid of it and detested
it.— -"the scientific spirit signifies poise between hypothesis and
verification, between statement and proof, between appearance and
reality. It is inspired by the impulse of investigation, tempered
with distrust and edged with curiosity. It is at once avid of certainty
and skeptical of seeming. It is enthusiastically patient, nobly literal,
candid, tolerant, hospitable." This is the statement of a man of
letters, who had found in science "a tonic force" stimulating to all
the arts.

By the side of this it may be well to set also the statement of a man
of science. In his address delivered here in St. Louis last December,
the President of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science — who is also the president of one of the foremost of
American universities — declared that "the fundamental character-
istic of the scientific method is honesty. . . . The sole object is to
learn the truth and to be guided by the truth. Absolute accuracy,
absolute fidelity, absolute honesty are the prime conditions of
scientific progress." And then Dr. Remsen went on to make the
significant assertion that ''the constant use of the scientific method
must in the end leave its impress upon him who uses it. A life spent
in accord with scientific teaching would be of a high order. It would
practically conform to the teachings of the highest type of religion."

This "use of the scientific method" is as remote as may be from
that barren adoption of scientific phrases and that sterile application
of scientific formulas, which may be dismissed as an aspect of
"science falsely so called." It is of deeper import also than any mere
utilization by art of the discoveries of science, however helpful this
may be. The painter has been aided by science to perceive more
precisely t he effect of the vibrations of light and to analyxe more
sharply the successive stages of animal movement: and the poet also
has found his profit in the wider knowledge brought to us by later
investigation. Longfellow, for one. drew upon astronomy for t he
Mini re with which he once made plain his moral:

548 BELLES-LETTRES

as "proper objects of the poet's art," declaring that "if the time
should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized
to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and
blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration,
and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine
inmate of the household of man."

Again, the "use of the scientific method" is not equivalent to the
application in the arts of scientific theories, although here once
more the man of letters is free to take these for his own and to bend
them to his purpose. Ibsen has found in the doctrine of heredity
a modern analogue of the ancient Greek idea of fate; and although he
may not "see life steadily and see it whole," he has been enabled
to invest his sombre Ghosts with not a little of the inexorable
inevitability which we feel to be so appalling in the master work of
Sophocles. Criticism, no less than creation, has been stimulated
by scientific hypothesis; and for one thing, the conception of literary
history has been wholly transformed since the theory of evolution
was declared. To M. Brunetiere — whom I hoped to have had the
honor of following today and to whom I am glad here to be able to
express my many debts — we owe the application of this doctrine
to the development of the drama in his own language. He has shown
us most convincingly how the several literary forms — the lyric,
the oration, the epic, with its illegitimate descendant the modern
novel in prose — may cross-fertilize each other from time to time,
and also how the casual hybrids that result are ever struggling to
revert each to its own species.

Science is thus seen to be stimulating to art; but the "'use of the
scientific method" would seem to be more than stimulation only.
It leads the practitioners of the several arts to set up an ideal of
disinterestedness, inspired by a lofty curiosity, which shall scorn
nothing as insignificant and which is ever eager after knowledge
ascertained for its own sake. As it abhors the abnormal and the
freakish, the superficial and the extravagant, it helps the creative
artist to strive for a more classic directness and simplicity: and it
guides the critic toward passionless proportion and moderation.
Although it tends toward intellectual freedom, it forces us always to
recognize the reign of law. It establishes the strength of the social
bond; and thereby, for example, it aids us to see that, although
romance is ever young and ever true, what is known as neo-roman-
ticisni. with its reckless assertion of individual whim, is anti-social.
— and therefore probably immoral.

The "use of the scientific method" will surely strengthen the
conscience of t he novelist and of t lie drainal i-t ; and it will train 1 hem
to a sterner veracity in dealing with human character. It will inhibit
that pitiful tendency toward a falsification of the facts of life which

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES 549

asserts the reform of a character in the twinkling of an eye just be-
fore the final fall of the curtain. It will lead to a renunciation of the
feeble and summary psychology which permits a man of indurated
habits of weakness or of wickedness to transform himself by a single
and sudden effort of will. And on the other hand, it may tempt cer-
tain students of life, subtler than their fellow craftsmen and more
inquisitive, to dwell unduly on the mere machinery of human motive
and to aim not at a rich portrayal of the actions of men and women,
but at an arid analysis of the mechanism of their impulses. More
than one novelist of the twentieth century has already yielded to
this tendency. No doubt, it is only the negative defect accompany-
ing a positive quality; yet it indicates an imperfect appreciation of
the artist's duty. "In every art," so Taine reminded us, "it is neces-
sary to linger long over the true in order to attain the beautiful. The
eye, fixing itself on an object, begins by noting details with an excess
of precision and fullness; it is only later, when the inventory is com-
plete, that the mind, master of its wealth, rises higher, in order to
take or to neglect what suits it."

The attitude of the literary critic will be modified by the constant
use of the scientific method, quite as much as the attitude of the
literary creator. He will seek to relate a work of art, whether it is an
epic or a tragedy, a novel or a play, to its environment, weighing all
the circumstances of its creation. He will strive to estimate it as it
is, of course, but also as a contribution to the evolution of its species
made by a given people at a given period. He will endeavor to keep
himself free from lip-service and from ancestor-worship, holding
himself derelict to his duty if he should fail to admit frankly that
in every masterpiece of the past, however transcendent its merits,
there must needs be much that is temporary, admixed with more
that is permanent, — many things which pleased its author's coun-
trymen in his own time and which do not appeal to us, even though
we can perceive also what is eternal and universal, even though we
read into every masterpiece much that the author's contemporaries
had not our eyes to perceive. All the works of Shakespeare and of
Molicre are not of equal value; and even the finest of them is not
impeccable; and a literary critic who has a scientific sincerity will
not gloss over the minor defects, whatever his desire to concentrate
attention on the nobler qualities by which Shakespeare and Moliere
achieved their mighty fame. Indeed, the scientific spirit will make
it plain that an unwavering admiration for all the works of a great
writer, unequal as these must lie of necessity, is proof in itself of an
obvious inability to perceive wherein lies his real greatness.

Whatever the service the scientific spirit is likely to render in the
future, we need to be on our guard against the obsession of science
itself. There is danger that an exclusive devotion to science mav

550 BELLES-LETTRES

starve out all interest in the arts, to the impoverishment of the soul.
Already are there examples of men who hold science to be all-suffi-
cient and who insist that it has superseded art. Already is it neces-
sary to recall Lowell's setting off of "art, whose concern is with the
ideal and the potential, from science which is limited by the actual
and the positive." Science bids us go so far and no farther, despite
the fact that man longs to peer beyond the confines. Vistas closed
to science are opened for us by art. Science fails us, if we ask too
much; for it can provide no satisfactory explanation of the enigmas
of existence. Above all, it tempts us to a hard and fast acceptance of
its own formulas, an acceptance as deadening to progress as it is
false to the scientific spirit itself. "History warns us," so Huxley
declared, "that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as
heresies, and to end as superstitions."

Ill

The growth of the scientific spirit is not more evident in the nine-
teenth century than the spread of the democratic movement. Demo-
cracy in its inner essence means not only the slow broadening down
of government until it rests upon the assured foundation of the people
as a whole, it signifies also the final disappearance of the feudal
organization, of the system of caste, of the privileges which are
not founded on justice, of the belief in any superiority conferred by
the accident of birth. It starts with the assertion of the equality
of all men before the law; and it ends with the right of every man
to do his own thinking. Accepting the dignity of human nature, the
democratic spirit, in its finer manifestations, is free from intolerance
and rich in sympathy, rejoicing to learn how the other half lives.
It is increasingly interested in human personality, in spite of the
fact that humanity no longer bulks as big in the universe as it did
before scientific discovery shattered the ancient assumption that the
world had been made for man alone.

Perhaps, indeed, it is the perception of our own insignificance
which is making us cling together more closely and seek to under-
stand each other at least, even if we must ever fail to grasp the full
import of the cosmic scheme. Whatever the reason, there is no
gainsaying the growth of fellow feeling and of a curiosity founded
on friendly interest, — both of which are revealed far more abund-
antly in our later literatures than in the earlier classics. In the
austere masterpieces of the Greek drama, for example, we may dis-
cover a lack of this warmth of sympathy; and we cannot but suspect
a certain aloofness, which is akin to callousness. The cultivated
citizens of Athens were supported by slave-labor; but their great
dramatic poets cast little light on the life of the slaves or on the sad
conditions of their servitude. Something of this narrow chilliness

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES 551

is to be detected also in the literature of the court of Louis XIV ;
Corneille and Racine prefer to ignore not only the peasant but also
the burgher; and it is partly because Moliere's outlook on life is
broader that the master of comedy appears to us now so much greater
than his tragic contemporaries. Even of late the Latin races have
seemed perhaps a little less susceptible to this appeal than the
Teutonic or the Slavonic; and the impassive contempt of Flaubert
and of Maupassant toward the creatures of their imaginative ob-
servation is more characteristic of the French attitude than the
genial compassion of Daudet. In Hawthorne and in George Eliot
there is no aristocratic remoteness, and Turgenef and Tolstoi are
innocent of haughty condescension. Everywhere now in the new
century can we perceive the working of the democratic spirit,
making literature more clear-sighted, more tolerant, more pitying.
In his uplifting discussion of democracy Lowell sought to encourage
the timid souls who dreaded the danger that it might "reduce all
mankind to a dead level of mediocrity" and that it might "lessen
the respect due to eminence, whether in station, virtue, or genius";
and he explained that, in fact, democracy meant a career open to
talent, an opportunity equal to all, and therefore in reality a larger
likelihood that genius would be set free. Here in America we have
discovered by more than a century of experience that democracy
levels up and not down; and that it is not jealous of a commanding
personality even in public life, revealing a swift shrewdness of its
own in gauging character, and showing both respect and regard for
the independent leaders strong enough to withstand what may
seem at the moment to be the popular will.

Nor is democracy hostile to original genius, or slow to recognize it.
The people as a whole may throw careless and liberal rewards to the
jesters and to the sycophants who are seeking its favor, as their fore-
runners sought to gain the ear of the monarch of old; but the authors
of substantial popularity are never those who abase themselves or
who scheme to cajole. At the beginning of the twentieth century
there were only two writers whose new books appeared simultane-
ously in half a dozen different tongues; and what man has ever been
so foolish as to call Ibsen and Tolstoi flatterers of humanity? The
sturdy independence of these masters, their sincerity, their obstinate
reiteration each of his own message — these are main reasons for the
esteem in which they are held. And in our own language, the two
writers of widest renown are Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling,
known wherever English is spoken, in every remote corner of the
seven seas, one an American of the Americans and the other the
spokesman of the British Empire. They are not only conscientious
craftsmen, each in his own way, but moralists also and even preach-
ers; and they go forward in the path they have marked out, each for

552 BELLES-LETTRES

himself, with no sVervings aside to curry favor or to avoid unpopu-
larity.

The fear has been expressed freely that the position of literature is
made more precarious by the recent immense increase in the reading
public, deficient in standards of taste and anxious to be amused. It
is in the hope of hitting the fancy of this motley body that there is now
a tumultuous multiplication of books of every degree of merit; and
amid all this din there must be redoubled difficulty of choice. Yet
the selection gets itself made somehow, and not unsatisfactorily.
Unworthy books may have vogue for a while, and even adulation,
but their fame is fleeting. The books which the last generation trans-
mitted to us were after all the books best worth our consideration;
and we may be confident that the books we shall pass along to the
next generation will be as wisely selected. Out of the wasteful over-
production only those works emerge which have in them something
that the world will not willingly let die.

Those books that survive are always chosen from out the books
that have been popular, and never from those that failed to catch the
ear of their contemporaries. The poet who scorns the men of his own
time and who retires into an ivory tower to inlay rhymes for the sole
enjoyment of his fellow mandarins, the poet who writes for posterity,
will wait in vain for his audience. Never has posterity reversed the
unfavorable verdict of an artist's own century. As Cicero said, — and
Cicero was both an aristocrat and an artist in letters,- — "given time
and opportunity, the recognition of the many is as necessary a test
of excellence in an artist as that of the few." Verse, however exquis-
ite, is almost valueless if its appeal is merely technical and merely
academic, if it pleases only the sophisticated palate of the dilcttant ,
if it fails to touch the heart of the plain people. That which vauntingly
styles itself the ecriturc artiste must reap its reward promptly in praise
from the pre.cicuscs ridicules of the hour. It may please those who
pretend to culture without possessing even education; but this aris-
tocratic affectation has no roots and it is doomed to wither swiftly.
us one fad is ever fading away before another, as asianism and
euphuism have withered in the past.

Fictitious reputations may be inflated for a litlle space; but all the
while the public is slowly making up its mind; and the judgment of
the main body is as trustworthy as it is enduring. Robinson Crusoe
and J'ilfjrim's Progress hold their own, generation after generation,
although the cultivated class did not discover their merits until long
after the plain people had taken them to heart. Cervantes and Shake-
speare were widely popular from the start ; and appreciative criti-
cism limped lamely after the approval of the mob. The Junylc-Jiook
and Huckleberry Finn will be found in the hands of countless readers
when many a book now bepraised by newspaper reviewers has

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES 553

slipped out of sight forever. Whatever blunders in belauding the
plain people may make now and again, in time they come unfailingly
to a hearty appreciation of work that is honest, genuine, and broad
in its appeal; and when once they have laid hold of the real thing
they hold fast with abiding loyalty.

IV

As significant as the spread of democracy in the nineteenth century
is the success with which the abstract idea of nationality has ex-
pressed itself in concrete form. Within less than twoscore years Italy
has ceased to be only a geographical expression; and Germany has
given itself boundaries more sharply defined than those claimed for
the fatherland by the martial lyric of a century ago. Hungary has
asserted itself against the Austrians, and Norway against the Swedes;
and each by the stiffening of racial pride has insisted on the recogni-
tion of its national integrity. This is but the accomplishment of an
ideal toward which the western world has been tending since it
emerged from the Dark Ages into the Renascence and since it began
to suspect that the Holy Roman Empire was only the empty shadow
of a disestablished realm. In the long centuries the heptarchy in
England had been followed by a monarchy with London for its capi-
tal ; and in like manner the seven kingdoms of Spain had been united
under sovereigns who dwelt in Madrid. Normandy and Gascony,
Burgundy and Provence had been incorporated slowly with the
France of which the chief city was Paris.

Latin had been the tongue of every man who was entitled to claim
benefit of clergy; but slowly the modern languages compacted
themselves out of the warring dialects, when race after race came to
a consciousness of its unity and when the speech of a capital was
set up at last as the standard to which all were expected to conform.
In Latin Dante discussed the vulgar tongue, though he wrote the
Divine Comedy in his provincial Tuscan; yet Petrarch, who came
after, was afraid that his poems in Italian were, by that fact, fated
to be transitory. Chaucer made choice of the dialect of London,
performing for it the service Dante had rendered to the speech of
the Florentines; yet Bacon and Newton went back to Latin as the
language1 si ill common to men of science. Milton practiced his pen
in Latin verse, but never hesitated to compose his epic in English.
Latin served Descartes and Spinoza, men of science again; and it
was not until the nineteenth century that the invading vernaculars
finally ousted the language of the learned which had once been in
universal use. And even now Latin is retained by the church which
still styles itself Catholic.

It was as fortunate as it was necessary that the single language of
the learned should give way before the vulgar tongues, the speech of

554 BELLES-LETTRES

the people, each in its own region best fitted to phrase the feelings and
the aspirations of races dissimilar in their characteristics and in their
ideals. No one tongue could voice the opposite desires of the northern
peoples and of the southern; and we see the several modern languages
revealing by their structure as well as by their vocabularies the
essential qualities of the races that fashioned them, each for its own
use. Indeed, these racial characteristics are so distinct and so evident
to us now that we fancy we can detect them even though they are
disguised in the language of Rome; and we find significance in the
fact that Seneca, the grandiloquent rhetorician, was by birth a Span-
iard, and that Petronius, the robust realist, was probably born in
what is now France.

The segregation of nationality has been accompanied by an increas-
ing interest in the several states out of which the nation has made
itself, and sometimes even by an effort to raise the dialects of these
provinces up to the literary standard of the national language. In
this there is no disloyalty to the national ideal, — rather is it to be
taken as a tribute to the nation, since it seeks to call attention again
to the several strands twined in the single bond. In literature this
tendency is reflected in a wider liking for local color and in an intense
relish for the flavor of the soil. We find Verga painting the violent
passions of the Sicilians, and Renter depicting the calmer joys of the
Platt-Deutsch. We see Maupassant etching the canny and cautious
Normans, while Daudet brushed in broadly the expansive exuber-
ance of the Provencals. We delight alike in the Wessex-folk of Mr.
Hardy and in the humorous Scots of Mr. Barrio. We extend an equal
welcome to the patient figures of New England spinsterhood as drawn
by Miss Jewett and Miss Wilkins, and to the virile Westerners set
boldly on their feet by Mr. Wister and Mr. Garland.

What we wish to have explored for us are not only the nooks and
corners of our o\vn nation; those of other races appeal also to our
sympathetic curiosity. These inquiries help us to understand the
larger peoples, of whom the smaller communities are constituent
elements. They serve to sharpen our insight into the differences
which divide one race from another: and the contrast of Daudet and
Maupassant on the one hand with Mark Twain and Kipling on the
othfT brings out the width of the jrap that yawns between the Latins
(with their solidarity of the family and their reliance on the social
instinct) and the Teutons (with their energetic independence and their
aggressive individuality). With increase of knowledge there is less
likelihood of mutual misunderstandings; and here literature per-
forms a most useful service to the cause of civilization. As Tennyson
once said. "It is the authors, more than the diplomats, who make
nations love one another." Fortunately no hitrh tariff can keep out
the masterpieces of foreign literature which freely cross the frontier,

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES 555

bearing messages of good will and broadening our understanding of
our fellow men.

V

The deeper interest in the expression of national qualities and in
the representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied
by an increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down
the barriers of race and of language. More than fourscore years ago
Goethe said that even then national literature was "rather an
unmeaning term" as "the epoch of world-literature was at hand."
With all his wisdom Goethe failed to perceive that cosmopolitanism
is a sorry thing when it is not the final expression of patriotism. An
artist without a country and with no roots in the soil of his nativity is
not likely to bring forth flower and fruit. As an Arnerican critic aptly
put it, "a true cosmopolitan is at home — even in his own country. "
A Russian novelist has set forth the same thought; and it is the wisest
character in Turgenef 's Dimitri Roudine, who asserted that the great
misfortune of the hero was his ignorance of his native land. "Russia
can get along without any of us, but we cannot do without Russia.
Woe betide him who does not understand her! and still more him
who really forgets the manners and the ideas of his fatherland.
Cosmopolitanism is an absurdity and a zero, — • less than a zero; out-
side of nationality, there is no art, no truth, no life possible."

Perhaps it may be feasible to attempt a reconciliation of Turgenef
and Goethe, by pointing out that the cosmopolitanism of this growing
century is revealed mainly in a similarity of the external forms of
literature, while it is the national spirit which supplies the internal
inspiration that gives life. For example, it is a fact that the Demi-
Monde of Dumas, the Pillars of Society of Ibsen, the Magda of Suder-
mann, the Grand Galeoto of Etchegaray, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
of Pinero, the Gioconda of d'Annunzio arc all of them cast in the same
dramatic mould; but it is also a fact that the metal of which each is
made was smelted in the native land of its author. Similar as they
are in structure, in their artistic formula, they arc radically dissimilar
in their essence, in the motives that move the characters, and in
their outlook on life; and this dissimilarity is clue not alone to the
individuality of the several authors, — it is to be credited chiefly to
the nationality of each.

Of course, international borrowings have always been profitable
to the arts. • — not merely the taking over of raw material, but the
more stimulating absorption of methods and processes, and even of
artistic ideals. The Sicilian Gorgias had for a pupil the Athenian
Isocrates; and the style of the Greek was imitated by the Roman
Cicero, thus helping to sustain the standard of oratory in every
modern language. The Matron of Ephesus of Petronius was the ureat-

556 BELLES-LETTRES

grandmother of the Yvetteoi Maupassant; and the dialogues of Heron-
das and of Theocritus serve as models for many a vignette of modern
life. The Golden Ass went before Gil Bias and made a path for him,
and Gil Bias pointed the way for Huckleberry Finn. It is easy to
detect the influence of Richardson on Rousseau, of Rousseau on
George Sand, of George Sand on Turgenef, of Turgenef on Mr. Henry
James, of Mr. James on M. Paul Bourget, of M. Bourget on Signor
d' Annunzio; and yet there is no denying that Richardson is radically
British, that Turgenef is thoroughly Russian, and that d; Annunzio
is unquestionably Italian.

In like manner we may recognize the striking similarity — but
only in so far as the external form is concerned — discoverable in
those short stories which are as abundant as they are important in
every modern literature; and yet much of our delight in these brief
studies from life is due to the pungency of their local flavor, whether
they were written by Kjelland or by Sacher-Masoch, by Auerbach
or by Daudet, by Barrie or by Bret Harte. " All can grow the flower
now, for all have got the seed"; but the blossoms are rich with the
strength of the soil in which each of them is rooted.

This racial individuality is our immediate hope; it is our safeguard
against mere craftsmanship, against dilettant dexterity, against
cleverness for its own sake, against the danger that our cosmopoli-
tanism may degenerate into Alexandrianism and that our century
may come to be like the age of the Antonincs, when " a cloud of critics ,
of compilers, of commentators darkened the face of learning," so
Gibbon tells us, and "the decline of genius was soon followed by the
corruption of taste." It is the spirit of nationality which will supply
needful idealism; it will allow a man of letters to frequent the past
without becoming archaic and to travel abroad without becoming
exotic, because it will supply him always with a good reason for
remaining a citizen of his own country.

VI

Whether it is due to this correction of cosmopolitanism by national
ideals, whether it is rather to be credited to the spread of democracy
or to the increasing use of the scientific method, — the fact is indis-
putable that since the slow disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire
was followed by the steady compacting of the modern nations with
their several tongues (finally forcing the abandonment of Latin as
the universal language of the learned), there has been no epoch until
the present when all men of education and of culture have been able
to consider themselves as citizens of the world. Perhaps it is not
fanciful to see in this Congress of the Arts and Sciences satisfactory
evidence of the solidarity of the artists and of the scientists of every
race. A Congress like this has been possible only within the past score

PRESENT PROBLEMS OF BELLES-LETTRES 557

or two of years. That it has gathered now is a good augury for the
future; and that it has gathered here is a lasting benefit for us who
are native to this region.

The tale is told that after the statues from the studio of Thorwald-
sen had been unpacked in Copenhagen in the courtyard of the mu-
seum, there sprang up the next spring certain flowers of the Roman
Campagna, never before seen in Denmark, and a few of them were
acclimated and have flourished ever since in their new home in the
north. Is it too much to hope that a like good fortune may befall
some of the seeds of thought which have been brought here from
afar?

BIBLIOGRAPHY: HISTORY OF LITERATURE
FRENCH LITERATURE— GENERAL

(Prepared by courtesy of Professor Alcee Fortier, of Tulane University}1

BOURGET, Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine.

BRTJNETIERE, Etudes Critiques sur 1'histoire de la Litte"rature Francaise.
Nouvelles Etudes Critiques, 1882.
Histoire et Litt<§rature, 1885-1886.
Etudes Critiques, 3d series, 1887.
Histoire et Litte"rature, 3d series, 1887.
Questions de Critique, 1889.
Nouvelles Questions de Critique, 1890.
Etudes Critiques, 4th series, 1891.
Essais sur la Litterature Contemporaine, 1892.
Le Roman Naturaliste, 1892.
Etudes Critiques, 5th series, 1893.
Nouveaux Essais sur la Litterature Contemporaine.
L'Evolution de la poe"sie lyrique en France.
Manuel de 1'histoire de la Litterature frangaise.
DESCHAMPS, La Vie et les Livres.
DOUMIC, RENE, Etudes sur la Litterature francaise.

Ecrivains d'Aujourd'hui.
FAGUET, E., Etudes Litt6raires sur le dix-neuvieme Siecle.

Politiques et Moralistes du dix-neuvieme Siecle.
Drame Ancien, Drame Moderne.
Revue des Revues, Juillet, 1898.
Enquete sur 1'esprit frangais.
FILON, A., De Dumas a Rostand.

GROEBER, Grundriss der Roman. Philologie, t. 1, pp. 1-139.
LAKROUMET, Etudes de Litterature Dramatique.
LEMAITRE, J., Impressions de Theatre, 1888-1890.

Les Contemporains.

Ron, F., Etudes sur le dix-neuvieme Siecle, 1888.
PELLISSIER, G., Le Mouvcment Litteraire au dix-neuvicme Si6cle.
Essais de Litterature Contemporaine.
Nouveaux Essais.
PETIT DE JULLEVILLE, Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature francaise,

vols. vn and vin.

SAINTE-BEUVE, Portraits Contemporains.
SCHKRKK, Etudes sur la Litterature Contemporaine.
SARCEY, F., Quarante Ans de Theatre.
SPROXCK, M., Los Artistes LitteYaircs.
TAIXE, Essais de critique et d'histoire, 1857.
Nouveaux Essais, 1865.
Les Origines de la France Contemporaine.

1 This bibliography is merely intended to be suggestive, and is taken in part
from Petit de Julleville's I Us to ire dc la Langue ct dc la Littcrature franf'aise, vols.
vn and vin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: HISTORY OF LITERATURE 559

THIEME, H. P., Bibliographic de la Literature franchise au XIX siecle, 1897.
ZOLA, E., Documents Litteraires.

FRENCH LITERATURE— SPECIAL

RIRE, E., V. Hugo et la Restauration.
V. Hugo avant 1830.
V. Hugo apres 1830.
V. Hugo apr£s 1852.

CHATEAUBRIAND, M£moires d'Outre-Tombe, 3 e"dit., par E. Eire".
DESCHANEL, E., Lamartine, 1893.

FORTIER, A., Sept Grands Auteurs du XIXe Siecle: Lamartine, Victor Hugo,
Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, Th. Gautier, Prosper Merime'e, Francois Cop-
pe"e, 1889.

GAUTIER, TH. Histoire du Romantisme.
HUGO, V., Racontd par un tenioin de sa vie, 1863.

Preface de Cromwell, 1827.

SAINTE-BEUVE, Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire sous PEmpire, 1860.
SOREL, ALBERT, Mme. de Stael, 1890.
SOURIAU, De la Convention dans la trage"die classique et dans le drame romantique.

Edition Critique de la Preface de Cromwell.

SPOELBERCH DE LOVENJOUL, Histoire des oeuvres de Th. Gautier, 1887.
STAEL DE, MME., De 1'Allemagne.

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

BERXARDEZ-BRANCO, M., Portugal e os estrangelros.

BETZ, L., La Litterature Comparee, essai bibliographique, avec une introduction

de J. Texte, 1900.

BRANDES, G., Die Haupstromungen der Litteratur des 19 Jahrhunderts.
BRUXETIERE, F., Le Cosmopolitisme.
DORNIS, J., La Poe"sie Italienne Contemporaine.
HEXXEQUIN, E., Ecrivains francisfe, 1889.
JUSSERAND, J., Sliakespcare en France sous 1'Ancien Regime.
LAXSOX, G., Emile Deschamps et le Romancero (Revue d'histoire litteraire de la

France, 15 Janvier, 1899).
LEMAITRE, De I'lnfluence recente des litteratures du Xord.

Les Contemporains, tome vi, 1896.
LARROUMET, Shakespeare et le theatre francais (Etudes d'histoire et de critique

dramatiquo, 1S92).
MAIGROX, Le Roman historique en France: essai sur 1'influence de Walter Scott,

1S9S.
MEXEXDEZ Y PELAYO, Historia de las Ideas Esteticas en Espafia, 1SSG-96,

vols. iv and v.
REXAKD, G., I'lnfluence de la Suisse franchise sur la France depuis 1830 (Nou-

velle Revue, 1SS5).

I'lnfluence de 1'Allemagne sur la France, do 1870 a 1885.
Etudes sur la France contemporaine, 1SSS.
STERX, AD., Geschichte der ncuern Litteratur, 1SS2-S5.
TEXTE, JOSEPH, La Poesie Lakiste en France (Etudes de litterature europeennc,

1S9S).

Les Originos de l'influence allemande dans la litterature franchise
du XIX0 Siecle (Revue d'histoire litteraire de la France, ] 5
Janvier, 1S9S).

I'lnfluence allemande dans le Romantisme francais (Etudrs de
litterature curopeenne, 1S9S).

560 BIBLIOGRAPHY: HISTORY OF LITERATURE

VOGUE, E. M. DE, Le Roman russe.

WYZEWA, T. DE, Ecrivains Strangers, 1896-1897.

FRENCH LITERATURE OUT OF FRANCE

FORTIER, A., Louisiana Studies (Literature, Customs, and Dialects).
HALDEX, An DER, Etudes de Litterature canadienne franchise, 1904.
ROSSEL, V., Histoire litteraire de la Suisse Romande, 1889-91.

Histoire de la Litterature frangaise hors-de France, 1895.

HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE

(Prepared through the courtesy of Prof. K. D. Jessen of Bryn Mawr College)
I. General (bibliographical, biographical) and methodological works.

KARL GOEDEKE. Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung. Aus den

Quellen. Zweite ganz neu bearbeitete Auflage. Dresden, 1884 — x. Not yet

complete.

RICHARD M. MEYER. Grundriss der neueren deutschen Litteraturgeschichte. Ber-
lin, 1902.
JAHRESBERICHTE UEBER DIE ERSCHEIXUXGE.V AUF DEM GEBIETE DER OERMAXI-

SCHEX PHILOLOGIE, herausgegeben von der Gesellschaft fiir deutsche Philologie

in Berlin. Berlin, since 1880.
JAHRESBERK-HTE FUER XEUERE DEUTSCHE LITTERATURGESCHICHTE. Stuttgart.

later Berlin, since 1892.
GRUXDRISS DER GERMAXISCHEX PHILOLOGIE. Herausgegobcn von Hermann Paul.

Zweite verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Strassburg, 1896. Xot yet

complete.
RUDOLF vox RAUMER. Geschichte der germanischen Philologie, vorzugsweise

in Deutscliland. Miinchen, 1870.

KARL vox BAHDER. Die deutsche Philologie im Grundriss. Paderborn, 1883.
KARL BREUL. A handy bibliographical guide to the study of the German Lan-
guage and Literature. London, Paris, Boston, 1895.
JOHX RCHOLTE XoLLF.x. A chronology and practical bibliography of Modern

German Literature. Chicago, 1903.
ALLGEMEIXE DEUTSCHE BIOGRAPHIE, herausgegeben durch die historische

Commission bei der konigl. Akademie der Wissenschaften. Leipzig, since

1875. The supplementary volumes now appearing will include Germans who

died before 1900.
BIOGRAPHISCHES JAHRBucii und Dr.uTSCHER XEKROLOG. Herausgegcben von

Anton Bettelheim. Berlin, since 1897.
IVCERSCHXER'S DEUTSCHER LITTERATUR-KA LENDER, auf das Jahr 1904. Herg.

von Dr. Ileinrich Klenz. 20. Jahrgang, Leipzig.
GUSTAV KOEXXECKE. Bilderatlas zur Geschichte der deutschen Xational-

litteratur. 2. Auflage. Marburg, 1895.

ERXST ULSTER. Prinzipien der Literatur-Wissenschaft. I. Band. Halle, 1S97.
CIIAKLES M. GAYLEY and FRED X. SCOTT. An Introduction to the Methods and

Materials of Literary Criticism. 1 vol. Boston, 1S99.
AUGUST BOECKH. Encyklopadie und Methodologie der philologischen Wissen-

srhaftcTi. Ilerausgegeben von Ernst Bratuscheck. 2. Auflage besorgt von

Rudolf Klu?<mann. Leipzig, 18SG.

II. Grnr-ral Worlcs on the History of German Literature.

GEORG GERVIXUS. Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung. 5. Auflage. Herg. von
K. Bartsch. Leipzig, 1871-74.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: HISTORY OF LITERATURE 561

WILHELM SCHERER. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur. 9. Aufl. Berlin, 1901.
FRIEDRICH VOGT und MAX KOCH. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. 2. .Auflage.

Leipzig, 1904.
HEINRICH KURZ. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur mit ausgewiihlten Stucken

aus den Werken der vorziiglichsten Sehriftsteller. 4 Bde. Leipzig, 1892.
ADOLF BARTELS. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur. 2 Bde. Leipzig, 1901-02.
AFGUST KOBERSTEIN. Grundriss der Geschichte der deutschen Nationallittcratur.

5. Auflage. Leipzig, 1872-74.
WILHELM WACKERXAGEL. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur. 2. Auflage.

Basel, 1879-94.
KUNO FRAXCKE. A History of German Literature as determined by Social Forces.

New York, 1903.
A. F. C. VILMAR. Geschichte der deutschen National-Litteratur. Fortsetzung von

Adolf Stern. 25. Auflage. Marburg, 1900.

III. Special Periods.
JOHAXX KELLE. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur bis zum 13. Jahrhundert.

2 Bde. Berlin, 1892-96.
HUDOLF KOEGEL. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur bis zum Ausgange des

Mittelalters. Strassburg, 1894—97. Not complete.
HEUMAXX HETTXER. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur im 18. Jahrhundert.

4. Auflage. 2 Bde. Braunschweig, 1893-95.
JTLIAX SCHMIDT. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur von Leibnitz bis auf unsere

Zeit, Berlin, 1886-96.
JAKOB BAECHTOLD. Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur in der Schweiz. Frauen-

feld, 1890.
.!. W. NAGL und J. ZEIDLER. Deutsch-osterreichische Litteraturgeschichte.

Wien, 1899 ff. Not yet complete.

RUDOLF HAYM. Die romantisclie Schule. Berlin, 1870.
I!. M. MEYER. Die deutscho Litteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 1900.
ADOLF BARTELS. Dicdeutsche Dichtung der Gegen wart. 6. Auflage. Leipzig, 1905.

IV. Special Topics, Siibsidiary Works.

HEIXIUCH BIILTHAUPT. Dramaturgic des Schauspiels. 4 Bde. Oldenburg, 1902.

JAKOB MINOR. Neuhochdeutsche Metrik. 2. Aufl. Strassburg, 1902.

WILHELM SCHERER. I'oetik. Berlin, 18SS.

J. DrNi.oi'. Geschichto der Prosadichtungen. Deutsch von Felix Liebrecht.

Berlin, 1851. Latest English edition by Hy. Wilson. 2 vols. London, 1890.
GrsTAV FREYTAG. Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit. 5 Bde.
KARL WEINHOLD. Die deutschen Frauen in dem Mittclalter. 3. Aufl. 2 Bde.

Wien, 1S97.

GEsrmniTE HER DET'TSCHEN KUXST. 5 Bde. Berlin, 1885-88.
JAKOB GRIMM. Deutsche Mythologie. 3 Bde. 4. Aufl. 1875-78.
KARL MUKLI.EXHOFF. Deutsche Altertumskunde. 1870-1900.

\. Some Important Collections of Exxa'js.

JAKOH GRIMM. Kleinere Pchriften. 8 Bde. Giitersloh, lS(i 1-90.

WILHELM GRIMM. Kleinere Schriften. 4 lide. Giitersloh, 1881-84.

LrnwiG I'liLAxn. Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage. 8 Bde.

Stuttgart, 1865-73.

WILHELM SCHERER. Kleine Schriften. 2 Bde. Berlin, 1893.
KKICH SCHMIDT. Ohnrnkteristiken. 2 Bde. Berlin, 1901.
HERMAXX GRIMM. Kssays. Several volumes.
Krxo FISCHER. Goethe-Schriften; Schiller-Schriften; Schriften tiber Lessing.

562 BIBLIOGRAPHY: HISTORY OF LITERATURE

VI. Biographies.

CARL JUSTI. Winckelmann und seine Zeitgenossen. 3 Bde. 2. Aufl. 1898.

EHICH SCHMIDT. Lessing. 2 Bde. 2. Aufl. Berlin, 1899.

RUDOLF HAYM. Herder. Berlin, 1880-85.

EUGEN KUEHNEMANN. Schiller. Munchen, 1905.

ALBERT BIELSCHOWSKY. Goethe. Miinchen, 1904.

HERMANN GRIMM. Goethe. Berlin, 1899.

WILHELM SCHERER. Jakob Grimm. 2. Aufl. Berlin, 1885.

DEPARTMENT VII — HISTORY OF ART

DEPARTMENT VII — HISTORY OF ART

(Hall 8, September 20, 11.15 a. m.)

CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR HALSEY C. IVES, Washington University, St. Louis.
SPEAKERS : PROFESSOR RUFUS B. RICHARDSON, New York, N. Y.
PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE, Rutgers College.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS IN THE
STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF ART

BY RUFUS BYAM RICHARDSON

[Rufus Byam Richardson, Director, American School of Classical Studies, Athens,
Greece, 1893-1903. b. Westford, Massachusetts, April 18, 1845. Graduate Yale,
18(19; Ph.D. ibid. 1878; Student of Divinity, Yale, 1869-72; Berlin, 1872-74.
Professor of Greek, University of Indiana, 1880-82; ibid. Dartmouth College,
1 882-93. Member of the American Geographical Society, American Academy of
Sciences, British Society for Promotion of Hellenic Studies, German Arclueo-
logical Society, Austrian Archaeological Society, Greek Archaeological Society.
Editor of sEschines' Oration against Ctesiphon ; and contributor to several
scientific and educational journals.]

THIS is the subject on which I was invited to speak. It is a large
subject, almost immense. When it was announced to me it reminded
me of the theological student who came to his first pastorate full of
enthusiasm, and began to hit out straight from the shoulder at specific
evils. After his first sermon on the sin of intemperance the deacons
of the church waited upon him and told him that would never do.
because one of the richest men in the church was likely to take the
sermon as a personal attack. The next Sunday he hit out in another
direction, coming down hard on dishonesty in business. This time
'~>nc of the deacons came and told him that the other one had regarded
the sermon as a direct attack on him. Again he was advised to be
more cautious. The young man, however, having a bent for the
specific, found himself getting deeper and deeper into trouble, and
at last, to save himself, fell back on the noble but vast subject of " the
exceeding sinfulness of sin." After that he was held by all the con-
gregation to be a powerful preacher, and a safe man. He had a large
subject, and could hammer away on it for a lifetime without hurting
anybody's feelings.

"Fundamental Conceptions and Methods in the Study of the
History of Art " is also a large subject. I was thankful that with the
invitation came the suggestion. " Of course, there is no objection that
you emphasize classical art." Better a "pent-up Utica " where one
can at least get his back to a wall than "a whole unbounded con-

566 HISTORY OF ART

tinent." The field of classical art is, to be sure, no pent-up Utica; but
one has in it at least the comfortable feeling of seeing boundaries. It
is also easier to formulate conceptions and methods as to the study of
the history of classical art than as to classical art itself. We have
something tangible, an historical study.

A recent writer of a stimulating book entitled The Spirit and
Principles of Greek Sculpture has filed a mild protest against the
historical treatment of Greek sculpture. "All their books," he says,
" follow the historic development. They are histories of ancient
artists." And yet we find the author himself following in general the
same historical development of Greek sculpture as his predecessors,
the "scientific archaeologists," as he somewhat disparagingly calls
them. The natural excuse of these scientific archaeologists is that no
art was ever so clearly a natural development with a birth, a growth
to maturity, and a decline, as Greek sculpture. If we try to give an
orderly description of it we naturally make it a history. It is true that
about three quarters of Winckelmann's great History of Ancient Art
is not in the form of history, but is rather a tender, loving rhapsody,
ever held in check, over the objects taken singly and in the order of
his liking, an order with which one need find no fault; and then fol-
lows about one quarter called The History of Ancient Art in Relation
to External Circumstances among tJte Greeks, which deals with the
subject chronologically. Brunn, on the other hand, wrote a History
of Greek Sculptors apart from any description and estimate of their
works. But in later times, in Germany, France, England, and Amer-
ica, it has become the custom to clothe the skeleton with flesh and
blood, and treat the works along with the workmen. One will hardly
abandon the form of Collignon's History of Greek Sculpture to go back
to Winckelmann's arrangement.

It is an interesting, one might say a fascinating, study to trace the
development of Greek sculpture from the almost formless Xikandni
statue to the Lemnian Athena and on to the Xike of Samothrace.
from the stiff "Apollos" to the Hermes of Praxiteles and the works
of Lysippos represented to us by the apoxyomcnos, apportioning as
we go, to each great sculptor, as far as we can, his share in the devel-
opment which came not of itself, but was brought about by men
whom we begin to know and honor as elemental forces.

I foresee; that the subject will be large enough if I limit it once for
nil to Greek sculpture, and take as a subject the study of the history
of Greek sfulpture as the most prominent branch of the history of
Greek ait. The, world lias suffered no greater loss in art than the
wiping out of Greek painting. One might infer from Pliny that it was
almost, if not quite, as important and interesting as Greek sculp-
ture.1 From his description it is clear that the great painters, Zeuxis.
1 The Laocoon group and the Pergamon altar frieze did not perhaps fall a whit

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 567

Parrhasios, Protogenes, and Apelles gave a freer rein to expression
than ever Myron did in sculpture. What the Greek painters could do''
in the way of expression can be only inadequately brought home to:
us by late frescoes like those of Pompeii and by the delicate work on
red-figured vases. The best of these vase-paintings, however, would
probably compare with the paintings in the Stoa Poikile as pastels to
the Sistine Madonna. Sculpture is, and probably will always remain,
the art which ancient Greece has given us.1

Before speaking of methods in the study of the history of Greek :
sculpture we should speak of the conceptions which underlie that
art, and differentiate it from modern art, and exercise an influence
on our methods of studying it. During the whole period of the
greatness of Greece sculpture was religious, inasmuch as most of
the statues were representatives of divinities or heroes, offerings
devoted to them, and adornments of their shrines. It was also popu-
lar, in the sense that a whole people appreciated and enjoyed it, as
they enjoyed the national poetry. This was perhaps more true of
Athens than of other parts of the Greek world, but the statement
will stand for all Greece.

Modern sculpture as well as painting is neither religious nor popu-
lar; and does not seem likely to become so. It has ceased to be relig-
ious in large measure from the slackening of religious fervor. It is
not in the heart of painters of to-day to produce Madonnas like those
of Bellini, and the people do not clamor for them. Sculpture is still
further from being religious. In this practical and bustling age the
artist who tried anything as august as the Olympian Zeus would find
himself behind the times, and out of touch with the public. Nor are
the old conditions likely to return.

The artists have become a guild, and are not in and of the people.
Their clientele is limited to a few, mostly wealthy persons, and some
others who patronize art often as a mere fad. Xo one feels this more
than the artists themselves, who often have to resort to something
striking in order to keep themselves alive. For us who are simply
lookers-on, there is something refreshing in the frankness of those
who make no pretense of appreciating art. and are as outspoken as the
"bourgeois gentilhomme," whose love of music, was satisfied with
the " tronipette marine." In one of the most interesting rooms of the
Berlin Museum 1 heard a man by no means of the lower classes say in
a stentorian voice, " Diese Sachen interessiren mich gar nicht." The
days seem forever past when a whole city would rise up in arms as

short of paint ins; in this matter of expression . Pliny in < lord (110, 37^ lets his enthu-
siasm run ;i\v;iy with him. ami says that the Laocoon "is worth all the pictures
and bronze s in the world."

1 Hut what has happened in the rase of paint im; would have happened in
sculpture also had not rich Komans of taste demand -d copies of masterpiece-; to
adorn their houses and villas.

568 HISTORY OF ART

one man to protest against the removal from it of a beautiful statue.
Artists and art-lovers, while they may well despair of bringing back
those golden days, may perhaps say with Touchstone, " We that have
good wits have much to answer for."

It may seem like beginning history with Adam to go back here to
Winckelmann; but back to him we must go if we wish to get a view
of the beginnings of the study of the history of Greek sculpture. He is
the founder of that study and an example to us all. How far he outran
his generation is seen by the fact that his enlightened patron, Count
von Bunau, said, " Winckelmann is a fool, and will come to a terrible
end." Others were willing to concede that he was an inspired fool.
Rome was to him Mecca and Jerusalem combined. So absorbed was
he in its treasures of art that the question of becoming a Catholic
instead of a Protestant seemed to him much like a question between
tweedledum and tweedledee. His coming to Rome was an event in
the history of the study of art almost as important as the arrival of
Greek scholars in Europe which brought on the renaissance.

When he had once become papal antiquary and had charge of the
museums of Rome his one thought was the mastery of all the material.
His contempt of Belescnheit and of "those who excogitate huge books
and sicken the understanding"; his saying that "no scribe can pene-
trate the inmost essence of art, " show how proud he was. intrenched
in his museums. He could hardly disguise his contempt for a certain
"superficial English writer" who formulated theories on the sight of
a few statues, and said of him, " such an inference was to be expected
only from those who had seen Rome in dreams or like young travelers
in one day." He exacted as much from himself as he did from others.
N'othing less than an acquaintance with the whole field satisfied him.
His principle was comparable to that which Ritschl formulated for
the study of the classics, "Lesen. viel Lesen, Moglichst viel Lesen."
In his judgment only he who had seen a thousand statues was cap-
it ble of understanding one.

The wonder is that dealing as he did with copies, he still felt the
spirit and power of Greek sculpture as perhaps no man since has felt
it. Xo one can ever improve on his defining the essence of Greek art
as "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" (Edle Einfalt und stille
Grusse). Bosanquet. an English writer, offers as a substitute "har-
mony, regularity, and repose." But this leaves out the prime qualities
of "simplicity, greatness, and nobility."

Winckelmann was not so visionary and rhapsodical as to fail to
give some practical directions for the study of art, as follows:

(1) "Seek not to detect deficiencies and imperfections in works
of art until you have previously learned to recognize and discover
beauties."

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 569

(2) "Be not governed in your opinion by the judgment of the
guild, which generally prefers what is difficult to what is beautiful."

(3) " The observer should discriminate as the ancient artists appar-
ently did between what is essential and what is only accessory (in
the drawing)."

He could be, we see, as practical as when he was teaching trouble-
some boys in Saxony; and yet the fervor of his great work shook
Germany, stirred Lessing and Goethe, and made the author recognized
as a power wherever there \vere lovers of art.

Of course, no one could make so many utterances as he did with-
out making some mistakes, " Es irrt der Mensch so long er Strebt."
Even with the first publication of his great History of Ancient Art
came many corrections by the editors and others. But he stands
colossal above editors and annotators.

One hundred and thirty-six years have passed since the tragic
death of Winckelmann, and we know immensely more of the history
of Greek sculpture than it was permitted him to know. A present-
ation of some of the principal additions to our knowledge Will also
illustrate some of the fundamental methods of the study of the his-
tory of Greek sculpture. We have gone on to larger acquaintance
with the field, and have gathered in the fruits ripened by reflection
and comparison. It might not be difficult to find twenty such lines
of advance. But I will confine myself to three:

(1) Modern Excavations.

(2) The Study and Groupings of Copies of Ancient Statues.

(3) The Examination of the Literary Sources of our Knowledge.

(1) Modern excavations have modified, if not wholly revolution-
ized, the old notions of Greek sculpture, and rapidly made our hand--
books of sculpture antiquated. The excavation of Olympia, the first
suggestion of which came from Winckelmann, a suggestion that
ripened in the mind of Ernst Curtius, did not, it is true, yield so many
fine statues as might have been expected from the statement of Pliny
that seventy-three thousand statues remained at Olympia in A. D. 67,
after the Romans had been systematically transporting statues from
Greece for nearly a century and a quarter. But even apart from the
other important discoveries at Olympia the yield in sculpture alone
put the stamp of success on the enterprise. For the Hermes of Praxi •
teles alone, the only Greek statue on which we can put our hand and
say " this is an original from the hand of one of the great masters," *
probably some rich man could be found who would gladly pay the
whole cost of the excavation of Olympia. Having now a sure Praxite--

1 Pliny (34, 87) speaks of a Hermes of Kephisotodos holding a child. On the
strength of this Miss Sellars, in Pliny's Chapters on the History of Greek A rt (addenda,
p. 236), has suggested that Pliny must be preferred to Pausanias, and that we must
understand the famous Hermes to be the work of Kephisotodos, father or elder
brother of Praxiteles.

570 HISTORY OF ART

lean statue, the obvious method is to judge all material hitherto
supposed to be Praxitelean by this standard. By this test, for example,
the so-called Eubouleus head is accepted or rejected as a claimant
for membership in the Praxitelean group. The sculptures of the
great temple of Zeus have taken a very important place in the history
of art. The statement of Pausanias that Paionios and Alkamenes
.made the gable sculptures has generally been rejected on account of
; their style, which seems to point to a date earlier than that of these
two sculptors. It is quite possible that there will never be agreement
as to the school that produced these temple adornments; but one
thing seems fairly well settled, viz., that both gables and the metopes
• bear the stamp of a single style. Since the metopes were surely made
.at the time of the building of the temple, the gables also must have
been made at about the same time; and their style fits well enough
to the reported date of their execution, about 400 B. c., long before
.Phidias had appeared to make his Olympian Zeus.

The excavation of Delphi has at present raised more questions
than it has settled. Of the miscellaneous cargo of statues found in
the sea at Antikythera the same may be said.

