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202 in prose, finds its central interest, not in individual personality or the passion of love, but in some great national or racial issue. The romances of the Middle Ages, though usually centering in the fortunes of individuals and often dealing with love, are superficial in treatment, loose in construction, and primarily interesting as marvelous adventure. The fabliaux of the same period, which, with the novelle of the Renaissance, belong to the ancestry of the short story of the modern magazine, are concerned with single situations, and do not attempt to display a whole phase of life in its subtlety and complexity. All these forms contain, in the imaginative nature of their material, an element common to them and the novel; but the negative statements which have been made regarding each show how much they fall short or go beyond our modern conception of prose fiction.

Yet, though differing in these important and often fundamental respects from the modern novel, these earlier varieties of imaginative narratives contributed in a number of ways to the making of the type dominant to-day. In the sixteenth century, for instance, we find appearing, first in Spain and then in England, the so-called picaresque novel, a story told in the first person by a roguish servant, who passes from master to master and exposes both his own rascality and the seamy side of the more fashionable life of his time. Many of the episodes are of the kind narrated in the fabliaux and novelle, but they are strung together by the history of the rogue hero. This type has persisted with variations, especially the loss of the servant element, down to our own time, and reached its highest pitch of art in English in Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon."

The Elizabethan romance, represented by such a work as Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia," is in respect of realism much farther from our novel than the picaresque tale. But in its abundance of sentiment and frequency of moral purpose, it has elements which the novel of roguery lacked. Characterization, which so far had rarely


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Rh been a prominent feature in any form of fiction except the drama, was developed in the seventeenth century in a peculiar species of writing known as the Character outside of fiction altogether. The character was a short sketch of a typical figure of the time, used largely for purposes of social satire, apparently general in its application, but not infrequently written with an individual in view. We find this form elaborated in a slight setting of situation and narrative in the De Coverley papers contributed by Addison and Steele to the "Spectator"; and when the novel in the modern sense arose about a generation later, the practice in the analysis and presentation of typical human beings which the character had afforded proved of considerable service.

Perhaps more contributive than either the older story of romantic adventure or the character sketch, was the drama. The seventeenth century had seen, especially in comedy, the drama descending from heroic themes of kings and princes to pictures of contemporary life in ordinary society, not highly realistic as we understand the term, yet reproducing many of the types and much of the atmosphere existing around the author. It had cultivated the sense of a well-knit plot, of effective situation, and of the interplay of character and action—all elements transferable to prose narrative. And when, in the middle of the eighteenth century, we find the novel beginning to take the place of the stage as the dominant kind of imaginative entertainment, it is easy to see how much the younger form owed to the elder. There had long been an interchange of material between the two species. In the time of Shakespeare, to go no farther back, the playwrights frankly dramatized familiar stories from history, romance, and novella, and occasionally the story of a popular play was retold in prose narrative. Both processes are familiar to-day. Many successful novels appear later on the stage, and not a few successful plays are "novelized." There are, of course, marked differences in the kind of thing that can be best told by narrative or action respectively, and the failure to recognize these differences accounts for the frequent ill success of this kind of translation. But,

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204 after all allowance for this has been made, many of the elements of effective story-telling remain common to both novel and play.

The two chief claimants for the credit of founding the modern English novel are Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson. Defoe's stories depend for their unity chiefly upon the personality of the leading character. They are usually series of episodes strung along the thread of the hero's or heroine's life. Many of them, from their pre-occupation with the criminal classes, approach the picaresque; and even "Robinson Crusoe," justly the most popular, is more an adventure tale than a novel. His most notable characteristic is a singular realism, achieved by a skillful selection of matter-of-fact details, which produces a circumstantial effect like that of a modern newspaper report. But the realism, clever though it is, is mainly external; and comparatively little in the way of insight into character or motive is to be found in most of his stories. The great works of Richardson, "Pamela," "Clarissa Harlowe," and "Sir Charles Grandison," are novels without question. Not only does he achieve a large unity of action, building into a shapely structure round his central figure a complex of persons, motives and social conditions, but he deals in detail with the inner life of his characters, and he gives to passion and sentiment the pervading importance that has now become traditional in this form of literature. Sentiment, indeed, with him often enough degenerated into sentimentality, and he dwelt on the emotional and pathetic elements in his narrative with a deliberation and an emphasis successfully calculated to draw from his readers the greatest possible lachrymose response.

It was largely this exaggeration of the pathetic, and the idealizing of the chief character in order to gain an opportunity for the pathetic, that led Fielding to begin his first novel, "Joseph Andrews," as a parody of Richardson's "Pamela." Pamela had been pictured as a virtuous maid-servant, chastely resisting the approaches of her


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Rh young master, and Fielding planned the story of Pamela's brother Joseph, placed in a corresponding position toward his mistress, to ridicule the absurdities of his predecessor's method. But he soon became interested in his hero for his own sake, and in this novel, and still more in his masterpiece, "Tom Jones," he treated human nature with a robust frankness that earned for him the famous compliment of his disciple, Thackeray, that he was the last English novelist who dared to draw a man. Some of Fielding and perhaps more of Defoe is to be found in the sordid tales of Tobias Smollett; and in Laurence Sterne we have the sentimental tendencies of Richardson carried to the last extreme, but mingled in extraordinary fashion with a conscious humor that doubles back on the sentiment, the whole related in a style of remarkable individuality and brilliant wit. In the same period, Oliver Goldsmith produced his one novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield," a delicately drawn picture of a phase of contemporary society enriched with a group of characters, broadly typical, but delineated with an abundance of tender sympathy and gentle humor.