But the excavations on the Athenian Acropolis have thrown a
.wonderful light on the history of sculpture. They made Mrs. Mitchell's
carefully prepared History of Greek Sculpture antiquated almost as
soon as it was printed. Luckily in their case we had a terminus ante
tjuem to fix the date of the objects. The debris loft by the Persians;
came forth, and lo! it silenced all doubts as to the painting of statues.
Xot only did the old statues of soft limestone here show a coating of
most brilliant colors, red and blue, thickly laid on. but the somewhat
kiter archaic marble statues showed garments with painted borders,
hair, diadems, and eyes painted with discretion if not with taste.
That the nude parts also had a toning of less strong color could hardly
xl>e doubted. Where color was lacking it might in some cases be seen
.that it was simply because it had worn away. The garment of the
Moschophoros could be properly understood only by the supposition
.that it was painted. The notion of chaste, white marble as the
material of Greek sculpture vanished at a touch of truth. The
question became, not whether the Greeks painted their statues, but
h'nir they painted them. One simply surrendered to the evidence,
fcvhich was compelling. That this practice did not cease with the
ii-rehaic period, but was continued as long as Greece practiced tin-
.art is absolutely certain. That this was true of Praxiteles might have
be.cn well enough known from the statement of Pliny, so much neg-
lected, that Praxiteles valued most his statues that had been touched
up by the painter Xikias.1

: Xow app!yi;:g the propr-r method of study, one sees traces of

1 PHnv, 3o, 133.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 571

paint everywhere, even where it was least expected. One finds
them especially on the backgrounds of reliefs. On metopes of temples
it is best recognized by the fact that strong colors, especially blue,
were there used, although red was not uncommon.1 Even on a
statue clearly of Roman times, found at Corinth in the recent ex-
cavations, the folds of the outer garment carried large patches of
vermilion color.

How little Winckelmann knew of the marked difference between
local schools! What would he have said if he had seen the ^Egina
statues with their lean stiff style and the full forms of the gable groups
of both the Old and the Oldest Athena temple on the Athenian
Acropolis? It is wonderful that two schools some ten or twelve
miles apart should have been producing a-t the same time sculpture
of such distinctively opposite character.

(2) The study and grouping of copies. How little did Urlichs
know of Skopas when over forty years ago he wrote his book Skopas,
scin Leben und seine Werkc! One smiles now at the list of works
there ascribed to Skopas. But twenty-five years ago two male heads
were found on the site of ancient Tegea which evidently belonged
to a gable. They were left unwrought on one side, and the top of
each was cut off a little to fit the slope of an ascending cornice.
Since the head of a boar was found near by, the conclusion was at
once drawn that the pieces, one or all, came from the east gable of
the temple of Athena Alca which Pausanias described as containing
1 he Hunting of the Caledonian Boar. Skopas was the architect of the
temple, and since he was a sculptor it was natural to suppose that
these sculptures were as much influenced by him as the sculptures
of the Parthenon were influenced by Phidias. Luckily they had
a very marked character. The heads were distinctively different
from the Praxitelean type. Their greatest dimension was from front
lo rear, while the Praxitelean head is extended upward in a dome.
The under ja\v and cheek were strongly marked, giving an impression
of intense energy. The peculiar feature, however, was the eyes, which
being deepset in their sockets, with the inner corner depressed, had
a pad of flesh drawn down over their outer corner so that the upper
lid entirely disappears in a profile view. The gaze directed upward
and onward expressed an intensity of emotion contrasted with the
dreamy look of the Hermes of Praxiteles. For the first time we
seemed to catch the characteristics of Skopas.

In spite, however, of the admirable discussion of these sculptures
by Treu.'J the connection with Skopas was not regarded as absolutely
lixed. But eight years later. Botho ( Iraf ?' was struck by the similaritv

1 On the Zeus Temple at Olympia tin1 metope, it is said, were alternately red
and blue.

: Ath. Mi>(.. 188!, p. 303 ff. 3 R.»n. Mitt., 1SS9, p. 189 ff.

572 HISTORY OF ART

of two heads of a youthful Herakles crowned with poplar wreaths,
in Roman museums, to the heads from Tegea. He then enlarged his
list materially with copies poorer or more remote from the presumed
original. It was evident that some famous original had led to this
multiplication of copies. Pausanias records that a youthful Herakles
made by Skopas was set up in the gymnasium at Sikyon. Coins of
Sikyon of a rather late date show a beardless Herakles with the
taenia of a wreath, a fact that makes it certain that the statue wras
highly esteemed at Sikyon. That, then, was probably the famous
original which evoked so many copies. This series combined with the
Tegea heads made a base both broad and firm, and other statues were
invited to come and stand on it, and form a Skopasian group. A
Meleager in Rome and a. female head from the south slope of the
Athenian Acropolis, supposed by some to be an original, were
invited by acclamation. The test wras then applied to the sculptures
of the Mausoleum of Helicarnassus with the result that while many
heads there. appeared to bear the Skopasian features they were not
confined to the east side, as we ought to expect if we trust Pliny's
already incredible report that each one of four sculptors executed the
sculpture on each of the four sides, Skopas, as the elder, receiving the
front.1 And if any single frieze does not seem to be more Skopasian
in character than some of the others the safest inference to be drawn
is that Skopas as the master mind left the Skopasian stamp upon
the work as a whole.

Pliny also records that Skopas sculptured one of the drums of the
temple of Artemis at Ephesus; and the British Museum possesses such
a drum from that temple, which represents probably Alcestis between
Thanatos and Hermes, who has the Skopasian eye. By the method
thus established several other candidates were severely scrutinized
and some admitted and some rejected. The Ludovisi Ares receives
a majority of the suffrages. But it fares hard with some of the old
claimants. The Niobe group is rejected. Furtwangler has invited in
the Aphrodite of Melos (Venus of Milo) as a descendant, through the
Aphrodite of Capua, of the famous but lost Aphrodite of Knidos.
She ought to be received with shouts and almost with tears of joy
if her title can be made clear.

The resurrection of Skopas's Herakles was a single application of
a method which in the hands of a master has produced great results.
Eleven years ago appeared an epoch-making book, Mcisterwerke
dcr Gricchischcn Skulptur. by Adolf . Furtwangler. 2 The book is full

1 It seems more reasonable, inasmuch as there were several friezes going around
all four sides of the building, that a given sculptor should execute a given frieze
rather than parts of several friezes.

2 Translated in the following year into English by Miss E. Sellars. Eighteen
plates and nearly two hundred figures in the English edition represent by no means
all the statues that are cited.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 573

of illustrations, that the reader may not grope in darkness when
comparisons are made. The first impression made upon many people
by the book was that Furtwangler had inaugurated a boom in
second-class sculpture, and brought to honor many trifles. But let
any one pay careful attention to the method by which the first
section of the book brings before us the Lemnian Athena, a perfect
flower of Phidias's work, and he will realize that it is a method with
no madness in it.

Whether every one of the heads which the author puts into a certain
group is there to stay remains, of course, yet to be seen. Let it be
conceded that half the groupings are open to contention, the method
is still the method of the future. The only danger is that tyros will
try their hand at constructing groups and proclaim or assume their
success. But this is a field where the tyro ought to realize that he
must proceed with caution or he will find that he has let loose the
Geister and to lay them he must call in the "alte Meister."

To continue a work such as Furtwangler has inaugurated is not
Jedermann's Ding, but there lies the path of progress even if it is
the path of danger. Every few years somebody tries to construct
a Pythagoras group, generally out of some outlying part of Myron's
preserves. Much as we may desire to construct such a group we do not
appear to have the materials for it yet. For whipping back into
the Myronian corral certain waifs that sometimes threaten to make
a group by themselves, we get a sort of sanction from Furtwangler,
who allows that a great sculptor cannot always be credited with
only one shape of head. In speaking of the Discobolos, Ince Blundell.
and Riccardi heads, he says, " the strikingly different individuality
of these three heads need not perplex us, for from what artist should
we expect such variety as from Myron who multiplicasse vcritatem
videtur." He also gives the reminder that " copyists allow themselves
great freedom in the execution of details, especially in the case of the
hair." In fact, to the casual observer there is in some of the bearded
heads which Furtwangler calls Myronian very little superficial resem-
blance to the head of the youthful Discobolos.

(3) The study of ancient authorities. It may be profitable to con-
fine ourselves to two cases, Pausanias and Pliny. Pausanias, the
traveler, has long been suspected, and sometimes unjustly suspected,
of making great mistakes in his descriptions of ancient sculpture.
It has long been customary to regard the two corner figures in the
west gable of the Parthenon as representing the Kephisos and
the Ilissos, and writers on sculpture have recognized and admired
forsooth the ''liquid flow" in the form of the Ilissos. The great
master, Brunn, went on to the natural conclusion that the other
figures of the gable must be interpreted in like fashion; and he
accordingly made this gable into a sort of animated map of Attica.

574 HISTORY OF ART

The starting-point of this manner of interpreting such corner figures
seems to be that when Pausanias was at Olympia some local guide
told him that the two reclining figures of the east gable of the Zeus
temple represented the river Alphaios and the brook Kladeos. It
is more than likely that Pausanias, who belonged to an age when this
sort of personification was current, more than half extorted this state-
ment from his guides, who may well have told him what he wanted
to have them tell. At any rate Furtwangler is authority for the
statement that " in the artistic products of the fifth century there are
no instances of an}^ figures serving merely as indications of locality."

It is pretty generally believed that Pausanias's statement that
Paionios and Alkamenes were the sculptors of the gables of the
Zeus temple at Olympia was based on information of about the
same character. It was quite likely unknown to the ciceroni of that
time in Olympia, more than six hundred years after the erection of
the temple, who did execute these gable figures. The ciceroni might
fall upon almost any known sculptor rather than say that they did
not know. The name of Paionios was right at hand, cut on the
pedestal of his Xike, famous and admired, adjacent to the east
front of the temple.

The other so-called authority is Pliny the Kldor. who wrote more
than a century before Pausanias. We know from his nephew some-
thing as to how he wrote. He allowed himself little sleep. He had
readers read to him all the time that was left to him after his onerous
official duties were attended to. even when he was being rubbed after
the bath, through his dinner, and far on into the night. He never
read a book without making copious extracts. "My thirty-six
volumes," he says, "contain twenty thousand matters worthy of
attention, gathered from some two thousand books." Well, we have
his wonderful book, called Xatural History, which corresponds
pretty closely to what one would expect as result of such omnivorous
reading. Books 34, 3-5, and 36 are concerned with the history of art;
and this is all that interests us here. Inasmuch as it was known in
advance that these were a patchwork from older writers, some of
whom are casually mentioned, hero was a grand chance for Quclkn-
^ludicn offered as a challenge. Perhaps never was such study
more successful. It has been continued down to the present
time with unabated interest, in many lands and by many hands.
One rises from a reading of these studies with admiraton for the
acumen which has arrived at a fair understanding of what Pliny
himself did. and at what some of the main contributors furnished.
If we could ever find a copy of Pliny with quotation marks and
footnotes we could go somewhat, but not very much, beyond what
we now know as to the sources of the art-historical part of Pliny's
compilation.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 575

It has been made clear that very little except a few outbursts of
enthusiasm are the thoughts of Pliny himself. The greater part
was soon traced to Varro, who, though he had been swallowed by
Pliny, was already fat with what he had swallowed from others.
The interest really began when it was made out that Varro 's work
was largely taken from Xenocrates of Sikyon, who lived in the first
part of the third century B. c.

To Xenocrates may be ascribed the praise of his townsman Lysip-
pos as the head of an ascending scale, who, guided by another
Sikyonian, Eupompos the painter, took nature as his teacher. Phi-
dias, Polykleitos, Myron, and Pythagoras1 had made each his own
advances in art, but Lysippos gained the summit. To Xenocrates
also is usually ascribed the ascending scale of painters, ending in
Apelles.

Antigonos of Karystos, a contemporary of Xenocrates, also pre-
pared a history of art, adding to his work many of the things which
pleased him from Xenocrates' works. Features that are supposed to
be characteristic of him are passages with epigrammatical and art-
historical points. He probably set the proud Zeuxis and Parrhasios
over against the mild Apelles and Protogcnes; the poor Protogenes
against the rich Apelles; Polygnotos taking no pay for his painting
in the Stoa Poikile while Mikon took it. He is also supposed to be the
contributor of the criticism of the story that Hipponax's satire drove
ihe sculptors Bupalos and Athenis to suicide, adducing inscriptions
later than the time of the alleged suicide which showed that they were
still producing works which were the pride of Chios.

Duris of Samos, who lived in the fourth century B. c., was the most
prominent citizen of Samos in his time, being the tyrant and at the
same time the historian of the island. He was a literary personality.
Xenocrates and Antigonos of Carystos drew so strongly on him that
it' we had the books of all three we should probably see that these two
later writers indulged in one of the most gigantic literary thefts that
was ever practiced. In Pliny 34, Gl, we read that Duris declared that
Lysippos was nobody's pupil. Much of the anecdotical element of
Pliny may probably be traced to him. An example is the story of the
money-box into which it was Lysippos's custom to drop a gold -piece
every time that he made one of the fifteen hundred statues that are
ascribed to him, and the astonishment of the heir when he came to
break open the box. It was the contrast between the poor worker in
bronze and the famous and rich sculptor that tickled Duris's fancy.

1 It lias been thought that Pythagoras and perhaps Mvron also, were chrono-
logically misplaced in order to create this climax: but it appears from the recently
discovered table of Olympic victors, discussed by Robert (Hermes, lOOCH, that
in all probability no such violence need be assumed. Polykleitos was active in
460 B. c., Myron in 448, Pythagoras also in -448. The table also shows that Poly-
kleitos and Myron could have been pupils of Ageladas as well as Phidias.

576 HISTORY OF ART

He delighted to represent the poor ship-painter Protogenes as living
to decorate the Propylsea at Athens, and Erigonos, the slave who
ground colors for his master, as becoming a great master himself.
That such contrasts especially pleased Duris appears from Plutarch's
citing him as recording that Eumenes of Kardia rose by the kindness
of Philip from the son of a poor porter to wealth and power.

The whirl of fortune's wheel was a pleasing subject of reflection to
him. "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath
exalted them of low degree." The story of Apelles telling Alexander
when he began to indulge in art-criticism that he had better stop
because the servants who were grinding colors wrere laughing at him
is supposed to be one of the best of Duris's anecdotes.

It may perhaps seem to one who has not looked into this matter
that it is precarious to try to dissect Pliny in this way. But a legion
of the best minds in Germany have devoted their best efforts to the
understanding of the genesis of his work: and they are pretty well
agreed except in some small details. We may take it for an estab-
lished fact that hardly anything in his work was original with him.
He was willing, however, as practically all ancient authors, to palm
off other people's ideas as his own.

By the studies here briefly sketched, Pliny, instead of being de-
spised, has grown in value because we understand him better. Both
he and Pausanias are invaluable, partly because we have lost the
literature from which they so freely drew, and partly because we
have read their riddle.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART

BY JOHN C. VAN DYKE

[John C. Van Dyke, Professor of the History of Art, Rutgers College, since 1890.
b. April 21 , 1856, New Brunswick, New Jersey. L.H.D. Rutgers, 1889. Privately
educated, studied at Columbia and Rutgers Colleges; student of art in Euro-
pean galleries and art centres. Member of New York Bar, 1877; Librarian of
Sage College, since 1878. Lecturer in University courses of lectures at Columbia,
Harvard, Princeton, and other colleges throughout the United States. Author
of Serious Art in America; Principles of Art; How to Judge a Picture; History
of Painting; Old Dutch and Flemish Masters; Modern French Masters; Italian
Painting; Old English Masters; The Meaning of Pictures; The Desert; Nature, for
its Own Sake; The Opal Sea; and many articles for papers and magazines. Editor
of Art Review; The Studio.]

GENTLEMEN, — I have been asked by the officers of this Congress
1o speak to you to-day on the "Development of the History of Art"
— not of art itself, nor of its history, but of the men who write
the history and of the methods which they use in its construction.
In other words, I am to speak of the science of the history of art.
There has been strict injunction laid upon me that I talk not more
than forty-five minutes, so you will pardon me if I plunge into the
subject without preface or apology.

Some months ago, in conversation with one of our most distin-
guished critics, I chanced to remark that the art-books of to-day were
so much better than those of twenty years ago. "Yes," he answered,
" the books are better than the art." By which caustic extravagance
he probably meant that the art was not so very bad nor the writing
so very good, but merely that both had improved. Certainly there
has been a great advance since the days when our fathers wrote
expansive essays upon sculpture and painting, guessing at both their
facts and their feelings, with a charming commingling of frankness
and ignorance. The standard has been raised. Something more is
now required of the writer than a miscellaneous "taste for art." He
must have knowledge gained at first hand, knowledge not only of
the work of art whereof he writes, but knowledge of materials,
methods, mediums, schools, guilds, peoples, languages, countries,
climates, skies — all things that may even remotely relate to the
production of the artist or his art. II*1 must have discernment, judg-
ment, and above all sympathy, or that intuitive feeling which enables
him to grasp the spirit and quality of a work without perhaps know-
ing just why or how. And finally he must have the ability to tell
what he knows in a readable manner — in a language that may be
understood by the common people.

Happily much of this equipment is now our possession. The writers

578 HISTORY OF ART

of the newer art-criticism are certainly far ahead of all predecessors
in knowledge. As for their writing, it is so good that one wonders it is
not better. By that I mean more convincing, more satisfying, more
acceptable as the final word. " But there is no final word," you say.
Pray, why not ? " Because history has to be rewritten every ten
years." And again I ask, Why? You may retort about " a new point
of view," "more perspective," "a broader outlook," and all that;
which is perhaps only another way of saying that we of the present
do not see truly or estimate truly, or report truly. If we did, history
would not have to be rewritten " every ten years." Either the system
or the operator is at fault, and we shall not go far astray if we enter-
tain suspicions of both. At any rate, let us look into the matter for
a moment. I am not here to combat the higher criticism in art, nor
am I here to accept it with an unthinking gulp as one would a dose of
medicine. It has been of immense value and is not to be sneered at ;
but if it were quite perfect, quite acceptable, there would be no need
of revised editions; and the art-historian of the next generation would
lack an occupation. Instead of something tentative we should have
a finality.

Now it is frequently said — and often with a little smile as though
conscious of some absurdity — that the archaeologist or historian
is lost if he have not imagination. He must have a mind for the
plausible and the possible, a mind to discern a mountain in a mole-
hill, perceive Praxiteles in a Roman garden sculpture, or a forgotten
masterpiece by Giorgione in a panel signed Cariani. And that as a
general proposition is perhaps sound enough. It would IDC a strangely
deficient intelligence that could not put signs and characteristics
together and conclude that Cariani and Giorgione were of the same
school and period. That Cariani painted certain alleged Giorgioncs
or Correggios is a much longer step, a much larger imagining, and
one that may very easily lead us into error unless guarded at every
point. Let me illustrate that.

When Mr. Charles Waldstein saw a water-worn marble head among
a group of broken fragments in the Louvre he felt almost instantly,
as he tells us. "that this was a work not Roman, but Greek, and
moreover of the great period of Greek art." That, to begin with, is
a perfectly proper exercise of the archaeologist's imagination. He tells
us further that "the conviction soon forced itself upon him that here
was a piece of Attic workmanship of the period corresponding to the
earlier works of Phidias and, though reserving the final verification
for the time when it would be possible to make a detailed examination
and comparison with the metopes, he was morally convinced that
this was the head of a Lapith belonging to one of the metopes of the
Parthenon." So far. so good; but had Mr. Waldstein stopped there
and claimed a newlv discovered fact in art-historv bv virtue of his

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART 579

intuition or imagination he would not have been writing art-history,
but arrant assumption. It was a mere conjecture and not a demon-
stration — not a fact proved. But in this instance at least, he did not
stop there. He ran down the history of that head and found in it
confirmation. He compared the kind of stone, the exact measure-
ments, the treatment of frontal bone, flesh, and hair, the frown
of the brow and the protrusion of the lip, the passion, spirit, and
whole quality of the head with the Parthenon metopes. Finally he
took a cast of the head to London, fitted it on the shoulders of one
of the Lapiths in the British Museum, and had the satisfaction of
seeing that it fitted exactly even to the lines of the fracture in
the neck. That I should say was a proper exercise of the combining
imagination — nay, more, a stroke of real genius. And that is art-
history properly constructed, authoritative, and final in its conclu-
sion. That chapter at least will not have to be rewritten in ten
years or in this century.

But it is not such imagination as this that satisfies some of our more
advanced thinkers. They mean by "imagination" only too often the
ability to construct ua working hypothesis" —a scheme of cause
and effect into which the facts can be somehow squeezed and made
to do service even though the machinery creaks a bit in the working.
Professor Furtwangler, for example, in his learned volume on the
Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture has no hesitation whatever in pointing
out to us the exact style of Phidias, something about which we had
Thought our information a trifle hazy. But Professor Furtwangler
explains it by supposing a case. He has an hypothesis and the hy-
pothesis is the thing. Whether it wrecks probability, or for that mat-
ter Phidias himself, is of small consequence. He tells us that there
were countless copies of Creek marbles made in Rome and for Rome,
and that the works of Phidias must certainly have been among the
copied. Assumption number one. All that is necessary then to under-
stand his style, method, and spirit is to read him in the Latin trans-
lation, study him in the Roman copies. Assumption number two.
resting upon assumption number one. Some people miii'ht have dif-
ficulty in picking out these copies, but Professor Furtwangler, who
kno\vs about copies, variants, and replicas, has no trouble in hiving
his hand upon these various marbles in European galleries. Assump-
tion numher three, or rather a substitution of Professor Furtwang-
ler's judgment for the fact. He begins with the Lemnian Venus and
ends with the coins and vases, and there you have the stvle of
Phidias, proved to an eye-lash. If you protest that this is a mere
hypothesis, that if one link in the chain is faulty or lacking, the whole
falls to the ground, and that no logical proof, not even hearsay
evidence, is offered, you arc somehow scouted as old fogey, and not
in sympathy with the modern movement.

580 HISTORY OF ART

The evil of this theorizing is two-fold. First, the hypothesis is
accepted as proven fact by the rank and file, and is written down
finally as history. It is the kind of history, to be sure, that has to be
rewritten every ten years — a kind that could not live ten minutes
by virtue of its own strength; — but nevertheless it is accepted, and
confuses for a time. Secondly, the learning and research put into such
a theory is not placed to the best advantage, and does not count for
as much as it should because used to uphold a questionable structure.
That is such a pity, particularly in the case of Professor Furtwangler,
whose knowledge cannot be gainsaid.

One feels some regret of this kind in reading the works of so cautious
an archaeologist as Professor George Perrot. His histories of ancient
art are monumental, marvels of patient research and shrewd percep-
tion; and yet when he comes to Greece, his final goal, and opens with
his volumes on Mykenaean art he shakes our faith in his judgment
somewhat. For instance, he accepts the Schliemann conclusion
about Troy. Schliemann, it will be remembered, dreamed as a boy
of finding Troy and Agamemnon's Tomb, and when as a man he
started out in search of them he naturally found them in the first
mound he unearthed. Had he been seeking Aladdin's lamp he would
have found it in the first junk-shop on the Mouski. Professor Perrot,
strangely enough, accepts this hypothesis, and couples it with the
theory of the sequential development of the Greek race. Of course this
combined theory is not impossible, not improbable. Indeed, it is
made quite plausible; and yet one may question whether it is the
archaeologist's or the historian's affair to theorize and argue to such
an extent. Imagination may, in the end, remain imagination, and the
argument may be true enough and yet point to a false conclusion.
The facts are these. The mound which Schliemann discovered and
called Troy was found to contain three strata, each one reflective of
a different stage of civilization. Professor Perrot 's conclusion is that
the so-called Stone-Age man of the first stratum was the lineal ances-
tor of the Bronze-Age Trojan of the third stratum. And so the links
in a chain are forged to show you how the Greek finally came to power
and splendor, in life as in art.

Hut now let us see how it might have been; let us imagine some-
thin"; not a whit less improbable. Suppose this city of St. Louis
destroyed by an earthquake, buried deep, forgotten. Two thousand
years hence it is dug up by scientific historians. They find in the
ruins three strata representing three stages of civilization. They
first dig out the remains of a twenty-story "sky-scraper." then the
remains of a log hut, and under all they find mounds and mound-
builders' pottery. The conclusion according to Professor Perrot
would be most obvious. The present people of St. Louis must have
evolved from their ancestors, the Mound-Builders! It is all very

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART 581

plausible. There is nothing wrong with the argument. But the con-
clusion is somewhat beside the truth. The imagination has imagined
entirely too much.

It is not different with the reconstructors of the history of painting.
The higher criticism is more rampant there perhaps than elsewhere.
Painters long dead and forgotten are resurrected, galvanized into
life, or reconstructed on scientific principles; and panels and altar-
pieces are tossed about from painter to painter like balls in a
tennis-court. If an ichthyologist can reconstruct a fish from a single
bone, what prevents an archaeologist from writing the biography of
Rembrandt from his pictures. There are only two or three bones in
Rembrandt's life, but when put together by the aid of the life-giving
imagination they may produce something startling. We know no-
thing of importance about Rembrandt's youth, family, or bringing-
up; but here is a picture by him out of which we may be able to
distort some evidence. It was evidently painted when he was a
young man. It shows the portrait of a woman past middle life.
Rembrandt being a poor young man could not afford to hire sitters
or models and therefore it is probable that he painted the members
of his own family. This is doubtless his mother. She holds a book
in her hand. It is no doubt the Bible, because other books were scarce
in those days. From the fact that it is a Bible we may infer that
Rembrandt's mother was a religious woman. Ergo: she must have
brought Rembrandt up in the faith! And that, you see. accounts
for Rembrandt painting so many religious pictures!

I do not think I am here exaggerating very much the line of argu-
ment followed in the most recent and the most important life of
Rembrandt. It is a very interesting way of building up a life, or a
house of cards, as you please. All you need to do is to keep on with
your inferences and you will surely arrive. And the result is what?
Why, the acceptance of the hypothesis as proven fact. On what
other ground can one explain the Vienna Gallery Catalogue naming
one of its portraits by Rembrandt. ''Rembrandt's Mother." or. the
Berlin Gallery Catalogue writing clown "'Hendrickje Stoffels" as
the subject of another Rembrandt portrait. There is not a scrap of
evidence that would be accepted in a police court for either title.
• We have no facts about the looks of cither Rembrandt's mother or
his mistress; but the imagination of the critic can supply the vacancy.
And this is sometimes called scientific art-history, when it would
hardly pass muster as historical romance!

And there is my friend. Mr. Berenson. who knows more, I believe,
about Italian painting than any one living, confusing history with
some of his conclusions while illuminating it with others. That
imagination, without which no historian's equipment is complete,
seems to be loading so many of them, like a will-o'-the-wisp, into

582 HISTORY OF ART

strange morasses. Perhaps Mr. Berenson is less blinded by it than
others because he frankly says that: "Method interests me more
than results, the functioning of the mind much more than the
ephemeral object of functioning." He is more interested in whether
his hypothesis will work out than in the facts which constitute
history. He has "long cherished the conviction that the world's art
can be, nay, should be. studied as independently of all documents
as the world's fauna or the world's flora."

Now let me cite just one instance of the way this principle has
worked in the hands of Mr. Berenson. He notes, as many of us have
noted, that there are a number of fifteenth-century Florentine
pictures, variously attributed in the European galleries to Botticelli.
Filippo Lippi, and Filippino, which are obviously by one hand. He
rightly assumes that these pictures may be by a painter now unknown
and forgotten. He brings them together and shows their points
of resemblance quite conclusively. It is really a fine clearing up of
a dubious lot of pictures, done skillfully and with great knowledge.
Had he rested there, with the statement that this painter was
unknown, no one could have found the least fault with his mental
functioning. But he goes a step further. He ventures, half in jest
and half in earnest, to give this unknown painter a name, a manu-
factured name — Amico di Sandro — that is the friend or companion
in art of Sandro Botticelli. He not only constructs and names
this painter but he actually makes him influence Filippino in order
to account for a something in Filippino's work not traceable to his
reputed master Botticelli !

I submit that, however clever, audacious, or inspired this method
of Mr. Berenson's may seem, it is not productive of art-history;
and if you ask me what harm it does I answer that I have seen since
that essay was written, more than once, the name of Amico di Sandro
recorded in art-histories as a fact and not a figment. It will take
many years before that man of straw is finally removed from the
pathway, and meantime it is a stumbling-block to those who are
seeking the truth of history. I cannot but feel that the creation of
such an homunculus does not exemplify the science of the history
of art at all. The method is not scientific in the true sense but wildly
speculative; though I admit it is interesting and in its incidental ,
information most instructive.

The worst or the best, if you please, of all these modern critics and
historians is that they are not to be ignored. They are very learned,
very keen seers, very appreciative students. And in the main they
are on the right track. I myself was committed to the Morellian
theory over twenty years ago. and I am still a student of it and a
believer in it. It is an invaluable aid in establishing the authenticity
of works of art; but it is not the whole truth, not the only truth, not

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART 583

finality in itself. It needs support from without, and every scrap of
evidence that corroborates should be brought to bear.

As for evidence itself and its weight I sometimes sigh for a good
book on the " Value of Human Testimony," and a companion volume
on "What is Logic?" They should be in1 the hands of every historian
of art. It is necessary, of course, that the connoisseur should know
what is a copy, what a variant, what an original; but it is also
necessary that he should know what is common sense. It is not, for
instance, common sense to cast out all documents about pictures
or marbles simply because some of them have been misleading cr
erroneous. A Raphael contract or agreement to paint a Hercules and
the Nemean Lion may be worthless because the agreement was never
carried out; but a Raphael agreement for a "School of Athens"
would be excellent evidence because the agreement was carried out.
To be sure, a document may point to a certain altar-piece which
was afterward stolen and a copy quietly put in its place, and in such
a case criticism is justified in saying that the copy is a copy and not
the original; but the agreement of Correggio to paint the "Holy
Night " now in the Dresden Gallery is extant and is good corrobor-
ative proof of the Dresden picture having been painted by Correggio.
True enough documents have been forged and so also have signatures
— forged galore — but there are true documents as there are true
signatures, and either or both may be trustworthy evidence. The
question of probability comes in just here. There is nothing inher-
ently improbable about the inscription on the St. Bavon altar-piece
to the effect that Hubert van Eyck began it and Jan van Eyck
finished it. If it were a lie, it would not have been tolerated there
in the first place. It has always been accepted as a true statement
until the recent exhibition of early Flemish art at Bruges gave the
critics a chance to spin theories and formulate doubts. The St.
Bavon altar-piece failed to fit the theories and, of course, the theories
could not be in error. The altar-piece was wrong. Then followed slur
and innuendo, the glance askance, and the "I could an I would,"
all because the critics wanted to reconstruct the lost personality of
Hubert van Fyck by taking away from the established personality
of Jan van Kyck. In fact the defects of the newer criticism have been
exemplified in the most extravagant form in the recent attempts at
rewriting the history of the early Flemings. The writers have put
down a long series of unsupported guesses and asked their acceptance
as facts, ignoring all papers, past histories and traditions as mere
"petty documentation."

Without doubt a signature or inscription needs support by the
internal evidence of the work itself, but where one confirms the other
both should be accepted. And every one knows that written history.
such as that of Lucian or Vasari. is not to be trusted implicitly. It

584 HISTORY OF ART

needs confirmation, but is not the less in itself a positive aid to con-
viction. It cannot be tossed aside as worthless, nor yet again used
as a skeleton key to unlock any door. That Pliny records the making
of a Venus by Skopas is no proof whatever that a Venus found in
the ruins of Rome is a copy or a variant of the Skopas marble. At
that rate you could make documents prove anything you pleased.
If, on the contrary, Vasari says that Giorgione was a pupil of Bellini
it is to be believed, even though Giorgione does not show traces of
the Bellini shop in his work. Bastien-Lepage did not show Cabanel
nor did Whistler in his late work show Gleyre, but each was a pupil
of each as stated.

There is, to be sure, plenty of old woman's gossip retailed by
the old chroniclers that may not be believed at all. The thread-
bare stories about Daedalus, the first sculptor of Greece, who carved
the gods so true to life that they had to be bound with ropes to keep
them from walking away, about Zeuxis deceiving the birds with
painted grapes, and Parrhasios deceiving Zeuxis with a painted
curtain, are merely pleasant nonsense. Quite useless as well as
improbable are many tales of Vasari — that story, for instance,
retold from Ghiberti. of Giotto the sheep-boy being discovered by
Cimabue drawing sheep on a stone and the old painter standing
aghast at the excellence of the drawing. The story is of small
importance, whether fact or fiction; but we have a strong induce-
ment to doubt it because we have Giotto's sheep preserved to us
on the wall of the Arena Chapel in Padua. They are miserable little
wooden sheep out of a toy Noah's-Ark and not even a Byzantine-
trained painter like Cimabue could have been staggered by them.
On the contrary, had the story read that Giotto was a donkey-boy,
and was discovered by Cimabue drawing his donkey, it would be
equally unimportant perhaps, but certainly more believable, for we
have Giotto's donkey in the " Flight into Egypt " in that same Arena
Chapel, and a very excellent donkey it is, too. It might easily
enough have astonished Cimabue, for it is astonishing to artists of
greater learning even to this day.

Tradition — tradition handed down from mouth to mouth — is not
a thing to be lightly set aside. It is often the very basis of history.
Traditional accounts of Goethe, Shakespeare, Reynolds, or Frans Hals,
their methods of work, their conversation or personal appearance
may all be acceptable. Just so with traditions about art works. If all
the history of the Sistine Chapel were lost, the tradition that Michael
Angelo painted the ceiling would still be believable — more believ-
able perhaps than the tale of Benvenuto's escape from the neighbor-
ing castle of St. Angelo. The frescoes themselves would corroborate
it. Again, the •'• Madonna of the Rocks" in the Louvre is said not
to be by Leonardo da Vinci. But it came to the Louvre from the

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART 585

collection of Francis I, in whose service Leonardo worked and died.
In the king's lifetime it was considered a Leonardo; and it is not prob-
able that Francis would be deceived about it. The tradition has
come on down to the present time and is believable. Unfortunately,
however, the "Madonna of the Rocks" is not in Leonardo's best
manner: ergo, he did not do it at all. That, on the principle that
the king can do no wrong, and that Homer never nods, whereas we
know that all Homers do nod occasionally, and that the greatest
painters sometimes do poor work.

However, the inferior work does militate against the tradition of
this Madonna picture, just as Giotto's sheep discredit Ghiberti's story
about Giotto. For it cannot be denied that the internal evidence of
the work of art itself is the best evidence of all. There the newer crit-
icism is well based and deserving of all praise. Yet because the ana-
lysis of a picture or a marble is the safest of all methods, it is perhaps
the one that is the most often put in peril. It is so easy to determine,
almost at a glance, the national and provincial characteristics of a
work — so easy to locate an unknown marble or picture in its century,
school, town, and almost workshop — that the attribution to a certain
artist is often jumped at with equal ease and haste. But the diffi-
culty is enormously increased as the hunt draws to a close. When the
style, spirit, technique, type, mannerisms, and characteristics of,
say, an altar-piece are so marked that you locate it in the workshop
of Bellini or Perugino or Costa, your search has but begun. You
are now brought to consider the possibilities of pupils, imitators,
copyists, even forgers. And the last are not so despicable. There
was a clever rascal recently at work in Siena, who has deceived the
very elect with his forgeries of old Sienese pictures; and we all
know how forgeries of Corot and Dupre have led astray the Paris
experts for many years. But forgeries aside, there are the genuine
pictures of pupils and imitators that show the master's mannerisms
and characteristics to the very life. No one is too cunning to be
deceived by them. Botticini is sometimes read into Botticelli, and
I have no doubt that sometimes Botticelli is back of the label
Botticini. Great caution is necessary, and in the end the final test
is hardly scientific at all. It is brought about by an appeal to the
quality of the picture — the quality of drawing, contour, light-
and-shade. color. The questions are formulated. " Is the line of that
firm quality, that lightness of touch here and emphasis there, worthy
of Raphael? " " Has that light-and-shade a subtlety and depth and
gradation worthy of Leonardo? " •• Does that color-note ring true to
Titian? " In other words, it is by its quality that one should say
whether he has in hand a piece of silk or a piece of gingham, and by
a similar test he should be able to tell a work of a master from that
of an imitator, a copyist, or a forger. But this brings in the person-

586 HISTORY OF ART

ality of the artist and the spirit and feeling of his work which is last
century's method of criticism — a method now somewhat obsolescent
because regarded as unscientific.

So you see that with all the newer and higher criticism has taught
us, there is still cause for doubt and room for caution. And these
must inevitably centre about extravagant theories and unproved
hypotheses. That very quality of imagination, which has been
esteemed a virtue in the historian, has by continuous abuse become
little short of a vice. By its employment art-history has become
less of a fact and more of a fiction, until now people scarcely know
what to believe about, let us say, Giorgione, Lotto, the van Eycks,
or Phidias, Mino, and Jean Goujon. Skepticism is bred of this, and
I know of no more discouraging state of mind. When a person
does not know what to believe and doubts everything, he some-
times thinks that at least he is scientific, but in reality he is only
unhappy.

If I were asked the remedy for this ailment of historical criticism
I should certainly suggest that there be less of this twisting and
warping of facts to fit a preconceived theory — less of subjective
imagination and mental functioning and more of objective fact.
Why not state the facts as they are and let the reader draw his own
conclusions? It is the business of the historian or the critic to get
at the truth; it is not a part of his business to be forever putting
the other fellow in the wrong. He is not, or should not be, a partisan
advocate trying, by contorted statement and specious argument,
to win the case for his client, whether rightfully or otherwise; he
should be an investigator trying to establish the truth, though the
finding of it should shake his idol from its pedestal.

If I mistake not, impartial investigation, with the truth only as
a goal, is to be the spirit of the very newest criticism, and is to be the
ruling factor in the science of art-history for the next decade. Some
little volumes recently published — Michael Angela, by Sir Charles
Holroyd, and Donatella, by Lord Balcarres — will point my meaning.
In them one feels the disposition to get at the truth without partisan
bias; and in the Donatella book you have an assembling of the facts
without dogmatic utterances and fine-spun theories. That, it seems
to me, is as it should be. If there is anything very obvious or note-
worthy about the man or his work or the period, the facts will all
point toward it; if there is not, all the argument in the world will
fail to convince. There is something radically wrong with the theory
that has to be argued through five hundred pages. It doth protest
too much.

Now I would not have it thought for a moment that I am out of
sympathy with this higher criticism in art-history, or that I think it
might better never have been. On the contrary, it has done great

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART 587

good, and though many of its hypotheses will pass away, its discover-
ies and its learning will be the bases of a truer development here-
after. The theory of descent, which was so widely accepted twenty-
five years ago, is now almost discarded, but evolution as a principle
still exists, and it would be a strange mind that could not see wonder-
ful development in the sciences as the direct result of that theory.
Suppose we admit the hypothesis to be false, the immense inform-
ation gained in its pursuit is by no means without its compensation.
The art-criticism of the past fifteen years, though it may unsettle
rather than convince, has nevertheless been wonderfully informing.
The patient research, the collection of materials, the comparison of
works, the publication of reproductions have gone far to establish
a criticism that is scientifically based. The old guesswork, the hiding
of ignorance by a burst of emotional enthusiasm, the trusting to
impressions, the reliance upon tradition only, have rather passed into
the background. We are certainly upon safer ground with a surer
foundation under foot.

And what is perhaps of more moment to the people at large, we are
nearer to a true understanding and appreciation of art. All this criti-
cism that is being written, scientific or otherwise, is of no avail unless
it touches and informs and influences the public. Art is meant for
the public. Praxiteles carved and Giotto built and Paolo Veronese
painted, not for any little group of artists, but for the mob in the
street. The orator, the novelist, the critic, the historian, what use
for them to talk unless they have an audience? The painter and
sculptor, why should they labor if no one sees or cares? Let us have
no nonsense about art being exclusively for the artist or criticism
for the critic. If the arrow fly no further than that, it might better
not be shot at all.

Art is for the public, but the public not being too intelligent has
always needed some guidance from its better-informed members,
and still needs to be told what is good and what is bad. what is to
be admired, and what is to be shunned. That gives about the only
reason for the existence of art -criticism. Such being the case, it is
gratifying to note that present-day criticism deals with the art-
product in the light of the producer's intention. Art may not be for
the artists exclusively, but the artist knows his aim in his work, and
it is that aim rather than his interpreter's imagination that is to lie
explained to the public. The day of reading literary and romantic
meanings into pictures and marbles is past. \Ve are too firmly based
in materials and know the technique of all the arts far too well for that .
In its place1 we are to-day appreciating the beauties of tilings purely
decorative as we'll as expressive, and reali/ing with the artists that
ideas are good or bad as they reveal or are re-vealexl by the particular
medium in which they are cast. The public is being taught to look

588 HISTORY OF ART

at art from the artist's point of view. And, once more, that is as it
should be.

I trust all this means progress, expansion, enlightenment. And I
certainly believe in the future of art-history, though I have devoted
the most of this hurried paper to stating my unbeliefs. If I have
deprecated certain tendencies it is not that the work itself is so bad.
On the contrary, it is so good that I could wish it might be better,
more enduring, more authoritative.

SECTION A — CLASSICAL ART

SECTION A — CLASSICAL ART

(Hall 12, September 22, 10 a. m.)

CHAIRMAN : PROFESSOR RUFUS B. RICHARDSON, New York City.
SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR ADOLPH FURTWAENGLER, University of Munich.

PROFESSOR FRANK B. TARBELL, University of Chicago.
SECRETARY: DR. P. BAUR, Yale University.

CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND ITS RELATIONS TO
THE ALLIED SCIENCES

BY ADOLPH FURTWAENGLER
(Translated from the German by Miss Ethel D. Puffer, Cambridge, Mass.)

(Adolph Furtwangler, Professor of Archaeology, University of Munich, since 1894;
Director of Glyptotheca, since 1894; Conservator of the collection of Vases and
of the Gypsum Museum, b. Freiburg, Germany, June 30, 1853. Ph.D. Munich,
1874. Bursar, Imperial German Archaeological Institute, 1876-78; Manager
of the Excavations at Olympia, 1878-79; Privat-docent, University of Bonn,
1879-80; ibid. University" of Berlin, 1880-84; Professor of Archaeology, Berlin,
1884-94. Member of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, London,
Archaeologic Society of Athens, Imperial German Archaeological Institute.
Author of numerous books and memoirs on Archaeology.]

BEFORE we inquire what classical archaeology is to-day, and what
it aims at, let us cast a quick glance over what it was formerly.

In the period of the Renaissance and the succeeding time up to the
rise of Winckelmann. the study of the monuments of ancient art was
either purely artistic or purely antiquarian, but always absolutely
unhistorical. Artists made collections of drawings of antique works,
some of which collections are still extant; many objects were also
engraved and published. People rejoiced in and admired the antique,
Imt they did not perceive that in its fashioning it was very different
from contemporary art; for those drawings and engravings trans-
lated the ancient works of art completely in the stylistic forms of
their own time; of an historical understanding of them there was
as yet no trace. And the learned antiquarians of that period busied
themselves with ancient iconography and all sorts of minor matters,
while the elucidation of ancient works of art was sought mostly in
Roman history, which was most familiar to them; here, too, the
historical understanding of the antique is yet entirely wanting.

With Winckelmann a new epoch begins. In his History of Ancient
Art (I76o) the attempt is made for the first time to portray the antique
as an evolution, as an historically conditioned product of different
styles, organically unfolding one from another. Here was it first

592 CLASSICAL ART

acknowledged that the Greek is the basis of the Roman style, and
that the plastic works which have been preserved to us in Italy are
mostly only copies of lost Greek originals, and that the understanding
of most of the works of art must be reached through Greek legends
and poetry.

But Winckelmann did not carry through to fulfillment his de-
mand for historical appreciation. In opposition to it stood his own
and his time's conviction that the antique was the canon of all beauty,
the model and ideal in which all laws of the beautiful were exemplified,
and which modern art was bidden to imitate directly. This idea
was in complete contradiction to the historical view7, which saw in
antique art not a rigid norm, but a play of organically developing
style-forms. These two fundamentally opposed tendencies cross
each other continually in Winckelmann's works; he was himself never
conscious of the logical conclusions of his own new historical concep-
tion; he speaks as if there \vere only one antique ideal form, holding
as model for all time, and forgets his own great achievement, the
establishment of the demand that the antique shall be understood in
its evolution.

This contradiction was not resolved for a long time afterward;
indeed, it persists into modern times, inasmuch as, for instance,
Overbeck's treatment of the so-called mythology of art still suffered
from it.

It is the merit of that intellectual tendency — really opposed to
Winckelmann's — which was manifested first in Herder, then in the
circle of the so-called Romanticists, that a truly historical method
in the science of antiquity came to full formulation and conquest
in all fields. Men became able to put themselves sympathetically
into the alien feeling of long-vanished times. They applied no longer
the absolute measure of fixed concepts, but learned to use relative
historical judgments. The seemingly humble and hitherto disdained
now, too, attained to consideration. The religion, the folk-belief and
the whole mass of legend, as it appears in poetry, or as embalmed
only in local tradition, was recognized as the source, as the nourish-
ing soil, from which even the humblest of the works of ancient art
drew their intimate meaning and power.

This really new and — for the whole field of mental sciences —
most blessed transformation, which this historical feeling, heretofore
unattained by any epoch, brought about, had nevertheless untoward
results for classical archaeology. Attention was turned from the really
artistic clement, the essential form of the work of art, for only the
content and significance and the position of the work in the whole
cultural development was inquired into, and the problems of the
aesthetic form were ignored. It is a fact that very many aesthetically
important examples of the antique were recognized and appreciated

RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 593

by Winckelmann and his immediate disciples, but were later forgotten
until in most recent times the threads were again picked up where
these last had let them fall.

Another important circumstance tended to the same result, namely,
to the suppression of the artistic element in the archaeological
research of the nineteenth century: the extraordinary accumu-
lation of actual material which this very period saw; what the ex-
cavations, the travels and discoveries of all kinds brought to light
had to be first of all sifted and ordered, before it was possible to
press on to the deeper problems. Great tracts in the archaeological
production of the second half of the nineteenth century — and much
work belonging to state-subsidized institutions falls into this class
— are characterized by a completely sterile aridity. While aforetime
scarcely any but gifted spirits had devoted themselves to the study
of antique art, now the necessary work on the abundance of new
material attracted also many mediocre minds; and mediocrity, here
as elsewhere, understood but too wrell how to fix and socially estab-
, lish itself with the aid of state provision. Whoever had other and
higher aims found the mighty phalanx of unproductive Philistinism
against him.

But in spite of this retarding element, classical archaeology has
made progress, and, if we now ask what is the present status of this
science and what its aims, we must answer, that it is in truth every-
where in its beginnings, but that it has at least learned to see what
is most important for it, what it lacks and what it has to do.

Its problem is, in brief, to envisage and to interpret the history of
ancient art from its remains — just that task in which Winckel-
mann had made the first start. To interpret the history means to
display the continuity of organic development in the totality of
phenomena in the entire extant material of antique art. to under-
stand and to value everything as a link in a chain, to recognize the
conditions from which any given form issued, but beyond all to
penetrate into the individuality of just this given form, to grasp its
content as well as its artistic form, and finally to weigh in judgment
what is, as history, fully understood.

These broad general requirements embrace an endless amount,
and if we apply them to the special case, we are at once aware how
far we are yet, for the most part, from our goal. .First of all, the
material, even, is by no means yet complete; it happily has daily
accessions still, and the new is always a help in understanding the
old. And oven this understanding has ever new aspects; what
the student formerly believed himself to have understood and dis-
posed of appears now in fresh light, and this will continue, it is to
tie hoped, for a long time.

To be more exactlv cognizant of the ultimate aim of archaeologv

594 CLASSICAL ART

it will be well to determine its place relatively to the allied provinces
of knowledge.

Classical archaeology is that part of the science of classical antiquity
which has for its especial object antique fine art. It is therefore a part
of the so-called Philology, if we dedicate this word to the whole of the
scientific study of the culture of ancient Hellas and Rome; it is a twin
sister of Philology if we, as is usual, confine this name to the scientific
study of the antique literature.

It lies in the nature of mankind, that scientific activity should
have everywhere applied itself, not to bygone art, but to bygone
literature, not to the image, but to the word, of vanished times. We
can to-day, in fact, observe that a simple person has deep respect
for an ancient monument of language, and quite well understands
the scientific preoccupation with it, wrhile he does not make out at
all what the study of a piece of ancient fine art is for. The student
of epigraphy, who collects inscriptions, meets everywhere among
the peasants in the classic lands understanding and reverence for
his occupation; not so the archaeologist. And in truth, one can
note that the higher the type of the old work of art, the harder to
comprehend is a scientific occupation with it. That men find it
beautiful, and collect it, every one understands; but that it can be
object-matter of a science is hard to conceive; one at least sees the
picture, it is said, and any one can catch the idea; old and for-
eign writings must be explained by the scholar, but a beautiful
work of art — that explains itself. Scientific interest in the exam-
ples of a lower type is sooner understood, — in tools, utensils, pot-
tery, and the like, whose meaning and use have to be explained.
— in short, the antiquarian element in archaeology; further, the
need of scholarly elucidation of the content of antique fine art is
perceived; but not that the art-work as such can be material for
a science.

This psychological circumstance, which moreover is to be traced
not only in simple, uneducated persons, but deep in our culture itself,
explains why the science of written words had to develop so much
earlier than that of fine art, and why archaeology had to begin with
the study of antiquarian objects and then with the explication of
the meaning of ancient representative art, — and often to stick fast
at that point, so that still to-day many a scholar knows no other aim.

Archaeology has its own field of research, representative art; but
of course, granted the close connection of all expressions of a given
epoch of culture, its special function, to accomplish the complete
historical understanding of the art-work, cannot be fulfilled without
the knowledge of what has found utterance in the literature of the
ancients. Archaeology must build on the foundation which philology
as the science of literary remains, together with its inseparable com-

RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 595

panion, epigraphy, has laid. With this science archaeology stands
throughout in the closest connection.

In truth, as a good part of the material of the history of ancient
art is in literary form, — consists, that is, in facts from ancient
writers and inscriptions, — the archaeologist must be also philo
logian, or at least well schooled in philology. The methods of work
and the problems of modern philology must be his, too. He may no
more, as earlier, — e\en still in H. Brunn's History of Artists,—
make use of the various literary traditions without seeking their
source, without investigating whence the authority has his inform-
ation, what sort of a man he is anyway, what he could have known,
and what credibility is to be ascribed to him on the basis of his
personality. And the putting to use of the evidence from inscrip-
tions naturally requires complete familiarity with that branch of
philology which is commonly designated as epigraphy.

Nevertheless archaeology is no longer, as could once be maintained,
a mere appendage and accessory of philology; it was that, so long as
its aim was in mere antiquarianism or simply in illustrating some
passages of ancient literature by means of fine art or in expounding
the objective content of examples of fine art through passages of liter-
ature. Many notable scholars of the nineteenth century, who have
attained a considerable name, like Otto Jahn, have yet in reality
scarcely emerged from this conception of archaeology. In opposition
to these, Heinrich Brunn, unquestionably the greatest archaeologist
of the epoch just passed, defended the independence of archaeology
on the basis of the special character of its subject-matter; yet in his
works he has not drawn the full practical conclusions from this view,
and he has not entirety freed himself from that tradition which the
antiquario-exegetical subordination of archaeology had created.
He, too, was interested in a Greek vase, for instance, only to the
point of finding whether it gave a picture which illustrated a poetical
passage; the vase itself he did not yet grasp as the real object of his
study, — the vase as it is in itself, as an aesthetic whole, a work of
decorative art. That it was possible for Brunn so to misjudge the
whole aesthetic and historical significance of the Greek vase as ap-
pears in his theory of the late origin thereof, was only a consequence
of that very tradition.

Archaeology must certainly, therefore, work in closest connection
with philology, and with as complete as possible a mastery of the
ancient literature and inscriptions; but it must also be fully conscious
of its own characteristic quality and independent position, and must
vindicate these last in aiming to understand the work of fine art as,
what it is in itself, and not merely to make use of it to elucidate
something else.

A field of studv also which stands verv near to archaeolou'v is that

596 CLASSICAL ART

of ancient history. The monuments of art are completely to be
understood only on the basis of general history, and on the other
hand the development of fine art makes an important part of the
total historical development of the ancients. Moreover, a still closer
bond between the two subjects is given in the fact that many ex-
amples of representative art also offer important direct material for
the reconstruction of ancient political and commercial history. For
the early period of Greek as of Roman history, the archaeological
monuments, together writh the legendary remains, are in fact the
only material that we possess. The ancient historian is therefore
frequently referred to the archaeologists. But also many relics of
earlier times, like the distantly exported Greek vases, are of direct use
for the history of the Greek states, their foreign relations and their
trade. The most important objects of this kind are, however, the
coins. As to deal with these requires a vast amount of special infor-
mation, a special branch of science, numismatics, was early developed.
This division had indeed the advantage that the immediate primary
need, of sifting and classifying the immense material, was provided
for relatively early and well by the work of assiduous specialists;
but the separation was none the less, just as that of epigraphy from
philology, disadvantageous to numismatics even as to archaeology.
The former was too one-sided and narrow, and set its aim too low;
the numismatist was wont to take his function as fulfilled when a
coin was classified and identified, and to overlook that only then was
the most important matter in order, — the elucidation and appre-
ciation of the coin as work of art. On the other side, archaeology,
through this separation, suffered the drawback that the coins, which
were only too willingly left to the numismatist, were far too little
made use of, and material extraordinarily valuable for the history
of art, much neglected. Germany in particular was long backward
in this matter, at a time when numismatics in England had already
begun to deal with coins from a wider point of view.

Here should be mentioned a wider field of study, which is closely
affiliated with archaeology, — ancient geography and topography,
which treat, as Ernst Curtius expressed it, "the subsoil of the
historical life." The exploration of the classic lands as to their
geography and topography made an extraordinary advance in the
past century, and that, too. always in close touch with archaeology.
All civilized nations have had a part in it; in Germany in particular
Otfried Miiller, and, following his footsteps. Ernst Curtius, have the
credit of having recognized the importance of the ground on which
ancient civilization grew up. To the suggestion and stimulus of the
latter scholar is due the ideally exact survey of the Attic country
which the German Archaeological Institute secured. It would
certainly have been more important and beneficial for archaeology,

RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 597

if instead they had mapped, say, all the architectural remains in
Attica, which, like everything of this kind, are subject to sudden
alteration and disintegration, while the folds of mountain and valley
will long outlast our day. In all classic lands one is moved to clamor
for, first of all, a fixation through scientific maps of the perishable
relics which still remain. None the less was the before-mentioned
survey of the country most certainly a useful achievement. Even
should the significance of the soil for civilization be overestimated,
certainly this does no harm, and archaeology will do well always to
support whatever is destined to further the knowledge of the geo-
graphy and topography of classic lands. Indeed, so far as topography
includes the existing monuments, so far is it but a branch of
archaeology itself.

Another close neighbor of classical archaeology is to be noted in
Oriental philology, and especially in Egyptian and early Asiatic
research. These branches of science are still young, and have there-
fore not yet so fully divided off into specialties as the earlier science
of classical antiquity. Linguistic study is here still one with that of
history, culture, and art. Naturally here, too, the word was the first
object of inquiry, and the image was for long by many only regarded
if it had historical content, and only for the sake of that. Only very
lately do the Oriental remains begin to be dealt with as works of art
— and to this end classical archaeology has helped much; but all
too often still must one deplore in the case of Orientalists, even of
those engaged in excavation, that their eye is not yet sufficiently
trained to see artistic forms.

The late discoveries in regard to primitive culture in Greece, when
Crete was the centre of authority and fashion, have had especial
influence in closely linking classical and Oriental archaeology. That
civilization of 2000 years is. c. is only to be understood on the basis
of a knowledge of Egypt and the Orient. We recognize the close
connection with Egypt especially, but at the same time the full
independence and characteristic quality of that so-called Cretan-
Mycenaean culture. On the other hand we find in the Archaic-Greek
epoch of the eighth and seventh centuries an Oriental tendency in
art. emanating from Ionia, which is directly dependent on its models.
even if it soon freely moulds them to its own fashion. The time is
past when the postulate of Oriental influence on Grecian territory
was regarded as a sacrilege against Hellas. Classical archaeology
can solve its problem only in close connection and in constant
sympathy with that of the Orient; and no more operating with the
vague word "Oriental." as was formerly so much the favorite practice,
but instead a thorough-going intimacy with the rich, complex art-
development of Asia Minor and Egypt, must be required even of the
classical archaeologist.

593 CLASSICAL ART

A complete contrast to Oriental science is given in another subject,
not less closely related to classical archaeology, — that of the so-called
prehistory. While in the preceding the written monument predom-
inates, here it is completely lacking; study of the prehistoric period
is turned merely to finds without writing, and must seek to trace out
the historic development from these alone. This science, too, is
young, and strictly scientific treatment therein extremely recent;
as its subject-matter is relatively accessible and possesses a certain
charm for every one, it has given occupation to many dilettantes,
whose work, however, wras often of the greatest use as regards the
collection of material. Through just such a dilettante, the Homeric
enthusiast and fortunate treasure-seeker, Heinrich Schliemann, was
classical archaeology forced, in spite of its reluctance, to affiliate
itself to the heretofore disdained prehistoric study. Since then
classical archaeology has learned from the method of exact observa-
tion elaborated in prehistoric study to make use even of the humblest
finds, and to bring the discoveries of classic soil into a wider relation,
and very often thereby to attain for the first time to a real historical
understanding of them. Thus, for instance, the bronzes from the
ancient treasure-strata of Olympia can only be understood by aid of
the finds which have been made and studied in the prehistoric field,
and the recognition of the close relation between a great part of that
Olympic treasure and those of the so-called Hallstatt period in the
north and the northwest of the Greek country, is important for the
whole conception of early Greek history. The early period of Italy,
further, is for the first time at all comprehensible, since classical
archaeology has joined hands with prehistoric study. It is a matter
of course that, for this last, in turn, the alliance has also had the
happiest results. The two sciences will in the future seek to come
into ever closer touch with one another. The science of prehistoric
times must strive to make its material historical, that is, to link it
with groups of finds which can be historically fixed, just as classical
arid Oriental archaeology deal with theirs. And the latter had
learned from the former, on the other hand, to work up with care
not only the literary and the aesthetically beautiful specimen, but
also the quite insignificant ones, the humble potsherds and small
remains of metal utensils, and to apply thorn to the building-up of
the history of ancient culture and art. Classical archaeology, too, was
first turned through its connection with prehistoric science to exact
observation of the details of the finds of minor antiquities, whereby
the most important conclusions were reached. In Italy Wolfgang
Helbig was the first of the classical archaeologists who followed this
method, and he was able forthwith, by simply proving authentic the
material found in the Ktruscan tombs, to refute the thesis of the late
origin of the Greek vases, which Brunn had laid down.

RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 599

The attention, once directed upon the relations of the so-called
classical peoples with others without writing or literature, was bound
to bring classical archaeology in general into closer touch with gen-
eral ethnology. It \vas a long time, and there was, particularly in
Germany, strong opposition to overcome — which is in places very
active still — before the sciences of classical antiquity began to
recognize and admit that the Greeks and Romans were men as other
men are, and that, in spite of the high grade of their culture, they
shared the basis of it with other peoples, and that for an under-
standing thereof an acquaintance with these other peoples was
essential. This acknowledgment, which became fruitful for the
most various branches of the science of antiquity, has taught ar-
chaeology in especial the better understanding of the beginnings of
art on classic soil.

It is, however, especially the history of religion which has gained
most from ethnology, and has undergone through its influence a
complete revolution. The religion and mythology of the Greeks and
Romans are to-day also dealt with by all intelligent students
entirely on the basis of the teachings of ethnology; a few only,
German scholars in particular, still cling in narrow one-sidedness to
the old standpoint, according to which Greeks and Romans might
be explained only from themselves, that is, in reality, only from the
incomplete, circumscribed ideas of modern mankind. As the greatest
and most important part of the content of classical art comes from
religion and mythology, the history of religion becomes one of the
sciences most closely related to archaeology. In particular, the
understanding of that infinitely rich abundance of antique remains
which are connected in any way with the ideas about departed spirits,
could have been won by archaeology only by frank dependence on
modern ethnological studies in the history of religion.

As it is the content or subject of antique art which leads to
the alliance with the above-mentioned field of science, so it is the
formal side which binds archaeology to the modern history of art.
Archaeology is. as we saw, nothing else than antique art-history and
a part of general art-history. But the descent of archaeology from
philology has brought it about that in practice a sharp separation
obtains between it and the modern history of art — so much so that,
according to the dominant view, as it appears in our university in-
struction and in the organization of scientific congresses, the so-called
"History of Art " begins with the Christian Era. This separation is
greatly to be deplored, and redounds to the harm of both branches
of science. That there are real scientific congresses which use the
name of history of art. and at the same time shut out antique art.
is an extraordinary fact, only to be explained by the historical
development of that branch of science. Inasmuch as the whole art

600 CLASSICAL ART

of Christian times is founded on the antique, it can be understood
only by those who know the antique; no one who aims to work in
the modern history of art dare be ignorant of it; knowledge of it is
simply indispensable for him. And on the other hand, the archaeo-
logist will enlarge and illumine his view, and better understand and
appreciate the antique through comparison with the much more
completely and richly preserved works of modern art, if he has made
himself quite familiar with the modern art-development.

A more intimate cooperation of antique and modern art-history
would in any case be of the greatest value to both sides. Their separ-
ation was for a long time favored by the fact that archaeology seemed
to be forgetting her chief function and to be going off into antiquarian
pedantry and mere exegesis of works of antique art, while the modern
history of art aimed from the first at tracing the development of
style in great art and penetrating into the personalities of the great
masters, — an aim which was, indeed, incomparably easier on the
working basis of an abundance of well-preserved originals, than for
archaeology, which has at its disposal mostly only poor, and at that
mutilated, copies. This last difference had still another result: inas-
much as the material of the history of modern art is so much more
accessible and can be at once utilized by every one, there were not
wanting many unprepared intruders who, more than in other fields,
put forth amateurish work; and this helped in its turn to deepen the
cleft between the sister-sciences.

The field which is now designated as modern art-history is, more-
over, a very wide one, and specialization is therefore already begin-
ning within it, which is, indeed, very necessary. So much the more,
however, must the mutual relations of the special groups, and in
particular the bond with archaeology, be watched and tended. The
modern science of art has for the most part followed much too
exclusively the development of style, and has too little sought to
exhaust the content of the work of art as a whole; it has had
hitherto too much to do even in getting the material once sifted
and classified according to style. Still, just in this direction it
has already accomplished a vast deal, and can serve as a model to
archaeology, which has long been backward in this respect, and is,
for instance, just at the point of admitting that its most immediate
need is to make the many scattered remains of antique sculpture
accessible through photographs. In this point the modern science
of art has gone to its goal much more quickly and directly; but in
complete and impartial treatment of the single fact it could yet
learn much from archaeology.

On the boundary between archaeology and the history of modern
art stands the so-called Christian archaeology. Here, too, the actual
present division of subjects finds itself in contradiction to the logic

RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 601

of things. Christian archaeology is counted as a subject belonging
to theology, while it is really nothing else than a part of the history
of art. So far as it deals with ancient Christian art, its subject-matter
can be historically grasped only by one who can survey the whole
later antique art, and who is able to connect that special art-group
which draws its content from Christian belief with all the other con-
temporary art-forms. The alliance with theology, which is divided
on the basis of creed into Catholic and Protestant, can naturally not
be advantageous to an historical treatment of ancient Christian
research. Christian archaeology ought to be set off as a special bran?h
of classical archaeology, which would certainly be for its gain. At
present the historical understanding of the content of ancient
Christian religious imagination is on the point of experiencing a
tremendous furtherance not from theology, but from philology,
which is treating those ideas in connection with the rest of the later
antique religious concepts.

Finally, we have still to consider the relation of classical archaeology
to philosophy, especially to aesthetics. In earlier time the Greek art-
forms were taken to be, as a matter of course, the canons of taste, the
forms in which the Idea of Beauty comes to its purest expression.
Aesthetics, as the doctrine of the beautiful, was then most closely linked
with archaeology. So was it, too, with Winckelmann and his disciples.
Later, when the historical viewpoint in archaeology wras fully dom-
inant, aesthetics and archaeology drifted apart more and more; and
at present they are quite far asunder. But aesthetics, too, is another
thing to-day; it hardly believes any longer in the possibility of de-
termining absolute beauty from itself, but limits itself more and more
to the psychological problem of what appears beautiful to us, and
why it does so. Now it must be emphasized that for the understand-
ing of a work of art, in the sense of archaeology, it is by no means
enough to have determined the relative position within the circle of
other works of art: the question must also be put, how far it can be
determined why such and such forms were chosen by the artist,—
whereby one has to put himself to the extent of his power into the mind
of the ancient artist — and the further question, why those forms
produce such and such an effect upon me — for only of my own
emotions can I give an exact account. Now if one is prepared to
accept the solution of these questions as the function of the psycho-
logically grounded aesthetics, then is aesthetics also a necessary part
of the science of art. Then, however, the professional philosopher in
the hitherto current sense will certainly be less fitted to pursue aes-
thetics; for he usually fails entirely of that full knowledge of the sub-
stratum of his inquiry, art, which is indispensable for the solution of
those problems. For. in fact, even those aesthetic laws hitherto con-
cocted by the philosophers, which were put forth without a thorough

602 CLASSICAL ART

knowledge of art itself, seem to us more as the plays of fancy than as
real additions to our knowledge. To cite an instance : it has been, and
even most recently, set down as an aesthetic law of plastic art, that
the work must show a qualitative homogeneity of material, a law that
could never be set up by any one who is familiar with actual sculpture
as the greatest artists of all times have practiced it ; the oneness of the
material is the most unimportant of matters for sculpture, which has
instead to strive only for unity of appearance. In other fields it is
taken for granted that laws are deduced only from material that is
exactly known; with the aestheticians, however, the opposite has
frequently been the case. We believe that here real furtherance of
knowledge can proceed only from those who are completely at home
in the field of art; as thus in our own time an important addition to
our aesthetic understanding is to be credited to a keen-thinking
sculptor (Adolf Hildebrand). We should be glad, if a wish is per-
mitted here, to hope, as a development for the future, that every
special science, and in especial the natural sciences, might as it were
steep themselves in philosophy, that is, might put their own philo-
sophical questions and seek to answer them themselves. In any
case, however, we hope that aesthetics, so far as it relates to fine
art, may consent to be matter of art-study; certainly, however, in
a quite different sense from that existing in Winckelmann's time.

Supposing us to be now clear as to the position which classical
archaeology holds with reference to the other sciences, let us, before
bringing these reflections to an end, say a word on the characteristic
quality of this branch of knowledge and the method which it re-
quires.

In the higher sense there can be but a single scientific method,
which is fixed by the general laws of thought; but the special charac-
ter of the various subject-matters of the individual sciences brings
about special variations of that one method.

The primary principle of the study of ancient art is that the work
of fine art shall be treated and comprehended as what it is in itself.
This sounds like a complete truism, yet no requirement is wont to be
so often forgotten as this. To comprehend the real aesthetic nature
of a work of fine art, it is not enough to have philological, literary,
historical knowledge, taste and appreciation for poetry and other
arts, but there is needed also a special insight into the nature of fine
art and familiarity with the problems peculiar to that art. But this.
on the contrary, has evidently often been wanting, and not to petty
students but to talented scholars, since so much that is alien has been
read into the ancient works of art, and their true content and meaning
mistaken. Thus students have construed poetic thoughts into many a
Greek vase-drawing, which have a simply corrupting effect on appre-
ciation, instead of understanding them out of the aesthetic conditions

RELATIONS OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 603

of unfolding artistic impulses. And how much that is inartistic have
they interpreted into antique statues! — beginning with Winckel-
mann, who saw in the Apollo Belvedere the picture of the moment
after the slaying of the python — up to the scholars of our day.

Another principle of the method of our science is that every type
of specimen shall be dealt with according to its characteristic quality,
that its peculiar conditions shall first be known before the elucida-
tion of a particular object is begun. Against this principle too many
have sinned. The Greek vase-pictures, for instance, and the Greek
votive reliefs, the tomb-sculpture, the coins and gems, are such unlike
types of objects that for each one of them the standard is given by
another point of view.

An especial difficulty, however, is presented by the existing works
in statuary. For these are only to a slight extent original works,
and unfortunately the less important part, the greater number being
copies of late periods of the antique. Here the same conditions hold
as for the literary works of the ancients which exist in transcripts.
First all extant copies must be assembled, and out of these it must be
determined what has really come down to us. That is the same thing
which in philology is called the "recension" of manuscripts. Then
follows what is there designated as "emendation "; the reconstruction
of the lost model, which can come only through conjecture and hypo-
thesis with the help of imagination. As in philology his conjecture
is the best who has most perfect mastery of the language and gram-
mar, just so in archaeology he can most unerringly and correctly
reconstruct a lost plastic model from the extant copies who has the
profoundest knowledge of the plastic forms of the antique and their
"grammar.'' To the superficial view all conjectures seem alike
hypothetical: in reality they are tremendously different in value,
according to the powers of the originators.

Archaeology has only lately recognized and begun to fulfill her
function with respect to the existing copies of the lost masterpieces
of ancient sculpture. She was encouraged thereto by the progress of
modern technique, which first furnished, in photography, the means
',o compare with exactness the various existing but scattered copies,
and thereby to establish the tradition. Earlier students had no
adequate idea of this work, and contented themselves with assembling
the examples which were fairly alike, without deciding whether they
wore copies or more or less free remodelings. In passing judgment
on these it was usual to settle on a chance-selected copy, — and on
its errors, — and. wit h t he still undeveloped knowledge of the evolution
of style of the special forms, the mistakes of the copyist were as-
cribed to the original. V\ e have now. no doubt, made progress in these
matters; we are aware for instance, how mistaken it was of Brunn
to base his analysis of the type of the Giustiniani Apollo only on the

604 CLASSICAL ART

Giustiniani exemplar, without citing at all the replica from the
Baths of Caracalla; the former exemplar is one quite arbitrarily
made over by the copyist, such as the thick eyelids, and it was just
on those faulty traits, inserted by the copyist, that Brunn had
based his analysis of the form, the result of which could not be
otherwise than wrong. We now easily see further how the same
Brunn erred when he wished to see a characteristic of the glance of
Hera in the eyes of that head of the so-called Farnese Hera, while
we now see in the modeling simply a copy of that way of treating
the eye which belonged to the period of the original. But this whole
field, the reconstruction of the lost plastic masterpieces of the an-
tique from the copies which have been preserved, is an excessively
difficult one, and we know well that our study is here but in its
beginnings.

In general it appears to us that a thorough-going understanding
of Greek art as it really was, is now for the first time dawning upon
us, and we believe firmly in the future of our science and in its coming
important development. The absolute worth of Greek art within
the totality of the creations of the human mind comes more clearly
and more strikingly to view, the interest and the joy in this unique
beauty of the past are ever increasing, and still the eagerly pursued
excavations bring daily fresh material. We may well describe classical
archaeology as a scion of the great tree of human knowledge, youth-
ful indeed, but lusty and full of the promise of sturdy growth.

SOME PRESENT PROBLEMS IN THE HISTORY OF GREEK

SCULPTURE

BY FRANK BIGELOW TARBELL

[Frank Bigelow Tarbell, Professor of Classical Archaeology, University of Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois, b. 1853, Groton, Massachusetts. A.B". Yale, 1873; Ph.D. ibid.
1879; Douglas Fellow, Tutor in Greek, Yale College, 1876-82; Assistant Pro-
fessor of Greek and Instructor in Logic, Yale College, 1882-87; Annual Director
of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece, 1888-89; In-
structor in Greek, Harvard University, 1889-92. Member of the American Philo-
logical Association, Archaeological Institute of America, Society for the Promo-
tion of Hellenic Studies. Author of The Philippics of Demosthenes; A History
of Greek Art.]

BY the term " classical art/' as used in the language of this Congress,
I understand Greek art and what is commonly called Roman art,
which is mainly late Greek art on Roman soil. The history of each
great branch of this art — architecture, painting, and sculpture -
presents problems which might profitably be here discussed. Thus in
the field of architecture we might take up the origins of the Doric and
Ionic orders, or the question as to how much of what we are accus-
tomed to think of as characteristic of Roman architecture — its use
of arches, vaults, and domes, its combination of the arch with the
decorative column and entablature, its treatment of architectural
details and ornaments — was borrowed from Greek architecture as it
existed in Alexandria, in Antioch, and in other flourishing centres of
late Greek civilization. In the field of painting an attempt might
be made to explain on what evidence and by what methods may
be conjured up some shadowy semblance of the works of the great
painters of the fifth and fourth centuries B. c. ; or, under the stimu-
lus of a recent essay,1 to consider the extent of the originality in
design and in technique displayed by the extant frescoes of the
Roman imperial period.

Clearly, however, it would be unwise, within the limits of a single
address, to include matters so various, and I have therefore chosen
to confine myself to a single branch of Greek art, namely, sculpture.

What would an ideal history of Greek sculpture be? Suppose that
a man equipped with the highest native capacity for the task and
with the best training attainable at the present day had sources of
knowledge as complete for the Greek period as for the nineteenth
century of our era. what manner of history would he produce? What-
ever else his work might contain, — and that might be much. — • it
would set forth clearly and unquestionably the general qualities
characteristic of Greek sculpture in each successive phase of its
development, the distinctive features of each great local school, and
1 Wickhoff, Roman Art (translated by Mrs. S. Arthur Strong).

606 CLASSICAL ART

the individual styles of numerous artists great and small. The reader
would learn to know Myron, Phidias and Polyclitus, Scopas, Prax-
iteles and Lysippus, more fully and certainly than we can know
Donatello and Michelangelo. The influence of each of these great
masters upon his fellow sculptors, his pupils and successors, would be
disclosed. And scores of other sculptors of varying degrees of genius
would receive adequate treatment. All this of course would be done
with the help of illustrations, which would present to the eye a long
gallery of statues and reliefs, each piece complete in form and color
as when it left the master's hand.

How far we are from possessing any such history of Greek sculpture
as this every beginner knows. Of the necessary materials for such
a work only a small fraction exists. Instead of full and authoritative
literary documents we have the brief and unintelligent summary com-
piled by the elder Pliny, the scattered notices in Pausanias and other
writers, chiefly of Roman imperial date. — notices often vague, and
only in the rarest cases penetrating and precise, — and finally some
hundreds of inscriptions giving names of sculptors, occasionally with
one or two additional particulars, but mostly referring to works of
which not a vestige remains. However, as literary documents are
of only minor importance to the historian of art. our poverty in this
matter could be made light of. were the works themselves preserved
to tell their story to one skilled to decipher it. But in truth the actual
remains of the finest Greek sculpture are exceedingly scanty. Of
grave reliefs and votive reliefs and sculptures used as decorations for
temples and mausoleums we have, to be sure, a great many, though
in a mutilated condition. But of independent sculptures in the round,
such as statues of divinities, of athletes, statesmen, and men of let-
ters, we have from the best period very few. The masterpieces on
which the fame of the greatest sculptors rested are without exception
lost, and we are fortunate when one of them can be identified in a
ropy or copies of Roman date. Copies, in fact, executed during the
century preceding and the two centuries following the beginning of
the Christian Era. constitute a large part of our monumental testi-
mony to the history of Greek sculpture. That we have them is the
chief reason why we know the art of Pnlyclitus or Praxiteles more
fully than we may hope to know the art of Polygnotus or Apelles.

The historian of Greek sculpture, having these materials at his
disposal, ought to base his views as to the artistic style or styles of
a given time and place primarily upon extant original works of that
time and place, including every class of artistic remains, — sculp-
tures, paintings, coins, gems. — in short, all surviving products of the
graphic and plastic arts. Into the framework thus obtained he must
fit those lost works which he re-creates in imagination from copies.
Where trustworthy evidence fails, as it often does, he must perforce

PROBLEMS IN HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE 607

make large use of hypothesis, and, however cautious his tempera-
ment, he can hardly fail at times to confound plausible hypothesis
with well-established fact.

If this meant that we are doomed to endless, unprogressive guess-
work, it would be discouraging indeed. Fortunately nothing of the
sort is true. The advance which during the last hundred years has
been made in the understanding of the history of Greek sculpture has
been enormous, and is going on at the present day with accelerated
speed. This advance comes about in part through the constant acces-
sion of new materials. Even literary documents come to light, like
the fragment of a list of Olympian victors * found in Egypt and first
published in 1899, which has supplied us with valuable dates in
the careers of Pythagoras, Myron, and Polyclitus. New sculptors'
inscriptions continue to be discovered. And above all, the stock of
known sculptures is augmented each year by pieces which had been
hidden underground or sometimes even at the bottom of the sea.
Herein is one of the great, exciting compensations to the student of
Greek art. Every fresh discovery makes a problem. The new thing
must be studied and assigned to its proper place. It may become the
starting-point for a new set of hypotheses, and so lead to an extensive
readjustment of views previously entertained as to the history of
Greek art.

To this accession of new material there must come an end, and that
end cannot be very far off. But the study of old material is only
less fruitful than the acquisition of new, and it is hard to foresee a
time when discoveries can no longer be made with the materials in
hand.

Something has already been said of the part which the study of
copies plays in our reconstruction of the history of Greek sculpture.
Your attention is now invited to some of the more general questions
which that study involves. I realize as fully as any one that art-criti-
cism, to be profitable, must be exercised on the actual object. Abstract
discussions are likely not only to be dull, but also to miss the essential
point. Yet I venture to hope that a few considerations may be worth
putting forward, even without the help of visible illustrations.

To begin with, we need a working theory as to how these1 copies
were made. We know that in the Roman imperial period, to which
they chiefly belong, the practice of taking casts from statues, or at
least from bronze statues, was in use. Casts are easily multiplied
and easily transported, and from a cast or casts a workman or work-
men, in the same or different parts of the empire, could make any
number of copies in bronze or marble, agreeing with the original in
dimensions and in all principal features. But the opinion has recently
1 Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, part u, no. ccxxii.

608 CLASSICAL ART

been urged * with great force that the taking of casts from marble
sculptures was impracticable, for the simple reason that Greek mar-
ble sculptures were always more or less painted, and the process of
making a mould would have injured the coloring. Hence it is inferred
that we must draw a sharp line of distinction between two classes of
reproductions. On the one hand, from originals of bronze we have
copies, in which a high degree of fidelity may be presumed; on the
other hand, from originals of marble, and, it may be added, of gold
and ivory, we have imitations, whose trustworthiness is much less.
Thus, — so the inference runs, — while we may form a fair idea of
the bronze Discus-thrower of Myron or the bronze Doryphorus
of Polyclitus, we cannot know, except vaguely, the gold and ivory
Hera of Polyclitus or the marble Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles.

Here is a matter deserving serious consideration. Yet the distinc-
tion is perhaps not so important as it at first appears. We have no
assurance that the copies of bronze statues were always or even
usually made from casts, although that is possible. And even if they
were, it must be remembered that the possession of a cast, while
it made fidelity in the copy possible, did not by any means necessitate
fidelity. On the other hand, Greek marble sculptures may in some
instances by the Roman period have so far lost their coloring that no
objection would be felt to taking casts from them. And when this
was not the case, it must often have been possible to make an accurate
model in clay of a marble work, and from this model to make casts,
as has recently been done for one of the archaic female figures of the
Athenian acropolis. It is conceivable also that a copy was sometimes
based upon drawings made in the presence of the original and perhaps
accompanied by measurements. However it was done, it is certain
that copies much too faithful to have been executed from memory
were often made from marble originals. Thus in a caryatid of the
Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican we have a Roman copy of one of the
caryatids of the south porch of the Erechtheum, in fact, of the particu-
lar one which was removed by Lord Elgin and which now stands in
the British Museum. Again, there are numerous cases where a work
of relief sculpture in marble exists in two or more copies. Take
for example the relief representing Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes.
Whether the Naples example is the actual original or not, the original.
as of all such works, was certainly of marble. And in spite of the great
inferiority of the Villa Albani example, and the still greater inferiority
of the Louvre example, to that in Naples, the differences are not
greater than we often find between different copies of a bronze statue.
Now it is true that no amount of resemblance between copies affords
absolute proof of their resemblance to a lost original. It may con-
ceivably be that all derive from a single copy, and that an inexact
1 S. Reinach, Revue archMogique, 1900, n, p. 384 ff.

PROBLEMS IN HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE 609

one. Yet on the whole a high degree of resemblance, especially
between copies in marble from marble, is reassuring. It shows that
fairly faithful reproductions were possible and were worth while.
And, to conclude this matter, it does not seem necessary to regard
with much more distrust the copies made from marble than those
made from bronze.

Another question may be introduced at this point, although logic-
ally it belongs rather at the end than at the beginning of the discus-
sion. The practice of copying Greek sculptures of the fifth, fourth,
and third centuries B. c., is abundantly attested for the Roman
imperial period. May we then assume that all Roman copies go back
to Greek originals of good period, or must we consider the possibility
that some of them represent originals created at Rome in the first
century B. c., or later? Certainly we must consider the possibility.
In a copying age there is no reason why the new should not be copied
as well as the old, provided the new is in demand. Such demand did
exist for portraits of the Roman emperors, and we accordingly find
actual duplicates, though hardly so often as one would expect, in
our stock of imperial portraits. Thus the famous head of the young
Augustus in the Vatican agrees in all essentials with one less well
known in the British Museum, and a repulsive but powerful portrait
of Caracalla is preserved in several substantially identical copies.
But there is no clear case of an ideal creation of Roman date attaining
to the honors of reproduction. To be sure, this statement may not
pass unchallenged. A few years ago numbers of statues existing in
two or more repetitions, such as the marble Artemis from Pompeii,
the bronze Apollo with the lyre from the same place, the "Venus
Genetrix," so-called, and the nude youth made by Stephanus, were
commonly regarded as works of an archaistic school, whose founder
was supposed to be Pasiteles, a Greek sculptor working in Rome in
the earlier half of the first century B. c. This hypothesis of a Pasite-
lean school, which has been compared to the group of the " Xaza-
renes" in Germany and to that of the pre-Raphaelitos in England,
and whose productions have been supposed to be works of consider-
able originality and popularity, has now been generally abandoned.
Yet it still has adherents in England. Thus our best English hand-
book of Greek sculpture 1 defends the name of Venus Genetrix.
regarding the statue so called in the Louvre and its replicas as copied
from the cult-image made by Arcesilaus for the temple of Venus
erected by Julius Cirsar. But as the same authority holds that "the
type, in its general character, dates from an earlier age," the differ-
ence between this view and that which regards the statues in question
as copied directly from a fifth-century original is not, after all. very
great. Similarly with regard to the athlete of Stephanus. According
1 E. A. Gardner, Handbook of Greek Sculpture, sect. 78.

610 CLASSICAL ART

to one view this is simply one of several copies of an early fifth-century
bronze statue. It is not the best copy, and its singular proportions
may be due to arbitrary modification of the original. According to the
other view, this work, while greatly influenced by the style of the
fifth century, is essentially a new creation, not necessarily of Ste-
phanus himself, but perhaps of Pasiteles. or at any rate of about his
time. Under all the circumstances of the case the former hypothesis
appears to me far more probable. But the side which we choose to
take in the controversy does not greatly affect our conception of
fifth-century art, though it does make considerable difference in our
estimate of the artistic conditions in Rome in the first century B. c.
And even if we allow an exception or two, it will still remain true
that in dealing with copies, excepting portraits of Roman emperors
and one or two other Roman personages, we are dealing in the vast
majority of cases with reproductions of much earlier originals.

Let us now suppose that we are studying a piece of sculpture which
we suspect of being a copy and which we wish to assign to its proper
historical place. If we are equipped for the task, that is to say, if we
are endowed with good powers of observation and are extensively
acquainted with the monuments of Greek art, we shall of course
inevitably form a theory on the subject at the outset. But realizing
the fallibility of any copy, we shall search through the existing stock
of antiques for duplicates of the work under consideration. If there
are any, they must all be taken into account, just as all the manu-
scripts of an ancient author must be taken into account in the
attempt to reconstitute his original text. Let us suppose, to begin
with, that we find one or more such duplicates, agreeing with the first
piece in all principal features. Obviously either one of the number is
the original and the others are copies from it, or all are alike copies
of a lost original. The former alternative is possible enough in the
abstract, and there are some cases where it is actually held, more or
less confidently, by one or more archaeologists. The cases, however,
where it may be considered practically certain are extremely few.
In general no one of the duplicates has any claim to being regarded
as the original. All are alike copies. But copies are given to varying
among themselves according to the varying skill and conscientious-
ness of the copyists. Xo one of them, even though artistically it out-
rank the others, can be safely trusted to reproduce more faithfully
than they every detail of the original. Hence they must all be dili-
gently compared, in the hope of divining from their collective testi-
mony the prototype. In this undertaking a merely mechanical pro-
cedure, such as deciding by a majority vote of the -witnesses, will not
do. There must be a divinatory instinct. But alas! the faculty of
divination, however sure it may be of itself, cannot always impose its
results upon others. Its operation often seems arbitrary, and carries

PROBLEMS IN HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE 611

no conviction save to docile disciples. And if this is the case when we
are comparing two or more slightly varying copies, how much greater
is the danger when our search for duplicates proves unsuccessful and
we are left with but the single representative! Yet in spite of all
difficulties and perils the serious student cannot shirk the problem.
He must form his mental picture of the lost original as best he may,
and reveal it to others as clearly as possible. If he succeeds in winning
the approval of expert opinion, his view has attained to as much
certainty as the nature of the subject admits.

Thus far we have been supposed to be dealing either with a single
copy or with two or more substantially identical copies. But the
case is by no means always so simple. Often we find, besides a num-
ber of copies essentially similar to one another, one or more variants,
or in other words pieces so far like the agreeing copies that they can-
not be wholly independent, yet so far unlike that they cannot in any
strict sense be identified with them. The most obvious explanation
of such a variant is that the sculptor who executed it was simply
modifying the same Greek original which is represented also by more
exact reproductions. In one ease he may have worked from memory
and his divergences from the original may not have been intentional.
In another case he may have had an exact copy before him and may
have deliberately adapted it to some purpose of his own. Xo one
doubts that this explanation, in one or other of its forms, is often
applicable. Every one makes free use of it. Yet a different explan-
ation is sometimes possible and is sometimes preferred. What I have
called a variant may itself be a faithful copy of a lost Greek original,
so that we are led back to two closely related Greek originals, pro-
duced by the same sculptor or by two different sculptors, one of whom
in some way influenced the other. For example, there is at Mantua a
coarsely executed marble figure of a Muse, holding in her right hand
a tragic mask. This statue, while it has no known duplicates, is closely
similar in pose and drapery to the caryatids of the Erechtheum. In
view of this similarity it was seriously proposed * a few years ago to
treat the Mantuan figure as a copy of a Greek work of about 400 B. c.
But really it seems most improbable that a Greek sculptor in the
nourishing period of artistic activity, in seeking to create a Muse.
should have imitated so closely figures used as architectural supports,
however admirable, or vice versa. And I am glad to say that the
author of the suggestion retracted il '-' not long after in favor of the
common-sense view that the Mantuan Muse is nothing but an adapt-
ation of one of the caryatid figures by a late and clumsy sculptor.

A better example is afforded by the1 Farnese Diadumenus in the
British Museum. Of this statue again then1 are no duplicates: in

612 CLASSICAL ART

sense it stands alone. Yet it can hardly be dissociated altogether
from those other Diadumenus figures which are believed on good
grounds to be copied from a work of Polyclitus. The similarity in
motive goes so far as to make probable some close interdependence.
How then are the facts to be interpreted? Two theories are possible,
as in the previous case : either the Farnese Diadumenus is the work of
a sculptor of Roman date, a work based upon the famous statue
of Polyclitus, but so far modified as to attest considerable originality
on the sculptor's part; or it is a copy of a Greek work of about
Polyclitus's time, perhaps an Attic work which Polyclitus saw and
whose motive he borrowed and adapted. The question, it will be
seen, like that of a Pasitelean archaizing school, is chiefly a question
of the amount and kind of originality which may be assumed for the
sculptors of the Roman imperial period. Certainly an age which
produced works of such merit as the reliefs of the Ara Pacis, of the
Arch of Titus, and of the Beneventine Arch of Trajan, was not
wholly deficient in artistic originality. But it must be admitted
that for the precise kind of originality which would be implied by
the creation of the Farnese Diadumenus out of Polyclitean and other
fifth-century suggestions our knowledge of the Roman period does
not afford irrefutable evidence. The question is one on which seri-
ous students must for the present agree to differ.

The most ambitious historians of Greek sculpture are not content
with placing a lost original, divined from a copy or copies, in its
proper place and period. They would fain go farther and assign each
work, or at least each important work, to the individual master
who produced it, whether known to us by name or not. As slight
external helps in this task, they have the scanty literary notices
referred to at the outset of this address, but in the main they are
obliged to rely upon the qualities of the works themselves. Here
there is a temptation to apply the method pursued with so much
zeal and confidence by Morelli and his followers in the field of Italian
painting, the method which in discriminating artist from artist
makes large use of little-noticed details, such as conformation of
eye or ear. But the data presented to the student of Greek art are
hardly comparable to those presented to the student of the Italian
art of the Renaissance. In the latter field we have sufficiently well
authenticated original works upon which to base our knowledge
of the personal styles of the different masters, and from this sure
foundation we may proceed to recognize other creations of theirs.
But in the former field this sure foundation is almost everywhere
lacking. With the fewest exceptions we are limited to mere copies.
Now the broad features of a work of art, such as pose, proportions,
disposition of drapery, survive in the better sort of copies; but the
minutiae upon which we are tempted to rely in the effort to clistin-

PROBLEMS IN HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE 613

guish master from master — form of tear-duct, of ear-lobule, or
whatever it be — may be due to the copyists and therefore valueless
for the purpose desired. Indeed, the subjection of these inconspicu-
ous details to the law of habit, which makes them useful as identi-
fying marks, renders it unlikely that they would be reproduced
save in copies of superlative accuracy; and copies of superlative
accuracy are unfortunately very rare. Hence that method of con-
noisseurship which examines, as one means toward recognizing the
individual master, the treatment of inconspicuous details must be
regarded as largely inapplicable in dealing with Roman copies, or at
least as of dubious probative force.

Again, the problem of recognizing, whether in originals or copies,
the works of a single master is not merely the problem of recognizing
decisive similarities. An artist's productions may vary greatly in
different periods of his career, or even in one and the same period.
If we are trying with our bits of evidence to make out the achieve-
ments and so the personal style of a great Greek sculptor, we need
a theory as to the limits of the variation which we may in reason
attribute to him. How are we to form such a theory? Judgments
on this point commonly have an air of a priori dogmatism. Some
one proposes to attribute two works to the same artist. The objector
says, "No. The differences between the two are too great." No
proof is offered, but such a verdict, in spite of its air of intuitive
certainty, is doubtless derived more or less consciously from one's
knowledge of art and artists generally in the past and in the present.
No\v I think that what is needed is a more thorough-going stud}'
directed to this very point. The work of artists of modern times
lends itself to the purpose. Only when we have satisfied ourselves
as to the widest limits of variation shown by any one of them are
we in a position to form so much as a legitimate guess as to whether
two Greek works are too unlike to have been conceived by a single
brain and executed by a single hand.

Let me illustrate. There exist in Dresden two closely similar
Athena figures, one headless, the other with head partially pre-
served. By combining, on the strength of convincing proof, a head
in Bologna with the headless Dresden figure, and by supplying what
else is missing in one from the other, two complete and substantially
identical statues have been won.1 It is argued that in these we possess
copies of the Athena Lemnia of Phidias. Certainly the original
must have been a work of extraordinary merit and one of the Phidiac
age and school. There is some literary evidence, based chiefly upon
the absence of a helmet from the head, for believing it to lie by
Phidias himself. While this external evidence is far from satisfactory,
it appears to me to establish a considerable probability that the
1 Furtwangler, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, p 4 ff.

614 CLASSICAL ART

work, whether it be the Lemnia or not, — a point I would waive as of
little consequence, — is at any rate by Phidias. But the objection is
raised x that the type of face is so different from the type of face of
the Athena Parthenos of Phidias, known to us from unquestionable,
though poor, copies, as to throw the gravest doubt on the proposed
attribution. The difference does seem great: in the Parthenos a
broad face with full cheeks and cheerful look, in the other a narrow
oval face with sober, even severe expression. Can we suppose that
one artist conceived and presented to his countrymen the same
goddess in two aspects so unlike? Casting about for guidance here, I
can think of nothing better than to examine the sculptured Madonnas
of Michelangelo to see how far they agree among themselves in type
of face. As a result I find between the circular relief in the Bargello,
with its comparatively broad face and untroubled look, and the
Bruges Madonna, with its narrow face and solemn expression, both
of them productions of Michelangelo's early period, a difference
which to me seems as great as we are obliged to suppose between the
original Athena Parthenos and the original of the Bologna head
under discussion. If my estimate be just, then there is surely no
insuperable difficulty on this score in accepting the original of the
Dresden statues as the work of Phidias.

Take another specific problem of a similar nature to the last. — - a
problem which has only recently come into the forefront of interest
and which for this reason deserves to be treated somewhat more
fully. For fifty years and more until the other day. a marble statue
in the Vatican representing an apoxyomenus, that is. an athlete
scraping himself with a strigil, has been universally regarded as an
excellent copy of a bronze statue by Lysippus and as giving us our
most trustworthy knowledge of that sculptor's style. This supposed
knowledge has come to be a corner-stone in the history of Greek art.
With our proneness to accept "what is believed always, everywhere,
and by all." many of us had probably until lately not taken the
trouble to scrutinize critically the evidence on which the identification
depends. Let us look at it. Lysippus made an apoxyomenus. which
was carried to Rome, was, set up by Marcus Agrippa in front of his
Thermic, and was there much admired. These facts do not carry us
far. for the subject was no uncommon one and we possess no detailed
description of the treatment of it by Lysippus. But the marble
statue in question exhibits a system of bodily proportions radically
different from that of Polyclitus and agreeing with the valuable,
though inadequate, indications afforded by Pliny regarding the
innovations introduced by Lysippus. On reflection, however, we
see that the agreement does not reallv clinch the matter. At most

PROBLEMS IN HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE 615

it only proves that the original of the apoxyomenus of the Vatican is
not earlier than Lysippus; it does not prove that it is not later.
But here other considerations come in, more difficult to weigh in the
balances, but perhaps more influential in determining our opinion.
We have copies, one of them certified by an inscription, of another
work of Lysippus. a Heracles leaning upon his club, and it seems as
if the apoxyomenus fitted in very well with that. Moreover it has
been thought that in pose and in details of modeling this statue is
such as might be expected from the greatest sculptor of the age of
Alexander, a sculptor whom it is permissible, if not obligatory, to
regard as at least twenty years younger than Praxiteles. It has been
thought that what we know or guess of other sculptures of the age
of Alexander and later can be brought into intelligible relation to
the apoxyomenus, considered as Lysippean. And as not the least
potent argument, there has been the feeling that this statue is too
fine to be the work of some nameless or obscure sculptor of post-
Lysippean date.

These considerations would probably still continue to seem sufficient
to every one. had not a new claimant for Lysippean authorship made
its appearance, with credentials which have carried conviction far
and wide. I refer to the marble statue of Agias * found some ten
years ago at Delphi. This is one of a group or rather a row of eight
statues, representing eight members of a Pharsaiian family, the
family of one Daochus, tetrarch of Thessaly, who set them up soon
after the battle of Chseroneia (338 B. c.). The pedestal bore inscrip-
tions, mostly metrical, giving the names of the persons represented,
but no sculptors' signatures. Some of the statues, and above all the
Agias. appeared from the first to the fortunate discoverer to exhibit
the style of Lysippus. The matter entered a new stage in 1900. with
the publication,2 accompanied by an acute commentary, of a frag-
mentary inscription from Pharsalus, all but identical with the one
engraved at Delphi below the statue of Agias. but with the important
addition of the name of Lysippus as sculptor. There was then a statue
of Agias by Lysippus at Pharsalus. Of this statue, presumably of
bronze, nothing further is directly known, but it is inferred on
reasonable grounds that it was one of a series identical in subjects
with the scries at Delphi and probably set up a little earlier. So far.
so good. The next step is to infer that the unsigned marble Agias at
Delphi is a contemporary and trustworthy copy of the bronze
Agias by Lysippus at Pharsalus. and this inference lias been promptly
accepted by leading archaeologists, German. French, and English,
without a murmur of doubt or protest, so far as I know, from any
quarter. Hut whereas some who speak with authority have regarded

616 CLASSICAL ART

the Agias and the apoxyomenus as harmonious productions of a
single artist, and as in fact confirming each other's claims to Lysip-
pean authorship, another view is that the apoxyomenus shows such
fundamental differences from the Agias and from other undisputedly
fourth-century works that it must not only be denied to Lysippus,
but be assigned to a post-Lysippean date. The argument is summed
up in these sentences: "The feet are in the case of the apoxyomenus
a feature which can scarcely be reconciled with a fourth-century
origin. If we compare them with the foot of the Hermes of Praxiteles
we shall find not merely a difference of school, but a difference so
deep that it must show a different date. And can another work of
the fourth century be found which shows the mastery of anatomy,
and the precision in the rendering of detail, which we find in the
apoxyomenus?" 1

But, after all, why should we regard the Agias of Delphi as Lysip-
pean? The Thessalian tetrarch resident in Pharsalus decides to set
up in his own city bronze statues representing earlier members of
his family and himself, and for this series he engages the talent
of the foremost sculptor in bronze of the day, and perhaps that of
others. At the same time or later he decides to set up at Delphi
marble statues representing the same persons. That he should
use the same metrical epigrams for the two series is natural and
appropriate. But is there any reason why the two sets of figures
should look exactly alike? None, that I can sec. The earlier members
of the series, including the Agias, must probably be imaginary
portraits, and I cannot suppose that any Greek would compare two
sets of imaginary portraits in places separated by a journey of several
days to sec whether they agreed, or that he would be in the least
surprised or disconcerted if he should happen to notice discrepancies.
If it were a common practice of the time to make exact copies of
statues, then, indeed, it would be the most economical and might
be the most natural thing to have the bronze statues copied in
marble. But in spite of what Pliny says about the invention by
Lysistratus, brother of Lysippus, of the art of making casts from
statues, there is no good reason to think that exact copying was
common in Lysippus's day; indeed, some would go so far as to say
that it was not practiced at all. Therefore, I think that Daochus
would give the commission for the Delphian series, not to Lysippus
and his associates, but to a sculptor or sculptors who habitually
worked in marble, not hampering them with restrictions as to the
relationship of their work to the other series. Whether they would
be likely or not to be dominated by the influence of Lysippus, it is
impossible to say n priori; perhaps not. as his work seems to have
been exclusively in bronze. At all events, it is clearly unsafe to
1 P. Gardner, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1903, p. 130.

PROBLEMS IN HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE 617

make the Agias our basis for determining the personal style of
Lysippus.

What is certain, then, is that, in the Agias of Delphi we have a
marble statue contemporary with Lysippus, and the question recurs
whether, in view of its qualities and those of other works of the time
known to us in originals or in copies, we are forced to assign the
apoxyomenus to a post-Lysippean date. As in the case of Phidias
we faced the question, ho\v wide a range of variation is possible to
a single artist, so here we face the question, how wide a range of
variation is possible to different artists living at the same time and
under the same general conditions. For my own part, I am disposed
to think that there is no fatal objection to believing that Lysippus,
whom 1 regard as belonging to a younger generation than Praxiteles,
was himself the creator of those innovations which mark the apoxy-
omenus off from the Agias. And I am confirmed in this opinion when
it is pointed out to me how far Leonardo da Vinci was in advance of
Lorenzo di Credi, who was actually by seven years Leonardo's
junior.