Meantime, there had begun in England, as elsewhere, that complex reaction against the intellectualism of the eighteenth century known as the Romantic Movement. Among its more obvious phases was the revival of interest in remote places and periods, and especially in the Middle Ages. The extent to which this interest was ill-informed and merely sentimental is nowhere better illustrated than in the rise of the so-called "Gothic Romance." This variety of fiction is usually regarded as beginning with "The Castle of Otranto" of Horace Walpole, the son of the great Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and the type of the fashionable dilettante of the London of his day. Walpole had no real understanding or sympathy for the spirit of the Middle Ages, but one of his fads was mediæval armor, furniture, and architecture, and out of this arose his curious half-sincere experiment in fiction. The real leader in the production of this sort of "thriller," however, was Mrs. Radcliffe, who was followed by Clara Reeves and scores of minor imitators. The novels


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text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Prose Fiction I.


text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Prose Fiction II.


text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Prose Fiction III.


text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Prose Fiction IV.


text: The Harvard Classics Vol. 51/Prose Fiction V.


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206 of these ladies were set in a vaguely remote period of chivalry, their scenes were ancient castles, with concealed panels, subterranean passages, and family ghosts; their plots turned upon the usurpation of family estates by wicked uncles or villainous neighbors, and on the reparations and sufferings of missing heirs and heroines of "sensibility"; and their characters were the stereotyped figures of ordinary melodrama. A special development of this type appeared in the "School of Terror" headed by M. G. Lewis, whose nickname of "Monk" Lewis was derived from his novel of "Ambrosio, or the Monk," in which the terrifying and, it must be said, the licentious possibilities of the Gothic romance were carried to a high pitch. This, on the whole, rather worthless species, which had been accompanied by many feeble attempts at a more definitely historical type of novel, culminated surprisingly in the romances of Sir Walter Scott. Scott, however, had in his training and in his vast reading a basis for historical and romantic fiction all his own. He stripped the Gothic type of romance of its sentimentality and absurdity, strengthened it with his great fund of historical and legendary information, gave it stability with his sanity and humor, and interest by his creation of a great series of vigorous and picturesque creations. The art of fiction has gained in technical dexterity since Scott's day, stories now begin sooner and move more rapidly, conversation is reported with a greater life-likeness, the tragedy in human life is more often given its due place; but the entrancing narratives of Scott, with all their deliberation, are likely to retain their charm, and his men and women still have blood in their veins. He created the historical novel, not only for Britain but for Europe, and all its writers since have been proud to sit at his feet.

In the time of Doctor Johnson, Fanny Burney, the daughter of a noted musician, and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, gathered out of her experience of London society materials for her "Evelina," a novel of manners shrewdly observed and acutely chronicled. She is the chief predecessor of Scott's contemporary and rival, Jane Austen, the daughter of a provincial clergyman, whose knowledge of the world was practically confined to the county in which she


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Rh lived and the watering places, like Bath, where she spent an occasional vacation. But she had tact enough to confine her books to the life she knew; and this life, with its squires, its curates, its old ladies, its managing mothers and eligible daughters, is pictured with a minuteness and fidelity that has scarcely been surpassed. She writes smoothly, with an evasiveness in her characteristic irony that makes her personality hard to grasp, while it prevents that personality from coming between the picture and the spectator. Limited in scope, commonplace in incident, and deliberately ordinary in type of characters, her novels have the exquisite finish and perfection of a miniature. Parallel in some respects to Miss Austen's novels of English provincial life are Miss Edgeworth's, dealing with the Irish, and Miss Ferrier's with the Scottish field. Together these ladies stand at the head of that still vigorous branch of fiction which in America is mapping the life of the whole country with sectional novels, like those of New England by Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, and Mrs. Riggs, of the South by James Lane Allen, George W. Cable, and Thomas Nelson Page, of the Middle West by Meredith Nicholson and Booth Tarkington.

Fifty years ago the world of readers was divisible into the partisans of two great novelists, who, despite their limitations, made more obvious by the development of fiction on the Continent, still rank among the highest. William Makepeace Thackeray, who went back, as has been said, to the work of Fielding for his models, devoted himself chiefly to the picturing of English society, in the more restricted sense of the word, from Queen Anne to Queen Victoria. Definitely and perhaps restrictedly English in his outlook on life, his view of the human scene is somewhat insular. His natural sentiment was tempered by an acute perception of the meaner elements in human nature to such a degree that his work has a strong satirical element, and some have even been misled into thinking him


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208 a cynic. Gifted with a superb style, with profound sympathy and insight into human emotion, and with a power of rendering the picturesque aspects of a society, Thackeray remains a great master. The work of his contemporary, Charles Dickens, has had an even greater popular success. Dickens's early career gave him a knowledge of a much humbler grade of society than Thackeray pictures, and at the same time left him with a vivid sense of the wrongs under which the more unfortunate members of that society suffered. This led him to devote many of his works to the redress of social grievances, and connects him with the general humanitarian movements of modern times. Powerful as was Dickens's influence for reform in his own time, it seems clear that the very specific nature of the evils he attacked is bound to impair the permanence of his work, as it always impaired the artistic value. But we relish still his buoyant humor and geniality, the binding interest of his complex though sometimes confusing plots, and the charm of his immense throng of creations, typical to the point of caricature, but in their setting vital, appealing, and eminently memorable.

In spite of the abundant humor in both Thackeray and Dickens, the novel with them had become a very serious form, the vehicle of important moral and social truths. In the hands of its more notable masters, serious it has remained. The prevalence of the scientific point of view, so marked since the promulgation of the theories of Charles Darwin, has left distinct traces on the history of fiction. The philosophical and scientific learning of George Eliot appears in her work in the emphasis on the reign of law in the character of the individual, and, although she too possesses a rich vein of humor, the charming playfulness in which her immediate predecessors permitted themselves to indulge is replaced by an almost portentous realization of the responsibilities of art and life. In Thomas Hardy, too, the scientific influence is plainly felt, the overwhelming power of environment and circumstance being presented with a force so crushing as to leave the reader depressed with a sense of the helplessness of the individual, without any compensating faith in a


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Rh controlling the external forces which overwhelm him. Yet these writers display profound psychological insight, and make distinguished contributions to the progress of the art of fiction in its advance toward a more and more complete and penetrating portrayal of the whole of human life. Less somber in tone, but no less brilliant in workmanship, are the novels of George Meredith. Hampered in regard to the greater public by a style at once dazzling and obscure, Meredith has been acclaimed by his fellow craftsmen as a great master. Beginning partly under the influence of Dickens, Meredith gained for himself at length a peculiar and distinguished position as perhaps the most intellectual of the English novelists, or, at least, the novelist who concerns himself most with the intellectual processes of his character. Yet he is far from impoverished on the emotional side, and there are few scenes in fiction more poignant in their tragedy than that which closes "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel." Besides the influence of modern science, English fiction has latterly been much affected by foreign models, especially French and Russian. The tracing of these streams, however, would bring us to the consideration of men still writing, and involve us in a mass of production which cannot be characterized here, and on which we cannot hope to have as yet a proper perspective. The great amount of distinguished writing in the field of the English novel which has been revealed even in this rapid survey of its history will have suggested to the reader why it was found hopeless to try to represent it in The Harvard Classics. But these writers are easy of access, and this is the side of literature which the modern reader is least apt to ignore. Yet it is also the side which is most likely to be read carelessly, without consideration of purpose or method; so that it may now be worth while to try to come to some understanding as to its aim and the conditions of its excellence.

In considering the purpose which works of fiction may be supposed to fulfill, it will be of interest and value to note what some


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210 of the more prominent writers have said with regard to their reasons for practicing the art. The more selfishly personal motives may be passed over quickly. Money and fame have been desired and welcomed by most authors, as by most men, but they help us little to an understanding of the purpose of literature. Yet there are some who have written with neither of these in view, like Jane Austen, who died leaving a considerable part of her work unpublished, and apparently without having sought to publish it. Since the motives of men are more usually complex than simple, it is a safe assumption that even those who have frankly written for a living, or who have acknowledged the lure of ambition, have had other things in view as well, and have not found profit or honor incompatible with deeper and more altruistic aims. Of these last, the most commonly claimed is the moral improvement of the reader. No one has been more explicit about this than Richardson, whose preface to "Pamela" is characteristic enough to quote at length :
 * "If to divert and entertain, and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the youth of both sexes;

 * "If to inculcate religion and morality in so easy and agreeable a manner as shall render them equally delightful and profitable;

 * "If to set forth, in the most exemplary lights, the parental, the filial, and the social duties;

 * "If to paint vice in its proper colours, to make it deservedly odious; and to set virtue in its own amiable light, and to make it look lovely;

 * "If to draw characters with justness and to support them distinctly;

 * "If to effect all these good ends in so probable, so natural, so lively, a manner, as shall engage the passions of every sensible reader, and attach their regard to the story;

 * "If these be laudable or worthy recommendations, the editor of the following letters ventures to assert that all these ends are obtained here, together."

In similar vein his "Clarissa" is "proposed as an exemplar to her sex," and is made as perfect as is "consistent with human frailty."


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Rh her faults being put in chiefly lest there should be "nothing for the Divine grace and a purified state to do." Fielding, though less verbose, is no less explicit. He claims for "Tom Jones" that "to recommend goodness and innocence hath been my sincere endeavour in this history," and that he has "endeavoured to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices." Of "Amelia" he says: "The following book is sincerely designed to promote the cause of virtue." The frequent satirical tone of Thackeray, as well as the nature of his analysis of human motive, testifies to his sharing Fielding's desire to drive men out of their follies and vices by ridicule and contempt. Dickens characteristically combines the improvement of the individual with the reform of institutions. Of "Martin Chuzzlewit" he says: "My main object in this story was to exhibit in a variety of aspects the commonest of all the vices; to show how selfishness propagates itself, and to what a grim giant it may grow from small beginnings." Again, "I have taken every possible opportunity of showing the want of sanitary improvements in the neglected dwellings of the poor." In contrast to such ethical claims as these, Scott's confession, "I write for general amusement," sounds more than humble. Yet he frequently repeats it. He hopes "to relieve anxiety of mind," "to unwrinkle a brow bent with the furrows of daily toil." At times he approaches the moral aim of his more serious brethren, "to fill the place of bad thoughts and suggest better," "to induce an idler to study the history of his country."