Finally, some one may ask, "Is all this painful balancing of
probabilities worth while? Why pursue this difficult path toward
a dubious end? Why not take each remnant of classic art for just
what it is in itself, enjoying it according to its merits, and not tor-
menting ourselves with trying to establish its relations to other
existent or non-existent things?" Perhaps these questions take us
beyond the proper bounds of the subject prescribed for this address.
Nevertheless, I beg leave to say in answer that I have a good deal
of sympathy with the point of view which prompts such questions.
For the great multitude of cultivated people the important thing
is to know and appreciate works of art, rather than to understand
their history. A knowledge of the history of Greek sculpture is no
more1 necessary to an enjoyment of the Flgin marbles than a know-
ledge1 of the history of music is necessary to an enjoyment of a
symphony by Beethoven. There is reason to fear that in academic
teaching the historical side of the study of art is disproportionately
emphasized. But that detailed and comparative scrutiny upon
which a knowledge of the history of art rests ought not to slide the
power of enjoyment. Rather it ought to make enjoyment richer and
deeper. Moreover the intellect has its rights, as well as the a'sthetic
faculty. It is a legitimate, yes. with some an imperative, desire to
know what can be known of the1 conditions, material and spiritual,
that gave birth to immortal works of art. But let us not forget that
what gives dignity to this study is the power of the work of art to
stir the emotions, to divert, console, inspire. If we forget that, our
studv is ban-en of its chief regard.

SECTION B — MODERN ARCHITECTURE

SECTION B — MODERN ARCHITECTURE

(Hall 7, September 22, 3 p. m.)

CHAIRMAN: MR. CHARLES F. McKiM, New York City.
SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR C. ENLART, University of Paris.

PROFESSOR ALFRED D. F. HAMLIN, Columbia University.
SECRETARY: MR. GUY LOWELL, Boston, Mass.

THE Chairman of the Section of Modern Architecture, Mr. Charles
F. McKim, of New York City, spoke as follows:

"The unexampled opportunity offered our profession by this
international congress to meet and hear a great number of eminent
men of learning from all parts of the world, and to do honor to our
distinguished guests, has drawn us together to-day. The tribute you
make by your presence is abundant proof of your interest, at a time
when the demands of professional practice arc both numerous and
imperative. It is eminently fit and proper that one of the divisions
of this great congress should be devoted to architecture; not only is
this true, but we are highly fortunate to be assembled here in a com-
munity whose splendid spirit of progress in recent years has placed
it in the front rank of cities in the march of public improvement.

" Under these circumstances,! deem it a high privilege and pleasure
to be permitted to welcome you to this session on 'Modern Archi-
tecture.' Architecture is the oldest of the arts. Its principles were
developed early in the history of the race. Its laws were formulated
long before the Christian Era, and its most exquisite (lowers bloomed
under the skies that fostered the production of beauty. An era of
unequaled material and industrial prosperity throughout the coun-
try, together with a better understanding on the part of our builders,
has brought to us great opportunities. But we should realize that
great opportunities demand thorough training, that confidence comes
not from inspiration, but from knowledge, that the architect who
would build for the ages to come must have1 training of the ages that
are gone. lie must be faithful to the present, mindful of the future,
and yet not separated from the1 past. 1 think we may say of our Muse
what, in his recent tribute to Columbia. Bishop Greer said on the
occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of that uni-
versity:

" She journey;- on. o'er that lonely steep, the hinder foot still firmer.''

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE TO THE STUDY
OF OTHER PERIODS OF THE ART

BY CAMILLE ENLART
(Translated from the French by Mr. F. P. Keppel, of Columbia University)

[Camille Enlart, Professor of Comparative History of Architecture, University
of Paris; and Director of the Collection of the Trocadero.]

I SHALL endeavor to present a rapid review of the evolution of the
study of the architectural history of the Middle Ages and of the
present condition of this study, so far as it relates to France. It is
essentially a modern science: Nothing, however, is so modern as not
to have its roots in the past, and from the sixteenth century on, there
were those who were interested in the monuments of the Middle Ages:
in particular, their beauties had appealed to two scholarly architects,
Philibert de 1'Orme, who recommended the work of the old masters
in architecture as models of construction; and Jacques Androuet
du Cerceau, who made a collection of rcleves "of the most excellent
buildings of France." However, the whole point of view of the artists
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rendered the Middle Ages
utterly unintelligible to them: the historians alone studied the period,
and in their study, so far as the records show us, the fine arts played
but a small part. Two celebrated scholars. Peiresc, who died in 1637,
and Gaiguieres, who died in 1715, made collections of drawings of
those monuments which relate to the history of France; and from
1729 to 1733 the Benedictine Convent of Montfaucon published
a series of engravings of the same kind of subjects under the title,
Monuments of the French Monarchy. This work is, however, very
imperfect.

It would seem that the Abbe Le Boeuf. the historian of the Diocese
of Paris, who died in 1760, regarded our monuments with less scorn
and with more just appreciation than did his contemporaries. His
opinions regarding them were sufficiently definite to warrant him in
assigning exact dates to the buildings, but no one took the trouble to
•rather together his lectures or his manuscript notes.

To this unjust neglect of the art of the Middle Ages the Revolution
added actual hate. Until then the buildings had been spared because
of religious associations or out of respect for the ancient territorial
families, but now these memories became odious, and acts of vandal-
ism became matters of principle. However, there were two men,
more thoughtful than their contemporaries, who interested them-
selves in the monuments at this period: Alexandre Lenoir obtained
permission from the Convention to create a museum of French

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 623

architecture from debris gathered from all the edifices that had been
sacked, and Millin went about through France, in order to sketch the
most curious examples and to learn something about their history.
He published his National Antiquities from 1790 to 1798, and in
1792, an Englishman named Ducarel came over to study the subject,
and published in England a book on the Norman edifices of France.
The first really critical work was written in 1816 by a member of
the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Emeric David. His
History of French Sculpture shows a point of view astonishingly in
advance of his time; and his work is so accurate and his references
so clear that to-day one can hardly do more than change a few lines
here and there. It must be added that this work could find no pub-
lisher during the lifetime of its author. It did not appear until forty
years after it was written; and while the great History of Art through
its Architectural Monuments by Seroux d'Agincourt, published in
1827, is a trustworthy effort, it is a work that in comparison to that
of David seems very immature. The men who in 1795 had overturned
the throne and the altar were in all matters of art most fervent
believers, indeed, almost Ultramontanes. The doctrine of the infalli-
bility of the Roman ideas in art in their eyes did not admit of the
slightest discussion; the Restoration hardly modified their ideas.
Chateaubriand, however, discovered the poetry of the Gothic churches;
and in general it was through the men of letters that the Middle Ages
were already on the way toward being understood and appreciated,
when, about 1830, the Romantic movement brought about freedom
of thought in matters relating to art.

Like all revolutions, the Romantic movement went too far, and it
misunderstood the true nature of those principles whose beauty it
had discovered; but it is not often that public opinion is conquered
by just and well-balanced ideas. Public opinion was brought to
appreciate the- architecture of the Middle Ages by Victor Hugo and
his school, and the official sanction of this worthy renaissance was
the creation of the Commission on Historical Monuments in 1S38,
and. in 1S47, the establishment of I' E cole des Charles, where a course
in national archaeology was offered by the director. .1. Quicherat,
Through these institutions there has come about a logical and
scholarly procedure in restorations and in the study of our edifices
from the historical point of view.

With regard to restorations: Just at this time the restoration of
St. Denis had made it clear that a more serious study was absolutely
necessary. The idea of restoring the glories of an edifice which
summed up the annals of the French monarchy had been dear alike
to Napoleon, to Louis XVIII. to Charles X. and to Louis Philippe.
But each one of the three regimes had ignominiously failed to carry
it out. The chief architect. Debret. made himself famous In his

624 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

mistakes. It was still believed with all seriousness that all that was
necessary to do in order to imitate the Middle Ages was to make mis-
takes in composition and in drawing, just as children think that they
imitate a strange language when they make a jargon of discordant
sounds. Never was so much money so maladroitly expended. All
the ornaments of the fagades were robbed of their character. The
great bell-tower was in bad condition; the result of its rebuilding
was its immediate collapse.

To the architect J. B. Antoine de Lassus belongs the honor of
having rediscovered the rules and the real spirit of Gothic art, and
of applying them in the restoration of the cathedral of Notre Dame
de Paris, which was completed by Viollet-le-Duc, and which is a real
masterpiece. At the same time Lassus published the Album of Villard
de Honnecourt. It is a matter of great regret that this learned and
artistic man should have worked so slowly and that his life was so
short. Viollet-le-Duc, who was his collaborator and afterwards his
successor, has eclipsed him; but although much more brilliant as a
writer and much more productive, his restorations were not always
so satisfactory as those of Lassus.

While Victor Hugo was inflaming all imaginations with the art
of the Middle Ages, of which he himself had, by the way, a most
uncritical conception, there were other writers who were rendering
serious services to its history.

In 1828 Baron Taylor and Charles Nodier joined forces to publish
the immense collection of the Voyages Pittoresques ct Romantiques
dans I'anciennc France, which contains some valuable information
and a great number of beautiful and often very accurate lithographic
drawings, precious to-day as witnesses of the condition of the great
works at that time.

A very useful and reliable work was that of the Count Leon tie
Labord. In his researches relating to the history of the dukes of
Burgundy published in 1849-50, he has set an excellent example —
the first of its kind — by showing what may be done for the history
of art by a careful study of the earliest records.

It was for two men, Viollet-le-Duc and Quicherat, respectively, to
establish standards of taste and intelligence with regard to the art
of the Middle Ages, and accurate ideas as to its history and a scholarly
method for its study. Quicherat delivered erudite professorial lectures
at 1'Kcole des Chartes to a picked body of experts. Viollet-le-Duc.
on the other hand, won the favor of the entire public by the
magic of his expositions and deductions and the charm with which
he was aide to present his ideas. He maintained with inimitable
eloquence that, however different might be Greek art, Gothic art
is in no way inferior, either in structure or in beauty, and that it is
far superior to Roman art, which is neither original nor delicate.

625

Viollet-le-Duc's mind was too keen and too active for him not to pass
on from this conclusion to theories for the reform of modern art.
He proclaimed the necessity of a new style which should be as original
and as logical as the Greek or the Gothic. It is, however, from the
point of view of the archaeologist that one must judge him here, and
one is compelled to admit two defects : in the first place he undertook
too much to be able always to go back to the original sources in order
to verify his data. In his admirable encyclopaedia of French archi-
tecture are many errors as to details, corrected by M. Anthyme Saint-
Paul in 1880. Happily these inaccuracies do not militate against the
clarity and the justice of his admirable general ideas on the subject.
In his restorations the same haste brings about the same defects,
and here they are more serious; his confidence in the architectural
principles which he deduced too often urged him to make his re-
storations in a spirit that is dogmatic rather than historical: he
rebuilt edifices as they should have been, instead of restoring them
to what they actually had been. His disciples were beguiled by
his example, with results that the historical student must deplore.
Even worse, charmed as they were by the beauties of unity and logic,
Viollet-le-Duc and his disciples often obliterated from buildings early
repairs which might have been heterogeneous, but which had their
own beauty, and which in any case were of historic value.

Quicherat, on the contrary, was the apostle of truth rather than of
beauty. He was too much of a skeptic to carry his preferences to the
point of enthusiasm; too little a friend of the human race to permit
himself to become a popularizer and prosclyter; his spirit was not
that of the artist, but that of the savant. Disregarding popular
approval, he devoted his labor and his zeal to the attainment of
historical accuracy. He was a patient analyzer, one who put all
documents to the test of a most careful scrutiny, and who never
generalized beyond the limits of prudence. He was the creator of
an admirable school and method, both of them exerting a beneficent
influence that is still felt.

Possibly the essential difference in character of these t\vo men, to
whom we owe the education of the scholar and that of the artist
in France, has had something to do with the antagonism which still
exists between archaeologists and architects.

Contemporary with these two masters, but much less important
than they, one must place the well-known name of M. de Caumont.
the popularizer par excellence of the archaeology of the Middle Ages.
From 1880 to 1870. from the depths of his retreat in Xormandy, he
continued to exorcise a most mischievous influence. May I be per-
mitted to say that the reason that he succeeded in popularizing the
subject is that his conception of it. in contrast to that of Yiollct-
le-Duc and Quicherat. was essentially a commonplace one? Thanks

626 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

to his Alphabet of Archaeology, constantly reissued and revised from
1830 to 1870, the archaeology of the Middle Ages had no longer
any mysteries for the French cure or the chemist of the provincial
town. It became the harmless pastime of the college student on his
vacation; and, thanks to the foundation of the French Society of
Archaeology, with its organ, the Bulletin Monumental, with its annual
congresses and the reports presented at them, all the readers of the
Alphabet came into touch with each other and were enabled to receive
constantly, more or less regular instruction. Thus they learned to
examine and pass judgment upon the architectural monuments in
their neighborhood. When the congress came to them, caretakers and
cures were happy and proud to appear for the occasion as learned
men and to do the honors of their manor-houses or their churches;
the buildings glittering with stained glass and coats of arms recently
renovated and considerably embellished in the process. The work of
De Caumont spread over a considerable surface, because it had prac-
tically no depth; his book is essentially the work of a provincial, it
was made from a study of the Norman monuments; and his horizon
is limited in every direction. Never in all his life did a general idea,
a philosophical conception, or a logical train of reasoning come to
him. His work consists of a series of statements, sufficiently great in
number to make possible the formulating of chronological rules.

The matter was spread out with great regularity, and was then
cut up just as one makes caramels. The divisions follow regular
lines, the arbitrary limits of the centuries; as in geology, each period
has a name. The definitions, like the names, are based upon acci-
dents of form without real bearing, and not upon principles, or
upon forms that are really generic and essential.

Another popularizer, more intelligent than De Caumont, but an
illogical thinker, was Didron. This man accomplished a great deal
of work, and, in his Archaeological Annals, has left a monument of
permanent value. He was an artist of taste, a painter on glass and
a designer of bronzes; a merchant \vho was not averse to advertise-
ment, but, at the same time, a man of considerable scholarship. His
temperament was ardent and controversial; lie was an eloquent
denunciator of vandalism and a militant Catholic. While render-
ing great services to medieval archaeology, he made three serious
mistakes. Justly indignant as lie was at certain restorations, but
immoderate in his criticisms and not entirely free from prejudice1,
he did his share in bringing about the antagonism between archaeo-
logists and architects, an antagonism which is still a misfortune to
both. and. above all. a misfortune to the monuments themselves.

Didron was right in seeing in the art of the Middle Ages the expres-
sion of Christian fivili/ation, but he exaggerated this point of view
to the extent of seeinir nothing; but heresvin the art of the Renaissance

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 627

and that of modern times. Lastly, it was through his influence
that medieval art became closely interwoven with clericalism in the
minds of very many people, with two very unfortunate results : the
creation of a nondescript neo-Gothic art, exaggerated by mys-
ticism (of this, the work of Didron himself furnishes some of the
earliest models) and, secondly, a distrust of medieval art on the part
of the non-clerical public.

Along with these influential men Merimee, a delicate litterateur
and excellent archaeologist, should have an honorable place. In
archaeology, as in literature, he had a keen eye and a refined taste,
and that sense of proportion which Didron lacked. He was able to
bring to light in the French provinces numberless treasures of art
which, upon his recommendation, have been rescued from oblivion
by the Commission on Historical Monuments.

At this time, Revoil, an eminent archaeologist and ardent South-
erner, was a distinguished member of this Commission. We owe to
him a number of restorations of unequal merit and a sumptuous
work upon the Romanesque architecture of the Midi, which contains
beautiful illustrations of more permanent value than the text.

Two other scholars, MM. Vitet and Daniel Ramee, should be men-
tioned as among the best of the archaeologists of the middle of the
nineteenth century. Vitet was the first to prepare an elaborate and
richly illustrated monograph upon a French cathedral. He chose
Noyon, and his work is still the only one that contains adequate
drawings of this edifice; the text is now no longer up to the stand-
ard of our present scientific knowledge, but it has formed a valu-
able basis for later researches. The same may be said of Ramee 's
archaeological studies and his short essay upon the history of archi-
tecture.

Two conscientious archaeologists of keen insight and skilled as
draughtsmen were Leo Drouyn, of Bordeaux, whose Military History
of Guicnnc is a complete and accurate monograph, with illustrations
which were destined to form the most valuable part of the books of
M. de Caumont, and Felix de Yerneilh, of Perigord. known to fame
for his theory that Byzantine art came into France in the tenth
century from the Venetians, a most ingenious theory, but one which
later documentary discoveries have exploded.

While these masters were making known the history of our archi-
tecture, that of our industrial arts was bring defined by such men as
Dusommerard, Paul Lacroix, known as " Bibliophile Jacob," Dareel.
Ferdinand de Lasteyrie. who wrote on the arts of the goldsmith
and the painter upon glass, and, above all. Charles de Linas, whose
researches in gold-work and enameling leave nothing more to be done.
An immense work on the History of the Industrial Arts by Laharte.
written too earlv. unfortunately, is still the only bodv of knowledge

628 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

which we have on this subject. We are, however, expecting its re-
placement by the work of M. E. Molimer.

The fact that the Gothic style had been carried into foreign lands
by French monks had been noted about 1857 by Felix de Verneilh;
about 1860, Palestine and Syria were explored by the Marquis de
Vogue and Baron Rey. The first studied the churches of the Crusaders
and the second their castles. In addition, M. de Vogue brought to
light the Christian architecture of Central Syria during the period
from the fourth to the eighth century, the period which forms the
connecting link between medieval and classic art, and discovered
there the prototypes of our medieval architecture. The period of
Early Christian art in Gaul was illumined by Le Slant's fine volumes
upon Christian sarcophagi.

To the labor of these men, who did so much for the history of the
art of their country, should be added that of foreign scholars. In
England, about 1792, Ducarel made a study of Norman architecture;
later, about the middle of the nineteenth century, Willis published
an edition of the Album of Villard de Honnecourt ; Parker made
a comparison of the French edifices with those of England; Street,
in studying the architecture of Spain and Northern Italy, recognized
very definite French influences. In Germany, Hiibsch, Schnaase,
Sulpice Boisseree, threw considerable light upon the history of our
art.

The results obtained by this first generation of scholars are now
distanced and have had, in many instances, to be corrected; but
they were none the less of value.

Medieval architecture, a dead letter for the men of the eighteenth
century, who, with the sole exception of Le Boeuf, could not assign
a date within a thousand years, had, in 1830, its definite limits, and,
in 1880, at the time of the death of Viollet-le-Duc and Quicherat, the
entire body of its history was made the property of the French
people. The different epochs. Merovingian, Carolingian, and Roman-
esque (with its two divisions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
and its many schools), were recognized, but were not clearly defined.
In the Gothic style three periods were clearly distinguished. The
history of each cathedral and abbey was known and. to some extent,
iho history of the influences of French art upon foreign schools.

But. together with much truth, several errors were being pro-
pagated. For the most tenacious we must thank M. de Caumont.
who. i;ikiim the opposite view from that of Millin, interpreted the
term croisrc d'ogivcs as equivalent to "' pointed arched window."
Caumont callfd the pointed arch the f>yirc. whereas ogives are in
reality the .-aliont ribs forming the groins at the intersection of
two vaults (arc UK of/ivus =<irc de rcnfort). A more serious error, for
it lies in a fact and not in a word, was that which made him choose

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 629

the pointed arch as the characteristic of the Gothic style, which, for
this reason, he christened "ogival." He would by this classification
have brought into Gothic architecture practically all the Romanesque
buildings of Burgundy and Provence and half of those of the Isle
de France; all those of the North, of Central France, and of the
Southwest.

Felix de Verneilh made another blunder; having no knowledge
of the destruction of Saint Front de Perigueux in 1120 by a fire, of
which a complete account appears in the chronicles of the bishops,
he thought that he saw in the famous present church with its domes
the edifice of 1040. He believed it to have been derived from Saint
Mark's at Venice, which was also attributed to the tenth century,
and he saw in it the prototype of the domed churches of Perigord;
whereas, as a matter of fact, many of these latter are much more
ancient, and none of them come down farther than the year 1100.

R6voil, in studying the art of Provence, believed that he could
assign definite dates to very ancient foundations through certain
epigraphic characteristics and certain architectural forms imitated
from the antique. He believed in an unbroken persistence of these
influences in Provence, whereas there was only a renaissance of it in
the twelfth century, as is shown, on the one hand, by the late date
of the buildings that approach nearest to Roman art, Saint Gilles
and Saint Trophime of Aries; and, on the other hand, the crudeness
of those relics that are known to be connected with the Merovingian
or Carolingian periods, as, for instance, the crypts of Saint Victor of
Marseilles, of Montmajour and of Digne.

From 1880 until the present time the schism between the disciples
of Viollet-le-Duc and those of Quicherat has become more clearly
defined. This is due to the divergent paths along which their masters
led and which they followed. The pupils of Quicherat lived in the
speculative domain of history; those of Viollet-le-Duc in the prac-
tical domain of art. Without relinquishing the study of the evolution
of the medieval styles, the architects of the school of Viollet-le-Duc
have more and more come to neglect historical researches in order
to give their attention to the architectural forms, both in the inter-
ests of restoration and of original construction. With regard to
restoration. M. Lucien Magne has come to the point of announcing
as a principle that all attempts to imitate closely the ancient form
should be abandoned, and that the monuments of the past should
rather be completed in a modern style that will be harmonious with
the ancient parts of the building. This principle he has applied very
happily in the church of Bougival.

This whole point of view has met with much opposition in Belgium
from the pupils of Baron Bethune. a rival of Viollet-le-Duc, and by
the professors of 1'Ecole Saint Luc. especially the architect Cloquet.

630 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

These men are most particular as to the question of the imitation of
the Gothic style, even in new buildings, and, as a matter of prin-
ciple, restore the old buildings without the slightest divergence from
the original style.

In France, the most eloquent and the most learned of the pupils
of Viollet-le-Duc, M. de Baudot, has exerted an excellent influence
and has offered a well-attended course in the Museum of the Tro-
cadero. He has made the study of the styles of the Middle Ages and
of the Renaissance serve ends that are not speculative, but prac-
tical. In other words, his results are not copies, but logical deduc-
tions. The Rationalist school, of which he is the head, studies the
principles of the masters of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance
and modifies them in so far as the modern problems have become
modified by new building-materials, better facilities for transport-
ation, more practical mechanical devices, and changes in customs
and needs.

Unfortunately the Rationalist School meets great difficulty in the
fixed habits of contractors and workmen, who- have become accus-
tomed to work and to set their prices in accordance with the prevail-
ing usage. Furthermore, the results obtained by mechanical appli-
ances give a monotony that is not in the spirit of an architecture
that is really carefully studied out in its details.

Still. M. de Baudot has. in the new church of Montmartre. suc-
ceeded in creating entirely new forms adapted to iron and cement
construction; and another artist, M. Plumet, has carried on higher
and higher the art of adapting from the Gothic forms a modern archi-
tecture that is at the same time thoroughly logical and thoroughly
satisfactory.

The Middle Ages have come to exert so strong an influence on our
study that, for the last fifteen years. 1'Ecole des Beaux Arts itself
has maintained a course by M. Paul Boeswilwald which acquaints
young architects with the artistic history of their country: and,
shortly after this course began, one was opened by M. Lucien Magne
upon decorative art. in which the principles of M. Viollet-le-Duc were
openly approved.

One idea of Viollet-le-Duc 's, which was realized only after his death,
has become very fruitful in its results. This was the establishment,
in 1SS2. of the Museum of Sculpture and Architecture at the Tro-
cadero. The Museum has developed in an astonishing way. and it has
been literally a revelation to the public. It contains casts of carefully
selected examples from the architecture of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, and makes them still better known to the public by
sale of copies.

Architectural work in France is to-day improving, and no one can
question that the present advance in style and accuracy is the result

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 631

of the general propagation by those who have come under the influ-
ence of the instruction of Quicherat and of the methods of 1'Ecole
des Chartes.

The influence of the successor and the chief disciple of Quicherat,
M. de Lasteyrie, is predominant among the present historians of
French art. He had many pupils, and the results of his teaching have
been more immediately felt than those of M. de Baudot, as the pub-
lication of books does not offer the same practical difficulties as the
construction of buildings. M. de Lasteyrie and his pupils, of whom I
have the honor to be one, give their attention as much to the careful
study of historical records as to that of architectural forms, and their
methods of research are equally rigorous in both. Thanks to their
efforts, the history of medieval architecture has achieved an extra-
ordinary precision as to dates and general conclusions. The desire to
be able to settle everything exactly has, however, sometimes tempted
some of us too far. By crediting certain vague texts with an accu-
racy which they do not possess, we have made serious blunders. In
his last work, M. de Lasteyrie gives a rather dangerous example,
when, having noticed with regard to the cathedral of Chartres that
introitur ccclcsie cannot possibly have reference to the doorway, he
affirms that the portal of Saint Gilles was completed in 1170 because
an act was passed in that year ante fores ecclesie. A similar case is
that in which he affirms that the southern tower of Chartres is more
ancient than the porch because a tower is a more necessary archi-
tectural feature than a porch. Some of the errors resulting from
the too eager scrutiny of the texts are not less dangerous than the
too absolute judgments of Yiollet-le-Duc. M. Lefevre Pontalis makes
an error of more than a quarter-century as to the date of the church
of Bellefontaine from having believed that a formal permission to
build in 1124 must have immediately been followed by actual con-
struction, and he has multiplied the error through assigning dates
to a number of other churches as the result of his conclusions as
to Bellefontaine. A disregard for historical accuracy threatens to
make very difficult the establishment of a geographical chart for
the Romanesque schools of architecture. For the last twenty years,
the pupils of M. de Lasteyrie have devoted themselves to the study
of these schools, taking as a framework the ecclesiastical boundary
lines, although, as indeed would be the case to-day, the influence
that held certain groups of artists within certain territories could not
have been other than political, — the influence of vassalage. The
frontiers of the spiritual jurisdiction were entirely different.

It was from 1'Ecoledes Chartes that there came an authority whose
too early death occurred only a few years ago, Louis Courajod.
He established a course on the history of French art at 1'Kcole
clu Louvre, for which a worthv successor has been found in the

632 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

person of Andre Michel. While taking a most scrupulous account of
the texts, their teaching rests much more on the aesthetic point of
view than did that of Quicherat and his successors, and it certainly
does not seem to be less fruitful in results than that of 1'Ecole des
Chartes. Courajod indeed erred, from time to time, by reason of his
too vivid imagination. His theory, basing the origin of the Gothic
style upon the necessities of construction in wood, which has been
contradicted by the actual facts, has been abandoned. One of
his pupils, M. Albert Marignan, has shown himself to be a distin-
guished architect of unquestioned originality. Through his undertak-
ing to prove that they were of much more recent date than had
been believed, he has to his credit the bringing about of a general
reconsideration of the dates of the most celebrated monuments. The
buildings lend themselves only in a small degree to Marignan's
attempt; for instance, his opinions with regard to the great doorway
of Chartres and the tapestries of Bayeux have provoked most inter-
esting replies from M. de Lasteyrie as to Chartres and M. Lanore as
to Bayeux.

An authority who is a teacher only by his writings, M. Anthyme
Saint-Paul, has a wide and most salutary influence in pointing out the
historical errors of Viollet-le-Duc and in editing with modern scholar-
ship and critical insight the archaeological sections of the Guides
Joanne. He has brought an immense mass of accurate information
within the reach of the public, and has corrected a number of errone-
ous theories.

Another independent authority, the ingenious M. Auguste
Choisy, has published monographs that are masterly in their technical
analysis of Roman and Byzantine architecture, exhibiting a penetra-
tion and a power of synthesis that are beyond all praise. Here and
there only, in points of detail, is there a lack of information or an
erroneous historical deduction.

One must also say a word with reference to the interesting labors of
the Count de Dion upon two branches of medieval architecture that
have been too much neglected, the chateaux and the monasteries,
and also the valuable research of the lamented Palustre upon the
French Renaissance. One cannot say too much in praise of the work
of M. Emile Male upon the Religious Art of the Thirteenth Century, —
too comprehensive a title, by the way, — of which t\vo editions
liavf appeared within the last three years. The author lias traced
with astonishing success the literary sources from which have come
the paintings arid sculptures that decorate our churches.

In addition to the publication by provincial societies of architect-
ural statistics, along various lines and of most unequal merit, — and
in general distinctly inferior to those published in Germany, -
researches have been made into the different schools of art of the

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 633

French provinces, arid particularly as to the art of the Romanesque
school. Revoil studied in Provence, and Ruprich Robert, the elder,
worked later in Normandy. Their labors are important, but incom-
plete, and their conclusions can be accepted only in part. We owe to
M. Brutails a masterly study on religious art in Roussillon. Finally
the lamented M. Rochemonteix studied the Romanesque art of the
altar. The greater part of this research appears in the form of
theses by the students of 1'Ecole des Chartes. Among eleven theses
of this character only four have been published, those of MM. Lefevre
Pontalis, Jean Virey, Thiollier, and my own. The French school at
Rome has now taken up researches into the history of art on its own
account. From 1889 to 1894 I studied in Rome the French origins of
Gothic art, and this year M. Bertaux published there the first volume
of a most important study on the art of Southern Italy. Other
works are in preparation. The students of the school at the Louvre,
unwilling to be left behind by their rivals, have been doing their
share in this work. Up to the present time they have occupied them-
selves mainly with the Renaissance, M. Vitry in a beautiful book
upon Michel Colombo, and MM. Marquet de Vasselot and Raymond
Koechlin in the study of the sixteenth-century sculpture at Troyes.
M. Salomon Reinach has carried on to the period of the Middle Ages
the course of lectures upon national antiquities delivered by M. Ber-
tram!. Two experts, who were friends of the lamented Courajod,
MM. Andre Michel and Lemonnier, faithfully gathered together his
lecture-notes, and have published them. Finally, I myself have been
able to bring out, within the last two years, two volumes of a manual
of French archaeology, in which ] think has been gathered together
the present knowledge of our national architecture from the sixth to
the sixteenth century.

For the past one hundred years foreign archaeologists have con-
stantly been making important cont ributions t o the hist ory of French
architecture. In 1792 the Englishman Ducarel led his French con-
freres in the study of the Xorman architectural monuments. In our
own time, an American and two Germans have1, similarlv, led in the
siiuly of certain historical questions.

The French archaeologists have confined themselves too closely
to their own country, and the superiority of several of these foreign
works lies in the fact that their authors were able to see French archi-
tecture in the light of their knowledge of that of other countries. It
is these comparisons that give its great value to Professor Dehio's
exhaustive work on Occidental Kcdesiastical Architecture, the pub-
lication of which began in 1885. This is a colossal work, which coin-
bines much personal research with a rt'sunx' of manv hundreds of
ot her books, t he whole being unified b\- his personal point of view, just
as all the drawings in the work are upon the same scale. For the future

634 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

this publication must be regarded as an indispensable tool for all who
wish to make a serious study of medieval art.

The first man to publish a complete book upon Gothic architecture,
and to show that the beginnings and the culmination of this architec-
ture were in France, was Professor Charles Moore of Harvard Univer-
sity. This excellent book, published first in 1889, had a great success
and was republished, with many improvements, in 1900. It is one
of the most original and most logical works that have been written
upon the subject. Mr. Moore admits as "Gothic architecture" only
the purest types, all very rare, and practically limited to the Isle de
France: the imperfect Gothic he calls "pointed architecture." This
system of classification is a little radical, and the expression "pointed ''
seems unsatisfactory, because the pointed arch was a frequent element
in Romanesque architecture.

Finally, among the most important foreign works must be men-
tioned the book of Dr. YVilhelm Voge on The Beginnings of the Monu-
mental Styles of the Middle Ages. It is a history of the origins of monu-
mental sculpture in France, and is precious on account of the range
of its researches, the accuracy of its statements, and its richness in
comparisons. The general conclusions, however, appear in the light of
our present information to be capable of refutation.

An Italian. Commandatore Rivoira. has made a very important
study of the Lombard influences in France, and an Englishman.
John Hilson. has just produced most disturbing but most convincing
documents with reference to Ihe origin of the Gothic style.

In conclusion. I should like to outline the questions that have
to-day been settled, and those thai are still debatable.

The chronology of the buildings and the method of their study have
reached the maximum of accuracy. Nowadays, indeed, we have more
than one example of too great accuracy. The history of our art in the
Middle Ages has been written and many errors have been rectified.
The history of our Merovingian and Carolingian epochs remains
obscure. In 1*91 M. de Laslcyrie pointed out Quicherat's errors in
the restoration of the Basilica of St. Martin, of Tours. M. Brut ails
and M. Ma it re are still discussing the date of St. Philibert de Grandlieu.
Since ISS'2. Daniel Ramee has been demonstrating how uncertain
arc1 all the attributions of dates to those buildings that are regarded
as earlier than the year 1000. The1 question of Oriental origins enters
into the >t udy of 1 he work of ( his period. MM. Last eyrie and Brut ails
arc1 not prepared to u'o as far upon this point as arc1 M. de Vogue and
I )ieulafov and Choisy. M. Grell. however, lias come to the conclusion
from his studv of I lie Basilicas of Algeria and Tunis that these devel-
oped along with those of Ihe Occident, and notes curious likenesses
between the two. Commandalore Rivoira. on the other hand, in his
fine work on the origins of Lombard art. makes clear that from the

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 635

fifth to the ninth century Italy had nothing to do with the Orient,
and created on her own behalf an analogous art, whose monuments
are anterior to those of the Byzantine Empire. As to the Romanesque
epoch, M. Anthyme Saint-Paul, in opposition to the opinions of
Verneilh and Corroyer, has just demonstrated that the school of
Perigord does not go back as far as the tenth century, but only
about as far as the year 1100, and that Saint Front of Perigueux,
rebuilt later than 1120, is not its most ancient edifice.

The Byzantine origin of this French school is denied by M. Brutails,
but I hope to be able to show that its models are probably Cypriote
edifices of from the ninth to the twelfth century. The geography and
the classification of the Romanesque and Gothic schools has not yet
been entirely cleared up, but it is in the way of being so.

That the Gothic style originated in France is to-day universally
recognized. The history of its diffusion into other lands is known in
a general way, and has been studied in detail with regard to France,
Spain, Scandinavia, and the Island of Cyprus. I have recognized the
English origin of the "flamboyant" style, which was developed in
France, but whose elements found their origin in England one or two
centuries before their adoption with us.

One question, however, remains in great obscurity, — the origin of
the groined ribbed vault (croisee d'ogives}. Contrary to the opinion
of Quicherat, Max van Berchem has shown that the Romans did
not know this feature of architectural construction, and that the
"cancri" of the lighthouse at Alexandria were "crabs," analogous to
those bronze crabs of the Cleopatra's Needle now in New York in
the care of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The most ancient
groined ribbed vaults may well be those of Saint Ambrose of Milan.
M. Dirteni, in his fine book on Lombard art, attributes these to
the ninth century. Cattaneo refuted him in 1S89, but MM. Dehio,
Rivoira. and Moore still believe them to be of the eleventh century.
In support of this theory. M. Rivoira has cited a church at Monte-
fiascone which at the same time has this element, and bears a
commemorative inscription placing its construction in the eleventh
century. Unhappily, this inscription, embedded in a facade which
was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, might, and probably did. be-
long to an earlier church of which no other trace remains to-day.
This church, therefore, proves nothing. On the other hand, I have
demonstrated that the most ancient examples of Gothic art in
Italy date from the end of the twelfth and from the thirteenth
century, and were introduced from Burgundy by the monks of
Citeaux. a fact which Mr. A. L. Frothingham, Jr., announced at
the same time that I did. and one about which no one is any
longer in doubt. The attribution of the Ambrosian vaults to the
eleventh century does not exactly accord with this point of view.

636 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Mr. John Bilson has shown that Durham Cathedral in England had
groined ribbed vaults between 1093 and 1104, and M. de Lasteyrie
has not been able to bring any convincing arguments against this.
The groined ribbed vault must then have been of Anglo-Norman
origin, for M. Lefevre Pontalis has not succeeded in maintaining
against the arguments of M. Anthyme Saint-Paul the attribution
of the groined ribbed vaults of Morienval to an earlier date than
1120, and no other French example can with certainty be assigned
to an earlier period.

As to the Gothic style itself, MM. de Lasteyrie, Moore, Gonse, and
Lefevre Pontalis believe it to have originated in the Isle de France.
M. Dehio alone believes it was due to the collaboration of the master
builders of France, Picardy, Burgundy, Lombardy, and Anjou, an
hypothesis that neither M. Saint-Paul nor I myself regard as in-
admissible.

M. de Lasteyrie has shown, as has M. Marignan, that, contrary to
the opinion of M. de Vogue, the statued portals of Saint Denis and of
Chartres are earlier than those of Saint Gilles and of Aries. They were
all built in the second half of the twelfth century, but the typical
model came from the North and not from the South. This fact is
definitely decided, and there is no longer any discussion except as to
differences of a few years with regard to the dates of Chartres and
Le Mans.

An error in terminology with reference to the end of the Middle
Ages was started when Courajod gave the name of Burgundian School
to the work of Flemish sculptors who worked at Dijon at the end of
the fourteenth and during the fifteenth century. It is interesting
to see that Belgium itself, following this classification, displays its
national sculpture under the title of Burgundian School. I found
recently in Flanders at Douai fragments that are contemporary with
the famous tombs at Dijon, and identical in style. The Flemish art of
Dijon was not in any way different from that of its native land. The
origins of this Flemish art, however, were French, as Mr. Koechlin
has now demonstrated. Finally, there is still discussion as to how
great was the Italian influence in the French Renaissance. The
lamented Eugene Miintz, in a clear exposition of the character of this
influence, while restating the story of Laurana and his works, does
not throw into sufficient light the personal character that the French
architects and sculptors succeeded in giving to their imitations of
Italian art. On the other hand, the late Leon Palustre showed
himself most illogical in exaggerating this originality and in mini-
mizing the influence of the Italians in France. M. Vachon has taken
up in this spirit the parts played respectively by Boccador and
Chambiges in the building of the Hotel de Ville of Paris. His ar-
guments rest, however, on engravings and tapestries of doubtful

RELATIONS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 637

authenticity. This question will be settled not only in this particular
case, but for the whole period, by the study which Baron Geymuller
has just published in Germany on the French Renaissance, and which
will be translated. He makes most interesting revelations as to the
lack of originality of such buildings as the Chateau de Blois, where
imperfections have been servilely copied from the Italian models.
This work apparently is to be the final word upon the question.

I will conclude this rapid review, ladies and gentlemen, by saying
that nothing is more fruitful than the comparative study of art and
that nothing can be of greater value than such a gathering as I have
just had the honor of addressing. This honor will always be one of
the happiest memories of my career as a scholar, and I thank you,
ladies and gentlemen, for your kind reception and for the courteous
attention with which you have heard me.

THE PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

BY ALFRED DWIGHT FOSTER HAMLIN

[Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin, Professor of the History of Architecture, Head
of School of Architecture, Columbia University, b. September 5, 1855, Con-
stantinople, Turkey. A.B. Amherst College, "1875; A.M. ibid. 1885. Post-
graduate, Mass. Institute of Technology, 1876-77; Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris,
1878-81. Special Assistant, Department of Architecture, School of Mines,
Columbia University, 1883-87; Instructor, 1887-89; Assistant Professor,
1889-91; Adjunct Professor, 1891-1904. Corresponding Member of the Ameri-
can Institute of Architects. Member of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and
Sciences, Architectural League of New York, National Geographic Society.
Author of A History of Architecture ; European and Japanese Gardens, in col-
laboration with others. Contributor of many titles to Johnson's Encyclopaedia,
International Encyclopedia, and Sturgis's Dictionary of Architecture.]

IT is not easy to estimate correctly the significance and true
proportions of present-day movements. We are so near them, that
by the laws of historical perspective — as inexorable as those of
linear perspective — the relative importance and true dimensions
of things are distorted into false aspects. If the observer would not
be misled by mere appearances, he must seek to divest himself of the
traditional prejudices of his present-day environment, and survey
the scene from heights whence he may command broader horizons
and discover the larger aspects of the view. If we cannot reach the
mountain summits of detached and impartial criticism, we can at
least attain the nearer heights, and find profit in the survey from
even so modest an elevation.

We are asked to consider the Problems of Modern Architecture.
This title may be interpreted in various ways; but for the purposes
of this discussion I shall take it to refer to those great questions of
tendency which have become insistent with the progress and the
changes of modern civilization: the questions of the whence and
the whither of modern architecture. How have modern conditions
come about, and how shall we deal with them? How shall the art
be vitalized? What influences are impinging upon it, and how under
these influences may it be guided in the direction of progress? It
is these broad problems of present drift and future development
which I have chosen to discuss, rather than the technical details of
modern office practice. If it is important for the critic and the
theorist to acquaint themselves with the practical aspects of the art,
it may also be profitable for the active practitioner to look up and
away from his drawing-board and take account for a brief space of
these larger questions of his art.

Let us first briefly note the way we have come during the past
century, so that by observing the force and direction of the influences
that have brought us to our present station we may the better take

PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 639

our bearings and judge of our future course. So widely do the de-
velopments of the nineteenth century in architecture seem to differ
from anything we observe in its previous history that we might
almost imagine that the laws which have controlled the progress
of the arts in earlier ages had ceased to operate. In the matter of
style, for instance, the apparent confusion of the present day stands
in striking contrast with the unity of Greek or of Gothic art. But
this contrast is not due to the failure of the laws which have governed
the evolution of styles in the past, but to new conditions producing new
results under the same laws. These laws are not enactments, but
simply the observed Avays of working of the human mind in matters
of art: the outward expression in practice of principles which are
fundamental and immutable. If the stock formulae of historic crit-
icism fail to fit our modern art, the fault lies in the form of their
statement, not in the laws they express; and the defect of statement
comes from their being framed upon the experience of ages in which
the conditions were widely different from those of to-day. We must
devise new forms for their expression, in terms of present-day
experience. If. for instance, we cease to define architectural styles
in terms of profiles and features and details of design, and apply
as criteria of style the broader considerations of spirit, feeling,
structure, mass, and composition, we may discover underlying the
apparent confusion of modern styles certain unities of spirit and
method upon which we can build new definitions of modern styles.
If the critic of future days shall find, as I believe he will find, no
great difficulty in recognizing the architecture of our time by these
controlling characteristics, then he will with perfect justice predicate
the style of this period as defined by these characteristics. The
confusion of details borrowed from past ages will trouble him no more
than we are troubled by the appearance of Doric and Ionic columns
together in the Propykea at Athens, or by finding in Greek archi-
tecture elements of both Egyptian and Asiatic origin. And when he
notes the prevalent use, as a decorative dress for steel-frame build-
ings, of forms originally belonging to lit hie architecture, he will see
therein the working of the same law of stylo-evolution by which
the Greek perpetuated in stone many details originating in wooden
construction, and by which the Roman incorporated into his archi-
tecture of vaults and arches, of brick and concrete, the columnar
details which he had learned from the Greeks.

Let us now briefly review the origin of the changed conditions
which so sharply mark off the nineteenth century from all previous
periods in the history of art.

The nineteenth century was ushered in by profound political and
social disturbances following the great democratic revolutions in
America and France, and lasting through the whole first half of the

640 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

century. Society was adjusting itself to new conceptions of govern-
ment and new political boundaries. The interests of art were crowded
out of the thoughts of men. There was at the same time in progress
a profound intellectual revolution. Modern philosophy, modern
physical science, modern archaeology, were taking scientific shape,
giving rise to new conceptions of the universe. The dethronement of
the intellectual authority of hieratic religion, begun by the humanists
in the fifteenth century, became complete with the establishment of
the theory of evolution. Religion has become so largely a matter
of the individual conscience that it has ceased to be an important
factor in influencing architectural development in general.

More directly, though not more profoundly influential in the trans-
formation of architectural conditions, were the industrial changes
of the same half-century. Steam power and the rise of mechanical
manufacture, with its concentration of industry in special localities,
and its system of specialized activity which we call the division of
labor, completely revolutionized the world's work, substituting the
operative for the artist-artisan, and machine-reproduction for indi-
vidual design and hand-craft. The rapid growth of international
commerce was meanwhile breaking down the boundaries of national
and local styles, making every region familiar with the work and
taste of all others. The growth of archaeological science, greatly
favored by the invention of photography and its application to
engraving, was in like manner breaking down the barriers of time,
making the works of past ages as familial1 to our generation as
those of its own time. Thus, while artistic taste and feeling were
becoming atrophied from disuse, the strongest temptation was
supplied to substitute archaeological imitation for original design.
Out of this condition arose successively the (ireek and (lothic re-
vivals, each hailed in its turn as the sure panacea for the artistic
a-nu'iuia of architecture in that day. The beauty of not a few of the
individual works which resulted stands in conspicuous contrast with
the general artistic destitution of the time. It testifies to the fact
that the spark of art is inextinguishable, and that good architec-
ture is u-ood in whatever language of stylo it is expressed.

As if further to confuso the problem of architecture in the middle
period of the nineteenth century, the development of iron introduced
into construction an entirely new element. The architects, avoiding
it. as intractable for (Ireok or (lot hie or lloman design, allowed it to
fall into the hands of the engineers, and the magnificent opportun-
ity it offered for the creation of a new. living, rational, and artist it-
type of building-design, by the vast spans and airv construction
it made possible. - -this opportunity passed by unimproved. The
Romans taugln the world the majesty of spacious vaulted halls:
the medieval builders the solemn u'randeur of lontr and lol'tv vistas;

PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 641

modern engineers and architects taught us how utterly forbidding
and ugly a great, wide, and lofty roof can be made. Now that men
have learned the fallacy of the historic revivals, and have begun to
seek out more rational ways of handling these resources, they have
to contend with traditions established by seventy years of inartistic
engineering. The French alone have, during these years, given
the world the benefit of repeated efforts to lift iron construction out
of the slough of artistic despond, — as in the Halles Centrales, the
Church of Saint Augustine, and the exhibitions of 1878 and 1889,
particularly the Salle des Machines of the latter exhibition.

Architecture, thus, on the threshold of the twentieth century,
finds itself in a condition which it has never before experienced. Its
resources, both for construction and design, are richer than ever
before in history. The phenomenal activity and inventiveness of the
technical industries, and the interchanges of commerce, have placed
at the architects' disposal a marvelous variety of building-materials
and processes, which they are constantly increasing by new additions.
Iron, steel, bronze, and aluminum; concrete and artificial stones;
bricks of endless variety of form and color; terra-cottas, faience and
tiles without end; roofing-materials of ingenious design; paints and
cements and plasters of every sort; lumber and timber from the
ends of the earth, prepared in marvelously elaborate fashion; new
systems of construction of extraordinary ingenuity and efficiency -
all these the architect of to-day finds spread before him. Machinery
lightens the physical task of those who labor to produce the results
he seeks in his design. On the artistic side he has the advantage of
choosing, from the endless catalogue of building-forms and materials
offered him in open market, whatever shade, color, texture, quality,
and effect he desires, in wood or metal, stone, glass, tile, brick,
terra-cotta, plaster, or textile hangings.

But along with this marvelous increase in its resources, architec-
ture has had laid upon it tasks at least proportionately more varied,
complex, and difficult than those of earlier ages.

Greek architecture reached its perfection of refinement not only
because the Greeks were endowed with a marvelous artistic instinct,
but also because artistic effort was for centuries concentrated upon
a few simple problems. Every feature of the place, construction, and
detail of these could be and was worked out to final perfection because
for three centuries at least the requirements — the programme — of
the temple and propylsea and stoa remained substantially unchanged.
The problems of Roman architecture were far more varied and com-
plex, and Roman architecture, although in part the work of Greek
artificers, is marked in consequence of this complexity by flexibility
of adaptation and grandeur of scale rather than by extreme refine-
ment of detail. In medieval architecture, again, a single type — that

642 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

of the three-aisled, cruciform, vaulted church — quite dominated the
evolution of architectural form. All the methods of Gothic con-
struction were established by empirical processes, through the
cumulative experience of repeated experiments upon an identical
problem; and the same is largely true of its decorative design. Such
long-continued concentration of effort upon a single problem is out
of the question in modern times. We have too many kinds of build-
ings to erect, — for religious, educational, administrative, com-
mercial, social, penal, charitable, and decorative purposes; churches,
colleges, and schools, railway-stations, armories, laboratories, exhibi-
tion buildings, warehouses, museums, theatres, hospitals, hotels,
capitols, city halls, theatres, office-buildings, and houses large and
small. Moreover, — a more serious difficulty by far, — the require-
ments of any given class of buildings never remain long the same.
Experience can be cumulative only in small degree; the experience
of a few years back may profit us, but that of twenty-five years ago is
utterly out of date. No sooner does a type develop into something
like final shape than new requirements or new methods of construc-
tion suddenly appear, and the whole problem must be studied anew.
No style can therefore develop to-day into the unity and finality of
some of the historic styles. There is never any opportunity to perfect
the details of a single type.

To these difficulties must be further added the complexity of
design required by our modern civilization. Even an ordinary city
dwelling is a maze of intricate provisions for convenience and com-
fort beside which the most elaborate palace of earlier days was, in
the matter of practical details, a problem of lucid simplicity. The
designing, specifying, and superintending of a modern structure, with
all its engineering complexities of installation, wiring-ducts, flues, and
fixtures, absorb a large part of the scanty time allowed by our
systems of building by contract for the elaboration of the complete
design. Under these conditions the architect must design or control
a range of work which covers all manner of trades, industries, and
sciences. It is impossible that one person should master them all, or
any considerable portion of them, in a truly satisfactory way.