In contrast with these older statements of purpose is the assumption prevailing among the more serious of modern novelists that fiction is primarily concerned with giving a picture of life. This aim is set forth not only in explanation of their own work, but as a test of the value of that of others, irrespective of intention. By it is displayed the peculiar danger of "novels with a purpose," whether that purpose is moral or social. They point out that Richardson's method of "exemplars," whether of virtue to be imitated or vice to


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212 be shunned, is apt to result in creations snow-white or pitch black, which fail in truth because human nature, even in the best and worst, is a complex of good and evil; and which fail in effectiveness, because the reader finds no corroboration in his experience and remains unconvinced of their reality. Similarly the novelist with a theory to prove, of the stupidity or cruelty of bad poor laws, foul prisons, red tape and the law's delays, as in Dickens; of the rights of women, the falsity of Calvinism, the wickedness of commercial marriages, as in more modern writers, is likely to drive his point home by exaggeration, false proportion, some interference with the natural way of the world. The aim to recommend virtuous action by the display of "poetic justice" is open to the same objections. In both cases there results loss of both truth and effectiveness. The same may be true of both the satirical and the merely entertaining aims: in the first, the emphasis on the traits held up to ridicule runs the risk of going beyond the bounds of the normal; in the second, the curious, the marvelous, the mysterious, or the amusing may be sought for at the expense of the natural, with the result that the reader's skepticism prevents his submitting himself to the illusion of reality necessary for the enjoyment of the pleasure or the advantages to be derived from imaginative art.

The zeal for true pictures of life which thus censures the older theories of "instruction and delight" is part of the modern tendency to realism, and is connected with the triumph of the scientific point of view. Indeed, its most extreme advocates are at times quite explicit about this: "We should work," says Zola, "upon characters, passions, human and social facts, as the physicist and chemist work with inorganic bodies, as the physiologist works with living organisms." On this theory he believed himself to have constructed his novels; and though he did not carry it out as rigorously as he supposed he did, the results of it are all too evident in the assembling in his pages of vast masses of almost statistical facts, set down without regard to taste, convention, or decency. But not all modern realists interpret their creed in so mechanical a manner. Many have held to the belief in true pictures of life


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Rh committing themselves to the extreme view that the record should be untinged with the personality of the writer. And, indeed, it is now fairly well agreed that such absolute objectivity, is neither possible nor desirable. It is not possible for many reasons. All the facts concerning any human episode, not to say life, cannot be recorded in a book, so infinitely numerous and complex are they, linked to thousands of others which are necessary to a full statement of them, and themselves involving a life history and an immemorial ancestry. Thus in the most severely realistic work selection is necessary, the selection of what seems significant to the author; and with this selection the personal element has already entered. Again, the sympathy of the author unconsciously determines questions of relative stress and emphasis; and intimate qualities of temperament and imagination affect the atmosphere in which the most baldly reported incidents take place.

So we arrive at the important distinction between artistic and literal truth. This is a distinction which everyone is accustomed to recognize in daily intercourse, yet which even professional critics are liable to muddle at times in the discussion of art. We all know how it is possible to report the bare facts of an action or the actual words of a conversation so as to convey to the hearer a totally false impression. On the other hand, an accurate view of what was done and said, with the right implications as to character, motive, and tone, may be conveyed without any reproduction of facts, in the narrow sense, at all. The second method is clearly that at which the artist should aim. His business is with the typical, not the individual; the permanently characteristic, not the temporarily actual; the spirit, not the letter. Most of us have heard discussions of a book in which a critic has urged as an objection that a certain incident is not lifelike, when a friend of the author has triumphantly answered that that precise incident is the thing in the work which actually happened. Supposing that the criticism was just, we see at once that one of two things must have occurred; either the author did not understand what happened in real life, failed to see its true causes and relations,


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214 and so did not himself know the real facts; or else he reported it out of its true relations, and so deprived the reader of the means of knowing the real facts. An apparent third possibility might also be mentioned; that the episode in question was what might be called a "freak" happening, an abnormal occurrence like the birth of an eight-legged calf, which, while historically actual, is really out of the order of nature, and not in itself fit to be a link in the chain of happenings which a true picture of life represents. Of course, such an abnormality has a cause; but the obscurity of the cause makes this possibility a special case under our first explanation—it is not easily displayed in connection with its true causes.

It is evident, then, that the recording of mere detached fact, untouched by the author's personality, is not only impossible, but may, when attempted, lead to the violation of actual truth. The door is thus opened to the exercise of the artistic judgment, both in the selection of material and in its manipulation and presentation. The background of this judgment, as it were, is the general view of human nature and of the world at large which the individual author entertains. This view has been arrived at by the observation and meditation which he has practised throughout his life; the conclusions which it involves affect the interpretation of everything that comes under his notice; and its first effect on his art is in determining the choice of subjects to be treated. Individual people and events will arrest his attention and suggest artistic treatment according as they are happy illustrations of what he has perceived to be general truths; and in his treatment he will not scruple to modify them to make them more apt. He will choose what Bagehot calls "literatesque" subjects, subjects fit to be put in a book, as he calls picturesque subjects those fit to be put in a picture; and he defines both as those summing up in a single instance the characteristics that mark the class as a whole to which they belong.

Let us now compare this conclusion as to the legitimate purpose of the novel with such a moral aim as that of Richardson. As a matter


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Rh of fact, the difference lies more in his way of stating his theory than in his practice. So far as his observation of life led him to believe that people of the type of Pamela and Clarissa act in general as these heroines do, and that their fortunes in general are determined by their character and their society in the manner he represents, so far he is merely using them properly as illustrations of the view of life of which experience has convinced him. So far, however, as he modifies their characters or careers to conform not to the way the world is, but to the way he wants people to believe the world is, he is artistically false, his picture fails in truth, and the modern reader declines to be interested or convinced. The whole question turns on which the author puts first, artistic truth or effect. If he is more concerned with specific effects than with truth, his "novel with a purpose" will deserve the contempt with which the phrase is usually employed. If his main concern is with truth, his "purpose," being merely a special illustration of the truth with whatever practical result in mind, will do no harm, but may add greatly to the zest with which he paints his picture.

THE VALUE OF FICTION

Assuming the correctness of the view that the novelist's business is to give true pictures of life, we are met by the question of the value of this result. The answer to this is twofold: there is an intellectual value and an emotional value.

The amount and range of experience that comes to the ordinary man is of necessity limited. Most of us are tied to a particular locality, move in a society representing only a few of the myriad human types that exist, spend the majority of our waking hours attending to a more or less monotonous series of duties or enjoying a small variety of recreations. In such a life there is often no great range of opportunity; and the most adventurous career touches, after all, but a few points in the infinite complex of existence. But we have our imaginations, and it is to these that the artist appeals. The discriminating reader of fiction can enormously enlarge his experience of life through his acquaintance with the new tracts brought within his vision by the novelist, at second hand, it is true, but the vivid writer can often bring before our mental eyes scenes and persons


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216 whom we can realize and understand with a greater thoroughness than those we perceive directly through our senses. The materials for the understanding of men and life are thus greatly increased, and at the same time the data for the forming of those generalizations which collectively make up our philosophy. The basis of all sound altruistic activity is sympathy, and sympathy again depends on the imagination. We act tactfully and effectively for the relief of another's suffering when we are able imaginatively to put ourselves in that other's place. Now, familiarity with well-described characters in fiction not only makes us acquainted with a much wider variety of human beings and enables us to understand them, but it provides us with a kind of emotional gymnastic, increasing our capacity for putting ourselves whole-heartedly and clear-mindedly in the other man's place. Thus such familiarity is a corrective of both provincialism and selfishness, broadening the outlook and enlarging the emotional range through the development of the imagination. Here is an ethical result more effective by far than that indicated by the old formula of "exemplars," warnings, and poetic justice, and one that implies no forcing of the truth to bring its lessons home.

THE METHODS OF FICTION

In what has been said about fiction as a picturing of life, something has already been implied as to the methods involved. There remain, however, some other important questions of technic on which we may briefly touch.

However true a writer's picture of life, it is of little value if it does not impress itself on the reader. The question of effectiveness is thus of great importance, and with certain classes of authors it not infrequently absorbs them to the exclusion even of the question of truth. The most comprehensive element of effectiveness is structure. A story that does not hang well together, in which the scenes are mere scattered episodes, which has no palpable thread, no climaxes, and no conclusion, is not likely to be read through, and, if it is, it rouses no deep interest, intellectual or emotional, and leaves no definite stamp on the memory. The factors which it lacks are


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Rh those that give unity of structure. From this point of view, the problem of the novelist is to make as close-knit and thoroughly organized a plot as possible without violating natural probability in appearance or reality. This is the greatest of technical problems for the author, as the critical appreciation of structure is the last power to be acquired by the careless reader; yet no sound capacity for judging or enjoying fiction is possible to him who cannot thus view the work as a whole.

Somewhat similar faculties are required on a smaller scale in the handling of situation and incident. Many writers are able to present these effectively in isolation; but the great writer treats them not as beads on a string, but as stones in a great building.

Both plot and incident in turn must be vitally related to character. Not only must the persons stand out clearly described and recognizable as the people we know, but the things that happen and the kind of characters through and to whom they happen, must reciprocally explain each other. Much discussion has taken place with regard to the propriety of explicit analysis of character in the novel, some writers feeling bound to let a character's words and deeds alone explain him as they do in the drama, others feeling free to come forward in their own persons and explain frankly the motives and feelings of their creatures. Much naturally depends on the way it is done. Thackeray's friendly gossip with the reader behind the backs of his dramatis personæ is often so charming that we should be loath to lose it; and often the explicit statement of the author saves us much labor and prevents important misunderstanding. On the other hand, there is unquestionably great satisfaction in the drawing of our own inferences, and a considerable gain in the illusion of reality when the actors are allowed to exhibit their quality unaided by a talking showman.