Thus while the modern architect has been supplied with resources
of extraordinary richness and variety, he has also been assigned a
task of at least equally increased complexity. But this does not ade-
quately express the situation. For there are in modern architectural
practice two factors unknown to the great ages of the art in the past,
which render it still more difficult to work out a characteristic and
dignified expression of the spirit and ideals of the age. These are, in
brief, the contract system, and the decline of artistic artisanship. The
contract system, which has grown up with modern methods of busi-
ness and has entered into the fabric of modern life, compels the archi-

PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 643

tect to devote a large part of his time, before the first spadeful of earth
can be turned in the excavations, to perfecting details which, in other
ages, were largely given to artisans to work out, each an expert in
his line, or were at most left to be elaborated during the slow progress
of the work. The whole time allotted to the study of the problem
is cut down to the narrow limits between the preliminary sketch
and the signing of the contract; and since the greater part of this is
spent in the elaboration of details, the fraction left for the legitimate
artistic Avork of the architect — the work of study and experiment-
ation and revision of the plan, the masses, voids, and solids of his
design — is reduced to a pitiable insufficiency. How rarely, in modern
work, does the designer of an important edifice have adequate time
allowed him for a truly satisfactory study and discussion of his
problem! And the further bane of the contract system lies in this,
that, the contract once signed, further correction and amendment of
the design are impossible. No amount of " happy thoughts, " resulting
from the experience acquired as the work progresses, can avail to
improve its artistic quality. The ghost of "extras" stalks abroad,
haunts the chambers of the architect's consciousness, and, indeed, is
too often materialized without help from spiritualistic mediums. This
spectre effectually blocks the way for those happy afterthoughts
which are really the ripest artistic fruit of the architect's brain.

Artistic artisanship has been stifled between the two irresistible
forces of modern industrialism and modern education. The machine
and the factory have taken over the work of the hand-craftsman;
and modern democratic education has opened to the young man born
in the ranks of the trades a hundred gates of employment where in
olden times there was but one. The execution of architectural and
decorative detail has become a matter wholly apart from its design; a
matter of accurate reproduction of office-drawings rather than of the
artistic interpretation of suggestive sketches by the architect. Thus
the design of every detail has been thrown back upon the architect,
an added task and responsibility which in the older days he did not
have to be burdened with.

But no statement of the actual conditions of modern architecture
would be complete which omitted to mention the commercialism
of our age. We must admit, I think, that the really controlling inter-
ests of our time are the commercial. These make, on the whole, for
peace and for the brotherhood of man: but they can never replace,
though they have largely usurped, the controlling influence of religion
upon art. Office-buildings and railway-stations are more characteristic
expressions of our modem culture than cathedrals. To this ascend-
ency of commercial interests must be ascribed the growth of public
and private luxury. This may or may not be of advantage artistically ;
that depends upon the way in which this luxury chooses to express

644 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

itself. But there can be no doubt regarding the pernicious influence
of another phase of modern commercialism, — that which imposes
upon everything a valuation by dollars and cents; an influence
always disastrous in art, and in no art more disastrous than in archi-
tecture. The financial criterion is fundamentally hostile to the
artistic. Applied to buildings, it wipes out massive supports and deep
shadows by paring down the walls to the last extreme of thinness; it
excludes sculpture and mural painting from a building in order to
pile an extra story upon it; it demands pretentious luxury in the place
of artistic beauty. With this spirit every architect has to contend, in
large works as well as small.

These, then, are the peculiar conditions of modern architecture,
briefly and broadly stated. What are the really vital problems of
modern architecture to which they have given or must give rise?

The fundamental problem of all architecture is to harmonize the
demands of utility and beauty in structural design; in other words,
to express utilitarian functions in terms of plastic art. It is this
problem which differentiates architecture from engineering, in which
utilitarian functions are expressed solely in terms of scientific exact-
itude. This problem is as truly the problem of to-day as it was of the
Middle Ages or of antiquity. The utilitarian requirements of archi-
tecture have multiplied enormously in the past hundred years, but
so have also the artistic resources at the architect's disposal. There is
no excuse for ugly buildings to-day; if the conditions of design are
more difficult, what is this but a call to forsake deep-worn ruts, to
bring ourselves into harmony with our environment, to recognize
our conditions instead of trying to evade them — • to triumph over
difficulties and obstacles by making them the very occasion of new
successes, as did the medieval architects who extracted such con-
summate beauty out of the very limitations under which they worked?
There seems to me to be no counsel demanding more urgent repetition
and more earnest heeding, in this time of intense intellectual and
social activity, than to make beauty the supreme aim of architectural
effort.

Tradition and the archaeological spirit clamor for the reproduction
of obsolete forms; commercialism seeks to suppress whatever does not
appear readily convertible into cash dividends; literary critics cry
out for originality at all costs as the crowning virtue; multiplying
utilitarian requirements insist upon recognition by the architect, and
threaten to deprive architecture of its place among the fine arts.
Amid tins din the architect who is a true artist keeps his eye and
heart fixed upon the pole-star of pure beauty, which has guided the
course of true art by its clear and steady ray through all the ages.
Beauty in architecture is above and beyond all questions of tradition
and historic style and passing fashion; it is a question of mass and

PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 645

proportion, of balance and rhythm, of line and light-and-shade; of
variety in unity, of appropriateness and common sense. The beauty
which consists in the realization of the highest attainment in these
qualities is the fundamental beauty which underlies all the varied
forms of expression it has received in different ages from different
hands; which we recognize in Greek temple and Gothic minster, in
the mosques and tombs of India, the palaces and domed churches
of Italy, and the masterpieces of all times, ancient and modern.
How futile, in comparison with the securing of this fundamental
beauty, appears all preoccupation with minor questions of style and
fashion; how useless the setting forth of this or that formula of design
as the sure recipe for architectural reform! It must be the study of
modern architects to rid their profession and its practice of every
burden which embarrasses them in their quest of artistic perfection,
in their pursuit of the ideal beauty. Many, in spite of obstacles, are
faithful to their ideals; the spirit of the artist lives in them and
breathes in their work, but we need more of such men. The greatest
of dangers confronting modern architecture is that which threatens
to change it from an art into a business — a pursuit — an activity
controlled by other than artistic ideals — a side issue of engineering.

As subdivisions of this great general problem, we must, I think,
recognize five special problems or groups of problems as pressing
for solution in the architecture of the twentieth century. The first
is the problem of the artistic handling of modern structural devices
and materials.

The second is the problem of the right division of labor and respon-
sibility, in the production of modern buildings, between the architect,
the engineer, and the craftsman.

The third — - related to the second — is the problem of the relation
of architecture to the arts and crafty, and the recovery for the crafts-
man of activities that have fallen wholly under the control of the
factory system.

The fourth is the problem raised by the contract system: the
question as to how far the burdens imposed by that system can be
lightened, and the largest measure of artistic progress secured under
such as cannot be thus lightened.

The fifth is the great problem of the education of the architect.

I have stated what I believe to be the problems which most seri-
ously confront the architecture of the coming years. Their solution
lies not with any one person, but with the profession as a whole, both
here and abroad. There is no seer gifted with the power to forecast
that solution; but every thoughtful man who reflects upon them may
reach individual convictions, the free discussion of which can be
made helpful and stimulating to those who take part in it. This i<
mv excuse for the further observations I have to offer.

646 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

In no period of history have new systems and materials of con-
struction been so multiplied or so rapidly developed as in recent
years. I need only instance the remarkable rise of steel-frame or
skeleton construction, and the increasing use of reenforced concrete,
as examples. In the United States the growing scarcity of timber
will soon eliminate wood as a cheap material for houses and temporary
structures and thus create a new problem in cheap building. Here,
then, are three problems demanding serious study, and which, unless
our architects are active and watchful, will fall so completely into
the hands of the engineers, and receive from them so purely utilita-
rian a treatment, that it will take a half-century or a century of ugly
experiments to convert these to the service of true art. How shall
we approach the task? Do we not here need most of all the spirit
of devotion to pure beauty, under the guidance of common sense,
leaving the resulting style to be what it will? Let us not be con-
cerned either to perpetuate or to cast aside the language, the forms
and details of the traditional styles: our real concern must be to
produce beautiful buildings, using these new resources of the art as
means to that end. and employing or discarding, as this controlling
end may demand, the forms we have already learned by heart in the
schools and offices. When to lay bare and when to conceal, when to
emphasize and when to mask the structural framework, how to make
new materials count for beauty; when, where, and how to apply
decoration, and how far this shall be structural and how far applied,
— these are the questions to be solved, and not the question whether
the forms we use shall be classic, Romanesque, Gothic, Oriental,
or the product of pure fancy.

But this artistic adaptation of new materials and systems of con-
struction may, and doubtless will, proceed further than the mere-
invention of new decorative details and combinations. Already the
elevator, the hollow-brick arch, and the steel skeleton have begotten
a new type of building, — the American tall office-building, or "sky-
scraper." The artistic handling of this monstrous problem is still
ft subject of earnest study. It seems not unlikely that if our architects
pursue a progressive course, other wholly new types of edifice will
arise, under the pressure of new requirements and the development
of new methods of building, in which broad spans, vast trusses, deep
underground apartments, and the like, will be important factors.
Xot merely the old details, but the old mass-forms may disappear —
as has been the case, for example, in ship-building. The traditional
maxims of structural art. based on masonry construction, will relax
their hold, and practices be adopted in design which we of to-day
consider unorthodox: precisely as Gothic design threw over the
classic practice as to formal symmetry and emphasis of horizontal
divisions. It behooves our architects now upon the threshold of the

PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 647

century to see to it that they themselves be the inaugurators of such
changes, holding them under the control of high artistic principles,
instead of allowing them to be forced upon the art from the outside
and to be dominated by wholly utilitarian and philistine influences.

The next three problems are problems of professional relations
and practice. The architect and the engineer, the architect and the
craftsman, the architect and the contractor, — how shall these stand
related in their joint task of realizing in permanent form the artistic
dreams, the structural conceptions, which the architect delineates on
the drawing-board? It is of course clear that their labors must be
pursued in a spirit of collaboration; the problem is to secure greater
cordiality, and above all a greater predominance of the artistic
feeling and sympathy in this collaboration. The precise measure of
relative independence, and hence of relative subordination of one to
the other, must be differently adjusted, the labor differently divided,
from what is now customary. There is too much engineering exacted
of the architect to-day for the best results, from either the artistic
or engineering point of view. He should not be required to know less
of engineering than he commonly knows under present conditions,
but to do less of it. If it were exacted of him only that he should
design constructive edifices, the specific engineering of which should be
turned over to experts working in collaboration with him, making
universal the procedure now possible only in the largest offices, he
would be freer to devote himself to this proper and special work
of artistic design. In like manner the artisan should have a freer
hand, and artisanship be encouraged as the handmaid of archi-
tecture. Something of this mingling of freedom and collaboration
exists in the relations of architecture to the sister arts of painting
and sculpture. It is a healthy and stimulating relation when the
responsibility is rightly apportioned. To determine the right balance
of apportionment is a serious but not an insoluble problem. To this
problem both individuals and organized bodies will no doubt devote
their best thought in the years to come. There is less promise of
successful coping with the inherent difficulties of the contract system.
which is not likely soon to be displaced. Both its vices and its virtues
are too strongly entrenched for easy dislodgment. Only the years
can decide whether the vices can be extirpated or must be endured.
It is not easy to forecast any line of action for the future in this
field of endeavor.

The fifth of our problems is that of the education of the architect.
The nineteenth century has witnessed the disappearance of profes-
sional training by apprenticeship in law. medicine, theology, and
engineering, and the substitute in its place of the modern system
of analytical and theoretical studies in the class-room with practical
applications in the laboratory and office. Business and journalism

648 MODERN ARCHITECTURE

are tending more and more in the same direction. How far is this
system applicable to architecture, which has taken on more and
more the character of a liberal profession? In France, Germany,
and Austria architecture is now taught according to this theory in
great schools of art, but with a strong surviving element of the
apprenticeship system in the methods of the atelier. In America
the methods of the university and technological school prevail more
completely; in Great Britain they have only lately begun to be
introduced to any noticeable degree. Which is nearest right? How
far should the schools attempt, and how far forbear, to teach the
practical practice of the profession, and how far leave this to the
offices? What should be the requirements for admission to the
schools? What should be the place in these schools of studies of
pure culture or liberal discipline, and what the relative proportion of
time assigned to the actual training in design? What should be the
relative importance and the proportion of time assigned to abstract
drawing and to distinctively architectural draughtsmanship? In
teaching design, should the emphasis be placed on abstract design-
problems, to cultivate the powers of imagination and invention, or
upon more practical problems, in order to give anticipatory experience?
These and other like questions press for an answer. Different schools,
in different environments, will give different answers. As time goes
on, changing conditions will bring about different answers in the
same school, and there will always be a place also for men trained
in no school but the school of office experience. Of course we can
make here and now no final answer to these questions. One or two
things are, however, clear. The increasingly exacting and complex
duties of the modern architect have made what was once a fine art,
and only an art, a profession of exceeding difficulty and importance,
requiring for its worthy practice a training which is almost a liberal
education in itself. The architect needs the broad view, the generous
grasp of a wide range of ideas, good sense and varied knowledge, as
well as artistic training and office experience. His education must
lay foundations of discipline, taste, and knowledge broad enough
to enable him to meet all the varied exigencies of changing methods
and conditions.

I would fain enlarge upon these considerations, and discuss at
greater length the relative claims of technical and artistic training.
the relative share of the school and office in preparing the architect
for his work, and the question of general or specific discipline in
design; but I am warned that my time is spent, and I must draw to
a speedy close. I have said little about the problem of style, because
I believe in any ago in which architecture is a vital art. — - as I believe
it is with us, in spite of the influences that tend to stifle the breath
of its artistic life. — this problem settles itself, as I believe it is doing

PROBLEMS OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE 649

and will more completely do in the years to come. It will do this not
by developing any fixed and narrow range of forms which can be labeled
"style of the twentieth century" and catalogued in a dozen lines,
like the historic styles of the past; but by such a straightforward,
rational, and artistic treatment, both structural and decorative, of
modern architectural problems, as shall speak clearly of the age and
time which produced them, through an endless variety of forms and
details, derived no matter whence, no matter how, so long as they
fit the requirements of the building and endow it with an expressive
beauty and grace. When school and office cease to apply the mean-
ingless shibboleths of particular style-formulae, and when we cease
to judge designs, or to make designs, by the rules of obsolete styles,
while, on the other hand, we refuse with equal consistency to turn
our backs on the past and exalt eccentricity into the throne that
belongs to beauty, insisting always on fundamental beauty and good
taste, our architecture will be a truly free and living art, possessed of
the only qualities of style worth possessing, whether ancient labels
fit or not. We must cease blind imitation as well as blind innovation,
and make the highest attainable beauty the object of our pursuit.

And what of inspiration? Whence shall we draw the breath that
shall kindle within us the flame of artistic enthusiasm? Religion
cannot give it, because religion is no longer mistress of architecture;
her throne is in the heart of the individual. Commerce cannot give
it, for commerce is predominantly selfish. The collective passions of
the future must supply it; but what are they to be? Intellectual
culture, human brotherhood, patriotism, the worship of the past,
altruism? Who can tell? The finest architectural works of recent
years in this country are libraries, college buildings, museums, and
expositions. This fact surely has some significance. And yet we must
admit that modern architecture lacks enthusiasm. To raise it to the
level of the great ages of architecture requires more than brains and
money: both of these it has in greater abundance than ever before.
It needs the fire of a burning passion, a great enthusiasm, an over-
whelming emotion, a soaring imagination. Whence these are to come
it is not for us to say. We can only hope the future will be less
materialistic and selfish than the recent past, and that every one who
enters upon this noble profession may cultivate within his own heart
the wanning fire of enthusiasm, kindling it at whatever artistic
shrine gives forth the purest and the brightest flame.

SECTION C — MODERN PAINTING

SECTION C — MODERN PAINTING

(Hall 4, September 24, 3 p. m.)

SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR RICHARD MUTHER, University of Breslau.
MR. OKAKURA KAKUZO, Tokio, Japan.

PROBLEMS OF THE STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING

BY RICHARD MUTHER

(Translated from the German by Dr. George Kriehn, New York)

[Richard Muther, Professor of History of Art, University of Breslau, since 1895.
b. Ohrduff, Germany, February 25, 1860. Studied at Heidelberg and Leipzig.
Privat-docent, University of Munich, 1883-95; Conservator of the Cabinet of
Engravings, 1885-95. Author of Anton Graff; Gothic and Early Renaissance
Illustrations of German Books; The History of Modern Painting; Geschichte der
englischen Malerei.]

OF the several works treating the painting of the century just
passed which have recently appeared, we shall first consider the
Geschichte der modernen Malerei, by Richard Muther (1893). This
work for the first time attempted to give a general view of the entire
activity in Europe during the nineteenth century. All painters were
treated who had created works of real artistic value in France,
England, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, and Spain. If, in spite of
such wealth of detail, the book has not quite solved the problem of
presenting a clear picture of the artistic development of the century,
this is to be attributed to the circumstance that it endeavored to
unite incompatible things, and to be, at the same time, an historical
and a controversial work. In the years in which it was written,
modern art was fighting for its very existence. The author was en-
thusiastic and wished to take part in the struggle. The new ideals
appeared to him so victorious, that a misguided enthusiasm for
them led him to consider the earlier ideas more or less false. In
reading the book one has the feeling of having climbed a high moun-
tain, from which classicism, romanticism, and historical painting
seemed gloomy ravines, through which it was necessary to pass in
order to ascend. Only after reaching the summit one could breathe
freely; for here all is bright, illumined by the rays of the sun of
impressionism..

An artist defending his principles is, indeed, justified in such
partiality, but not an historian. For he whose ideals we no longer
accept is not, therefore, to be dismissed as antiquated and worthless.
The actual is not necessarily the eternal, nor are present tendencies

654 MODERN PAINTING

the only truth. Every artistic movement which has ever existed
is justified within the bounds of the time of its existence, and, like
other organisms, when its time has come, it will die a natural death.
The historian should not battle for a cause, either as accuser or
defender; his proper position is rather that of a mere recorder.

In this spirit Cornelius Gurlitt approached the great theme in his
work, Die deutsche Kunst des 19 Jahrhunderts (1890). He never
blames or condemns, but, effacing the personal element, he enters into
the spirit of the past, not in order to glorify our present achievements,
but to mete out justice to every sincere and inspired effort. For
objectivity and impersonal appreciation, Gurlitt's history cannot be
surpassed. If, notwithstanding, the reader, after the perusal of the
book, has the feeling that the artistic development of the present
is to-day less clear than that of the past, this must be ascribed to
another reason. The author takes his phenomena as he finds them;
and although he analyzes and weighs them, he never inquires after
the causes. He neglects to examine the soil from which the art of
every age springs, which after all is the first and most important
thing in historical writing. For history is not a storehouse of acci-
dental occurrences, but the result of inevitable laws which affect
each other in all directions. The problem is to find the point of view
which commands the whole stream of tendency, and from which its
component parts may be arranged into comprehensive groups. As
we rightly explain the works of Giotto, Botticelli, and Raphael from
the time and circumstances under which they arose, we must also
treat modern art as a natural problem, by deducing the character of
its works and the changes of style from the historical changes in
culture during the nineteenth century.

It will first be necessary to cast a glance at the eighteenth. For
this love-crazed and blood-shedding, this trifling and fighting century
is the mighty period in which the old world passed away, and the
foundation was laid upon which we are to-day building. With what
seven-league boots did the spirit of the age then sweep over the
nations, and with what dreadful harshness did the opposing forces
crash into each other! "Vive la joie!" Such was the device at the
beginning of the eighteenth century. With what feverish joy the old
aristocratic families of the ancien regime celebrated their rococo! The
whole world seemed to have become an Isle of Cythera, where nothing
of the sorrow of life could enter. But while the distinguished gentle-
men and ladies, disguised as Pierrots and Columbines, celebrated
their gallant shepherd masquerades, rough voices suddenly sounded
in the midst of their cooing and whispering. Threatening symptoms
announced that the long and beautiful day of the aristocratic order
must end, and that the plebeian also demanded a seat at the table
of pleasure. The great writers of all countries were the bold heralds

PROBLEMS OF STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING 655

of the battle. In proclaiming their thoughts of a new religious and
social progress, they sowed the seed which ripened at the end of the
century. In 1789 the die was cast, and the Revolution completed
what literature had begun. "Apres nous le deluge," so lightly ex-
pressed by the Marquise de Pompadour, became an awful truth.

Naturally the events which at that time shattered the old world
into ruins also exercised a deep influence on art. Glancing for a mo-
ment at the days of the Renaissance, we find art supported in the
main by two powers, the church and royalty. Raphael and Michel-
angelo, Correggio and Titian, Velasquez and Rubens, — they all
created. their most magnificent and monumental works either for
the church or for the princes of their country. With the close of the
eighteenth century these two powers ceased to be factors which
determined the character of art. In Germany Kant wrote his Kritik
der reinen Vernunft, showing that God, who, according to the teaching
of the Bible, had created man, was in the light of philosophy a mere
idea created by man. In France also the Almighty was dethroned,
and the Goddess of Reason was raised in his place. The church thus
lost the inspiring power which it formerly exercised upon art, and,
although during the nineteenth century religious pictures were still
painted, their very small number serves to show how far an age of
investigation in the natural sciences has deserted the cycle of ideas
in which human thought formerly moved. The close of the eighteenth
century was no less fatal to the kingly power which ruled by divine
right. A constitutional king no longer has the means to be a Maece-
nas in a grand style, as was Louis XIV, and even if he could command
them, his commissions could be of no avail to art, because they would
contradict the modern view of life. The painting of our own days can
no longer permit itself to be made a herald of royalistic ideas.

Now it is a characteristic of art that it can only flourish upon the
basis of a quiet, clarified culture. But this clarified culture of the
past had been destroyed by the Revolution, and modern culture
\vas still in a state of formation, so incomplete and full of contra-
dictions that it could not yet serve as a basis of a new art. Only
when the spirit of an age has been clearly formed can art incorporate
it in tangible form. Such was not yet the case at the beginning of
the nineteenth century; and this explains what seems at first sight
the remarkable circumstance, that painting, which had previously
been an expression of its own epoch, now placed itself in opposition
to this epoch. The eye of artists was fixed not upon their own time,
but upon the past. They thought to produce better art by glorifying
the beautiful culture of former centuries.

The painting of the first half of the nineteenth century was,
therefore, in the main retrospective. At first the subjects were
taken from the old Hellenic world, and later artists became absorbed

656 MODERN PAINTING

in the fables and legends of the Middle Age. Then, in further course
of the development, they proceeded to modern times, and there came
a period of historical painting which found its chief aim in glorifying,
in large paintings, rich in figures, the principles and political actions
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The painters of genre
and of landscape also accommodated themselves to this point of
view; for the latter did not paint nature as it existed before their
eyes, but sought rather, in a reconstructive manner, to revive the
vision of the earth as it appeared in the days of ancient Hellas
or of the Middle Ages. The genre painters did not exhibit the
people of the present; rather, in their peaceful painting of peasants,
they depicted an idyllic world, which, like an immovable piece of
the past, had survived in modern life. Paintings were not conceived
as representations of the present, but as hymns of praise of the
good old times. The windows of the studios were hung with heavy
curtains to avoid seeing anything of the ugly world without.

Yet events were gradually taking place which caused the artist,
instead of lingering in the past, to turn his eyes to the present, and
to paint not only the world of long ago, but the world of his own day.
The most important of these events were certainly the great changes
in transportation which have taken place since the forties. Until
that time the coach had lumbered heavily from village to village;
now the steamship and the locomotive established rapid connection
between the most distant parts of the earth. The world came under
the influence of this traffic, and it would have been strange, indeed,
if painters had not made use of the possibilities of travel thus made
so easy. They took up the wanderer's staff and became globe-trotters,
traversing in every direction the Orient, Scandinavia, and even
America. In numerous genre paintings they recounted the manners
and customs of strange people, and in numerous landscape pictures
they exhibited the sights of the Universe, —

Wenn jomand cino Reise tut,
So kan ner was erzahlen;

such is the content of these pictures.

While artists were thus wandering in distant countries in order to
depict an exotic nature, there occurred contemporaneously another
event which caused them to occupy themselves with what was going
on in their own home and their immediate neighborhood. The great
social problem of the nineteenth century arose after the revolution
of 1780, which had been a struggle of the people against feudal des-
potism; the fruits of these struggles fell into the lap of the bour-
geoisie. The feudal knights had been followed by knights of fortune,
and a chasm yawned between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between
the possessors of property and the poor. The year 1848 passed like
a threatening storm over Europe. When the workmen were fighting

PROBLEMS OF STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING 657

behind barricades, many of the painters felt the need of taking part
in these struggles. Searching in the slums and tenements, they made
their brush a weapon with which they entered the lists for the rights
of the disinherited. " The lot of the poor is pitiful," such is the refrain
that runs through their paintings. The fame of having been warm-
hearted friends of mankind cannot be denied these artists. They
proved that art cannot be joyful when life is serious, and they
fought for noble aims with worthy intentions. Unfortunately, how-
ever, their paintings can no longer afford us a pure, aesthetic pleasure,
because the intention is better than the execution. Occupied only
with the thoughts they wished to express, all these tribunes of the
people neglected beyond measure the purely technical side of their
art.

With these tendencies we approach a difficult question, but one
of great importance for the future development of modern painting,
[•'or what is true of these apostles of humanity is more or less true of all
who wielded the brush in the first half of the nineteenth century.
They were less painters than disguised literati. The value of their
paintings consisted more in what they studied than the manner in
which they rendered it. It is easy to explain the literary spirit
which at that time dominated painting. With the close of the eight-
eenth century, the bourgeoisie became the principal purchaser and
the most important patron of art. In these circles purely aesthetic
needs did not yet exist. They could only understand art in so far as
it served culture, and therefore demanded of pictures the represent-
ation, in epic breadth, of interesting things which could be read from
them. It was not thus in former centuries. During the rococo
period men surrounded themselves with works of art only in order to
enjoy their beauty. They knew that a picture could play upon the
filaments of the soul through the noble language of line and the
] tower of color to awaken feelings akin to those caused by music. But
in the nineteenth century this purely sensuous joy in the beautiful
had to be awakened again. It had to be brought home to the general
consciousness that painting was not an appendix of literary culture,
but an independent art which ruled a mighty realm, that of beautiful
form and beautiful color.

The painters of the succeeding generations felt the need of treading
this path. They desired to show by their works that it was not the
function of the artist to relate, amuse, or teach, but only to paint in
the best manner possible. But how and where should they begin?
Under the tutelage of the literary, the purely artistic taste had
greatly suffered. The prerequisite of artistic production, therefore,
was to refine this taste; and this could be best accomplished by
seeking advice from the classic painters of the past. With the middle
of the century, modern painting, accordingly, entered upon the second

658 MODERN PAINTING

phase of its development. Artists began now to examine, technically
and aesthetically, the works of classic painters, and sought to paint
pictures which, in technical excellence, should not be inferior to
theirs. This originated a systematic study of the colors used by the
old masters.

These painters, also, may be classified in accordance with the
models they chose. There were some who preferred the rugged and
angular masters of the quattrocento; others who endeavored to
acquire the light and shade of the Venetians of the sixteenth century;
others, again, who became absorbed in the works of the little masters
of Holland during the seventeenth century; and, finally, others
who delighted in the bold brush-work and the dark tones of the
Neapolitans of the baroque period. The result of these studies was
an exceedingly important one. A whole generation of painters in all
countries of Europe had made it a lifework to discover the secret
of color possessed by the old masters; and they consequently com-
manded in virtuoso fashion all the technical means of the past. All
of their works are pleasing on account of their cultivated, distin-
guished beauty, reminding us of the old masters.

But was the goal actually reached when the power was gained to
imitate the old masters to the extent of actual illusion? Had these old
masters themselves been in their turn imitators, or is not the wealth
of varied beauty created in former centuries to be explained rather
by the circumstance that every artist dared to trust his own eye and
his own feelings? This independence had not yet been attained by
the moderns. There existed a contradiction between the modern
subjects which they represented and the style of the old masters
in which they represented them. Examining their paintings, we may
well ask whether the movements of modern man are actually repre-
sented, or whether they are not a slavish repetition of the positions
and gestures which are found in the old masters. Does the arrange-
ment actually express the surging activity of modern life, or is not
everything forced into a scheme of composition prescribed long
ago? The color deserves a special attention. The old masters observed
carefully the conditions of lights under which they labored. They
painted their pictures in studios into which the light penetrated
through small bull's-eye panes, and their paintings were destined
panly for gloomy chapels in great churches, partly for narrow rooms
paneled in brown wood, into which the light of heaven fell softly
through stained glasses.

In the nineteenth century life has become brighter. Through large
panes of glass the light streams full into our rooms. Furthermore,
the great physical achievements of the nineteenth century have
brought wonders of light before which an old master would have stood
speechless. When they, or even when our grandparents lived, there

PROBLEMS OF STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING 659

were only candles and oil lamps; to-day we have gas and electricity.
It is magical to see the gas-lamps throwing their flickering rays
through bluish twilight; to observe the light of electricity flood a
salon and mingle with the soft rays of a lamp. From all these wonders
of light of the new age, painters had heretofore kept fearfully at a
distance. They labored in the regular transom light of their studios,
and even softened this by means of curtains and draperies, in order
that it might most nearly approach the conditions known to the old
masters.

The succeeding generation of painting, therefore, saw itself con-
fronted by three great problems. Whereas formerly modern men
had received a pose studied from old painters and ancient statues,
the problem now was to seize upon the movements of actual life.
Whereas formerly the works had been composed in accordance with
a rigid scheme, it was now proposed to present real life in a picture,
without doing violence to it or forcing it into the narrow prison of
traditional rules. Where formerly the dark color-schemes of the old
masters had been projected upon subjects of modern life, it was now
proposed to substitute for this "brown sauce" the fresh brightness
of nature, and to record all the wonders of artificial light which the
age of electricity and gas had produced.

From two sides the painters were strengthened in this tendency.
In the first place, an event of great consequence occurred in the
discovery of Velasquez, on the occasion of an exhibition of his work
in private possession held at Paris in honor of the two hundredth
anniversary of his death. While artists had until now been only
familiar with the dark masters, they here made the acquaintance
of a light one. For the tone of his pictures is not a brown, but a cool
pearl gray. An old master, therefore, had already painted nature as
they wore now beginning to see her, and it is always important for
new truths to find classical verification. Of no less importance was
the influence of the art of Japan upon the course of the development
of European painting. At the beginning of the sixties there had
been a heavy importation into Europe of colored prints, the study of
which acted like a revelation. Here, too, everything that painters
sought was expressed in classical perfection. They marveled at the
spirited and lively arrangement of leaves, in which all architectonic
balance was lacking, but which, just because of this asymmetry, had
an effect as realistic as if nature itself had improvised them. They
were impressed by the surety with which the Japanese seized upon
the most rapid motion; things which the European had learned to see
only by means of instantaneous photographs were here presented
with boldest directness. Finally, they marveled at the color-effects.
What fresh brightness, and at the same time what beauty of tone.
was possessed by these magical prints; red and green trees, glowing

660 MODERN PAINTING

lanterns, the yellow sickle of the moon, twinkling stars, — every-
thing was represented, and nowhere a false note; everything held
together by that wonderful harmony which had formerly been
attempted by a false tuning to brown. Thus did Velasquez and the
Japanese contribute to the origin of modern impressionism.

Freedom from the great dead have been thus won, an independent
representation of entirely new impressions became the aim of painters.
Especially did they try to solve all the problems of life which had
formerly been so timidly avoided. After they had been so long
painting in brown, they found the wonders of plein air so attractive
that for several years only scenes in the open air were painted.
Rays of sunlight which flutter blinkingly through the treetops,
great green meadows bathed in sunlight, the glimmer of glowing
air, the play of a spot of light on the water and on yellow sand -
such were the most popular subjects. After they had learned to
paint sunlight, other problems received their turn. They attempted
to depict the foggy freshness of morning and the sultry vapor of the
storm, the mysterious night scenes and gray twilight. Upon open
air pictures followed others representing the movements of light
indoors with a delicacy previously not thought of. Lastly came the
wonders of artificial light, those phenomena which the last quarter
of the nineteenth century, with its unheard-of improvements in the
entire lighting system, has brought about. It may, indeed, be said
that never before have light-effects of such subtilty been recorded
in pictures.

And to-day? Well, every art suffers from the defects of its qualities.
The impressionists had discovered air: for it they neglected line,
since in atmosphere the outline disappears. They had discovered
light: for it they had, in a certain sense, neglected color, since color
is disintegrated by light, and the colored surface is dissolved into
a conglomeration of differently colored luminous points. The impres-
sionist delighted also in the most subtle nuances of tones dissolved in
light; but in eliminating from their works all pregnant lines and all
pronounced colors, they destroyed, in many respects, the decorative
effect of their pictures, which, from a distance, often had the effect
of indistinct violet and yellow chaos. And so towards the end of the
'•entury, another new problem appeared, how to progress from the
purely artistic to the decorative.

.Modern painting had concerned itself very little with this problem.
In reviewing the products of classical art. it will always be found
that the old masters carefully weighed the relations of the picture
to the space it was destined to occupy. The mosaics of Ravenna and
the frescoes of Giotto were intended to fill the whole church with
solemn harmonies and to be effective from every point of view, even
from the greatest distance. Therefore, purely decorative artists like

PROBLEMS OF STUDY OF MODERN PAINTING 661

Giotto used only great, impressive lines, and arranged mighty com-
plexes of color in accordance with simple decorative laws. All
naturalistic effects are avoided; all belittling detail, as well in the
fall of the drapery as in the structure of the landscape, is eliminated;
only the clear silhouette speaks. The pictures must be visible from
a distance, and at the same time correspond, in all their lines, with
the lines of the building.

Quite a different sort of painting arose in the Netherlands at a
later period. In abrupt contrast to the monumental work of the
Italians, the small pictures of Jan van Eyck are painted stroke by
stroke, with minute exactness; the stubble of the beard, every vein of
the hand, every ornament of clothing, is rendered with naturalistic
accuracy. Jan van Eyck could indulge himself in such fine brush-
work, because his pictures made no pretense of effect at a distance, but,
like the miniatures of the prayer-books, were destined to be inspected
at close quarters. They were altar-pieces for domestic use, before
which the observer, after he had drawn away the curtain, knelt or
stood. In like manner we may explain the style of later Dutch
cabinet pictures. Placed for the most part upon easels, they hinted
to the spectator that their delicacies could best be seen by close
inspection. Even when they served as decoration for a wall, the
delicate work of a Don or a Mieris was calculated in accordance with
the proportions of the small Dutch rooms. If any of these Dutchmen,
as, for example, Koning, exceptionally received a commission in
Flemish palaces, he immediately changed his style; for he knew that
a picture for a large room must be differently treated, not only in
style, but also in composition, from his accustomed work.

The weakness of the nineteenth century was most clearly revealed
in the circumstance that it had lost every feeling for the relation
of the picture to space. What awful performances did not mural
painters perpetrate in our public buildings! In accordance with
the literary trend of painting of the first half of the century there
was no thought of beauty in form and color, but only of the didactic
value of the works. Instead of proceeding on the supposition that
a picture should really adorn, they endeavored to give historical
instruction to the public, and tacked historical genre paintings on the
walls. As to art in the home, we have not yet forgotten the time
when small photographs and line engravings, instead of being kept
in portfolios, were fastened to the walls, where they naturally had
the effect of dead white and black spots. Museums and exhibitions
also contributed to confuse public taste by juxtaposing the most
heterogeneous things on the walls: little cabinet pieces of Brouwer
and Ostade alongside of a great altar-piece by Rubens, and a mighty
Delacroix flanked by dainty Meissoniers. In this way the feeling for
the decorative importance of art was more and more lost. The pur-

662 MODERN PAINTING

chaser was not astonished when a picture, which he had admired at the
exhibition, looked like a hole in the wall or like a monotonous dirty
brown spot, when seen from a distance in a large room of his home.
The change for the better was first seen in the domain of mural
painting. Almost contemporaneously in all countries, tendencies
appeared, the object of which was, by means of the clear arrangement
of the complexes of color and line, to restore the mural picture to
its place as a decorative element. But the panel picture was also
reminded of its decorative purpose. Our rooms are not only brighter
but more spacious than were the small and dimly lighted Dutch
rooms; and it was only a sign of a lack of originality in modern
painters, notwithstanding the changed conditions of light and space,
to hold fast to the manner of the old masters. Impressionism first
brought the colors into harmony with the brighter light-effects of our
rooms, and neo-impressionism supplemented this by paying the
greatest possible attention to distant effects. It is, indeed, astonish-
ing how impressive these dotted paintings are. The little dots, at
close view a gaudy chaos, when seen from a distance shape them-
selves into such plastic forms, that neo-impressionistic paintings
overlook the widest rooms. Pointillism (in which the surface of the
picture is not smooth, but composed of little elevations and depres-
sions) contributes further to this effect; for, by reason of their
rough surface, the paintings, like the old mosaics, are effective from
every point of view. Numerous masters have sought to reach the
same goal of monumental decorative effect by other means, such as
the simplification of form by the effect of harmonious spots of color,
and by the subordination of color to decorative purposes.

But it cannot be denied that this latest art, in so far as it is good,
still stands in intimate connection with impressionism. After im-
pressionism had taught painters how to catch the finest nuances of
motion and expression, an entirely new language of line was the
result of their reversion to the principle of style, and of the reduction
of the thousand details which they had learned to see anew to their
simple and significant original forms. In observing with scientific
accuracy the effect of light on color, impressionism also discovered a
wealth of new shades of color. We now distinguish a hundred values
where formerly we only saw one. Expressions like red, green, and
brown have become meaningless for the manifold infinitely differ-
entiated values of color. Consequently, when artists proceeded
from the realistic rendering of their impressions of nature to free
symphonic composition in the colors which impressionism had
discovered, there arose wealth, harmony, and softness of color, not
hitherto achieved. Such, in its principal stages, is the course which
painting has traversed from the beginning of the nineteenth to the
dawn of the twentieth centurv.

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING

BY OKAKURO KAKUZO

[Okakuro Kakuzo, b. Tokio, Japan, 1863. Graduate of Tokio University. Di-
rector of the School of Fine Arts, Tokio, 1890-98. Member of Archaeological
Commission of the Imperial Japanese Government, 1888-1905. Blue ribbon
of the Order of Industry, Senior Fifth Rank; Sixth Rank of the Order of the
Jewel; Knight Commander, St. Michael, Bavaria. President of the Nippon
Bijitsuin, Vice-President of the Society of Japanese Painters. Author of Ideals
of the East; Awakening of Japan.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, — In thanking you for
the honor you have conferred on me in inviting me to address you
on the " Modern Problems in Painting, " I cannot but acknowledge
that I approach you with great trepidation. It is barely a half-cen-
tury ago that we children of Japan were admitted into the comity
of nations at the gracious instance of your first Embassy under
Commodore Perry. Since that time the name of America has been
for us associated with the best of Western culture. We have been so
accustomed to sit at your feet and listen while you discoursed that
it seems strange, indeed, that one should ever stand and face your
learned audience. My only reason for nerving myself to this heroic
effort is because of my belief in your time-honored courtesy and the
sympathy shown by you for all that pertains to my country. My
address shall chiefly concern the problems as seen from the stand-
point of Japan. It is to be a confession, therefore an appeal, — an
appeal, therefore a protest. Protests are more or less wearisome.
It is needless to say that my imperfect command of your language
will further tax your patience.

Perhaps there is some shade of humor in the situation if we con-
sider that the present difficulties of Japanese painting are partly
due to your introducing us to the lights and shadows of a modern
national existence. It may be that a cruel retribution has come
over you in being asked to lend your ears to my incompetent pre-
sentation of the very problems of which you yourselves are the
remote and innocent cause. For I must warn you beforehand that
there is nothing new or instructive in what I am going to submit to
your consideration. So much has been already voiced by the illus-
trious thinkers of America and Europe that my utterance can have no
special value except that it comes out of the Far East.

I hope, however, that the Eastern point of view may not be
altogether devoid of interest to you. Your modern painting, and the
circumstances under which it is created, are still seen by us against
the background of our own ancient traditions. Our criterions may
not be orthodox in your eyes, but they at least represent the stand-

664 MODERN PAINTING

ards of taste which had guided the aesthetic attempts of India,
China, Corea, and Japan through these hoary centuries. If, perchance,
in the course of this paper, my comments on the state of painting
in the West should sound impertinent, I beg you to recall that I am
speaking as one from the Orient.

I wish you further to remember that my criticisms are not dictated
by my want of respect for Western art, compelling as it does in all
its phases the unconscious homage of wonder, if not always of ad-
miration. Our reverential attitude toward all true expressions of art
can be explained by our old axiom to approach a picture as one
would enter into the presence of a great prince. We have been
taught to prostrate ourselves even to a vase of flowers before examin-
ing the beauty of its arrangement.

In the first place, I wish to distinguish between the problems which
concern the individual painter and those which concern society. To
our Eastern conception of art the questions of technique belong to
the painter himself. The public has no right to determine what it
shall be in the present or the future. The individuality of the artistic
effort forbids that an outsider should meddle with its methods.
The painter himself is but half-cognizant of the secret which makes
him a master, for each new idea imposes its own modes and laws.
The moment when he formulates his secrets is the moment when he
enters on his old age and death. For beauty is the joy of the eternal
youthfulness of the creative mind. And it is the sharing the gladness
of the artist in his discovery of a reawakened life in the universe
that constitutes the love of art to us. One of our monk-painters
of the Ashikaga period in the fourteenth century claims that art is
the Samadhi of the playfulness of the human soul. Indeed, it is the
magnificent innocence of the playful genius which is too selfish to
be exclusive that makes all great art so unapproachable and so
inviting to all.

Art is nothing if not the expression of the individual mind. A
Chinese painter in the sixth century denned painting as the move-
ment of his spirit in the rhythm of things. Another Chinese of the
Sung Dynasty (the eleventh century), in the epigrammatic style char-
acteristic of his ago, has called it the mind on the point of the brush.
Art-appreciation is always a communion of minds. The value of a pic-
ture is in the man that speaks to you behind his pigments. It is in
the f|uality of his intonation that we respond to his personality, not
in the pitch of the key nor in the range of his voice. What an
intense personality lies in the silk and canvas of the old masters
whose names we do not know, whose date even is a matter of ar-
chaeological controversy? Who of the recognized great painters cither
in the West or the Ka.-t has not directly appealed to us despite the
distance of time and race? Their language is necessarily different.

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 665

Some may be in the Confucian sequence of the white, some in the
Italian sequence of the brown; others again in the French sequence
of the blue, but behind the veil is the mind, always eager to tell its
own story. The trade of the connoisseur is founded on the fact of
this great individuality of the master which distinguishes him from
the forger or the copyist.

The common weakness of humanity is to offer advice when it is not
asked. Society has been ever ready to invade the sanctuary of art.
Patronage, with its accustomed superciliousness, has often imposed
its authority on a realm where gold could not reach. Public criticism
with the best intentions in the world has made itself only ridiculous
by trying to interfere in questions where the painter must be the sole
judge. Why enchain the dragon-spirit of art? It is evanescent and
always alive, and is godlike in its transformations. Was it a Greek
who said that he denned certain limits in art by what he had done?
The Napoleonic geniuses of the brush are constantly winning victo-
ries mindless of the dogmatic strategy of the academicians. The
foremost critic of modern England has been ironically censured for
his undue depreciation of Whistler, as one who was to be remembered
by what he failed to understand. The fate of aesthetic discussions is
to hang on the Achillean heel of art, and therein to find the vulnerable
point of attack. We can Ruskinize only on the past.

If I may stretch a point, the masters themselves may be said to be
responsible for allowing society to frustrate the spontaneous play of
later artists. Their personality has been so great as to leave a last-
ing impression on the canons of beauty so that any deviation from
the accepted notions is certain to be regarded with suspicion. Society
has been taken into the confidence of art, and, like all confidences,
it was either too little or too much. The world has become disre-
spectful toward art on account of the proffered familiarity. It feels
at liberty to dictate where it ought to worship, to criticise where it
ought to comprehend. It is not that the public should not talk, but
that it should know better. It is not that society should not be
amused, but that it should enjoy more. We are sorry to realize how
much of real aesthetic sympathy is lost in the jargon of studio-talks.

The very individuality of art which makes its problem so sub-
jective to the artist at the same time makes it defy classification in
time. It is a matter of doubt whether we can speak of the "modern
problems" in painting as such with any amount of accuracy or with
profit. The problem which confronts the painter to-day has been
always with him since the days he first traced the mastodon on
bone-fragments in the primeval dons of the cave lions.

Of course the history of painting means the constant accretion of
the problems of lines, light, and color, until nowadays the complex
machinery requires a gigantic intellect to set it successfully in

666 MODERN PAINTING

motion. The step from the symbolic outlines of the early Nara
painters to the depth and intensity of the concentrated ink-poems
of the fifteenth century, the change from the archaic drawings on the
Etruscan vases to the mystery of color-equations as conceived by
your living master, John LaFarge, presents such a contrast as to
make them seem totally different. Yet the agony and the joy of the
later workers have been equally shared by the primitive artists.
They all belong to the common brotherhood of the brush who with
infinite patience devoted themselves to the adjustment of styles and
materials in order to create and appease the craving for beauty. It
must not be supposed that the task of an earlier age was lighter
because it was simpler. The burden of artistic effort must have
been proportionately the same, for the desire of its real votaries is
to carry all that it can bear. Life is eternal, and so is art. The ancient
and the modern meet within ourselves on the hazy borderland where
yesterday parts from to-morrow.

In this age of classification we often forget that the eternal flow of
life joins us with our predecessors. Classification is after all a con-
venience to arrange our thoughts, and, like all objects of convenience,
becomes in the end troublesome. The modern scientific mind is apt
to consider itself to have conquered matter by simply labeling it.
But definitions are limitations, and thus the barriers to our insight.
A seventeenth century Japanese poet has written that we feel the
coldness of things on our lips like a blast of autumn whenever we
begin to speak. Laotze, in his supreme adoration of the Unspeakable,
has pointed out that the reality of a house is not in the roof nor the
walls, but in the spaces which it creates. So the reality of painting
consists in its innate beauty, not in the names of the schools or
periods in which we love to arrange it on the shelves of our historical
consciousness.

The demarcations into the classical, romantic, or the realistic
schools, are meaningly applied to the great masters, for they meant to
represent one and all of those modes. They are in a sense anachron-
isms, for they transcend all time. They are each a separate world in
themselves, reflecting the universal formulas with the particular
phases of the life around them. The age belongs to them as much
a.s they themselves belong to the age.

It has been said that romanticism is the distinctive characteristic
of modern art. But which of the so-called classic masters have not
been romanticists? If the term means individualism, the expression
of the self instead of impersonal ideals, it must be the common pro-
perty, nay, the very essence, of all creative efforts. If the term means
the emotional side of the art-impulse, in contradistinction to the
intellectual, or the sensuous, which respectively represent the classic
or the realistic, it is again a name for art itself, because art is emotion.

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 667

A painting is the whole man, with his infinite susceptibilities to the
thoughts of other men and nature around him. It is his essay on the
world, whether it be a protest or an acquiescence. Delacroix has been
considered the acme of modern romanticism. But do we not see in
him the all-roundness of a great artistic mind? He is an artist.
He is a Delacroix.

Again, people are wont to claim that realism is the insignia of
modern painting. There is no realism in art in the strict sense of the
word, for art is a suggestion through nature, not a presentation of
nature itself. We may notice that a vast amount of conventionality
exists even in the French impressionists, who are said to have given
the last word of realism. Their best productions command respect,
not on account of their power of painting sunlight, but in the value
of the new poetry they are enabled to express through their out-
door technique. The idea of division of color was extant long before
the modern impressionism — am I correctly informed? — already
found in Titian.

Realism could not be the special characteristic of modern painting.
What painting of all times and all nations has not evinced the
desire for being true to nature? The relation of the artist to nature
has been defined ever since art was born. The climate of the land
in which he worked, the amount of light, the landscape, the occupa-
tions of men, his hereditary memories, the moral and the scientific
ideas of the age, which were intended to give him confidence in the
universe, have determined the character of his representation. His
instinct was always to record what he saw or imagined that he saw
around him. We must remember that what appears symbolic to
us in the archaic forms of painting was considered highly represent-
ative in their own age. The earliest annals of painting both in the
East and the West reflect the admiration for realism. We have
stories which I think you also have of the wondrous depiction of
fruits which the birds came to peck, of horses so true to life that
they neighed at night and often ran away from the walls.

Although the development of painting in different countries
has created different methods of approaching nature, the original
relation to it has never been broken. For nature is a part of art as
the body is a part of the soul. A Sung writer has called attention
to the interrelation when he remarked that one admires a landscape
for being like a picture and a picture because it is like a real land-
scape. Art is no less an interpretation of nature than nature is a
commentary on art. The types of physical beauty in man or woman
which have been the source of inspiration to great masters are in
their turn determined by the ideal which they set for the succeeding
generations. The waves have become Korin to us as .shadows have
grown to be Rembrandt to vou.

668 MODERN PAINTING

I do not know that I have made my meaning clear to you. I have
tried to say that the problems of the painter are individual and
subjective, that the method of expressing his personality lies entirely
with each artist and forbids any interference from the outside.
I hope that I have conveyed to you the idea that the questions
which we may discuss profitably regarding painting are not whether
it shall be more idealistic or less realistic, whether the artist should
create in this scheme of color, or that tone of light. These belong to
the painter exclusively, and he is well able to take care of himself.