The attempt has here been made to outline some of the main principles of the art of fiction without adopting the partisan attitude of any one school. Within the limits of these principles there is room for a great variety of type, for realism and romance, for chronicles of the commonplace and annals of adventure, for stirring tales of action and subtle psychological analysis. The endless variety of


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218 human life supplies an equally endless variety of themes; and the nature of the theme will properly lead to emphasis now on the external, now on the internal, now on the ordinary, now on the extraordinary, with appropriate variation of the technical methods employed. But with all this variation the demand holds for truth to the permanent and essential traits of human nature and human life, and for vitality and interest in the presentation of this truth.

But what, the reader may ask, of the pleasure from novels? naturally, since the giving of pleasure is usually assumed as the main end of fiction. Well, pleasure largely depends on who is to be pleased: there are readers who could demand no greater pleasure than that sense of enlargement of personality, of the scope of experience and sympathy, which has been put down as the chief value of the novel. It may be claimed, also, that in the demand that fiction should impress vividly and hold the interest powerfully we have provided for the seekers after pleasure. The greatest pleasure is to live broadly and intensely, to feel oneself in a world significant at every point and palpitating in response to our activities, and this the greatest fiction surely tends to give. One of the finest of modern masters of the art, Mr. Henry James, has summed up the matter in an epigram as true as it is brilliant, that we are entertained by the novelist because we live at his expense.


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 II. POPULAR PROSE FICTION

HE works to be dealt with in the present lecture are widely separated in time and place. They include "Æsop's Fables," a collection which bears the name of a Greek slave of the sixth century, but is actually a growth of many generations before and after him; the "Arabian Nights," which contains Oriental stories of diverse origin; the sagas of mediæval Ireland, as represented by "The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel"; and the folk origin; the sagas of mediæval Ireland, as represented by the Grimms or imitated by Hans Christian Andersen. In so broad a range of writings there is naturally great variety of matter and style, and there might seem at first to be few common characteristics. But all the works mentioned—or all except Andersen's tales—are alike in being popular prose fiction, and Andersen's collection is an artistic imitation of similar productions.

THE MEANING OF "POPULAR"

The term "popular" is here employed, of course, in a technical meaning, and does not have reference to vogue or popularity, in the ordinary sense. Popular works, in the stricter definition of the term, are anonymous and are held to be the product of many successive authors. They commonly pass through a long period of oral transmission before being committed to writing, and they are consequently cast in a conventional or traditional, rather than an individual, style and form. The exact nature and extent of popular composition is a matter of dispute. In the case of ballad poetry, with its dancing, singing throng, the process of communal authorship can sometimes be actually observed; but in the case of the prose tales no such opportunity exists for collective composition. Still even there the changes and additions introduced by successive narrators make of a story a common product, for which no single author is


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220 responsible. Popular works in both prose and verse show various stages of artistry; and just as in the Anglo-Saxon epic of "Beowulf," there is evidence of the hand of a single poet of high order, so in the "Arabian Nights," for example, one may suspect that the style and structure were largely molded by a single writer, or group of writers, of skill and literary training. There are many mooted questions as to the history of the whole type, or as to the exact nature of particular works, but there can be no doubt of the existence of a great body of literature which is in a real sense public property—popular somehow in origin and transmission, and thereby determined in its character. Both the verse and the prose of this popular sort are well represented in The Harvard Classics, the former by the traditional ballads and the latter by the works enumerated above.

THE MODERN TASTE FOR POPULAR LITERATURE

Writings of the kind under consideration would probably have had a less conspicuous place in a literary or educational collection a few generations ago. For interest in popular literature, or, at least, formal attention to it on the part of the learned and cultivated, is largely a growth of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In earlier periods, and especially in those when classical standards prevailed, the study of literature meant primarily the study of great masterpieces of poetry, philosophy, or oratory, and the art of criticism consisted largely in the deduction of rules and standards from such models. The products of the people, if noticed at all by men of letters, were likely to be treated with condescension or perhaps judged by formal standards, as Addison praised the ballad of "Chevy Chase," for conforming in great measure to the narrative method of the "Æneid." But in more recent times the spirit of criticism has changed, and writers have even swung to the opposite extreme of adulation of all popular products. The part of the people in composition has been magnified, until the "Iliad" or the "Beowulf" has been conceived as the actual production of a whole community. With this renewed admiration for popular literature in its highest forms has come an enthusiastic interest in all the minor products


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Rh of popular or semi-popular composition, and vast numbers of scholars have devoted themselves to the collection and investigation of folk songs and folk tales from every corner of the world. Most interest has doubtless centered in the poetry, as most labor and ingenuity has been spent upon the great epics, such as the "Iliad" or the "Nibelungenlied." But the excellence of much popular prose narrative has also been recognized, and this also has been very extensively studied.