Then what is the objective side of the question? What are the
modern problems of painting which society can fitly discuss at all?
I reply that it is the relation of painting to society itself. Society
regulates the conditions under which art is produced. If it cannot
claim the artist, it can claim the man. If it cannot dictate his tech-
nique, it can furnish his theme, and to a certain extent his ideals.
It is in the secret understanding between the performer and the
audience that delight both. It is the humanity that reverberates
alike through the chord of art and the hearts of the people. The
more human the call, the more universal and deep the response.

Sociological conditions have not, however, always been favorable
to the free development of art and have often threatened to crush its
existence, and sometimes succeeded in doing so. It is owing to this
that the great masters are so rare. Indeed, it is a tribute to the
virility of the art-instinct that we should have even the few. Their
lives both in the East and West have shown remarkable instances of
struggle and victory over circumstances. Hosts have suffered and
have succumbed to social tyranny. Hosts are suffering and succumb-
ing to their destiny.

Nothing touches us more than the weary lines on a great painter's
face, for they are the traces, not of his contest with his art but with
the world. One is a joy and a solace, the other is an eternal torment.
The antagonism between the two lies in the laws of their existence.
Art is the sphere of freedom, society that of conventions. The vul-
gar ever resents the ideal. Society is somehow always afraid of the
living artist. It begins to offer applause when his ears are deaf. —
flowers when he is safely laid in his grave. The success and popular-
ity of a living painter in many cases are signs of lowness of spiritual
level. For the higher the artistic mind soars the greater becomes the
possibility of local or contemporary miscomprehension. Even in the
perfection of Raphael or the princely ease of Rubens we are tempted
to miss the sublimity of the tormented soul of Michael Angelo.

Society lias not only been inimical to individual masters but has
at times indulged in wholesale destruction of schools. Political
changes have often enacted tragedies. War has devastated many
a garden of beauty. With due respect to the interesting qualities

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 669

of German art we cannot help contemplating the enormous ravages
inflicted upon it during the long religious wars of the Reformation.
After Diirer there seems to be no painter of that calibre, and the Teu-
tonic race has come to be characterized as "ear-minded" by other
more fortunate nations. The Flemish, the Dutch, the Italian, the
Spanish, all have had their share of the disastrous consequences of
national convulsions. The French Revolution, despite its far-reach-
ing beneficence, gave a severe blow to traditional excellence. In these
we are but alluding to a few instances of the constant persecutions
of European art which society has perpetrated on art since the
days of the Greeks.

Eastern art has had also its ample measure of such catastrophes.
To give an example, — - the conquest of China by the Mongols in the
thirteenth century brought about a sudden downfall of Chinese
art from which it has never since been able to recover. As you are
doubtless aware, the time at which this calamity occurred was the
brightest age of Chinese painting. It was in the Sung dynasty, so
rich in poetical and philosophical inspirations. It was the age when
Confucianism had evolved a new meaning by the synthesis of Taoist
and Buddhist ideals. It was the age when China was breaking through
the crust of her ancient formalism, when political and economical
experiments were tried on a vast scale. You will remember that the
wonderful porcelain of China was the special product of this period
of universal activity.

Painting was the art of the Sungs. It is to their masters that the
later Chinese, and we, Japanese, owe the higher conception of the
quality of the line, or the manipulation of light and atmosphere
within the condensed area of ink treatment. Before them Chinese
painting was beautiful in its repose, with the stately completeness of
style winch we see in the remains of early Indian or Graeco-Roman
painting. The Sung artists emancipated Asiatic art from this class-
icism to turn its gaze on the poetry of movement and seek new
meanings of life in the intimate aspects of nature.

It is always fatal to generalize on art-epochs, but never more than
on this Sung period when each artist is a school by himself. I shall
but tire you with the enumeration of illustrious names like Ririomin.
Beigensho, Bayen, Riokai, Choshikio, or Mokkei, for they may
signify very little to you. I shall only draw your attention to the
series of paintings of Buddhist saints owned by the Boston Museum,
which, though not by any recognized master, arc fair specimens of the
later Sung work. There you will find the expression of an artistic-
mind of a high order which can hold its own beside the early Ital-
ians.

Alas! all these brilliant achievements of the Sung "Illumination"
were stopped in their full career by the advent of the Mongol

670 MODERN PAINTING

conquerors. Their barbarous rule crushed the vitality of the native
civilization, and painting had barely a chance to survive. Thence-
forward it is a decadence relieved here and there by few exceptional
geniuses. It was not the Mongols alone who inflicted such disaster
on Chinese art. The Manchus have come again from the North to
impose another alien government. Wars and disturbances never
ceased to harass the Chinese painter. What one regards to-day as
representative of Chinese art is but a dismal shadow compared with
what it was in the glorious age of the Tang or Sung masters.

In Japan, owing to our insular position, we were saved from the
Mongol disaster which beset Chinese art. Yet there are instances
when a civil war was the cause of destroying local centres of art.
One on the largest scale, which affected the whole of Japan, was the
war of the Ashikaga-Shogunate, which raged with few breaks for
nearly a century following the fifteenth. It ravaged Kioto and
Xara, the ancient capitals where the arts and crafts had clustered
from early days. The school of portraiture which culminated with
Xobuzane, the virile representations of contemporary life which are
seen in the Tosa makimonos, were a vital force before this sanguinary
period. The vigor of Buddhist painters had then but slightly abated,
for the splendid kakemonos, commonly attributed to Kanoaka,
are mostly produced within two centuries of this crisis. But in the
incessant turmoil of the late Ashikaga period the artist had no place
to pursue his vocation. The monasteries, which were the nurseries
of painting, were burned or their occupants were dispersed. The
function of the hereditary court painters ceased, for the court itself
\vas suffering through the misfortune of continuous war. Any one
conversant with the history of Japanese art will notice how our art
\vears an entirely new aspect after the restoration of peace. It has
evolved new and interesting phases ; but the ancient traditions of
the Kasugas and Tosas were lost forever.

Tho calamities imposed upon art by the social conditions do not
cud here. Even in the days of peace we shall find that the so-called
encouragement was by no means a boon to art. The self-complacency
of society is apt to make itself believe that patronage is everything.
On the contrary, the word " patronage " is in itself an insult. We want
sympathy, not condescension. If society really cared for good art,
it should approach it with the respect clue to all the noble functions
of life. As it is, painting has been often called to the degrading
service of society. It was this that made the great Tang painter
Yenrippon tell his children that he would disown them if they ever
learned to paint.

Maeterlinck has said that if the flowers had wings they would fly
away at the approach of man. I would not blame them if they
ever flew awav from the cruelties of floriculture. Art. the flower

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 671

of thought, has also no wings. Its roots are bound to humanity. It
is painful to think how it has been trimmed, cut, and tortured by
unfeeling hands to be confined in a vessel for temporary admiration.
Sotoba, a Sung poet, has remarked, "Men are not ashamed to wear
flowers, but what of the flowers? " If the Buddhist idea of retribution
is to be believed in, the flowers must have committed terrible crimes
in their former lives! Let us hope for the painters a better incarnation
in their next.

Religion has been supposed to be the greatest inspiration of art.
It is often claimed that the loss of religious zeal caused the decadence
of art. But art is a religion in itself. The mere fact of painting a
holy subject does not constitute the holiness of the picture. The
inherent nobleness and devotional attitude of the artist's mind
toward the cosmos alone stamps him as the religious painter. It has
been remarked that in the picture of the bamboo by Sankoku lay
the whole mystery of Taoism. The stereotyped representations of
Christian or Buddhist subjects, of which, we are sorry to say, there
are so many, are not only a parody on religion but a caricature of
art itself. Here we see another instance of the effects of misplaced
patronage, where even religion made a handmaiden of art, and thus
diverted it from its legitimate expression.

Again, the ambitions of kings and potentates have led them to
use art for their own glorification. Their monumental works were
not the patronage of art, but patronage of themselves. The same
spirit of self-importance moved them as that which led to the en-
couragement of portrait-painting by the modern bourgeoisie. The
instinct is natural, but not favorable to the elevation of art-ideals.
I n the hundred golden screens of Momoyama, we find the magnificent
tediousness that characterizes the work of Kano Yeitoku, painter-
iii-ordinary to the Japanese Napoleon. On the walls of Versailles we
feel the elaborate insipidity of Horace Vernet, the historian of the
Taiko Hideyoshi of Europe.

Society, in posing as the patron, forgets that its true function is
that of the mother. Art was rarely allowed a place to nestle on its
bosom. The waywardness of art, born of her innate individuality, has
caused her to be treated as a stepchild. The palmy days of painting
were only when the painters had a recognized place in the social
scheme. In old times painting was either a trade or an occupation of
the religious. The great masters belonged to the guild if not to the
cloister. They were Bellinis, or Fra Angelicos.

In the East, where hereditary profession is an important factor
of society, the family took the place of the guild. Our old master
was cither a scion of the Tosas, or a monk, a Yeshin-Sodzu, or a
Chodensu. Monasticism itself later on gave protection to the bro-
therhood of painters, for, in the strict formalism of Oriental life, the

672 MODERN PAINTING

Buddhist gown afforded the means of liberation from social tram-
mels. You may notice that the Kanos always held ecclesiastical
titles, that Hokusai had a shaven head.

It must not be implied that the conditions in the past which gave
to both the Italian and the Japanese painters a recognized place in
society are to be considered ideal or perfect. I am simply pointing
to the fact that the position of art was not at least anomalous, as
it is nowadays. The difficulty at the present time is that society has
broken the ancient harmony, and offers nothing to replace it. The
academy and the institute are poor substitutes for the medieval
guilds or the Japanese monasticism, — the groups which kept up
the traditions and furnished a home for art.

The modern spirit, in emancipating the man, exiles the artist.
The painter of to-day has no recognized function in the social scheme.
He may be nearer nature, but is further from humanity. Have we
not noticed how intensely human are the pictures of all the great
masters? Do we not notice how distant and cold are the modern
productions? Art for art's sake is a wail of Bohemia.

If we look on the surface of things, it would appear as if there
were no time in history when art was so honored as it is to-day in
Europe or in America. The highest social distinctions are conferred
on the successful painter, and the amount of his remuneration is
incomparably greater than that given the old master. Yet it is a
matter of doubt whether he enjoys the fostering care and the stimu-
lating influences which the community and brother-workers accorded
him in the past. The very lack of finish and refinement in their
work shows the difference between the new and the old. It is signi-
ficant that in France, where the relation between the artist and the
community is better kept than elsewhere in the West, where tradi-
tions are still adhered to by its "Institute," we find the most vital
of contemporary achievements.

Modern art-education is not altogether the blessing that it is gen-
erally supposed to be. It is true that the academies and the museum
have opened up to all what was once a secret of the trade. It is also
true that systematic instruction has enabled one to overcome the
apparently unnecessary hardship of apprenticeship. But the art
academies cannot impart the benefits of the older method. The
grinding of colors and the attendance on the master, however irk-
some it mitrht have been, were the means of developing the moral
fibre of the artistic mind. The constant contact with the master-
worker, and the participation in the details of his work, were the best
means of obtaining insight into the entire complexity of production.
It is the home-life of art, which no school-life can replace. Art-
education, as it is generally conducted, is destructive to individuality.
Its systematic nature enforces a uniform rule on all. Again, the very

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 673

facility of modern methods robs the student of that severe training
which gave the finish to the work of old masters. Even the universal
use of photographs, which have come to be an important factor of
art-work in these days, saves the artists from the necessity of the
arduous copying of masterpieces which was the essential point of
traditional teaching. Who is not a painter nowadays? We have so
many amateurs that there are no great masters. We have made so
much of ourselves that there is very little left in others.

We of the East often wonder whether your society cares for art.
You seem not to want art, but decoration, — decoration in the
sense of subjugating beauty for the sake of display. In the rush
for wealth there is no time for lingering before a picture. In the
competition of luxury, the criterion is not that the thing should be
more interesting, but that it should be more expensive. The paint-
ings that cover the walls are not of your choice, but those dictated
by fashion. What sympathy can you expect from art when you
offer none? Under such conditions art is apt to retaliate either with
incipient flattery or with brutal sarcasm. Meanwhile the true art
weeps. Do not let my expressions offend you. Japan is eager to
follow in your footsteps, and is fast learning not to care for art.

The social conditions of modern Japan have laid grave problems on
her art. Indeed, it is with a feeling of sadness that I approach the
subject, for at the present moment Japanese painting is threatened
with entire destruction. The danger is due to the effects of the
series of wars that have continually disturbed us since the middle
of the last century, and also the occidentalization of the national
life. The advent of the American Embassy in 1853 precipitated the
revolution which was to end in the Restoration, the restoration of the
classic rule of the Mikado in 1868. This movement was the outcome
of the Japanese Renaissance which began in the eighteenth century
to recall us to a consciousness of the age preceding the Shogunates.
The whole energy of our scholarship was then concentrated on the
research and reconstruction of the literature and arts of the Xara
and early Kioto period which had so long been obscured during the
feudal age, — especially during the long wars of the Ashikagas
which we have already mentioned. The early half of the last century
is marked by the rise of a classic school of painting as a resultant
of this revival of ancient knowledge. The age was rich in artistic
activity in all branches. Even the old-fashioned school of Kano
caught new inspiration by a return to Scssiu and a renewed study
of the Sung masters. The Bunjin school in the style of the later
Ming and early Manchu dynasty were in full swing. Kioto was famous
through the names of Okio, Goshun, and Ganku. Hokusai was living
until 1S48. But the political agitations which then came over the
nation turned our energies into other channels beside that of art. The

674 MODERN PAINTING

threat of foreign complications was coupled with the actual struggle
of overthrowing the Tokugawa Shogunate. The gleam of the sword
and the flash of gunpowder were before the people's eyes by the year
1860. Kioto and Yeddo became the main centres of commotion, and
unrest was over all the country. Uprisings in various provinces
culminated in the general civil war which began in the vicinity of
Kioto, and convulsed the nation from Kiushiu to Yesso. It was in
those days that the art-treasures of the daimios were scattered to
form the ornaments of Western museums, when Buddhist painting
and sculpture in the monasteries were wantonly destroyed in the
mistaken zeal of Shinto converts.

It is heart-rending to hear of the burning of wonderful lacquer
boxes to collect their gold, for nobody could afford what was con-
sidered a luxury in that moment of universal calamity. Painters had
to abandon their profession. Those who did not follow the wars had
to eke out a hard subsistence by rude hand-work.

The Restoration was accomplished in 1868, which marks the year
when the last remnant of the army of the Shogunate was defeated and
submitted to the authority of the imperialists. It was in that year
that his Majesty the present Mikado ascended the throne and in-
augurated the enlightened policy which was to give Japan a place
in the family of nations. But the necessary friction attending the
adjustment of the old to the new social and economic conditions was
a source of constant disturbance. We had riots and rebellions, — the
last of which, the Satsuma Rebellion of 1878, was of quite a serious
nature. After that, peace was assured, and art had a chance to
survive. In 1882 we had our first national exhibition of painting.
But the community was too deeply involved in solving the problems of
modern industrialism to show any deep sympathy for the revival of
art. The best energies of the leading men were devoted to the fram-
ing and application of constitutional government, and the revoking
of the ex-territorial jurisdiction inflicted upon us by the foreign
powers.

Another great drain on our resources and intellect was the organ-
ization of the army and navy to secure our independence; for our
national existence was threatened by the continental aggression on
our legitimate line of defense. We must try to live before we could
paint. In 1894-95 we had the Chinese War. At the present moment
we arc in a death-grapple with one of the mightiest military nations
of Europe.

The ravages of war are bad enough, but in Japan we have the hard
task of facing the antagonistic forces which peace itself had brought
to bear upon us. I refer to the onslaught of Western art on our
national painting. A great battle is raging among us in the contest
for supremacy between Eastern and Western ideals. With what

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 675

results time alone can determine. I am aware that sincere lovers of
art in the West have always emphatically urged us to the preserva-
tion of our national style. I have heard many wonder why we should
have tried to imitate you in painting, as in everything else. You
should remember, however, that our wholesale adoption of your
methods of life and culture was not purely a matter of choice but of
necessity. The word "modernization" means the occidentalization
of the world. The map of Asia will reveal the dismal fate of the ancient
civilizations that have succumbed to the spell of industrialism,
commercialism, imperialism, and what not, which the modern spirit
has cast over them. It seems almost imperative that one should
mount the car of Juggernaut unless one would be crushed under its
wheels. Socially, our sympathy towards painting, as towards all
other questions of life, is divided into two camps, — the so-called
progressive, and the conservative. The former believes in the ac-
ceptance of Western culture in its entirety, the latter with a qualifica-
tion. To the advocates of the wholesale westernization of Japan,
Eastern civilization seems a lower development compared to the
Western. The more we assimilate the foreign methods the higher
we mount in the scale of humanity. They point out the state of
Asiatic nations and the success of Japan in maintaining a national
existence by the very fact of recognizing the supremacy of the
West. They claim that civilization is a homogeneous development
that defies eclecticism in any of its phases. To them Japanese painting
appears at one with the bows and arrows of our primitive warfare, —
not to be tolerated in these days of explosives and ironclads.

The conservatives, on the other hand, assert that Asiatic civiliza-
tion is not to be despised; that its conception of the harmony of life
is as precious as the scientific spirit and the organizing ability of the
West. To them, Western society is not necessarily the paragon
which all mankind should imitate. They believe in the homogeneity
of civilization, but that true homogeneity must be the result of a
realization from within, not an accumulation of outside matter. To
them, Japanese paintings are by no means the simple weapons to
which they are likened, but a potent machine invented to carry on
a special kind of aesthetic warfare.

I would like to say in this connection that Japanese art lias not
yet been presented in its true light to outside nations. Except to the
few who have made a special study of it, or to those whose real insight
into beauty has made it possible to enter into its spirit, the real
meaning of our national painting seems not to have been grasped
by the general Western public. Our painting is still known to you
through the color-prints of the popular school, and the flower and
bird pictures which represent the prettiness, not the seriousness of
our artistic efforts. I beg vou to know that in the works of our

676 MODERN PAINTING

masters lies as deep a philosophy of life and a religion of beauty
as those which animated the creations of your own. The mode of
expression is different, but the intensity of the emotion is the same.

There is a certain phase of Japanese painting which is difficult for
Western comprehension on account of its very Eastern nature. The
monistic trend of the Eastern thought has led to concentration
where it became expansive in yours. The microcosmic notion of
our later philosophy has even accentuated the tendency to express
with simplest means the most complex ideas. In some cases, color and
shading have been discarded in the eagerness of preserving the
purity of the idea. It is not symbolism but infinite suggestiveness.
It is not the simplicity of the child but the directness of the master-
mind. An ink-landscape of Kakei or Sessiu is a world in itself,
replete with the meaning of life. Without actual examples before us
it is hard to make myself understood. To take an analogy, the self-
completeness of those masters is in its own way the self-completeness
you find in the Mona Lisa of Leonardo or The Gilder of Rembrandt.

The fact that these concentrated poems were enjoyed by our
society was the proof of its culture. It showed the ability of the
public to sympathize and fill out the background which the artist
has purposely left unfilled. The public was as much the painter as
the painter himself, for both were required to complete an idea.
It belonged to the age when the tea-ceremony was universally
practiced, as a serious attempt to perfect the art of sympathy. You
are doubtless aware that the tea-ceremony is called a ceremony
because it is not a ceremony. It was a vital method of realizing the
harmonious appreciation of the facts of mundane life. The guest and
the host were alike called upon to create the unity of the room,
and the rhythm of the conversation.

I do not assert that Japanese painting has been always able to
keep up to this high standard. Like the tea-ceremony, it has often
become formal and meaningless. We feel the fatigue of the art-
impulse instead of its virility. But the worship of the suggestive
has been an integral part of our art-consciousness. The ideal was
always there, however we may have failed to approach it.

The conservative thinks that it is a great pity these ancient ideals
should be lost. I, for one, who belong to the humble ranks of the
conservatives, find it deplorable that the traditions of Chinese and
Japanese painting should be entirely ignored. I do not mean to
say that we should not study the Western methods, for thereby we
may add to our own method of expression. Nor do I desire that
we should not. assimilate the wealth of ideas which your civilization
has amassed. On the contrary, the mental equipment of Japanese
painting needs strengthening through the accretion of the world's
ideals. We can only become more human by becoming more uni-

MODERN PROBLEMS IN PAINTING 677

versal. The value of a suggestion is in the depth of the thought
that it conveys. What I wish to protest against is the attitude of
imitation which is so destructive of individuality.

Disastrous as have been the consequences of the sweeping inunda-
tions of Western ideals, its ravages on Japanese painting might have
been comparatively slight had it not been accompanied with modern
industrialism. It may be that Western art is also suffering from
the effects of industrialism, but to us its menace is more direful as
we hear it beating against the bulwarks of our old economic life. To
us it seems that industrialism is making a handmaiden of art, as
religion and personal glorification have made of it in the past.
Competition imposes the monotony of fashion instead of the variety
of life. Cheapness is the goal, not Beauty. The democratic indif-
ference of the market stamps everything with the mark of vulgar
equality. In place of the hand-works, where we feel the warmth of
the human touch of even the humblest worker, we are confronted
with the cold-blooded touch of the machine. The mechanical habit
of the age seizes the artist and makes him forget that his only reason
for existence is to be the one, not the many. He is impelled not to
create but to multiply. Painting is becoming more and more an
affair of the hand rather than of the mind.

The task of preserving Japanese painting against all these antago-
nistic influences is not easy. It is a matter of no small wonder that
we should have produced within recent years a new school of national
painting. Our hope in the future lies in the tenacity of the Japanese
race which has kept its individuality intact since the dawn of its
history. Two generations cannot change the idiosyncrasies of twenty
centuries. The bulk of our traditions still remains practically un-
harmed. Of late years there has been a marked tendency to a deeper
recognition of the best in our ancient culture. We are glad to see in the
heroic sacrifices of our people in the present war that the spirit of old
Japan is not dead. Our greatest hope is in the very vitality of art
itself which enabled it to thrive in spite of the various adversities
which it had encountered in the past. A grim pride animates us in
facing the enormous odds which modern society has raised against
us. At the present day we feel ourselves to be the sole guardians of
the art-inheritance of Asia. The battle must be one fought out to the
last.

Perhaps it may have seemed to you lhat I have painted in too
dark a color the modern problems of art. There is a brighter side
of the question. Western society itself is awakening to a better
understanding of the problem. The suspense of art-activities at the
present moment has aroused the anxious inquiry of serious thinkers
into the cause of the universal decadence. It is time, indeed, that
we should begin To work for the true adjustment of society to art.

678 MODERN PAINTING

I shall be only too grateful if my words have been of service in draw-
ing your attention to the grave nature of the situation in the East.
In the name of humanity, I call on the brotherhood of artists and
art-lovers to a solution of these world-wide problems.

SHORT PAPER

MR. CHARLES H. COFFIN presented a paper on " Some Considerations of our
System of Instruction in Painting."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: HISTORY OF ART

SPECIAL WORKS OF REFERENCE

(Prepared by the courtesy of Professor Halsey C. /res, Director of the St. Louis
School of Fine Arts)

BERENSON, Modern Art.

BROWN, Sacred Architecture: Its Rise and Progress.

BRYAN, Dictionary of Printers and Engravers.

Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.

CLEMENT, MRS., Handbook of Painters, Sculptors, Architects, and Engravers.
COLLIGAN, Greek Archaeology.

Cox, KENYON, Monograph on Whistler in "Masters Old and New."
DE FOREST, History of Art.

DIDRON, Christian Iconography, History of Christian Art in the Middle Ages.
DURET, THEODORE, Histoire de J. McN. Whistler et de son univre.
FERGUSON, History of Architecture.

History of Modern Architecture.
FLAXMAN, Lectures on Sculpture.
FURTWAENGLER, Work on Art.
HAMMERTON, Thoughts about Art.
HARE, Cities of Italy.
HUNT, Talks on Art.
KUGLER, Handbook of Painting, German, Flemish, Dutch.

Handbook of Painting, Italian School.
LE Due, VIOLLET, Discourses on Architecture.

Habitation of Man.
LLOYD, Age of Pericles.
LUBKE, History of Art.

History of Sculpture.

MEMES, History of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture.
MITCHELL. History of Ancient Sculpture.
Mi T.LEK, Ancient Art and its Remains.
MUTHKR, History of Art.
OLIPHANT, Makers of Florence.
PALGRAVE, Essays on Art.
PERRY, Greek and Roman Sculpture.
POYXTF.R, Ten Lectures on Art.
POYXTKR and HEAD, Classic and Italian Painting.
Rr.SKix, Seven Lamps of Architecture.

Stones of Venice.

Modern Painters.
SCOTT, The Catacombs of Rome.
SEXSIER. Life of Millet.

SMITH. Architecture, Gothic and Renaissance.
SPOOXKR, Biographical History of Fine Art.
STORKU. Cathedrals of Britain.
SYMOXD*. Life of Michael Angelo.
Renaissance in Ttalv.

680 BIBLIOGRAPHY: HISTORY OF ART

TAFT, LORADO, American Sculpture.
TAINE, Lectures on Art.
Principles of Art.
VAN DYKE, History of Painting.
VASAEI, Lives of the Painters.
VENABLES, Cathedrals of England, Eastern.
VIBERT, Science of Painting.

WAY, M. T. R., The Art of James McNeil Whistler.
WILKINSON, Ancient Egyptians.
WINCKELMANN, History of Ancient Art.
WINKLES, Cathedral Churches in England and Wales.
WOLTMANN and WOERMANN, History of Painting.
YONGE, Christians and Moors in Spain.

SPECIAL WORKS OF REFERENCE ON THE SECTION
OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

(Prepared by the courtesy of Professor A. D. F. Hamlin, Columbia University)

FERGUSSON, JAS., History of Modern Architecture, 3d ed., Revised by Robert

Ken. (London, John Murray. 1891.)
GARBETT, E. LACY, Principles of Design in Architecture. (London, John Weale.

1850.)

GUADET, J., Elements et Theorie de 1'architecture. (Paris, Librairie de la Con-
struction Moderne, 13 Rue Bonaparte.)
HAMLIN, A. D. F., The Difficulties of Architecture, Architectural Review, vol. i,

no. 2.
The Battle of the Styles, Architectural Review, vol. i, nos. 3

and 4.
Modern French Architecture, Architectural Review, vol. x,

no. 2.

SCHUYLER, MONTGOMERY, American Architectiire. (New York, Harper Bros.)
STATHAM, H. H., Modern Architecture, A book for Architects and the Public.

(New York, Scribners, 1898.)
WAGNER, OTTO (Vienna), Modern Architecture. Transl. by Prof. N. Clifford

Ricker (Rogers and Manson, Boston.)

HANDBUCH DER ARCHITEKTTJR, edited by Josef Durm, for discussion of particular
problems of modern design, construction, and planning. (Stuttgart, Seemann.)

POETRY

POETRY

THE IDEA OF LAW IN POETKY.1

BY WILLIAM J. COURTHOPE

[William John Courthope, Professor of Poetry, University of Oxford, 1895-
1901; b. 1842; educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford; Litt.D., Dur-
ham, 1895; LL.D. Edinburgh, 189S. Author of Life of Addison (Men of
Letters series) ; History of English Poetry; Life in Poetry, Law in Taste.
Editor of the Standard Edition of Pope (including a. life of Pope from hii
pen).]

PAET I.— FRENCH POETRY.

FINE art is the imitation, by the poets, painters, sculptors, and
musicians of any people, of the idea of the Universal in Nature. This
idea springs out of the character of the race, the course of its history,
the common perceptions of its men of genius. As the life of a nation
develops, the practice of its various artists instinctively falls in with
the growth of society, advances with it to maturity, and languishes in
its decline. Sometimes, as in ancient Greece, the history of art seema
to manifest itself with almost as much certainty and regularity aa
the life of a flower, or a tree, or a human body. The Greek poet dis-
covered by a kind of spontaneous instinct how to express the idea of
greatness in his race in the divine simplicity of hexameter verse; the
Greek musician learned at a very early stage how to imitate human
passions in dance and song. With the remarkable development of
civic life that followed the Persian invasion the Greek architect and
sculptor co-operated to embody in marble the loftiest ideas of religion.
Instinctively, in the same age. the dramatist combined, from the epic
minstrelsy and the religious hymn, a mode of imitation fitted to ex-
press the profounder ideas of society about life and nature. With
rare and delicate taste, /Eschylus and his two great successor? made
the drama, in its progressive development, a mirror for all the
changes of moral and religious feeling that transformed the Athenian
mind between the battle of Marathon and the Sicilian Expedition.

68G rOETHY

And when, after the battle of Chaeronea, the Greek enthusiasm for
liberty and the old Hellenic belief in the gods died away together,
the loss of imaginative energy in society reflected itself in the purely
prosaic imitation of the Xew Comedy. In all directions the law of
Greek art was embodied in the works of great artists, and, as I
said in my last lecture, Aristotle's best criticism in the Poetics is
not new legislation, but the declaration of the law of Xature already
existing in art.

Had it been the destiny of Aristotle to declare the a}sthetic law of
any modern European nation, his task would have been far more
difficult. In no Christian society has the artist shown the same spon-
taneous faculty for imitating Xature as in Greece. Many obstacles
stand between Xature and the imagination of the modern artist. To
begin with, he has been cut off from the fountainhead of his primaeval
instincts by the conversion of his ancestors to Christianity. Moreover,
the nation in modern Europe is not constituted simply, as in the
small Greek states, but is vast and complex, composed of antagonistic
classes, each with its own perceptions and ideals, which often baffle the
attempt of the artist to divine the ideas common to the whole society.
Lastly, the modern imagination and judgment are bewildered by the
presence of surviving models of Hellenic art, which constantly oppose
themselves to the ideas derived from Christian education. Xevorthe-
less, a historic examination of art will hardly leave room for doubt,
that the varieties of ideal imitation in the different countries of
Europe have been as much the product of national character, as was
the case in the City States of Greece : and I propose in this lecture to
illustrate, as clearly as I can in the time at my disposal, how national
forces have combined to give a dominant bias to the genius of French
poetry.

Experience shows how closely the master qualities of the French
character still correspond with Caasar's description of them. The
assimilation of Visigothic and Frankish elements have not materially
altered in the Gaul either the brilliant and fickle temperament, vividly
colored by transient emotions, the rapid logical perception of things,
or the sense of artistic form and proportion common to all races that
have felt the influence of the Latin mind. As this national character
expands in the course of French history, there passes before the
imagination a long drama of something like civil war between tw.o
mutually irreconcilable factions — the bourgeoisie and the feudal
aristocracy. The landmarks of the struggle stand forth prominently;
the long agonizing conflict of the early ages between the Crown, as
the representative of civil law and order, and the great vassals, as
the representatives of feudal privilege; the victory of the Crown,
allied with the bourgeoisie, under Louis XI. ; the religious wars
between Catholics and Huguenots; the accession of Henry IV. and

IDEA OF LAW 1ST POETRY 687

the elimination of the Huguenots as a political power; the wars of
the Fronde and the annihilation of the political power of the feudal
aristocracy; the absorption of all the powers of the State by the
Crown in the reign of Louis XIV. ; the decay of the Monarchy in the
eighteenth century; the French Revolution.

As illustrating the working of the Law of National Character in
literature, nothing can be more remarkable than the vivid reflection
of this course of political development in the various stages of French
poetry. There in the very infancy of society, may be observed the
trenchant antithesis between the genius of the two opposing classes in
the contrasted styles of the Provencal lyric and the fabliau of the
Trouvere ; the one the poetical vehicle of the inhabitants of the
Castle, the other of the inhabitants of the town. We see the two
types brought into deliberately satiric contrast in the famous Romance
of the Rose, in the latter part of which the bourgeois John de Meung
mocks at the ideals of his chivalric predecessor William de Lorris.
The alliance between the Court and the bourgeoisie is symbolized in
the poems of Marot, who set himself to refine the character of the old
French poetry to suit the more fastidious taste of Francis I. On
the other hand, the poetry of Ronsard, the representative, with the
Pleiad, of the party of the aristocrac}", reflects in a new form the old
tendency of the castled nobility to mark out for themselves a manner
of conception and expression sharply separated from that of the
vulgar. Ronsard's movement, in spite of his real genius, is seen from
the first to be against the inevitable tendency of things, and is there-
fore doomed to failure; and in the same way D'Aubigne's Huguenot
ideals, unable to make head against the Catholic tendency in the
French nation, find utterance, like a lonely "Vox Clamantis," in
the lofty strains of Lcs Tragitjiics. Henry IV. ascends the throne;
and with Malherbe, as the dictator of poetical taste, the victory of the
Monarchical over the feudal principle in French politics, the victory
of reason over imagination in French poetry, is practically decided.

If, turning from this general historic \iew, we ask how these two
parties respectively manifested their character in French literature,
it is clear, in the first place, that the qualities in the French nation
which the aristocracy communicated to the language were of the
feminine order, both in their virtue and their defect. How remark-
able is the long -array of brilliant women who have left a name in
French literature — the Countess of ( 'h
the Marquise de Rambouillet, Madame .•
How poweifiil an influence on the coui
cisocl by the Covtrs d'Amour, the Hotel Rainbouillet, the Salon- of the
PrecJeuses! From the noble ladies of France, and the men who,
according to the laws of chivalry, declare! thorn-elves their servants,
the French idiom acquired that exquisite vein of irony and innuendo

688 POETEY

which made French conversation for so long the standard of manners
in European society, and French prose the finest instrument of criti-
cism, letter-writing, and diplomacy. But the masculine qualities of
imagination are conspicuous by their absence. What the French
aristocracy wanted in their literary style was substance, sincerity, a
sense of the reality of things. Weigh the names of their representa-
tive men, Charles of Orleans, Eonsard, Voiture, Chapelain, St. Amant,
against such names as Eabelais, La Fontaine, Moliere, and Voltaire,
representatives of the bourgeoisie; observe the triviality of matter
in the lyrics of the Troubadours, in the poetry written for the Hotel
Eambouillet, in the romance of the Grand Cyrus; -and you will
see the defeat of the French aristocracy in the conflict of History
explained in the conflict of Ideas.

The bourgeois element in French poetry is of an evidently opposite
kind. It has none of the romance, delicacy, or spiritual imagination,
which distinguish the work of the chivalric party; its qualities are,
above all, good sense, shrewd observation, keen logic, a penetrating
appreciation of hypocrisy and unreality, an unerring sense of the
ridiculous, an Epicurean enjoyment of life. Deprive this bourgeois
genius of its native tendencv to vulgarity, by putting it under the
patronage of the Court, give it subjects for imitation suitable to its
knowledge and powers, find it an instrument of expression analogous
to its favorite fall inn; and the flower of the French imagination will
in time unfold itself in the Comedies of Moliere and the Fables of
La Fontaine. It is in the works of these two writers, perhaps above
all others, that we may observe the operation of what it is not improper
to call the idea of Xatural Law in French Poetry.

Moliere has been severely censured by the more austere critics of
France a= a careless and slovenly writer. He is blamed for want of
polish in his style, for his incorrect selection of metaphors, for his
audacious plagiarisms: and all these reproaches he has to some extent
justly incurred. P>ut his defects are almost the inevitable accom-
paniment of his splendid qualities as a comic creator. Moliere im-
itated the ridiculous in Mature wherever he found it. When he
thought that Spanish or Italian phrases, or the vulgarisms of French
idiom, were cxpro-sive of character, he used them without any regard
to tin- delicate nerve? of the French Aeademy. With as little hesita-
tion he drew on the inventions of the classic and Italian dramatists or
the fnlliuii.r of Boccaccio, if they furni-hed him with c«nvenipnt plots
for framing hi- observation nf what was deserving of ridicule in
hi- own society. But all his creation.- are eminently original. Xo-
wheyr- el-e than in France could -m-h universal types of human nature
as M. .Tourdain Tarrtnff. and Alceste have been conceived ami em-

sucli nice pre-

IDEA OF LAW IN POETEY 689

essence of absurdity in the manners of Les Precieuses or Les Femmes
Savantes. As a mirror for such universal truths of Nature the
refined literary language of the Academy, and the conventional stand-
ard of manners in the Hotel Rambouillet, were equally inadequate.
Moliere in his Comedies doubtless leans to farce; but he does so
because the old popular French farces furnished him with the ideal
atmosphere required to give poetical truth to the observed realities of
Nature. Nor do his bourgeois instincts carry him into excess. His
seemingly buffoon extravagance of conception and spontaneous exu-
berance of expression were kept within due limits by the sense that
his plays were to be performed before the most fastidious of monarchs,
who would never have tolerated the exhibition of vulgarity beyond
what was necessary for the purposes of art. Hence, in spite of its
negligence, the composition and language of Moliere are in the highest
sense well-bred, harmonious, and classic.

Exactly analogous to the dramatic practice of Moliere is the liter-
ary practice of La Fontaine, except that, as the poems of the latter
were intended to be read, no one has ever blamed him for incorrect-
ness of style. La Fontaine makes no more effort than Moliere to raise
himself info a consciously ideal atmosphere. He cares no more than
Moliere did for the praise of absolute originality; his fables, like the
plots of Moliere, are borrowed from the inventions of predecessors,
fabulists such as Phaxlrus, Babrius, Horace, and a hundred others.
But through all this borrowing and adaptation, the unmistakable char-
acter of the old French fabliau, and the individuality of La Fontaine,
make themselves felt. His verses breathe the easy Epicurean air char-
acteristic of his class. His peasants and citizens are types of the men
and women whom lie saw in the farms and markets; his beasts use
the average human language of prudence and good sense. In the
flow of his verse \ve listen to the natural idiom of the conversation of
his time. Nevertheless, the ideal atmosphere, required for the imi-
tation of the Universal, is never absent from his creations, and know-
ing as he did that he was writing for refined society, his poetry, with
all its apparent ease, is in realitv the result of the most careful selec-
tion of words and harmonies.

The dominant bias of French taste, however, di-closes itself not
merely in work* in which the artist is felt to he dealing with materials
akin to his own nature, but in the abstract reasoning by which men of
genius have endeavored to regulate practice in the higher spheres of
poelic invention. For example, the French idea of law in art is strik-
inglv exhibited in the approved rules of composition for the tragic
drama. Fuliko the dramas of Athens and of England, the tradition
of the theatre in France is not of popular origin, but is the late
creation of a few great poets, accommodating Their practice to the
taste of comparatively refined audiences. There was. indeed, a time

690 POETRY

when the itinerant stage of the Middle Ages found a welcome among
the French, as among the English people, but these exhibitions had
so dwindled during the miserable period of the Hundred Years' War,
that, at the close of the sixteenth century, one company of actors, in
the Hotel Bourgogne, was sufficient to satisfy the dramatic require-
ments of the whole country. When the taste for the stage began
to revive the poet was free to invent for himself, and he naturally
turned for his models to the tragedies of Seneca, never meant for
acting, in which an abstract situation is worked out by means of rhet-
orical harangues and sharply pointed dialogue. The form thus
adopted proved so acceptable to French taste, that, in spite of the
efforts of Voltaire and Diderot, it kept possession of the stage for
nearly 200 years.

Having thus grounded the practice of the drama on the authority
of Seneca, the French poets proceeded to regulate it by the supposed
theory of Aristotle. Corneille was the first to define the law of the
stage in his Discourse on the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place.
He assumed that the external form of the Greek drama was some-
thing immutable; that Aristotle had defined its changeless rules in the
Poetics; and that these rules had been faithfully observed in his own
tragedies. Xow the only unity on which Aristotle really insists is
Unity of Action; and in his Discourse Corneille plainly shows that
he does not know what Aristotle meant by Unity of Action. Unity
of Action in the Poetics means simply the representation on the stage
of a fictitious story, with a proportioned beginning, middle, and end,
involving a display of human passion, character, and misfortune, in
such a form as to appear probable and lifelike to the spectator?.

Shakespeare and the Greek poets perfectly understood the working
of this fundamental law. So vividly does Shakespeare conceive his
ideal situations as a whole, that he even realizes in his imagination
the state of the climate and temperature, as when Hamlet says to
Horatio: "The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold;" or when Duncan
praises the amenity of Macbeth's Castle:

This guest of summer,

The teniple-liaunting martlet, does approve,
.By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooinjrly here : no jutty, friese.
.Buttress, nor coiim of vantage, but this bird
Hath inade his pendent bed and proereant cradle :
'\Yhi-re they inn-1 bivd find hnunt. T have observe
The air is delicate.

So again, in As You Like It, when Oliver asks the way to Rosa-
lind's cottar, wiih what particular d>,'t;'!i!s the poet bring? the ?cene
before n? ! —

IDEA O.F LAW IX I'OETHY Ml

Good morrow, fair ones : pray you, if you know,
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
A sheep-cote fenced about with olive trees?

To which Cclia replies:

West of tliis place, down in the neighbour bottom :
The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream
Left on your right hand brings you to the place.

The fact is, that both the Greek and English dramatists were the
natural successors of the minstrels — the former of Homer and the
cyclic poets, the latter of the mediaeval trouvercs — and their imagin-
ations were accustomed to live in the ideal action of the story-tellers.
Xow for a story in itself Corneillc cared nothing. What he meant
by unity of action was the unity of abstract idea in a drama. He
understood very well the nature of the stage effects required to produce
emotion in an audience; and he constructed his plays logically and
scientifically with a view to securing these effects. I imagine that
the way in which he composed a tragedy was something like this:
First, he searched for a situation in which he might exhibit a conflict
between the will and the passions; then, when he had found the
subject, he filled in the situation with the characters, and determined
their relations to each other in successive scenes; after that, he
thought out the emotions and sentiments proper to each scene; lastly,
he colored the whole of the dialogue with impassioned rhetoric and
epigrammatic points.

Composing on this principle, Corneille was able to exclude from the
structure of his drama every external incident that was not necessary
to the evolution of his abstract idea, but he was far from attaining
unitv of action. Re strove to imitate, a* far as possible, the outward
form of Greek tragedy, and took note of Ari-Motle's saying, that it is
not necessary to represent on the stage the whole of a recorded action.
r>ut lie did not observe that the reason of thi- was that, in the Athe-
nian theatre, the audience were all familiar with the whole story-
represented, and so were able to supply from their imagination the
necessary gaps in the action. But Ibis is nor the case in Tlic Cid.
Corneille. in this play, merely select- from the story of the Spanish
hero such ci-odos as he deemed necessar for the treatment of his

t> and i >on ( ^oii'c

iiuarrel causing the

situation re-ernbles

According to r>ne of

igue for C'himene is

avemre th.e in-ult of-

692 POETRY

fered to his father; the love of Chimene for Rodrigue is checked by
the duty imposed on her to avenge the death of her father; the dra-
matic interest depends on the solution of the psychological puzzle.

It is extremely interesting and instructive to observe how carefully
Corneille applies the Law of the Three Unities to a tragedy thought
out on this completely abstract principle. He wished to make the play
appear logical to the audience on the stage; he did not care about
making it appear real to the universal imagination. Accordingly, he
pleads apologetically, in his Discourse on the Three Unities, that he
has not departed from the rule of Unity of Place further than he
was absolutely obliged by the nature of his subject. And as to the
Unity of Time, since the action of the play is restricted by the sup-
posed law to twenty-four hours, the dramatist is obliged by the course
of events to make Don Rodrigue first kill Don Gomes, then conquer
the Moors, then come back to fight a second duel with Don Sanche;
and that he may do all this within the prescribed time limits, his
father, Don Diegue, opposes the desire of the king to give The Cid
an interval for rest and refreshment, observing that it is nothing for a
man of his son's heroic valor to come from a battle to a duel without
making a pause !

And yet. though Corneille is so anxious to satisfy the demands of a
dramatic law which has no existence in truth or nature, he sees no
improbability in representing Chimene making long speeches to her
lady-in-waiting in order to show the audience the state of her mind in
the struggle between her inclination and her duty; no improbability
in bringing Don Rodrigue to his mistress, after he has killed her
father, to entreat her to plunge the same sword into his own heart; no
improbability in causing the king to decide that Chimene's plea
for vengeance against the man who has killed her father shall be
satisfied by a duel between Rodrigue and Chimene's selected champion,
the prize of victorv being the hand of Chimene herself; no improb-
ability in leading us to suppose, at the close of the play, that Chimene
marrie< her father's slaver and lives happily for ever after! Such im-
probabilities could never have been conceived by any poet who undei-
slood the meaning of Aristotle's principle of Unity of Action in the
imitation of Xature: but they proved no obstacle to the appreciation
of the tragedy by an audience whi-ch accepted the artificial hypothesis
with which the poet started, and mainly desired to have their own love
of antithesis and rhetoric satisfied in a dramatic form of representa-

it from me. as an Fndi-hman. to -peak with disrespect of
dramatists of France. Viewed in their relation to the

reneh society, plays ]jke ][nrac'\ Cinna. I'licdrc, and Athalie
seem to he marvels of dramatic skill and invention. Mv argument is
that n sor-iftv like that of France was incapable of conceiving tragic

IDEA OF LAW IX POETRY 693

action like that found in the plays of ^Eschylus and Shakespeare. The
action of the poetic drama in Greece and England was a reflection of
widespread popular energy, of freedom of thought, speech, and deed,
of national greatness and patriotism, exalted by an inward sense of
power and by the defeat of such foreign enemies as Xerxes and Philip
II. No such inspiring air of liberty stirred the imagination of France
in the seventeenth century. With what feelings would Louis XIV.,
retaining in his memory his youthful experiences of the Frondist wars,
have witnessed on the stage the sufferings of legitimate kings, de-
prived, as in Richard II. and Macbeth, of their thrones and lives by
the usurpation of ambitious subjects? How would his monarchical
pride have revolted against such a spectacle as King Lear, stripped of
his last shred of authority, the sport of the elements, the companion
in adversity of fools and madmen ! What woiild the Jesuits have
said to the daring doubts and speculations of Hamlet's conscience ?
Absolutism and centralization called for another order of dramatic
exhibition in France. Driven from her free range in external Nature,
the Muse of Tragedy retired into the recesses of the human soul, whose
inner conflicts she might represent without rousing the political sus-
picion of king or cardinal. Yet even here she was haunted by the
phantoms of her own self-consciousness. The overpowering sense of
the authority of Aristotle, the anticipation of the verdict of the asso-
ciated critics of the Academy, the oppressive idea of a dramatic stand-
ard formed by ancient models of unrivalled excellence, all these
influences co-operated to make ihe French dramatist voluntarily fetter
himself in his imitation of nature. The Law of the Three "Tnities is
an illustration of the tendency in the French character, as developed
by the history of France, to repress the liberties of imagination by the
analysis of Logic.

As the French la\v of the stage is defined by Corneille in his Dis-
course on the Unities, so the law of French literary taste is expounded
by Boileau in the Art Poetif/ur. Critics are apt to undervalue poems
of the class of Horace's. Art Po< ti<-a and Pope's E.^n;/ on Criticism,
because they regard them as abstract treatises on taste, containing
cold and commonplace maxims of composition: wherea- their real
interest and importance lie in the fact that tlu'v are declaration- of
law bv a victorious literarv party. The . I /•< Tin-lim and the Epistle
to Align*/ us were manifestoes of the HVllcnisiiig party in Roman
literature, directed against those who favored the rude facilitv of poof?
like Lucilius and Plautus. The E*xai/ an Crif!c>*m is an argumerv'" in
verse against the taste represented by the Metaphysical Poets of the
seventeenth century in England. More suggestive than either of
these poems, because more relentless and uncompromising, the Art
Pot'/i</ne stands out prominently a- the final declaration of Law. by
the literary representatives of the French bourgeoisie, in alliance with

694 POETEY

tlie Grown on the one hand., and with the Classical Humanists on the
other, against the aristocratic literary party represented in the co-
teries of the Precieuses. The artistic value of the apparently abstract
rules formulated in the poem consists in their oblique way of reflecting
on the practice of the Seuderys, St. Amant and Pradon. The Art
Poetique is the formulated expression of the law of French poetry,
first recognized nearly a century before in the verses of Malherbe,
whose praises Boileau so enthusiastically sounds. " Lastly," he says,
" came IMalherbe, the first in France to give an example of just ca-
dence in verse, to show the power of a word in its right place, and to
restrict the Muse to the laws of duty. Eestored by this wise writer,
our language no longer offered any rude shock to the refined ear.
Stanzas learned how to close gracefully; one verse no longer ventured
to overlap another. Everything approves the justice of his laws, and
this faithful guide still serves as a model to the authors of our time.
Walk in his steps; love his purity; imitate the clearness of his happy
style.''

What, then, was the ideal which Boileau, by his reasoning and illus-
trations, set before the French poet ? The expression of Truth, Rea-
son, Logic. The aim was not wanting in life and vigor. Genius, says
the critic, at the opening of the Art Poetique, is indispensable, but
the medium in which genius must work is good sense. " Tout doit
tendre au bon sen?.'' And again, " Good sense must prevail even in
song." Hardly so deeply laid as the foundation of Horace, " Scribendi
recte sapere est et principium et fons," the rule implies that the stand-
ard of the correct imitation of nature is the lucid perception and logic
of the bourgeois mind, aided by the refined manners of the court.
" Etudiez la cour. connaissez-vous la ville." Above all, whatever sub-
ject is chosen, the poet must go to its essence, and not be sati-iied till
he has found the exact and perfect form of words required for the
expression of the thought. Xot a word about Beauty, Liberty, Im-
agination. Fancy. In every phrase we hear the voice of the stern pro-
scribe)', the Sulla of poetry, on the watch to put on the list for mas-
sacre some dangerous partisan of the Hotel Eambouillet, who has
managed to escape critical notice.

I Soil can was well aware that Poetry could not dispense with the aris-
tocratic clement in language: and being at war with the principle
favored by the -ocial aristocracy, he sought to till the void in his criti-
cal system by allying himself with the literary ari-tocracv of the Ee-
naissance, and exalting the authority of the Greek and Eoman classics.
The principle was excellent so lor, r a? it meant no more than self-
criticism by the highest standard of antiquity. But Boileau was
almost inevi'fibly carried into error by his logic. lie regarded all the

1 ' i

IDEA OF LAW IX POET If Y 695

priety of each could be determined by settled rules. " Every poem,"
he says, u shines with its proper beauty. The rondeau, Gallic by birth,
has the artlessness of nature, the ballad, strictly subject to its old max-
ims, often owes a lustre to the caprice of its rhymes. The madrigal,
more simple and more noble in its style, breathes gentleness, tender-
ness, and love.'1 Thus, in opposition to his own and Horace's teach-
ing, that the form of poetry must necessarily adapt itself to the
thought, he speaks as if poetry lay in stereotyped forms of versification.
In spite of his foundation of sound reasoning, he came insensibly to
identify the imitation of Nature, under the guidance of good sense,
with the mere external imitation of Greek and Eoman poets.

Two examples will show the inconsistencies into which his logic
betrayed him. Among the various types of poetry which he found
himself obliged to define was the Eclogue. According to the dictates
of good sense this form of poem must, he says, avoid the two extremes
of pompous elevation on the one hand, and of rustic meanness on the
other. An easy abstract rule; but what does it practically mean ?
" Between these two excesses," says Boileau, " the path is difficult. In
order to find it, follow Theocritus and Virgil. Let their feeling com-
positions, dictated by the Graces, never quit your hands; turn them
over by night and day. They alone in their learned verse will be able
to teach you by what art an author may without meanness lower his
style; how to sing of Flora and the fields, of Pomona and the woods;
how to animate two shepherds to contend on the flute, to celebrate
the allurements of love's pleasures; to transform Narcissus into a
flower; to cover Daphne with bark; and by what art at times the
eclogue invests the country and the woods with consular dignity."
Would a poet who in Louis XIV. 's time acted obediently on these in-
structions have been imitating Nature according to the law of Good
Sense ?

Again, Boileau found himself much perplexed how to apply the
principle of Good Sense to his idea of an epic poem. The epic,
he says, sustains itself by failli and lives by fiction; therefore you
cannot di-pense in a poem of this kind with the machinery of pagan
mytholngv. Hence it is impossible to write a Christian epic. " In
vain,'' he says, alluding to the attempts in this direction of poets in
the anti-classic camp: "'in vain do our deluded authors, banishing
from their verse these traditional ornaments, strive to make God,
the «aints. and the prophets act like the deities sprung out of the
poets' imagination, tako the reader into Hell at every step, and intro-
duce him to Ashtaroth. Beelzebub, and Lucifer alone. The awful
mysteries of the Christian faith are incapable of gay and brilliant
ornament. On every side the Gospel presents to the mind the spec-
tacle only of Eepentance and Judgment, and the inexcusable mixture
of fiction gives to its truths an air of fable. What, an object to offer

696 POETRY

to the eye, the devil blaspheming against heaven — the devil, whose
aim it is to abase the glory of your Hero, and who often disputes the
victory with God! "

True enough in its application to the feeble invention of Scudery
and his companions, a criticism like this only proves that the French
were incapable of producing a great epic poem. It does not prove
that there was anything fundamentally wrong in the conception of
Paradise Lost. And the same rigid restrictive logic characterizes all
Boileau's devices with regard to diction and versification — the exclu-
sive use of the Alexandrine, the caesura always in the middle of the
line, the avoidance of the hiatus and the " enjambement," the choice
of words to harmonize exactly with the movement of the rhythm, —
all which are only the final declaration by the Academic dictator of
the laws first promulgated by Malherbe. For the time the victory of
Boileau and the ideas of the cultivated bourgeoisie over the party of
mediaeval Romance was complete. Xor was it a mere transient fashion
of taste. For about one hundred and fifty years the Law of Classicism,
as defined in the Art Poetique, exerted an irresistible authority. In
spite alike of the half-hearted efforts of Voltaire to enlarge the liber-
ties of dramatic action, and of the experiments of Diderot in senti-
mental cOmedy, the classic style, founded on the Law of the Three
Unities, reigned supreme upon the French stage through the eight-
eenth century. But it was a party triumph, a Pyrrhic victory, won
by the vigor of a certain element in society, and liable to be reversed
when the class from which the movement sprang lost its vitality.
Undermined by the growth of natural science, by the philosophy of
the encyclopasdists, and by the sentimentalism of Rousseau, the im-
posing structure of French classicism fell almost at the first discharge
of artillery brought against it by the Romantic party after the restora-
tion of the Bourbons.

It is riot to be denied that it deserved its fate. But at the same
limn it would be well for us Englishmen to examine very carefully the
true los.-on to ho learned from the triumph of French Romanticism.
The Law of Classic Taste in Franco could not have remained para-
mount for so long a period; its authority could not have been in-
stinctively recognized by so many groat creative intellects, or so clearly
do finer] by a sucopssir.n of able critie=. if it had not represented some-
thing real and positive in the constitution of the French character.
And looking at the matter historically, when we see that the idea
of the manner in winch Xaturo ought io be imitated in Poetry, as
expressed in the Art Poetique, i= actually embodied in the poems of
La Fontaine and Molierp. and that the idea of the structure and
versification proper to the drama is the same in the tragedies of Ra-
cine and Yoliaire as in the criticism of Boileau, then candid minds will
allow that, however narrow may have been the sphere of imitation,

IDEA OF LAW IX POETEY <i(J7

and however restricted the perception of harmony, both adapted them-
selves to an irresistible tendency of things in the development of
French society. The great error of the Eomanticists was that they
ignored the existence of this historic law. As a revolt in the sphere
of art and imagination their movement was fully justified, and noth-
ing would have been easier for them than to show that a law of taste,
which might have been suitable for the times of Louis XIV., was
quite unsuitable for the times of Charles X.

What the Boinanticists wanted, however, was not a revolt but a
Eevolution. The rules, distinctions, practices, and traditions, which
had been the result of so much ingenious thought and labor, were to be
swept away, and Poetry was to find for herself a basis in first prin-
ciples, supposed to be entirely modern. What were they ? The mani-
festo of the victorious Eomanticists is to be found in the Preface to
Victor Hugo's Cromwdt, which founds its reasoning on this colossal
generalization : '' To sum up the facts we have just observed, Poetry
has three Ages, each of which corresponds with an epoch of society :
Ode, Epic, Drama. Primitive times are lyric, ancient times are epic,
modern times are dramatic. The Ode sings eternity; the Epic sol-
emnizes history; the Drama paints life. The character of the first
kind of poetry is naivete; the character of the second simplicity; the
character of the third truth. The rhapsodists mark the transition of
the lyric poets to the epic poets, as the romance-writers from the epic
poets to the dramatic poets. Historians arise in the second epoch;
chroniclers and critics in the third. The personages of the Ode are
Colossi: Adam, Cain, Xoah ; those of the Epic are giants: Achilles,
Atreus, Orestes; those of the Drama are men : Hamlet, Macbeth.
Othello. The Ode derives its life from the ideal, the Epic from the
grandiose, the Drama from the real. In a word, this threefold Poetry
springs from three groat sources — the Bible, Homer. Shakespeare."

The upshot of this reasoning is, that the end of the modern or
romantic drama is to paint real character, and A'ietor Hugo tells us
very naively how this was done in the case of Cromwell. He had for
a long time accepted the portrait of the regicide, painted by F>ossuet,
as true to life; but, happening to come across an old document of the
seventeenth century, he discovered that the portrait did not resemble
the original. The idea must therefore be corrected, and the proper place
for correcting it was the Drama. Accordingly he road a vast number
of book*:, from which ho generalized the character of the man and
his times. chose a dramatic moment in the life of his hero which
would enable him to exhibit hi? real motive- to the reader, surrounded
him with more than sixty other dr<nnatix pcrsonac, and finally com-
pleted the portrait of the character in a play which extended it-elf to
about 1 '2.00() linos. It seems, indeed, to have struck Victor Hugo that
there was something paradoxical in the fact that a composition founded

698 POETRY

on aesthetic principles, in an epoch of the world in which the drama
was the natural vehicle of imaginative thought, could not possibly be
acted, and he made a half promise that, at some future time, he would
adapt CroimceU for the stage. I am not aware, however, that he ever
reduced his ideas to practice.

But what "Victor Hugo did not perceive was that, while he professed
to be sweeping away all French dramatic tradition, while he imagined
himself to be imitating Shakespeare, and to be creating in a spirit
of unfettered liberty, he was showing a complete ignorance of the
principle on which Shakespeare's plays are constructed, and was uncon-
sciously following, though with a variation, the stage principles of his
predecessors. As I have already said, Shakespeare's method of dra-
matic creations, like that of the Greeks, is to reduce what was orig-
inally a well-known epic story into such a form as will please the
imagination of spectators in a theatre; the method of the French
playwright is to analyze an idea in his own mind and then to repro-
duce it in a dramatic shape. It matters not that the idea which
Hugo analyzed was that of a single man's character, while that which
Corneille analyzed was a psychological situation: that, in The Cid, the
spectacle to be contemplated is a conflict between Love and Honor,
and, in Cromwell, the conflict of motives in the mind of a regicide; in
both cases the imaginative process is the same, the logical combination
of abstract ideas; in both cases the artistic result is fundamentally
the same, a play depending for its effect on rhetorical speeches and
epigrammatic points. This is the method of Seneca, not the method
of Shakespeare.

Examine, again, the motto of another great standard-bearer of
Romanticism, Theophile Gautier. His principle, " Art for Art's sake,"
seems to promise the artist unlimited liberty in imitating Xature, pro-
vided he is possessed of adequate skill. When illustrated by Gau-
tier s own practice, however, his maxim evidently implies a deter-
mination to identify the methods of poetry with the methods of paint-
ing. Gautier endeavored to imitate Xature in words, exactly in the
same way as the painter imitated her in form and color. Xo\v, in a
lecture on "Poetical Decadence" I fully admitted that the art of
poetry included an element analogous to the art of painting, as may
be plainly seen in the descriptions and similes of great poets like
Homer, Virgil, Milton. Spenser, and Ariosto. Xor do I deny that
Gautier's poetry abounds in admirable pictorial tours de force, such
as the humorous picture, in his Enmux ct Camccs, of Winter as an old
violinist. " With red nose and pale face, and with a desk of icicles,
he executes his theme in the quartet of the Seasons. He sings with
an uncertain voice old-world quavering airs: his frozen foot warms
itself while it marks the time. And like Handel, whose wig lost its

IDEA OF LAW IX POETRY 699

powder when lie shivered, he makes the white sprinkling of snow
fly from the nape of his neck."

But to confine the function of poetry, as Gautier did, to word-
painting is surely, in the first place, to form a meagre conception of the
art, and in the second place, this supposed invention of the Eomanti-
cists is really nothing more than an application of the old classic law
of Boileau, that the poet is bound to find for his verse the word
exactly corresponding with the image in his mind. Turn to the
Lutrln, and Boileau's picture of the Treasurer of La Chapelle in bed
will furnish you with a brilliant sample of the word-painting which
was Gautiers whole poetical stock-in-trade. "In the dark retirement
of a deep alcove is piled a costly feather-bed. Four pompous curtains
in a double circle defend it from the light of day. There, amid the
calm and peaceful silence, reigns over the swan-down a happy indo-
lence, and there the prelate, fortified by breakfast, and sleeping a light
sleep, waited for dinner. Youth in full flower beams in his coun-
tenance; his chin descends by t\vo storeys on to his breast, and his
body, thick-set in its short stature, makes the bed groan beneath its
lazy weight/''

Do not the instances I have given furnish in themselves an answer to
the reasoning of the Romanticists ? Had these children of the Revo-
lution possessed real self-knowledge they would have perceived that
their most successful work was conceived in accordance with the
old classical law, and they would have aimed only at such an amplifica-
tion of that law as would give free play to their own gifts and genius.
Unfortunately they were animated by a spirit not of comprehension
but exclusion. The party of the Romanticists had gained the upper
hand, and they were determined to proscribe and massacre the party
of the Classicists as ruthlessly as the Classicists of the seventeenth
century had proscribed and mas-acred the party of the Precieuses.
Romanticism under Louis XIV. and under Louis Philippe was equally
the protest of a faction against the inevitable tendency of things; but
in the one ca-c it was the struggle of a social caste against the princi-
ple of Absolutism, in the other of a literary coterie against the prin-
ciple of Equality. Just as Mile, de Rambouillei and her friends
sought to separate themselves from the vulgar world by the nicety
of their manners and language, so did Theophile Gautier and his fol-
lowers seek to shock the instincts of the bourgeoisie by their red waist-
coats and outrageous versos. " For us." says Gautier, in his account of
the Romantic movement, "the world divided itself into 'Flamboyants'
and 'Xcutral Tints.' the one the object of our love, the other of our
aversion. We wanted life, light, movement; audacity of thought and
execution, a return to the fair period of the Renaissance and true
antiquity; we rejected the tame coloring, the thin and dry design,

700 POETKY

the compositions resembling groups of dwarfs, that the Empire had
bequeathed to the Eestoration."

To the foreign critic it seems that, as in French politics the central-
izing principle has overpowered local liberty, so in French art the
native tendency is for logic to prevail over imagination. Whatever
literary party has been dominant in the taste of French society has
sought to establish its supremacy by imaginative Analysis. The result
has been to develop in the art of our neighbors great beauty of ab-
stract Form, a splendid capacity of lucid expression, but more and
more to turn away the creative impulse of the artist from the imitation
of universal ideas of life and action. In the rival theories and prac-
tice of the modern French Xaturalists and Impressionists I seem to
detect, under a changed form, the old party struggle between the
Classicists and the Romanticists. In one direction, I see the disciples
of Gustavo- Flaubert, by a new application of the precepts of Boileau,
employing all the resources of precise and artistic language to deco-
rate the sordid commonplace of bourgeois life; in another. M. Anatole
France, as the successor of Kenan, arresting the transient impressions
of his own mind in a succession of delicate phrases, which would
have been the delight of the Hotel Kambouillet. But, in both direc-
tions, Analysis undermines the conscience with the suggestion of sub-
jects and idea- which lie at the very foundation of the Family and
the State.

Must these things be ? Is it impossible for the French novelist to
contemplate Man under any aspect except that which involves some
relation to his neighbor's wife ? impossible for him to transport the
imagination into the world of ideal action? Perhaps it may be
answered, that all the energies of the nation are concentrated in Paris,
where lies its brain, and that Analysis alone can penetrate to the prin-
ciple of life underlying the wild excitement of the Parisian Bourse,
the gossip of the Parisian journal, the intrigues of the Parisian draw-
ing-room. But Paris is not France: the poetry of the people, its
historic soul and character, lies elsewhere. Turn away from the dis-
solving scene of life in the capital, with its superficial reflection of
vulgar materialism, to the bypaths of rural France, where Xature pur-
sues her ancient round in the midst of silent labor and elemental
pieties. Pause in imagination, for example, in the valley of the Loire,
as that noble river flows peacefully amidst historic battle-grounds;
through walled towns, where every stone seems to recall some national
memory — • Orleans. Tours, Angers; through fields in which, here and
there, peasants mav still be seen, as Millet saw them, listening with
bent heads In the voice of the Angelus; under gray chateaux, which
perhaps, no longer tenanted by the descendants of their former lords,
look down, at fixed -seasons, on popular festivals celebrated around
them since the Middle Ages — will any man of taste and imagination,

701

viewing scenes like these in the light not of romance but of history,
and thinking of all the movement and animation of the present in its
relation to the past, venture to say that Moliere and La Fontaine
would have found nothing worthy of imitation in the France of this
century ? Would they not have been able to show us in an ideal form,
though it were but in comedy, how much of the historic character
of their country has survived the conflict of thirty generations; how
many of the primaeval springs of national life combine to preserve the
unity of French society; to what extent the ancient religion is still a
moving power in the hearts of the people ? Let it be granted that it
is no longer the drama or the poem, but the novel, which is the
vehicle of imaginative expression. Yet the novel also can be made the
mirror of the ideal imitation of Nature, and the novelist who is able
to give a reflection of the true morals and manners of France in the
classic language inherited from Pascal and Mme. de Sevigne', will
command an European audience as wide and appreciative as in the
•davp of Louis Quatorze.

PART II.— GERMAN POETEY.

THE same inevitable forces out of which arose the character of
French Poetry are seen to be working, though under very different
circumstances, to determine the character of German Poetry; and it is
this law, or idea of law, in Germany wich I propose to make the sub-
ject of my present lecture. First of all, let us consider precisely the
nature of the facts with which we have to deal. It cannot be said that
Germany has expressed the idea of the Universal, either in the crea-
tive departments of Poetry or in the plastic Arts, with as much char-
acter as Italy, England, France, or even Spain. The Germans have
produced no romantic epic of universal European fame like the
Orlando Furioso, no classic epic that can be named with Paradise
Lost; no romance like Don Quixote; no tragic drama comparable, I
do not say with the tragedies of Shakespeare, but even with those of
C'orneille and Racine; no comic drama approaching within visible
distance of that of Moliere. In painting, two German names alone
are household words, Holbein and Albert Dlirer. To compensate for
these deficiencies, the Germans are supreme in Music: Handel, Mozart,
and Beethoven form a triumvirate whom the united musicians of the
rest of Europe would challenge in vain. From Germany have come
the great men of contemplation in Religion, Philosophy, and Criticism
- Luther, Kant, Lessing. And in lyric poetry — that department of
the art which is most akin to Music — their compositions (I am
thinking of the ballads of Schiller and IT bland, of Faust, and of
IIYim-'s Songs) have roused emotions in the hearts of men untouched
by the lyric poetry of any other nation, with the possible exception of
the poetry of Byron.

I think that these facts are precisely the results that might be
expected to follow from the genius of the German character, and
the course of German history. German genius, at least as manifested
outwardly up to quite modern times, has been rather contemplative
than practical. The German has — or had two generations ago —
the same strange contrasts in his character as are noted by Tacitus:
the love of arms joined with the tendency to domestic indolence; the
passion for intellectual liberty, accompanying the neglect of the arts
of society ; energy in war, followed by reverie in peace. In peace, says
the practical Roman historian, " ipsi hebent, mira naturae diversitate,
cum idem sic ament inertiam et oderint quietem." Something of this

IDEA OP LAW IX POETKY 703

contradictory combination of qualities is visible in the characters of
many of the greatest Germans ; they are content that their bodies shall
never travel out of sight of their own hearth-smoke, if their souls have
freedom to soar through the Infinite. Luther, shaking the world from
his monastery, with his doctrine of Justification by Faith ; Kant
revolutionizing philosophy in his little provincial town, beyond whose
walls he rarely stirred ; both were true Germans. And hence it seems
to me quite natural that, when the Germans strive to express their
idea of the Universal in the sphere of creative imagination, they should
turn with the readiest sympathy to that one of the Fine Arts which
at once exerts the widest sway over the pure emotions, and is least
under the direction of Reason, least subject to the limitations of
plastic form; in other words, the German genius has closer affinities
with the Art of Music than with the Arts of Poetry and Painting.

If, however, we look at the creative departments of Poetry, as
actually developed in Germany, we shall see how faithfully the
practice of the poets reflects the ideas of action proper to the
history of the German people. The political history of Germany
is the exact antithesis of the history of France, for while the prominent
feature of French history is an excessive centralization leading to
Absolutism, the character of German history is an excess of Individ-
ualism resulting in Anarchy. Until recently the Germans had
no political ideal of united action which could be reduced to prac-
tice. At a time when Spain, France, and England were all nations
with clearly defined interests and policies, Germany was a loose ag-
gregation of States, in which the old feudal, semi-tribal order was
still predominant; the Emperor being its impotent head, and against
that head all the other members, each in conflict with the other, being
in rebellion — the Princes at war with their Sovereign, the Cities and
Knights with the Princes, the Peasantry with the Knights and the
Cities. From the midst of this caldron of chaos rose the Reformation,
and from the Reformation the Thirty Years' War. with its political
and spiritual divisions of Catholic against Protestant, and its fruits
of desolation, poverty, despair. When the wars were over, each petty
exhausted state settled down within its own limits, and began to culti-
vate civil arts in its own way, having cut itself off from the mediaeval
ideals of the Christian Republic, without having been able to a=>imi-
late the ideals of the modern Xation.

Such was the state of politic? in Germany at the time when the
foundations of modern German literature were laid. The most char-
acteristic period of German Poetry i> the century between the Seven
Years' War and the French "Revolution of ISIS; and during that
period the most common complaint of German writers of genius is the
want of great central ideas of action to form a basis of national art.
Goethe, in his Diclr/ung unJ ~\Vtilir]/''it. describe? the prevailing condi-

704 POETEY

tion of things in the middle of the eighteenth century : " Because in
peace patriotism really consists only in this, that every one sweeps his
own doorstep, minds his own business, learns his own lesson, that it
may go well with his house, so did the feeling for Fatherland excited
by Klop stock find no object on which it could exercise itself." Ger-
many was full of men of imagination; they were all anxious to write
great epics and great dramas; unfortunately they had to make their
poetical bricks without straw, having neither characteristic ideas of
political unity, nor any continuous tradition of rude art out of which
they might consciously develop more perfect forms. Hence each poet
was forced to think out the first principles of composition for himself ;
and one of the characteristics of German poetry, that, in the higher
walks of the Art, Criticism precedes Creation.

Now if we apply the twofold law of Fine Art to Klopstock's
Messiah, the most celebrated epic that Germany has produced, we
shall see how its form was affected by the imaginative conditions I
have just described. The matter may be best illustrated by the method
of comparison, and Klopstock's idea of poetical law be inferred by
contrasting the mode of composition followed in the Messiah with that
of Paradise Lost. Both Milton and Klopstock agree in the selection
of a subject of universal interest; in both of them the matter which
is the foundation of their conception is derived from the Bible. But
Milton has obtained for himself perfect freedom of poetical creation
by laying his action in the prehistoric period described in the first
chapters of Genesis, whereby he is enabled to treat the story of the
Fall in the epic form consecrated by the usage of such great poets as
Homer and Virgil. He has shown equal judgment in limiting the
action of Paradise Regained to the single episode of the Temptation,
which he can treat in epic style without any departure from Scripture
authority. Klopstock, on the other hand, has . formed no central
conception of the action which he proposes to relate. He begins
his epic with the. events immediately preceding the Crucifixion, but
he transports his action, as he pleases, from the sphere of the real to
the supernatural, embellishing it with episodes of angels and demons
which have no basis in the Scripture narrative. This attempt to
fuse what is historical with what is purely poetical betrays a fatal
want of judgment in view of the nature of the subject, and would
never have been made if Klopstock, before beginning to write, had
realized the truth of what Aristotle says as to the difference between
Poetry and History.

Observe again the remarkable contrast in the vehicles of language
which Milton and Klopstock respectively employ for the expression
of their ideas. The English of Milton is a fusion of the Saxon and
Latin elements in our tongue, the one stream bearing on its face all
the spiritual character derived from its Teutonic source, the other

IDEA OP LAW IN POETRY 705

colored with the rich hues of traditional Latin civilization and philo-
sophy. The language of Klopstock is that pure German which he
himself thus describes : " Let no living tongue venture to enter
the lists with the German. As it was in the oldest times when Tacitus
describes it, so it still remains., solitary, unmixed, incomparable." A
true description, however boastful, but not one that recommends the
German language as the vehicle for a subject into which have flowed
all the ideas of the late Alexandrian philosophy, the mediaeval science
of the Schoolmen, the civil conceptions of Eoman Law, and the mys-
tical theology of the Jewish Talmud. A similar difference is visible
in the metrical form of the two poems. The blank verse of Milton is
essentially a national metre, refined with the highest art from the
usage of three earlier generations of English poets; the metre of the
Ifessiah is an exotic imitation of the classic hexameter, invented by
Klopstock, and having no root in the German language. In these es-
sential respects, therefore, the Ulcssiali must be pronounced to want
the national character required to make a first-class German epic
poem.

Again, let us apply the two-fold law of Fine Art to the German
drama. "What is meant by the Universal in dramatic poetry is a situ-
ation of general interest such as we find in Macbeth or the CEdipus
Rex; characters animated by motives common to humanity; love,
jealousy, revenge, as we see them exhibited in men like Othello and
Orestes; sentiments of general human application, "To be, or not
to be," or " The quality of mercy is not strained," etc., etc. In order
that the dramatist may produce these universal effects, it is practically
necessary, first, that the subject or idea of the action shall be common
both to his audience and to himself, and, secondly, that the form or
character of his drama shall have been the product of long stage
experience, as was the case both in Athens under Pericles and in
England under Elizabeth. Xow neither of these conditions was satis-
fied when Lessing founded the modern German drama in the eight-
eenth century; Germany had then neither a national idea of action,
nor a national dramatic tradition. Lessing himself says in his
Hamlurgische Dramaturgic : '"' Out on the good-natured idea to pro-
cure for the Germans a national theatre, when we Germans are not
yet a nation! I do not speak of our political constitution but of our
social character. It might almost be said that this consists in. not
desiring to have an individual one. We are still the sworn copyists of
all that is foreign; especially are we still the obedient admirers of the
never enough to be admired French."

In spite of these unfavorable circumstances, three men of eminent
genius- — Lossing, Schiller, and Goethe — determined to lay the foun-
dations of a national theatre. How did thev set to work ? Lessin^,

O7

as he confesses, formed his dramatic conceptions in the spirit not of

706 POETEY

a poet but of a critic. He based his idea of the Universal on the
Poetics of Aristotle, of which he says : " I do not hesitate to acknowl-
edge (even if I should therefore be laughed to scorn in these en-
lightened times) that I consider this work as infallible as the Elements
of Euclid." His first impulse towards dramatic creation was accord-
ingly to prove that the French dramatists did not rightly understand
Aristotle's meaning in the Poetics, and then to build his own the-
atrical edifice on what he conceived to be Aristotle's first principles.
But this procedure was a violation of the Law of Character in Fine
Art, for, as I have said in a lecture on Aristotle, the rules for com-
position in the Poetics were generalized only from Greek examples,
and in many respects were not applicable to the circumstances which
necessarily determined the form of the modern drama. True, Les-
sing had no traditional forms on which to model his creations, because
the mediaeval drama had died out without having developed any Ger-
man stage. But the forms which he himself evolved a priori from his
critical imagination were devoid of national life and character. This
is particularly noticeable in what is perhaps his greatest dramatic
effort, Emilia GaJotti. His aim in this tragedy was to exhibit, in a
dramatic form, the moral effects of corrupt aristocratic manners such
as then prevailed in the Courts of the German princes. He thought
that he might effect his aim by allegorizing the story of Appius and
Virginia, for he hoped that the fame of that legend would enlist on
his behalf the sympathies of his audience. But he never considered
whether the action of a father stabbing his daughter to preserve her
chastity was characteristic of modern manners, or in accordance with
what Aristotle calls the law of ideal probability. Though Corneille
as a critic is not to be compared with Lessing, he shows himself in
Horace to have a more practical understanding of the fundamental
laws of the drama, for he takes care in that play not to offend against
the appearance of probability, by modernizing the facts of the story,
while at the same time he flatters the prejudices of his audience, by
pretending that the Romans -felt and spoke like Frenchmen.

Schiller's dramas have far more life than Lessing's, because lie wrote
as a poet, not primarily as a critic, and so breathed his own genius and
ardor into his ideal creations; but he had as little conception as Les-
sing of the essential law of the stage. Hear what he savs in his
preface to the Robbers: "This play is to be regarded merelv as a
dramatic narrative, in which, for the purpose of working out the in-
nermost operations of the soul, advantage has been taken of the
dramatic method, without otherwise conforming to the stringent rules
of theatrical composition, or seeking the dubious advantage of stage
adaptation.'" Tn other words. Schiller wrote for the reflective reader,
not for spectators in the theatre absorbed by the idenl reality of action;
\vith him the audience is left out of account. And what is true of his

IDEA OF LAW IN POETRY 707

Robbers is more or loss true of all his plays; seek for the element of
poetry in them, and you will find it to be rather lyrical than dramatic ;
the best passages in Don Carlos, Wallenstein, and even William Tell,
are those in which he pours out his OAvn emotions, not those in which
it is necessary for him to carry the audience out of themselves into the
action and passion of the imaginary situation.

As for the plays of Goethe, with the exception of Faust, of which
I shall speak presently, they breathe the spirit of sculpture, the most
remote of all the arts from the genius of action. Heine describes
them with cruel justice; he likens them to the statues of the gods in
the Louvre, " with their white expressionless eyes, a mysterious mel-
ancholy in their stony smiles." " How strange," he continues, u that
these antique statues should remind me of the Goethian creations,
which are likewise so perfect, so beautiful, so motionless ! and which
also seem oppressed with a dumb grieving that their rigidity and
coldness separate them from our present warm, restless life, that
they cannot speak and rejoice with us, and that they are not human
beings, but unhappy mixtures of divinity and stone." ISTo more in the
drama than in the epic did the Germans find that ideal matter and
form which needed to blend congenially with their imaginations
before it could assume the character of Fine Art.

How different is the case with German lyric poetry! The German
song-writers began to be celebrated in the last quarter of the eight-
eenth century, just at the period when the mind of Europe was
agitated with the apprehended approach of a great change in the
structure of societ}', the more mysteriously alarming that its nature
could not be divined. All felt it, but most of all the Germans. Cut
off from the outlets of expression in political life, the ardent minds of
Germany sought with the more vehemence to give utterance to this
universal feeling in the sphere of imagination and emotion. In the
German language they had an instrument admirably adapted to their
purpose. As Klopstock said of it. it had remained since the days of
Tacitus "solitary, unmixed, incomparable." With its ancient inflec-
tions, its homely words, its abstract torm=, its extraordinary powers
of compounding itself, this venerable parent language was capable of
touching primitive chords of emotion in all who possessed a strain of
Teutonic blood — that is to say, in every nation north of the Alps.
But it was not possible to strike out at one boat the essential char-
acter of national art. and Gorman philosophers, as well as Gorman
poets, made many experiments before they hit upon the true form.
The failure of the Holy ]?oman Empire to produce any working
ideal of life and action had loft the German mind in a position of
contemplative isolation, and with a strong tendency to regard all
human affairs from a cosmopolitan point of view. Such an abstract
mode of conception was foreign to the genius of Fine Art, which

708 POETRY

deals either with concrete images or positive emotions, and will not
come to the artist at the bidding of analytical philosophy.

Hence the critical advice of Herder, a truly representative German,
to his young countrymen in the eighteenth century was barren and
futile. Herder said : " National literature is of little importance ;
the age of world literature is at hand, and every one ought to work
in order to accelerate the coming of the new era. What we want is a
poetry in harmony with the voices of the peoples and with the whole
heart of mankind. Our studies must be cosmopolitan, and must in-
clude the popular poetry of the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Franks, Ger-
mans, Italians, Spaniards, and even the songs and ballads of half-
savage races." That is the opinion of a man who understands the
necessity of expressing the Universal in poetry, but who has not the
least conception of the meaning of the characteristic. It is needless
to say that nothing in the shape of Poetry ever came in Germany,
or could come anywhere, out of such a horrible witches' cauldron as
Herder proposed to mix.

Not less contrary to the true law of character in art was the attempt
made by the patriotic party in Germany to express in the lyric poetry
of their native language ideas of a civil or political order. If ideas
of this kind be embodied in lyric verse, the style adopted must be
lofty and severe, but of what was needed for such a style the Ger-
mans, with their want of political training, had no conception. How
far they were from attaining it may be imagined from a comparison
of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard with Frederick Schubart's
once famous poem, Die Furstengruft, or The Vault of the Princes.
Both poets have here selected a subject of universal interest, and both
seek to draw out its essential character by a series of contrasted
images. Gray hits the mark. How solemn and heroic is the march
of the verse in which he represents the compensations in the respective
lots of prince and peasant that make them equal in the grave!

Th' applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined,
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrines of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.

Schubart's poem, on the contrary, is a rhetorical invective against
the prince? of Hprmany. whom he reproaches as the tyrants of their

IDEA OF LAW IN POETRY 709

race. It proceeds to its climax by a succession of contrasts, glaring,
violent, theatrical, though not wanting in force and power, describing
the coffins of the princes rotting in the glimmering light of the vault,
with silver shields hanging over them, and grinning skulls, emblems
of vanity. There is no flesh now — so the poet reflects — on the
hands which once, by a stroke of the pen, consigned good and wise
men to prison ; the stars and orders shine like comets on the breasts of
skeletons. The ear can hear no more the voice of flattery or lasci-
vious music, or the cry of hounds and horses, with which they sought
to still the voice of conscience. Let the hoarse croak of the raven be
far from the vault, and every rural sound, as well as the voice of
mourning, lest they should awake those who in their day were deaf to
the prayers of the peasant whose fields they ravaged, and to the sobs
of children and the sighs of soldiers, made orphans and cripples in
their wars.

In a poem like this we feel the characteristic imagination of the
German people endeavoring in an uncongenial subject — for the
presence of death demands solemnity and humbleness — to express its
sense of the infinite, the terrible, the grotesque, the spectral, without
ever arriving at the desired effect. A nearer approach to perfection is
made by Biirger, whose imitations of the old ballad style woke an
answering chord in the imagination of Walter Scott, and helped to
hasten the romantic revival in England. In his Leonora, Biirger ex-
pressed the wild unrest of the European imagination during the revo-
lutionary epoch in a highly characteristic manner, by associating it
with the images of demons and spectres still surviving among the
people of Germany.

It was not, however, till Goethe produced Faust that the German
lyric poets discovered the form of art qualified to give expression to
the universal revolutionary emotion. In Faust everything is as it
should be in art. The varied characters of Faust himself, Mephisto-
pheles, and Gretchen, together form the full complement of spiritual
human feeling which manifested itself in an outward form during
the epoch of the French Revolution : the picturesque scenes of local life
which are scattered through the drama — Auerbach's wine-cellar, the
Brocken, the town fountain, the cathedral — are all necessary to the
general effect; the little touches of sentiment — Gretchen's song of
the King of Tlmle. the flower divination, the peasants' holiday enjoy-
ment— if one of these had boon away, the poem would have lacked
something of its complete perfection.

And yet the form of Faust is not essentially dramatic but lyrical;
it could never be satisfactorily acted on the stage like a play of
Shakespeare ; in its theatrical aspect it is only suitable for opera. Why
then has it achieved its undisputed place as one of the great repre-
sentative poom? of the world ? The answer is because, while its form

710 POETRY

is exactly suited to the universal nature of the subject, the character of
that form is specifically German. Faust is German in its subject.
The legend of Faustus grew up in Germany itself during the sixteenth
century, and had therefore for generations been in the minds of the
people. Goethe assimilated it, brooded over it during his youth, and
poured into this mould all his own individual characteristics, as well
as the national characteristics of his race. Again Faust is German
in its dramatic form. Faust himself, with his vast intellectual energy
and his sense of ennui, represents the philosophic mind of Europe in
the eighteenth century, but, above all, the mind of Germany, de-
prived of the opportunities of action, and recalling the description of
Tacitus: " Ipsi hebent: idem homines inertiam amant, quietem oder-
unt." Mephistopheles is but the reflection of the ironic, scoffing spirit
which is the natural product of such a soil in the cultivated portion of
society; Gretchen, on the other hand, with her simple domestic in-
stincts and her trusting piety, typifies the unsophisticated elements
in the German people. Finally, Faust is German in its style : there is
in it none of that uneasy artificial sense of experiment which we find
in earlier German poets of the eighteenth century; the versification is
easy and flowing, suited alike to the nature of the subject and to the
genius of the language.

It is precisely these qualities that give color and character to the
songs of Heinrich Heine, Goethe's lineal successor in German poetry.
I believe that it was Thiers who described Heine as the wittiest
Frenchman since Voltaire, one of those epigrams in which the super-
ficial cleverness is a symptom of internal falsehood. Heine no doubt
imitated Voltaire in the raillery with which he assailed established
beliefs and institutions; but his raillery is quite devoid of the logical
analysis which characterizes the work of the author of Candidc. It
would be equally true to say that Heine was the wittiest Englishman
since Byron, whom he also imitates in his combination of the cynical
with the pathetic: but Heine's irony is not less remote from Byron's
aristocratic scorn than from Voltaire's philosophic mockery.

Heine was a representative German, though no doubt the hatred
of the Jew for the country, with all its institutions and rulers, that
oppressed the .Tewi=h race, was al?o strongly developed in his char-
acter. In one of his mo?t characteristic =ongs he imagine? a girl in
a foreign land struck with compassion for him and inquiring who
he is. He answer?:

I am a German poet,

In the Gorman land well known;
When men count the best names in it,

They will count with these my own.

And what I feel, little maiden,
Men feel in the German land;

When they reckon its fiercest sorrows,
Mv -niTnw- \vitli llH.se will stand.

IDEA OF LAW IX POETKY 711

What were the German sorrows ? Heine unites in himself the charac-
ters of Faust, Mephistopheles, and Gretchen, despair, scoffing, ten-
derness; and he expresses the agony caused by this conflict of emo-
tions under the image of the lover who has lost his love. The image he
employs is both universal and nationally characteristic; universal in
its ordinary application, as well as in giving utterance to the yearning
of the human heart for the infinite —

The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow —

characteristic in its expression of the sense of vanity in the German
mind, caused by the contrast between their own energy in metaphysical
speculation and their impotence in political action. But of the essen-
tial elements in his poetry I venture to say that the least congenial to
his imagination was the scoffing wit of Mephistopheles, and that the
chief ingredient in his art was the domestic tenderness of Gretchen.

We may see this from the prevailing features in Heine's lyrical
style. Matthew Arnold and oilier critics have spoken with just ap-
preciation of the perfection of Heine's lyrical form, but it is worth
while to note more precisely the essential character of that form. Its
character lies, I think, in the use of images, which are at once perfect
in expression, and which yet suggest something beyond what is ex-
pressed, of metrical words which set in motion an infinite train of
thoughts and emotions. Let me attempt bv a single example, which
will speak for itself, to show you what 1 mean. Here is a very inad-
equate rendering in English of a little poem complete in three stanzas
about the three kings of Cologne:

The three holy Kin^rs from the Kastland came;

Kadi asks wherever he parses,
"Which way is the way to Bethlehem,

My lovely lads and lapses ? "

The yoiniLT and the old. they could not say;

The K HILTS fared onward featly.
And followed a golden star alway.

That shone full hi^h and sweetly.

The star over Joseph's house abode;

They passed 'neath the roof tree lowly;
The Baby eried, the Oxen lowed;

Then san£ those three Kin^s, holy.

Imagine Voltaire, or indeed anv one but a German, writing anything
like that. It strikes exactly the same note as Goethe's " There was a
King of Thule " in Faust. And this note was possible to the German
poet, and to no other, because the German people were nearer than

712 POETRY

any other nation to the Middle Ages, because, with their Christianity,
they had retained in their imagination something of their old prime-
val beliefs about Nature, and because their pure unmixed language was
qualified to give expression to this ancient unconscious association of
ideas. To a certain extent their poetic faculty was shared by other
branches of the Teutonic and Celtic races, and Wordsworth notices
the mysterious effect in his stanza describing the unconscious song of
the Highland Maiden :

Will no one tell me what she sings ?

Perhaps the mournful numbers flow
For old forgotten, far-off things,

And battles long ago.

But as the folk-lore of Germany is far richer and wilder than that of
England, in proportion as it has kept clearer of the stream of Hellenic
civilization, so is it better adapted, by the simple domesticity of its
imagery, to touch what may be called the universal Gothic heart of
modern Europe.

It is in this spiritual elfin region that Goethe and Heine find the
largest freedom for their imagination. In their verse we listen to
mysterious voices from the pine-trees rustling outside the windows of
the lonely cottage in the mountains, or to strange primeval colloquies
between plants and animals; the white gleam of the Siren's body is
perceived in the whirlpool; small armies of dwarfs and kobolds creep
out of the bowels of the earth. Xot in the bitter Mephistophelian cyni-
cism with which Heine often thinks it fine, in Byronic fashion, to
close his pathetic lyrics, not there do we feel the genuine heart of the
poet, but in those self-forgetful reveries, tender and mysterious as the
folk-songs of Marguerite, in which he talks in their own language to
the peasants of the Harz mountains. Witness that unequaled cottage
scene, where the little maiden whispers her beliefs with pleasing trepi-
dation to her lover by the sinking fire:

Little folk and tiny people
Bread and bacon leave us none;
Late at night 'tis in the cupboard,
In the morning it is gone.

Little people to the cream-bowl
Come by night and take the best;
And they leave the bowl uncovered,
And the cat laps up the rest.

And the cat's an old witch-woman
Who, at midnight's stormiest hour,
Often in the hauhted mountains
Crawls on the old ruined tower.

IDEA OF LAW IX POETRY ?13

There in old time stood a castle.
Feasts were held and arms would glance;
Knights, and squires, and noble ladies
Used to thread the torchlight dance.

But it chanced a wicked sorceress
Cast her spell on tower and guest;
Now there's nothing left but ruins,
Where the owlets build their nest.

Aunt, who's now in heaven, told me
That the proper word of doom,
At the proper hour of midnight,
Spoken in the proper room.

It will turn those ancient ruins
Into castle halls once more;
Knights, and squires, and noble ladies
Dance as gaily as of yore.

And whoe'er he be that speaks it,
Tower and people at that word,
With the sound of drum and trumpet,
Shall proclaim their youthful lord.

Xot only in Goethe and Heine do you hear this note of genuine
lyric 'inspiration. It is of the essence of the poems of Uhland and
many another less known singer who has taken the rough diamonds
of suggestion from the Yolks-Lied and polished them into gems of art.
Let me venture to give you one more specimen from the songs of Wil-
helm Miiller, father of the eminent Professor of Comparative Philo-
logy, which will show you, even in the imperfect mirror of our own
language, with what exquisite skill the German lyric poets link uni-
versal sentiments with images drawn from the traditions of the people.
The subject of the poem is Vineta, an old town said by German legend
to lie buried beneath the Baltic:

Often on the evening silence stealing
From the sea-depths, fathoms, fathoms down,
Bells sound faintly wondrous tidings pealing
Of the old-world, ocean-buried, town.

There it stands for ever, ruins hoary,
Undecaying in their billowy grave ;
From the bulwarks flakes of golden glory
Rise, and paint the mirror of the wave.

And the fisher who, at red of even.
Once has seen that vision near the shore,
Heedless of dark cliff and frowning heaven,
Haunts the enchanted spot for evermore.

Often from the heart's deep places stealing
Upward, upward, to the world above,
Come to me, like far bells faintly pealing,
Voices of the days of vanished love.

Yes ! a faery world is sunk thereunder,
From whose hoary ruins still, meseems,
Visions, full of heaven's own light and wonder,
Rise, and paint the mirror of my dreams.

And whene'er I hear those faint bells ringing,
Through the magic waves I sink, ah me !
Sink, and seem to hear the angels singing,
In that old-world town beneath the sea.

I cannot impress too strongly upon those who hear me that a
knowledge of the way in which the law of Fine Art operates will
not enable us to produce works of Fine Art. That can be accomplished
by Genius alone. But, on the other hand, Genius can achieve nothing
of permanent value without obedience to Law; and the knowledge of
the operation of Law is of service to Genius because it strengthens
the judgment; it shows the artist how he must obey nature in order
to command it; it teaches him to judge himself; to recognize the
limits within which he can enjoy artistic and individual freedom; to
test the quality of his own art by comparing it with what is perma-
nent in the characteristic art of his country.

Hence all that I have attempted to do in this lecture is to estimate
the law or character of German Poetry historically. I do not for a
moment presume to assert that German Poetry in the future will in-
evitably move in the same grooves and channels as in the past. Char-
acter is modified by circumstances to an almost unlimited extent, and
during the present generation the history of Germany has undergone
something like a revolution. The idea of German Unity, which floated
with incorporeal ghostliness before the men of the eighteenth century,
has in our times taken a positive external shape; the German State,
the German Empire exists; what we want to know, before we can
foresee how far this change in history will modify the character of
German art. is just what no foreigner can at present know, namely,
whether the structure of German Unity has been imposed upon the
nation, by the genius of great rulers, statesmen, and soldiers, or
whether it is the natural product of the mind and character of the
people. In the former case it may be destroyed, as it has been created,
from without; in the latter the ideas of action it excites will be re-
flected in the sphere of spiritual imagination. We can see that, in the
material aspect of things, Germany, as a state, has freed herself from
the reproach which, from the days of Tacitus, has clung to her, of
being wanting in practical aim. It can no longer be said of her
rulers: " Ipsi hebent: inertiam amant. quietem oderunt." The full

IDEA OF LAW IN POETRY 715

powers of the State are devoted to perfecting the splendid scientific
faculties of the German mind, so as to make it irresistible in the oper-
ations of war and the enterprise of commerce, and to render the-
influence of Germany paramount in the councils of Europe.

But after all, the question as regards Fine Art is, What effect has
this great historical change made in the elementary German character,
or how far has that character caused the change, because the source
of all Poetry, of all ideal creation, is the mind of the People itself ?
How will the intense passion of the German mind for free thought and
speculation reconcile itself with the rule of the military Absolutism,
which seems to be the necessary instrument for realizing the ambitions
of the new German State ? And again, in what poetic form will these
imperial ideals express themselves without destroying that domestic
sensibility and that spirit of romance and reverie which have been in
the past the parents of German song and German music ?

It is certainlv a striking fact that the establishment of the German
Empire lias not been followed by a period of characteristic creation
in German Fine Art, at least in the arts of Painting and Poetry.
There have been characteristic movements of art in other nations.
The movement of the Poetical Preraphaelites of England, and that
of the Poetical Symbolists in France, may not fulfil the requirements
of the Tniversal, but certainly neither of them is wanting in distinct
character. Xor is characteristic movement wanting in that one of the
Fine Arts in which the Germans specially excel, for a German of
remarkable genius has, within our own generation, endeavored to
extend the functions of Music, by making it into a vehicle for the ex-
pression of intellectual ideas. Of the wisdom of his aims I do not ven-
ture to- speak, since the <|iieslion. whether this particular art is justified
in appropriating the principles of another, is one that belongs to the
Chair of Music rather than to that of Poetrv. But of what is passing
in the poetical imagination of the German people, as distinct from
the mind of the German Stale, wo know nothing — for in poetry the
Gorman soul is at present silent.

I do not wonder that it should bo so. To find out the form of
Poetry fitted to reflect the conflict of ideas between Feudalism and
Socialism. Catholicism and Nationalism, a= well as the forces that
attract tlio centrifugal units of German nationality to the Imperial
Crown, is a task that requires meditation both long and doop. Yet
the problem will doubtless be faced. And when the Muse of Germany
speaks again through ilic genius of a great poet, it is to be expected
that her utterances will not simply take the old lyrical form, but that
she will also employ those forms of drama or romance which are
needed to express universal idoas of life and action. In the sphere of
Poetry, as in that of Politics, the Germans will perhaps awake the
sleeping Barbarossa.

PAKT III.— ENGLISH POETEY

As illustrating the subject of my present lecture, I find a passage
in Pope's Essay on Criticism which is well deserving of examination.
It is this:

But soon by impious arms from Latium chased
The banished Muse her ancient boundaries passed.
Through all the northern world the arts advance,
But critic learning nourished most in France.
The rules a nation born to serve obeys,
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.
But we brave Britons foreign laws despised,
And lived unconquered and uncivilized :
Fierce for the liberties of art, and bold,
We still defied the Romans as of old.

In these linos the poet i? describing the progress from Italy to the
north of Europe of the groat movement known as the Classical Eenais-
sance. Considering that the description is in verse, the history in
the first six lines is surprisingly accurate. It is. of course, not true
that the storming of Eome by the Constable Bourbon, the feat of
"impious arms'"' to which Pope is alluding, was the cause of the
spread of the movement northwards; but it is an undoubted fact that
soon after that event the effects of the Renaissance begin to show them-
selves in the poetry of the courts, botli of Francis I. and of Henry
VIII. Though the sun of Italian poetry was then far declined, the
"critic learning'1 grounded on the supposed authority of Aristotle,
and fostered in the Academies of Italy, was very influential in pre-
paring the way for the later Academic criticism of France. Pope
is fully justified in saying that the doctrines, ascribed by this tradition
of culture to Aristotle, ''flourished most in France"; and he is also
right in explaining the fact by the tendency in the French character
to submit to absolute authority. It is no wonder that, taking the tradi-
tion at second hand from the French critics, who themselves echoed
the opinions of Scaligor and Castelvctro, imagining too that the sci-
ence of the Greeks had been transmitted through Horace's Ars Poctica
to the poetical treatise? of Vida and Boileau. he should have believed-
that the " rules " he looked upon as the source of true culture were
derived straight from the imperial head of ancient philosophy.

"When, however, lie comes to describe the attitude of the English
mind toward- these "'rules," his history becomes superficial and

IDEA OF LAW IX POETIJY 717

incorrect. At no time was it true, in the broad sense of the word, that
English artists " despised foreign laws " : on the contrary, one of the
most noticeable features in the history, alike of English painting and
of English poetry, has been the influence exercised on the course of
our artistic development by foreign models. Of the careful study
bestowed from the middle of the last century by our painters on the
work of the Italian, Dutch, and French masters, I need say nothing.
Confining my attention to the history of poetry with which Pope is
dealing, it will be sufficient to disprove his assertion by reference, in
the infancy of our poetry, to the work of Chaucer, who not only trans-
lated the Roman de la 'Rose, but derived much of his philosophy of
life from that poem; who also in his House of Fame constantly kept
in view TJie Divine Comedy of Dante; and who drew the scheme of
The C it aid-bury 2" ales from the Decameron of Boccaccio. After Chau-
cer we pass on to the practice of Wyatt,' Surrey, and their followers
imitated from Petrarch; after that, on the one hand, to the poetry
of Mi lion, so profoundly influenced by the Italian writers, both in
Latin and vernacular verse, and, on the other, to Beaumont and
Fletcher, who, under ihe influence of the style and structure of the
Spanish play, altered the whole tradition of the English romantic
drama.