INFLUENCE OF POPULAR UPON ARTISTIC LITERATURE

Though popular fiction has not always occupied a dignified place in the works on literary history, it has long exerted an important influence on the more sophisticated forms of literature. In the ancient world, it is almost too obvious to point out, the myths upon which drama and epic turned were at the outset often popular tales of gods and heroes. The fable, as the embodiment of moral wisdom, has been, of course, the constant resource of speakers and writers, and in the hands of such poets as Marie de France in the twelfth century, or La Fontaine in the seventeenth, it has received the highest finish of art. Though the "Arabian Nights" collection, as a whole, is of recent introduction into European literature, Oriental tales of the sort which compose it circulated extensively in Europe from the time of the crusades and supplied much material for the fiction of the Middle Ages. In the last century, too, poets have found a rich storehouse in the traditions of the days of "good Haroun Alraschid." The folktales of northern Europe, again, as represented by Celtic and Scandinavian sagas or by the modern German collection of the Grimms, have been the source of much lofty poetry and romance. Many a great play or poem goes back in substance to some bit of fairy mythology or to a single tale like that of a persecuted Cinderella, or of a father and son unwittingly engaged in mortal combat. The splendid romances of King Arthur have derived many of their essential elements from popular sagas not very different in character from the account of Da Derga printed in this series. In the hands of court poets or polite romancers the original stories were, of course, often disguised beyond easy recognition. Their motives were


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222 changed, and they were transferred to the setting of a higher civilization. Oftener than not the authors who treated them were wholly unaware of the history or meaning of the material. Yet a chief result of the critical scholarship of the last hundred years has been to show how the highest products of literary art are derived from simple elements of popular tradition.

CHARACTERISTICS OF POPULAR NARRATIVE

From the historical point of view, then, popular fiction has an important place in literary education. But in and for itself also, without regard to historical standards, this great body of writings possesses a direct human interest not inferior to that of the literature of art. The works selected for the present series illustrate very well the varieties of the type and the phases of life with which it may be concerned. The collections of Andersen and the Grimms offer, in general, the least complicated of narratives. The tales, or Märchen (as they have come to be called in English as well as in German), deal with simple episodes, localized, to be sure, but having for the most part no marked national or personal character. They are universal in appeal, and almost universal in actual occurrence wherever folklore has been collected. A very simple stage of narrative is likewise exhibited by the Æsopic fable. The hero tale of Ireland, on the other hand, is a more complex product. Here there is accumulation of episodes, with something like epic structure; and definite characters, half-historic and half-legendary, stand out as the heroes of the action. The localization is significant, and the stories reproduce the life and atmosphere of the northern heroic age. Both the narrative prose and the numerous poems that are interspersed in the sagas testify to the existence of a distinct literary tradition, still barbaric in many respects, in the old bardic schools. Finally, the "Arabian Nights" presents a still more elaborate development in a different direction. The fundamental elements again are beast fables, fairy lore, and popular anecdotes of love, prowess, or intrigue; but they are worked up under the influence of a rich and settled civilization and depict, with something like historic fullness, the life and manners of the Mohammedan Middle Ages. The collection,


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Rh like the works mentioned earlier, is of unknown authorship, and is plainly the product of many men through many generations. But the style gives evidence of a finished literary tradition; the nameless and numerous contributors appear to have been men of books rather than the simple story-tellers of an age of oral delivery. Though not in the stage of individual authorship, the "Arabian Nights" stands yet outside the range of the strictly popular and within the realm of literary composition.

Even in its most elaborate development, however, popular fiction remains something quite different from the customary modern novel or narrative poem. It commonly lacks a sustained plot, worked out with close regard to cause and effect. Still more characteristically it lacks the study of character and the intellectual analysis of such varied problems as occupy the fiction of the present age. The popular romances lay their stress chiefly on incident and adventure or simple intrigue, and set forth only the more familiar and accepted moral teachings. They represent, on the whole, an instinctive or traditional, rather than a highly reflective, philosophy of life. For all these reasons they have come to be regarded chiefly as the literature of children; a natural result, perhaps, of the fact that they originated largely in the childhood of civilization or among the simple peoples in more advanced ages. But it is noteworthy that they were not, in most cases, really intended for the young; and the man or woman who has outgrown them completely has one serious loss to set down against the gains of advancing years.


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 III. MALORY

IR THOMAS MALORY is unique among English writers. His famous "Morte d'Arthur," which came from the press of William Caxton, the first English printer, in 1485, he completed probably in 1470. Thus he wrote at a time when the printing press was beginning to make the various European languages less changeable than they had been when a gentleman's library might consist of but a single parchment manuscript; he was near enough to our own day to be the first English author whose work can now be read with enjoyment and yet without special study. Save for an occasional word which one must look up in a glossary—like the obsolete wood, meaning frenzied—a page of Malory, despite its archaisms of grammar and expression, is as intelligible as one of the latest magazines or novels. Nevertheless, when he wrote, the world of European civilization was still narrow materially and intellectually. The Atlantic was its bound to the west; the Sahara, to the south; the Far East was an almost mythical Cathay. The Renaissance had scarcely made itself felt beyond Italy; to all but a very few scholars, the old worlds of Greece and Rome and Palestine were known solely through stories from poetry and history so metamorphosed that King David, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great wore mediæval armor and held splendid court like Capet and Plantagenet kings. In spirit Malory is as much of the Middle Ages as if he had died two hundred instead of two score years before Columbus set out to solve the mystery of the western seas. It is hard to believe that only half a century after his death Englishmen should be reading Homer at Oxford and Cambridge, and Luther translating the New Testament into German; that a few years more, and the leading countries of Europe should be making plans for colonial empire which have resulted in the world-powers of the present. Thanks to his living in just the years that he did, Malory has left us in his "Morte


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Rh " a work full of mediæval spirit with almost no mediæval difficulty of language, though with a very charming suggestion of mediævalism in style.