!•] vcii if we examine Pope's history within the limits to which he
intended to confine it. it cannot be said that the English, as a nation,
ever set themselves deliberately to oppose the authority of the sup-
posed Aristotelian " rules.'' On the contrary, the first elaborate trea-
tise of criticism in the English language, Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie
for Poetry, is confessedly grounded upon them. Half a century before
Corneille, Sidney had advocated with ardour the principle of the
1'nities, as expounded by the critics of Ftaly : and he censured Spenser
for using dialect in his >'Ar/)//r/v/'.y Calendar, on the ground that the
experiment was an innovation on classical example. Ben Jonson. in
the next generation, constantly sneers at his contemporaries for their
barbarous neglect of the F'jiities. Dryden, though he never ventures to
deviate1 from the practice of the English stage into the paths of
critical orthodoxy, always speaks with superstitions reverence of the
authority of French critical law. And. if any further proof were re-
quired to indicate the gathering volume of opinion in this direction,
it would be furnished by the drift of thought in Pope'
Crih'cixm, and by Addison's dramatic criticisms in the
which vividlv reflect the movement of ta-te in the reign of Queen
Anne.

In any case, supposing it had been true that the English had defied
the critical tradition of the Humanists, passed on to France from
Italy, this would not have proved them to be uncivilized. For, in
the first place, the laws in question were not the laws of Aristotle. The

718 POETEY

rule of the Unities of Time and Place is not to be found in the
Poetics of that philosopher ; the only Unity, on the necessity of which
Aristotle insists as a la\v of dramatic poetry, is Unity of Action. The
first mention of the law of Unity of Time is in the commentary of
Scaliger on the Poetics, published in 1561, where the principle is
deduced by mere inference from casual expressions of Aristotle; the
law of Unity of Place is in like manner inferred quite arbitrarily
and for the first time by Castelvetro, in his edition of the Poetics,
published in 1571; Aristotle nowhere lays down such a rule in his
treatise, nor did the Greek dramatists observe it in practice. Corneille
was the first dramatist to proclaim his submission to rules dictated to
him by the two Italian critics: he defended his practice by reasoning,
but he only succeeded in establishing it, because it fell in with the
taste of the logical, and rather prosaic, French genius, which com-
pletely misinterpreted Aristotle's use of the term Imitation.

Once more : let us even suppose Aristotle to have been the author
of "'the rules," as Pope imagined; this fact would not have obliged
English dramatists, on any rational theory of authority, to obey his
particular edicts. The Law of the Three Unities could at most have
been classed with Aristotle's by-laws, such as his requirements for the
form of the perfect tragedy, or for the character of the ideal tragic
hero; and these, as I have before urged, being derived from his
observation solely of the practice of the Greek stage, have no applica-
tion whatever to the form and structure of the drama in other nations,
which is based on conceptions of the Universal in Xature in many
respects fundamentally different from the ideas of the Greeks.

Had Pope been better acquainted with the meaning of Aristotle, he
would have perceived that, provided his countrymen conformed to the
philosopher's grand principle of imitating the Universal in Xature,
they were quite right to imitate it according to the law imposed upon
them by their national character and history. So long as they obeyed
in a philosophic spirit their own municipal law of art. they might
despise foreign laws without incurring the reproach of insular bar-
barism. The application of the French "' rules " to a play like Hamlet
which caused Voltaire to call Shakespeare a drunken savage, shows
an ignorance of the methods of art actually employed by the English
poet which recoils on the head of the French critic; and though Boi-
Icau pronounced dictatorially that it was impossible to write an epic
upon a Scripture subject, yet the logical impossibility of the critic
was overcome, without any violation of the true laws of Poetry, in Mil-
ton's Paradise Lost To attempt to confine the liberties of the poet
by any a priori system of critical legislation is. as I have said more
than once, worse than useless. Genius must be left to find out the law
for itself.

Xot that this implies that there is no law beyond the will of genius.

IDEA OF LAW IX POETRY ?19

'' Fierce " as the English poets were, and rightly were, for the liberties
of wit, the best and most representative of them knew that these
liberties must be confined within certain limits and directed to a defi-
nite end. The end the}' had in view was the imitation of the Uni-
versal, but the aspect of the Universal that manifests itself to the
English artist is modified and colored by a character peculiar to his
own society, so that the poetical forms in which he reflects his ideas
are necessarily different from the forms in use among the artists of
other nations. It is for the artist to decide in what way he can turn
to his purpose the principles, instincts, and institutions, which go to
make np national character; how far he may successfully extend his
individual liberties within the law can only be determined by the force
of his genius. All that the critic can usefully do is to collect the law
of art, by observing what are the elements common to the work of a
nation's greatest artists, and to note the working of the law of
national character in art, by comparing the manner of imitating the
Universal prevailing in one nation with that prevailing in another.

It was for this reason that, before attempting to discover what is
the predominant idea of law in English Poetry, I examined in pre-
vious lectures how the law of national character has manifested itself
in the poetry both of France and of Germany. For it is plain that in
their elements, the French, German, and English minds have much
in common with each other; we all originally spring from one race; we
were all converted from heathenism to the Christian religion ; we all
inherited the institutions of Teutonic chivalry; the English language
is made up of words mainly derived from German and French sources.
It may, therefore, be concluded that Xature has put us all in the
way of taking the same view of the Universal: and that the very
divergent views of it, which are. as a matter of fact, disclosed in the
art and poetry of the three nations, are due to peculiarities in the
character and history of each people.

Comparing the English character then cither with the French or
the German, the iirst thing that strikes evcrv inquirer is the great
multiplied v of elements which the English exhibits, in contrast with
the simplicity of the oilier two. The German race has remained
completely unmixed, and many features, noted in their character by
an accurate observer like Tacitus, ha\e survived in it with verv little
change. Again, much of what C;rsar says of the character of the
ancient Gauls is obviously applicable to the character of the modern
Frenchman. At first sight this seems somewhat strange, when we re-
member that the conquering Franks were of pure Teutonic descent;
but when we see how completely, in the French language, the German
element has been merged in the TJomanee it is easy to understand
that the genius of the barbarous victors was subdued by the civiliza-
tion of the Romanized Celt.

720 POETEY

No ancient historian has attempted to analyze the character of the
English nation. It is made up of British, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian,
and Norman elements, each of which has been fused in the organic
whole without entirely losing its individual existence. How much
influence the British element has exercised on our whole character
may be doubted; if we are to judge from language, very little, for
the number of Celtic words we use may be easily reckoned. Nor do I
think that Matthew Arnold is anything but fanciful when he ascribes
certain features in the style of English poetry to the Celtic strain in
our blood, though of course I should be the last to deny the influence
of the Celtic genius as one of the sources of mediaeval English Ko-
mance. The love of constitutional liberty, which is so dominant a
feature in the English character, may fairly be ascribed to our Ger-
man ancestry; but the somewhat sluggish and stationary temper of
the Saxons must, after they were once insularized, have sunk into
torpor and decay, if it had not been quickened by the life and move-
ment of the adventurous Scandinavian immigrants; on the other
hand, the directing genius of the Normans runs in unbroken con-
tinuity through the entire history of the English nation.

If we turn our inquiry from race to language, we find the same
principle of simplicity in the elements prevailing in German and
French as compared with English. I quoted in my last lecture Klop-
stock's description of the purity of the German language, the struc-
ture of Avhich he boasts to have remained unchanged since the days
of Arminius. Erench, on the contrary, exhibits the growth of fresh
organic forms out of the structural decay of Latin, and reflects in its
history a regular process of transformation and development. Eng-
lish derives its vocabulary both from Erench and German, showing
a curious drama of give and take between the two opposing elements.
Physically, the dominant character of the German in our language
is indicated by the imposition of the Saxon mode of accentuation on
immigrant words. Thus the words Saturn, beauty, fortune, nature,
in which the accent is now thrown back according to the Saxon
principle, on to the first syllable, were in the time of Chaucer and
his contemporaries accentuated, according to the French principle,
on what would have been the penultimate syllable of the Latin word
Saturn, beautce, fortime, nature. But, by way of compensation, the
superior power of the French, in all matters relating to art and
culture, manifests itself in the disappearance of the Saxon alliterative
verse before the invasion of French metres determined by accent and
rhyme.

Passing from the elements of character in themselves to the war
of the elements in action, we may observe, in the sphere of politics,
how very differently each of the throe nations has proceeded in its at-
tempt to reconcile the conflicting principles of which its life is com-

IDEA OF LAW IN POETEY 721

posed. Our primitive ancestors, besides bequeathing to each of us
certain universal ideas of the duties of man to God, to the Family,
and to the State, handed down also certain common institutions —
Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Popular Control — representing various
interests and tendencies in society, by means of which it has been our
destiny to develop, according to our several circumstances, the course
of our national life. The history of France and Germany shows us
the spectacle of one or other of these principles growing to such
power that, like Aaron's serpent, it swallows up the rest. On the
other hand, though the dominant feature in the political history of
England is undoubtedly

Freedom slowly broadening down
From precedent to precedent,

the growing movement of liberty thus described does not, as Tenny-
son's verses seem to imply, arise from the inward expansion of a
single principle; it is the total result of the conflict between the
equally balanced forces of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.
There is no trace in the history of England of the centralizing ten-
dency of things in France, absorbing all the functions and color of
local liberty into an omnivorous Absolutism. There is visible none of
the anarchical rivalry of Orders that prevailed in the Holy Roman
Empire, reducing the power of the Imperial throne to impotence and
inaction. At one time in our history the Monarchical principle was
predominant, at another the Aristocratic; forward movement and
fresh equilibrium were attained by the People throwing its welgnt
into one scale or the other, as circumstances required. Centuries of
conflict, sometimes ending in civil war, were needed to develop
the principle of hereditary liberty, contained in such documents as
Magna Charta and the Bill of Eights, into the complex fabric of the
British Empire. The leading feature in the character of the English
Constitution is its power of reconciling contrary impulses of action.

As it lias been with us in the external sphere of politics, so it is in
the sphere of faith and imagination. From the very earlv days of
our religion we can see that a universal conflict has been proceeding
in the mind of Christendom, between the principle of authority, repre-
sented by Councils defining the dogmas of the Church, the principle of
individual liberty, represented -by the constant succession of heresies
and schisms, and the naturally opposed principles of Paganism and
Revealed Religion. But during the last six centuries the making of
organic thought in the great national communities of Europe has
been the result of the fusion, in different proportions, of certain antag-
onistic elements. — -Catholicism, Feudalism. Humanism, and Reform,
— and each nation has striven to settle the struggle proceeding in its
midst in the wav most consistent with its own character.

122 POETRY

France, in which the principle of kingly authority showed from the
first a tendency to be predominant, found little difficulty in recon-
ciling, at least superficially, the principle of Catholicism with the
principle of the Eenaissance. A Concordat with the Pope enabled
Francis I. to repress the inconvenient aspirations of the Gallican
Church ; and the Pagan splendor of the late painting and sculpture of
Italy was welcomed at the Court of a monarch who boasted the title
of the Most Christian King. But the spirit of the Reformation never
gained a foothold in the French imagination. Though Clement
Marot translated the Psalms, and though Rabelais, in the early editions
of his Romances, introduced ideas favorable to the Humanist reform-
ers of religion, the general character of Marot's poetry is not devo-
tional, and Rabelais made haste to suppress his liberalism as soon as
he found it was disapproved by authority. The genius of D'Aubigne,
the greatest of the Huguenot writers of mediaeval France, is hardly
representative of his nation, and perhaps the only attempt to treat
the subject of revealed religion spiritually .in French poetry is Boi-
leau's aridly Jansenist Epistle on the Love of God.

Germany, in the sphere of spiritual thought, has been as unre-
servedly on the side of individual liberty as France on the side of
central authority. She it was, above all other countries, who nour-
ished the genius of the Reformation. In the persons of Luther
and Kant she led the revolt against Avhat is established both in
Religion and Philosophy. But then Germany, owing to the un-
mitigated feudalism of her institutions, was incapable of assimi-
lating the intellectual movement of the Renaissance at the same
time as the great nations of "Western Europe. The Classical Revival
was essentially civic in its origin, and there was in Germany in the
sixteenth century no recognized civic centre round which art and litera-
ture could organize themselves to the same extent as in France and
England. When the different States of the Empire, at the close of
the Thirty Years' Wai1, settled down into exhausted quietude, the
Renaissance began to make its influence felt in the Courts of the
Princes; but its operation was entirely opposed to the experience of
the European nations of the West. W'inckelmann. Lessing, and
Goethe had no doubt a far clearer insight into the nature of Greek
art than the French and Italian critics, who followed the pseudo-
Aristotelian tradition, but they viewed it in the abstract, as critics
and philosophers, and not in its relation to the life of their own
country.

England has marked out for herself a path of Culture between that
of France and Germany. The bent of her historical character has
been to blend the principles of liberty and auihoritv. She has studied
how to accommodate the necessities of innovation with the tradi-
tions of old experience. Into our {"Diversities, the cradle- of the

IDEA OF LAW IX POETRY 7^3

ancient Scholasticism, we received the teaching of Erasmus and his
fellow Humanists, so that when Luther, with all his violent Tertullian-
like hatred of Greek poetry and philosophy, poured himself forth in
a flood of rebellion against the old regime, carrying on the tide of his
enthusiasm all that Germanic element in the English nation which,
nearly two centuries before, had been stirred by the preaching of
Wycliffe, we were saved by the strength of our dykes from the sub-
merging of invaluable elements in our life and history. Yet this
did not pi-event the spirit of the Reformation from penetrating the
inmost recesses of the national character, or from finding vivid forms
of expression in the greatest works of English poetry. I need say
nothing, for the fact is obvious, of its influence on the composition of
Paradise Lost; but its presence in the plays of Shakespeare, though
more subtly disguised, is equally unmistakable. I do not think that
any one can read with attention either Hamlet, Macbeth, or Measure
for Measure, without perceiving how powerful was the conflict in
England between the selfish, egotistic, material principle of life,
deliberately advocated by such an illustrious representative of the
Italian Renaissance as Machiavelli, and the principle of Conscience,
which was the prime spiritual cause of the Reformation.

From all this it seems to follow, first, that the " rules,''' or " for-
eign laws," of which Pope speaks with respect in the Essay on Criti-
cism, are only one of many elements that have combined to determine
the course of our national art and culture; and that, if English poetry,
like the poetry of other nations, is a mirror of our national character
and history, then the great fundamental law under which the genius of
the English poet must act, in order to produce any lasting work, is
the knowledge both of what mav be called the Balance of Power
between the constituent element? of our imagination, and also of
the method of fusing these contrary principles into a harmonious
whole.

In practice \ve find this to have been the aim of all the most repre-
sentative English masters, not alone in the art of poetry but in the
art of painting. '' The summit of excellence." says Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds in his Fifth Discourse, " seems to be an assemblage of con-
trary qualities, but mixed in such proportion thai no one part is
found to counteract the others. How hard this is to be attained
in e\ery art. those onlv know who have made the greatest progress in
their respective professions." So hard, indeed, is it. that one notices
throughout Sir Joshua's teaching a perhaps excessive tendency to
insist on the necessity of often suppressing elements of life, valuable
in themselves, for the sake of harmonious effect. For example he
says: "'A statue in which you endeavor to unite stately dignity,
youthful elegance, and stern valor, must surely possess none of these
to an eminent degree. TTenee it appear? that there is much difficult v

12-i POETKY

as well as danger in an endeavor to concentrate in a single subject those
various powers which, rising from different points, naturally move
in different directions." But genius is genius precisely because it
knows how to overcome apparently insuperable difficulties. If it had
not been for the authority of Sir Joshua, apparently on the other
side, I should have ventured to suggest that the particular combina-
tion of qualities he supposes was to be found in the statue of the
Apollo Belvedere, and I am at least confident that it is well within
the reach of poetry, which of all the arts is the one with most capacity
for the imitation of contrary qualities in action.

It is not too much to say that in English Poetry the reconciliation
of contraries is the character impressed on the works of a long suc-
cession of great poets, who have been so conscious of the strife of
principles in their own sphere, and of the dominant tendencies in the
spirit of their age, that they have each known how to imitate in an
ideal form the movement of life in Nature and Society. "We see,
for example, the principle at work in the Vision of Piers the Plowman,
in which the poet's powerful but confused attempt to work out an
ideal scheme of harmony between Church and State so strikingly
anticipates the actual course of events at the Reformation. We see it,
too, in the brilliant, vivacious, squabbling company of Chaucer's pil-
grims to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, the representatives
of so many opposing interests and so many distinct orders in society,
yet all united by the sense of a common religious duty to be per-
formed, and already so far advanced in the art of self-government as
to be willing to compose their quarrels under the general and mod-
e-rating guidance of the host of The Tabard. The most profound and
comprehensive conception of the mingled tragedy and comedy of
life ever expressed in poetry is to be found in the dramas of Shakes-
peare, in whose goniu? the elements are so mixed that it is difficult
to say whether the spirit of the ancient Church, of the Eeformation,
or of Humanism, is the stronger. The Satires of Pope, faithfully
reflecting in this respect the genius of the eighteenth century, seem
almost to eliminate the mediaeval element from the national imag-
ination, in a purely civic development of the principle of the Renais-
sance: but in Byron and Tennyson the spirit of individual liberty
returns on the top of the lido, seeking, under the guise of mediaeval
forms, to express, its revolt against the classic and aristocratic con-
vention- of the eighteenth century, without, however, losing sight of
the historic conflict of principles in English Poetry.

In future lectures I shall hope to illustrate the working of this law
of national character more fully and particularly from the practice
of our most representative poets. Meantime, let me say a few con-
cluding words about the kind of test we ought to apply, to see whether
the law i= fulfilled in any work of contemporary English poetry that

IDEA OF LAW IN POETEY 725

we may be called upon to judge. In the first place, I would repeat
what I have said in an earlier lecture, that the presence of the Uni-
versal in a work of art cannot always be inferred from the popularity
of that work. Tempting no doubt it is to decide in this way, for
never was there an age in which Fame travelled with such lightning
speed as our own. There is something dazzling and impressive in the
sale of tens of thousands of copies of a poem or a romance, nor is it
for a moment to be denied that any book which succeeds in pleasing
the imagination of so many human beings must possess in itself some
striking qualities of art, though not necessarily, or even probably, of
fine art. For the people judge by their emotions, sensations, and in-
stincts, not by their reason; and it is almost as impossible to divine
the effect which a work of imagination will produce on the popular
mind as to forecast the temper in which public opinion will act in
the sphere of politics. All that we can be sure of is that the quality
in a work of art which fascinates the imagination of the people will
be, like the considerations that sway them in politics, simple, obvious,
akin to their superficial sentiments, and as unlike as possible to that
mysterious struggle of opposite forces, the sum of which eventually
determines the national action and character. A novel like The Sor-
rows of Wcrthcr will always be, in the beginning, more popular and
famous than a poem like Faust.

Looking at the matter from the opposite side, while a work of
genius will necessarily have in it an element strongly appealing to the
universal, and therefore to the popular, imagination, we know by
abundant evidence that the kind of imitation which arrests general
attention is not that in which the essential motive thought of a great
poet resides. For example, a number of contemporary allusions to
Hamlet prove beyond question that what most impressed the audience
in the Elizabethan theatre was by no means the general plot of the
play or the character of the Prince of Denmark, but the appearance of
the ghost. It is equally certain, from the title attached to the early
acting copies of King Lear, that the imaginative pleasure experienced
by the spectators arose much less from the sublime representation of
the madness of the old king, than from Edgar's realistic assumption of
the character of poor Tom of Bedlam.

Equally fallacious is it to look for the character, which is the
mark of all Fine Art, in singularity of expression. There is a very
strong tendency in our times to adopt this standard of judgment.
Whether it be disdain for the judgment of the multitude, or an in-
stinctive perception that singularity is eventually the surest mean-; of
attracting the attention of the crowd, every observer must have noticed
the growing inclination of men of genius to invent forms which reflect
not so much the universal character of the nation, as their own per-
sonal peculiarities. At first this studied pursuit of unpopular ends

726 POETKY

meets with coldness and contempt in the public at large, but it is
noted and even approved by the intellectual few, who appreciate more
intensely eccentricity in an author, in proportion as they value in
themselves the sagacity which enables them to interpret it. By degrees
an ever-increasing circle of admirers imposes its own thoughtfulness
on the unreflecting public, which, though still unable to understand,
is no longer bold enough to ridicule. " Those who come to mock
remain to pray.'' Surrounded by a powerful body-guard, the once
neglected inventor of singularities tramples with impunity on the
traditions of art, and the coterie invests with a species of temporary
authority an eccentric practice which may have its primary roots in
Mannerism and Affectation.

The just mean of a true work of Fine Art lies between Popularity
and Singularity; such a work is the expression of Universal truth
bearing the stamp of national character. The critic in judging a new
poem will do well to ask certain questions about its qualities. First
as regards its conception. Does it strike the imagination, in its gen-
eral effect, as imitating the idea of Xature as a whole? Does it reflect
in itself the strife of opposing principles which make up the sum of
our civilization, our Christian faith, our hereditary institutions, the
long tradition of European culture? Are these conflicting ideas fused
in it in the same way as we see them fused in. Chaucer's Canterbury
Talcs, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, in Pope's Essfnj on Man, in Gray's
Elegy, in Tennyson's In Memoriam ? So too in respect of expres-
sion, every English poem, which is really a work of line art, Avill com-
bine in itself the universal with the particular. If it is justly con-
ceived, if it holds the mirror truly up to nature, then the expression
also will seem natural, the art will be concealed, and the effect left
on the mind will be Uepose and not Violence or Singularity. Close
examination alone will reveal what thought and labor have often been
given to arrive at this result; the selection and rejection of ideas; the
choice of words characteristic yet not forced; the variation of periods;
the combination of harmonies; in a word, all that subtle mixture of
elements which gives life and soul and movement to an individual
style. And as a style of this kind is generalized by the poet from a
wide acquaintance with the practice of the best poets in our literature,
so it can be rightly judged only by those who have a knowledge of the
historic development of our language. In criiu-ising the language
of a modern poet, look in his verse to see if it possesses the hereditary
national quality of condensing thought in an epigrammatic form —
see if you can find a family likeness in it to lines like these:

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. — SHAKESPEARE.

They also serve who only stand and wait. — MILTON.

A Tnan sn various that he seemed to be

Nut one. l'"t all mankind's epitome.- — • URYDE.V.

IDEA OF LAW IN POETKY 727

Man never is, but always to be, blest. — POPE.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. — GRAY.

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. — BYBON.

In all these lines the total effect of the idea expressed is simple,
natural, universal, and yet the individual character is strongly marked,
and the means adopted to produce the effect are very complex. Such
a reconciliation of opposing qualities is the universal condition of all
Fine Art.

PASSION AND IMAGINATION IN POETRY.1

BY HENRY CHARLES BEECH I KG

[Henry Charles Beeching, Canon of Westminster Abbey, since 1902; formerly
Clark lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. b. 1859: educated at
Balliol College, Oxford; Litt.D. Durham; Rector of Yattendon. Berkshire,
1885-1900; Professor of Pastoral and Liturgical Theory at King's College,
London, 1900-1903. Author of Love in llleness; Love's Loo/cing-Glass;
In a Garden, and other poems; Conferences on Books and Men; and Two
Lectures on Poetry. Editor of Milton's Works; Shakespeare'* Sonnets;
A Paradise of English Poetry, and various other authologies and editions
of English poets.]

The unsatisfactoriness of definitions of poetry arises usually from
one or other of two causes. If the definition is that of a critic, it is
the resultant of a long analytical process, and therefore not very intel-
ligible apart from the process by which it has been arrived at; if it is
the definition of a poet, it is certain to contain that element of poetry
which it professes to explain. Nevertheless, the most helpful aper^us
into poetry are those which the poets themselves have given us, and of
them all none is more helpful than that inspired parenthesis in which
Milton one day summed up its characteristics as " simple, sensuous
and passionate."

"We may presume that by his first epithet Milton intended that sim-
plicity which is another name for sincerity. He meant that a poet
muSt look at the world frankly and with open eyes; with the spirit,
though with more than the wisdom, of a child. We sometime? express
another side of the same truth by saying that poetry is "universal,"
meaning that it cares nothing for superficial and transient fashions,
but is interested only " in man, in nature, and in human life,'' in their
permanent elements. This first epithet seems to fix beyond dispute
an indispensable quality of all poetry. If a writer is insincere, or if
ho is conventional and fashionable, we are sure, whatever his airs and
graces, lhat ho is no poet. Y->\ •'sensuous''' it is probable that Milton
meant what, in more technical language, we should describe as "con-
crete/' Poetry deals with thing-, and it deals with people; it sings of
birds and flowers and stars; it sings of the wrath of Achilles, the wan-
dering- of rivsses and .'Eneas, the woes of King (Edipus, the problems
of Brutus and Hamlet; whatever be the thought or the emotion it is
concerned with, it is concerned with them as operating on a par-
ticular occasion ; it lias no concern with (he intellect or the emotions
or the will in abstraction from this or that wise or passionate or

PASSIOX AXD IMAGINATION IX POKT1JY 7v!9

wilful person.2 By his third epithet Milton, as most will agree, touched
or almost touched the heart of the matter. We all conceive prose to be
an adequate vehicle for our level feelings, but as soon as we are deeply
moved and wish to express our emotion we instinctively turn to the
poets. Wordsworth is at one with Milton in fixing upon passion as of
the essence of poetry, which he in one place defines as " the spontane-
ous overflow of powerful feeling?." It does not matter for poetry what
the emotion is that overflows; it may be love or hale, pity or fear, awe
or indignation, joy or sorrow; what matters for poetry is that some
passion there should be, for some paticular object, and that it should
be sincerely and deeply felt.

Essential, however, as passion is, so that where there is no passion
there can be no poetry, in saying passion we have not said the last
word. Any one may prove this to himself by a simple reminiscence.
He may at some time have been in love, for, according to Patmore,
"Love wakes men once a lifetime each:" and, perhaps, in a mood of
exaltation he may have taken pen and paper for a sonnet to his mis-
tress' eyebrow; but the poetry did not come; or, if something came, in
a calmer mood he recognized that it was not poetry. Or we may
illustrate from other passions. At the Queen's Jubilee a few years
since we were all passionately loyal, and the morning newspapers vied
with each other in producing odes; but no one could mistake any one
of them for poetry. Or, the other day, again, when the Konnos ver-
dict was announced, the intelligence of England was roused to a pas-
sion of indignation. I took up my weekly gazette the next Saturday
morning and found that indignation had made a good many versos, in
none of which was there a tincture of poetry. There was much curs-
ing and swearing, and appealing to Heaven for vengeance; but the
point of view was merely that of the man in the street.

These simple examples will sullice to show that poetry requires a
manner of viewing things which is not that of the average man. but
is individual to the poet: it, require:
hardly expect Milton to point this
would assume that every one
assume that wo all had the power

-The tradition of this concrojoness was not lo>t even in the eighteenth
century. Poets, living in a time of ab-tract thought. an<l feeling linger the
necessity of handling abstractions which they mi-took for universal*, hit upon
the device of personifying them, with the result that from the jiaire- of
Dodsley's ^Miscellany every family of ! lie mind and every operation of every
science look* <~nir at one with a capital letter, a fashion happilv pai
in the famous line:

Gray is not untouched with the malady, though, on the whole, he represents
a reaction hack to the richness of the concrete, the " pomp and prodigality"
of Shakespeare and Milton.

730 POETRY

way of looking at it. Xow, it is this fresh outlook and insight, this
power of viewing things and people out of the associations in which
the rest of mankind habitually view them, that is the root of the
whole matter. In the world of nature we find the poets moved even
to passion by objects that we hardly notice, or from long familiarity
have come to ignore. Their strong emotion arises from their fresh
vision. By means of that fresh vision the world never ceases to be an
interesting place to them.

By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed,
Or a shady bush or tree.
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.

So sang Wither of the Poetic Muse: and Blake expresses the same
truth in his inspired doggerel :

What to others a trifle appears
Fills me full of smiles and tears.

The converse of the proposition also holds true: what to others may
appear facts of the highest importance, may to the poet appear trifles.
Similarly in the world of men we find the poets as much interested in
the least as in the greatest, and we rind theiri unconcerned by many
of the distinctions which to mankind in general appear vital. "We find,
for example. Andrew Marvell introducing into his panegyric of Oliver
Protector a picture of King Charles at his execution, which embalms
the secret of all the cavalier loyaltv, and is to-day the oftenest quoted
passage of his poem.

The poet's subjects, then, are borrowed from any quarter in the
whole range of nature and human experience: "the world is all before
him where to ehoose : '" anything that excites any deep emotion in him
is a fit topic for his verse, and it is our privilege for the moment, so
far as that one experience is concerned, to look through his eyes. In
this way the poets interpret the world to us. They also interpret us
to ourselves. They make adventurous voyage= into hitherto unsounded
seas of the human spirit, and bring us word of their discoveries. And
what they thus win becomes an inalienable possession to the race: the
boundaries of humanity are pushed back. This power of interpreting
the world and human life is sometimes spoken of as an idealizing
faculty, and no exception can be taken to the term so long as it is not
explained to mean that the poet tricks up what he sees in false lights
in order to please us. For anv one who considers the best poetry,

PASSIOX AND IMAGINATION IX POETRY ?3'1

whether about the universe or man's heart, — and it is only the best
that must determine the genus — will admit that, so far as he has
trusted himself to it, it has convinced him of its entire veracity. It is
idealized only in the sense that a landscape is idealized by the removal
of the accidental and commonplace details, which sufficed to blind
others to the beauty that the painter distinguished. The artist, poet
or painter, sees the light that never was on sea or land until he saw
it; but when he has once seen it and shown it us, we can all see that
it is there, and is not merely a figment of his fancy. This mode of
viewing things, which by its freshness reveals, or interprets, or ideal-
izes, is what is meant by Poetical Imagination.

But now that that most terrifying of technical terms has been men-
tioned, it may be well to make a short summary of the various senses
in which the word is habitually employed, in order to observe what all,
or any, of them have in common, and how they connect one with
another.

(a.) When a psychologist speaks of imagination he is not thinking
of poetry; he means by the word the power of summoning again
before the mind's eye vivid images of what has been once seen. He
bids us look carefully at our breakfast-table, and then, closing our
eyes, notice how much of it we can recall, how clear or dim an image.
Whether skill in this memory-picturing has any link with poetical
imagination it would be hard to say; certainly to no one would a
power of vividly recalling images be of greater service. The faculty
seems to be entirely distinct from the power of attention and close
observation.

(b.) A more familiar usage of the word is that which makes it
almost a synonym for sympathy • — the power of projecting self into
the circumstances of others. We know to our cost that many men and
women are sadly to seek in this faculty, and it seems to be no especial
prerogative of poets, though Shelley thought so. He speaks of the
poet as —

A nerve o'er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of the earth.

And in his prose essay he says: '"A 711 an to be greatly good must
imagine intensely and comprehensively : he must put himself in the
place of another, and of inany others; the pains and pleasures of his
species must become his own: " and he continues, "The great instru-
ment of moral good is imagination, and poetry administers to the
effect by acting upon the cause." (Essays, i, 16.)

Shelley in this passage is no doubt theorizing too much from his
own personal feelings ; for it has often been remarked that poets have
been singularly lacking in imagination of this moral sort, and have-
been conspicuous for an intense selfishness in their domestic relation.0

73* POETRY

(c.) But the word is also used not of moral, but of intellectual
sympathy; a power of appreciating, by an act of intuition, the char-
acteristic qualities of things and people, so as to be able to set out a
train of consequences. A celebrated novelist was once congratulated
upon the admirable drawing in one of her books of a particular
school of Dissenters, and she was asked what opportunities she had
enjoyed of studying them. Her reply was that she had once caught
sight of a group of them through a half-opened door as she mounted a
staircase. That is no doubt an extreme case, but it is all the more
useful as an illustration. It helps us to realize how potent a faculty
is the endowment of the dramatist, which can pierce through human
appearance to its essential qualities, can conceive by a sure instinct
how, in given circumstances, the given character must act, and can
represent it to us, because it is vivid to him, in all the versimilitude
of essential detail. Such imagination is plainly one large and special
side of the faculty of seeing things out of their commonplace associa-
tions. As a branch of the same head would rank the still rarer power
of conceiving types of character, that for certain reasons have no
actual existence in the world we know, such types as Shakespeare's
Ariel and Caliban and Puck.

((/.) The word imagination is also used of a faculty which may at
first sight seem the opposite of this — a faculty of seeing people and
objects not as they arc in themselves, but colored by the atmosphere of
joy or gloom through which they are seen. The truth, however, prob-
ably is that nothing at all is, or ever can be, seen out of some atmos-
phere, a thing in itself being merely an abstraction; but the greater
a poet is, the more various are his moods, while with lesser men a
particular mood inay cover all the objects in their poetical world.

(c.) Again, the word has a narrower and more technical sense;
namely, the power of detecting resemblances in nature for the purpose
of poetical illustration. This use of the term is not merely freakish,
but connects with that broader and more fundamental sense to which
I have so many times referred, the power and habit of seeing the
" common things that round us lie '" out of their commonplace associa-
tion-, of seeing them in more subtle and original associations. For it
is the power of bringing together two objects or events that the ordi-
nary person would ne\vr dream of connecting, but in which the poet's
eve has detected similarity, and which lie therefore places side by side
so that one may throw light upon the other. Our thinking, it will be
admitted, is largely associational : one thing recalls another; but it is
lho prerogative of poets that the tracks between idea and idea in their
mind- are nor tlio-o of common trade. Recur for a moment to
Wither"- reference to a daisy. We know beforehand what a daisy will
surrrrr^t to a child, what to a gardener, what to a botanist: we do not

PASSION, AND IMAGINATION IN POETRY 733

know beforehand what it will suggest to a poet. It may be, as it was
to Chaucer, a crowned queen : —

A fret of gold she hadde next her hair,
And upon that a white corown she bare
With llourouns smalle, and (1 shall not lie)
For all the world right as a daisy
Ycrowned is with white loaves light.
So were the liourouns of her corown white.

How utterly dill'erent from this is the feeling of Burns ! To him the
daisy is the type of humble cheerfulness, sweet neighbor and meet
companion of the humble and cheerful lark. How different, again,
was that feeling it inspired in Wordsworth ! The point to strike
home to him was the touch of kinship between the simplest flower and
man in the fact- that both are alive :

S \veet silent creature
That brcathest with me in sun and air.

Imagination, used in this restricted sense of the interpretation of
phenomena by comparison, is often contrasted with a weaker form
of itself to which the name of Fancy is given. The distinction was
introduced into these islands by Coleridge, who endeavored to teach
it to Wordsworth ; it was then popularized by Leigh Hunt and after-
wards by liiiskin. It has played in the last half century so prominent
a part in the criticism of poetry, that it is perhaps worth while to
look it for once fairly in the face. Coleridge was always promising to
give a disquisition upon Poetical Imagination but he never kept his
word: he did, however, what was almost better; in the " Biographia
Literaria "' he illustrated his meaning from some passages in his
friend's poems; and we gather from his comments that he did
not at all mean Imagination to be distinguished from Fancy as the
{ten-option of deeper from that of more superficial resemblance-^ ; he
wished the term Fancy to be kept for the u=e of poetical imagery of
all kinds, and the term Imagination to be used of the poet's faculty as
a creative artist. Tie speaks of it as a unifying power, bringing to-
gether whatever will help his purpose, and rejecting all that is im-
pertinent and unessential, lie speak- of it also as a vivifving power,
turning "'bodies to spirits by sublimation strange.'5 That is to say
lie use:- Imagination not co much i>f a qualitv of the poet's mind as
of an artistic power which he exercises, the power of imposing
living form upon dead matter. — he calls it in the '•' Ode to Dejection "
''my xJiaphig spirit of imagination:' - — but it is not hard to see that
this unifying and vitalizing power depends upon what is the charac-
teristic essence of imagination, the unanalysable power of serin <T things

O

freshlv and in new and harmonious association?. The idea must pre-

734 POETRY

cede the execution, and it is a small matter whether the term Imagin-
ation be employed of the idea or the embodiment. Between Imagin-
ation and Fancy, therefore, as Coleridge conceived them, there could
be no confusion.

The trouble began with Wordsworth. By Imagination, as by Fancy,
Wordsworth practically means the use of poetical imagery; but he as-
cribes to the higher faculty the images which occur to the poet, not in
his superficial moods, but under the influence of deeper emotion.1
Leigh Hunt preserved and illustrated this distinction from a wide
range of poets. Mr. Ruskin, in the second volume of " Modern
Painters" (p. 163), turned aside from an elaborate disquisition upon
Imagination in painting to speak of poetry. " The Fancy," he says,
" sees the outside, and so is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear,
brilliant, and full of detail; the Imagination sees the heart and inner
nature, and makes them felt, but it is often obscure, mysterious, and
interrupted in its giving of outer detail. And then follows a re-
markable parallel between the flower passage in " Lycidas " and that
in the " Winter's Tale," greatly to the disadvantage of the former.

It will be remembered that the passage from " Lycidas " is printed
with marginal notes, as follows : —

Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, Imagination.

The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, Nugatory.

The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, Fancy.

The glowing violet, Imagination.
The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, Fancy and vulgar.

With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, huayination.

And every ilower that sad embroidery wears. Mixed.

Then follows the passage from the "Winter's Tale " : —

() Proserpina,

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than Ilie lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids.

i Characteristically Wordsworfh, in his celebrated preface, illustrated what
he meant by 1 magi nation, not from his friend's poetry, but his own. Upon
the line " Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods," he thus comments:
"The stock-dove is said to coo. a sound well imitating the note of the bird;
but by the intervention of the metaphor broods, the affections are called in by
the imagination to assist in marking the manner in which the bird reiterates
and prolongs her soft note, as if herself delighting to listen to it. and par-
ticipatory of a still and r;uiet satisfaction, like that which may be supposed
inseparable from the continuous process of incubation."

PASSION AXD IMAGINATION IX POETRY 735

And then comes tins criticism:

Observe how the imagination 'in these last lines goes into the very
inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all at first
with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's, and gilded
them with celestial gathering, and never stops on their spots or their
bodily shape; while Milton sticks in the stains upon them and puts
us off with that unhappy freak of^jet in the very flower that, without
this bit of paper-staining, would have been the most precious to us of
•all. " There is pansies, that's for thoughts."

I do not know whether this comparison has ever been the subject of
-adverse comment: I have often heard it praised. To me, I confess
it seems a compendium of all the faults that a critic of poetry
should avoid: waywardness, preciosity, inattention, and the uncritical
use of critical labels. In the first place the critic has ignored what is
of the first consequence, the motive of the two pieces, and has treated
them as parallel flower-passages from a volume of elegant extracts;
whereas no criticism can be to the point that does not recognize that
Milton's flowers are being gathered for a funeral, and Shakespeare's
are not to be gathered at all; they are visionary spring flowers, seen
in glory through the autumn haze. Without going at length through
each passage it is worth noticing that Shakespeare's lines about the
primrose are open to precisely the same censure, no more and no
less, as Mr. Ruskin accords to Milton's pansy. The epithet " pale " is
very far from " going into the very inmost soul '' of the primrose,
which is a hardy flower, and not in the least anaemic; it '' sticks in the
stains" upon the surface as much as the "'freaked with jet;" and
this, again, so far from being " unhappy/' gives the reason why the
pansy was chosen for the hearse among the flowers that " sad em-
broidery wear.'' A second point to notice concerns the lines that are
marked "nugatory.'' l>oth Shakespeare and Milton had the instinct
to see that just as, on the one hand, a llo\ver passage must not be a
mere catalogue, so, on the other, each item must not be unduly empha-
sized. And so we find that, while Milton has his "tufted crow-toe
and pale jessamine,'' and his " wcll-att ir'd woodbine" to make up
the bunch. Shakespeare also has his

Bold oxlip>. and

The crown-imperial, lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one !

a "nugatory" pa~-age whirh Mr. Ruskin omits from his quotation.
So much. then, for ihe contrast of Imagination and Fancy.

In resuming what has been said about the two great character-
istics of the poetical mind, its passion and its imagination, it may be
useful to illustrate from the picture that our great dramatist lias
drawn of the poetical character in the person of Macbeth. Macbeth.

7o(5 POETRY

indeed, was a poet without a conscience; but that circumstance is to
the advantage of our illustration, since we shall not be able to confuse
his morality with his poetiy. There are several points that may be
noticed.

1. First, though on this much stress must not be laid, we observe
Macbeth's power of summoning up, and vividly objectifying impres-
sions of sense. He sees an air-drawn dagger. He hears a voice say,
<: Sleep no more.''

2. Secondly, and this is fundamental, we remark the passionate in-
tensity with which he realizes whatever comes before him, his own
states of mind, or events that happen, and sees them in all their
attendant circumstances and consequences. Xo fact that at all inter-
ests him. remains a barren fact to him, and most facts do interest him.
When he is contemplating the death of Duncan he appreciates thor-
oughly and entirely all that i? involved in that death: —

He's here in double trust:
First, as 1 am his kinsman, and his subject,
(Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Wlio should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne hi* faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great oflice. that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued. against
The deep damnation of his taking-oh".

So he goes from point in point, realizing as he goes. Even more strik-
ing is the way in which he i? moved after the murder by Duncan's
untroubled condition, thoroughly appreciating it: —

J)uncan is in his grave:
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason hn< done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further!

I have liv'd loner enough; my way of life

N fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf:

And that whii-h <-lioiild accompany old age.

As honor, love, obedience. tro<>p« of friend*

I must not look to have: but. in their «tend.

Curse*, not loud, but deep, moii! h-honor. breath.

Which the poor heart would fain dmy. but dare not.

Especially characteristic here of the poet seems to me the pause on
the id»:-a of curses, to realize' them, br-foro goine further. " curse=, not
Ji;iid. but flcp."

PASS [OX AX I) 1MAGIXATTOX IX POETRY 73?

3. In the third place, we remark that, as Macbeth realizes with
such vividness and such emotion the qualities of everything that
appeals to him, so one thing is always suggesting another with sim-
ilar qualities : —

Then conies my lit again; I had else been perfect;
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air;
But now I am cabiri'd, c-ribb'd, confined.

When the ghostly voice that he hears, the echo of his own imaginative
mind, suggests to him the terrible thought that he has murdered not
the king only, but Sleep, the greatest friend of man, he is at once
absorbed in the thought of all the wonder and mystery of sleep, which
he draws out into a long string of images; forgetting all about the
business he had been engaged in, and the bloody dagger in his hand,
until his practical wife in blank amazement breaks in with, " What
do you mean? " Xo one, again, is likely to forget the desolate images
under which he sums up his idea of the worthlessness and meaningless-
ness of human life:

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is seen no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

•i. I would point out, further, as a frequent trait of the poetic
nature, Macbetlrs simplicity; shown partly by his interest in his own
moods; for example, in such saying? as ''"False face must hide what
the false heart dolh know;'' more curiously in his speculation why
he could not say " Amen :< when the groom he was about to murder
said, "'God bless us;'' most curiously in his irritation at ghost-
walking : —

The times have been

That, when the bruins were out. the m;ui would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again.
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools; this is more strange
Than such a murder is.

~). Finally, though in this [ am trespassing on a subject which I
hope to discuss in a second paper. \ve cannot but observe Macbeth's
extraordinary talent for expression. I will give but one instance.
Shakespeare, whether bv design or chance, has reserved for him, per-
haps, the most remarkable presentment in literature of the phe-
nomenon of falling night -

Lijjht thickens.

738 POETRY

an expression which gives not only the fact of growing darkness, but
also its qualities.

The picture of the poetical nature that Shakespeare has given us
in Macbeth is considerably heightened if by the side of it we add for
contrast his Richard II. Without working out the parallel in any
detail, it will be enough to call attention to two points. In the first
place, Richard has no imagination in the sense which we have seen
reason to give to that term; he has no intuition into the scope and
meaning and consequences of events. Compare, for instance, with
Macbeth's picture of old age, Richard's picture of a dethroned king : —

I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage;
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown;
My figured goblets for a dish of wood;
My sceptre for a farmer's walking staff,
My subjects for a pair of carved saints;
And my large kingdom for a little grave, etc.

The points in the picture which rouse Richard's emotion, and which
he sets out before us, are all merely superficial; never once does he
touch the real heart of the matter. The other noticeable thing is
that Richard is much less interested in persons or events than in his
feeling.? about them, and then only in such as are lamentable; and
perhaps, it would be true to add, less in the lamentable feelings than
in the pathetic language in which they can be expressed. He " ham-
mers out " a simile as though it was an end in itself, and is moved by
a curious phrase so as almost to forget his troubles. In the corona-
tion scene, after Richard has cast down the looking-glass with the
words, —

How soon my sorrow hath destroyed my face,

Bolingbroke, with all a practical man's contempt of play-acting and
rhetoric, satirically replies : —

The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed
The shadow of your face,

whereupon Richard is at once arrested : —

Say that again!
The shadow of my sorrow ! ha ! let's see !

Could there be a truer portrait of the " minor poet " or sentimen-
talist ?

SPECIAL REFERENCE WORKS RELATING TO POETRY

ARISTOLLE, Poetics.

ARNOLD, Study of Poetry.

AUSTIN, Poetry of the Period.

BAUMGARTNER, Goethe und Schiller; Weimar's Glanzperiode.

BOILEAU, L'Art Poetique.

BOUTERWEK, Geschichte der Poesie, 12 Vols.

BORINSKI, Deutsche Poetik.

Die Poesie Der Renaissance in Deutschland.
BRAITMAYER, Geschiehe der poetischen Theorie von den Diskursen der Maler

bis Lessing.

BROWNING, Essays on the English Poets.
BURDON, Comparative Estimate of English Literature.
CAMPBELL, Lectures on Poetry.
CARRIERS, Das Wesen und die Formen der Poesie.
CLEVELAND, English Literature of the Nineteenth Century.
COOK, Art of Poetry.

CRAIK, Compendious History of English Literature.
COURTHOPE, History of English Poetry.
DOYLE, Lectures on Poetry.
DOWDEN, History of French Literature.

Studies in Literature.

New Studies in Literature.

The Modern Period in English Literature.
DRYDEN, Discourse on Satire and Epic Poetry.
EMERSON, Poetry and Criticism.
FAURIEL, History of Provencal Poetry.

GOSSE, History of English Literature in the Eighteenth Century.
GOTTSCHALL, Poetik, 2 Vols.
GRANGER, Index to Poetry and Recitations.
GUEST, History of English Rhythms.
GUMMERE, Beginnings of Poetry.
HALLAM, Literary History of Europe, 4 Vols.
HAZLITT, On Poetry in General.
HIRSCII. Ciosohichte Der Deutschen Literatur.
HORACE. Art of Poetry.
HUNT, What is Poetry?

LECLERC AND RENAN, Histoire Litteraire de la France nu XTV. siecle, 2 Vols.
LEIXNER, Geschichte der Deutschen Litteratur.
LESSING, Laocoon.

LOISE, DC 1'influence de la Civilisation sur la Poesie.
LONGFELLOW, Poets and Poetry of Europe.

Defence of Poetry.

MAIIAFFY, History (if Classical Literature.
MASSON, Theories of Poetry.
MILL, Thoughts on Poetry ;uicl its Varieties
MOIR, Poetical Literature of the Past Half ( 'entury.
MONTGOMERY, Lectures on Poetry and General Literature.
MORELL, Biographical History of English Literature.
MORLEY, Writers Before Chaucer.

( 'haucer to Dunbar.
NEWMAN, Lectures on Poetry.
NICHOL. American Literature.
NEELE, Lectures on English Poetry.
PEACOCK. The Four Ages of Poetry.
POSNET, Comparative Literature.
PROCTOR, English Poetry.

740 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF POETRY

QUINET, De 1' Histoire de la Poesie.
RAYMOND, Poetry as a Representative Art.
REED, Lectures on the British Poets, 2 Vols.
RENAN, La Poesie des Races Celtiques.

ROETTEKEN, Poetik.

ROSENKRANZ, Handbuch einer allgemeinen Geschichte der Poesie, 3 Vols.
SAINTSBURY, History of Nineteenth Century Literature.

History of Elizabethan Literature.

History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, 3 Vols.

A Short History of English Literature.

A Short History of French Literature.

Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, 2 Vols.

Periods of European Literature, 8 Vols.
SATJER, Geschichte der Italienischen Litteratur.
SCHERR, History of English Literature.
SCHILLER, Ueber Naive and Sentimentalische Dichtung.
SCHLEGEL, Lectures on the History of Literature; Ancient and Modern.
SELKIRK, Ethics and Aesthetics of Modern Poetry.
SHAIRP, Aspects of Poetry.
SISMONDI, Literature of the South of Europe.

STAEL-HOLSTEIN, Treatise on Ancient and Modern Literature, 2 Vols.
STEDMAN, Victorian Poets.

Nature and Elements of Poetry.

STEMPLINGER, Das Forteleben der Horazischen Lyrik seit der Renaissance.
SYDNEY, Apologie for Poetry.
SYMONDS, Studies of the Greek Poets.
TAINE, Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise.
TUCKERMAN, Thoughts on the Poets.
VIGIE-LECOCQ, La Poesie Contemporaine, 1884-1896.
WABTON, History of English Poetry. XI-XVIII Centuries.
WELSH, Development of English Literature.
YONGE, Three Centuries of English Literature.

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