LEGEND AND ROMANCE

Even if the "Morte d'Arthur" had not this charm of style, it would be important in literature as giving the modern world the most easily intelligible mediæval version of what Tennyson called "the greatest of all poetic subjects." Of the several valuable contributions of the Middle Ages to the general store of European art and thought, none is richer than their mass of legend—stories of saints and martyrs, of many local champions of more or less fame, and of a few who attaining wider fame became great epic heroes of the world. In nearly every case, poetic fame has a basis of historical fact, but most of the superstructure, and all its adornment, is popular story. Such a hero is Siegfried, now the typical representative of the Germanic hero-age, but at first no better known than half a dozen other warriors, like Dietrich of Verona, whose stories grew out of the unsettling migrations of the Germanic peoples in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Another is Charlemagne, as colossal a figure in mediæval romance as in history is the monarch who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day in the year 800. An even greater epic hero of the Middle Ages is Arthur, who is much better known to English readers than the others largely because of Sir Thomas Malory.

THE HISTORICAL AND THE LEGENDARY ARTHUR

The historical basis of the Arthur-legends is the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain. In the three centuries after the first settlement of the Germanic invaders in that island, the Britons were gradually driven into the mountains of Wales and Cumberland and the peninsula of Cornwall, or they fled across the Channel to turn Armorica into Brittany. Meanwhile they suffered almost uniform defeat. But for a while about the year 500 they won victories that for nearly half a century checked the Saxon advance. Their leader was Arthur,


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V.] checked or altogether prevented. An element of consciousness, of reflectiveness, is introduced into the use of language; acknowledged imitation of certain models, deference to authority in matters of speaking, take the place of the former more spontaneous and careless employment of the common means of communication, governed only by the necessities of communication, which are always felt but not always reasoned upon. The best speakers, those who use words with most precision, with most fulness and force of meaning, with most grace and art, become the teachers of the rest. And however this influence be exerted, whether by simple recognition of authority in those who deserve it, or with the aid of a popular literature, handed down by tradition, or whether it rise to grammatical and lexical culture, to the possession of letters and learning, it is of the same nature; it produces its conserving and ennobling effects in the same way. It is the counsellor and guide, not the master, of national usage. It undertakes no wholesale reformation. It does not shear off from a language masses of unnecessary means of expression which untaught speakers would fain force upon it; it finds no such materials to deal with. Some write and speak as if the uncultivated employer of speech were impelled to launch out indefinitely into new words and forms, rioting in the profusion of his linguistic creations, until grammar comes to set bounds to his prodigality, and to reduce the common tongue within reasonable dimensions. But it is by no means so easy and seductive a thing to increase the resources of a language. We do not look to our dictionaries and grammars to know if we may use elements which come crowding to our lips and demanding utterance. Linguistic growth is a slow process, extorted, as it were, by necessity, by the exigencies of use, from the speakers of language. The obligation resting upon each one of making himself intelligible to his fellows, and understanding them in turn, is the check, and a sufficient one, upon individual license of production. Economy is a main element in linguistic development; that which is superfluous in a dialect, not needed for practical use, falls off and dies of itself, without waiting to be lopped away by the


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184 of a grammarian. Culture chooses, from among the varieties of equivalent form, utterance, and phrase which a defective communication has allowed to spring up within the limits of the same community, those which shall be accepted as most worthy of preservation. It maintains what is good, warns against abuses, and corrects offences committed by a part against the authority of prevailing usage. A cultivated language is thus simply one whose natural growth has gone on for a certain period under the conscious and interested care of its best speakers; which has been placed in their charge, for the maintenance of a standard, for the repression of disfiguring alterations, for enrichment with expressions for higher thought and deeper knowledge; for the enforcement, in short, of their own studied usages of speech upon the less instructed and more heedless masses of a community.

It is obviously futile to attempt to draw anywhere a dividing line in the development of language—to say, these differences on the one side are the result of later linguistic growth; those, on the other side, are original, a part of the primitive variety and indefiniteness of human speech. The nature and uses of speech, and the forces which act upon it and produce its changes, cannot but have been essentially the same during all the periods of its history, amid all its changing circumstances, in all its varying phases; and there is no way in which its unknown past can be investigated, except by the careful study of its living present and its recorded past, and the extension and application to remote conditions of laws and principles deduced by that study. Like effects, as we have already had occasion to claim, imply like causes, not less in the domain of language than in that of physical science; and he who pronounces the origin and character of ancient dialects and forms of speech to be fundamentally different from those of modern dialects and forms of speech can only be compared with the geologist who should acknowledge the formation by aqueous action of recent gravel and pebble-beds, but should deny that water had anything to do with the production of ancient sandstones and conglomerates.


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V.] The continuity and similarity of the course of linguistic history in all its stages, and the competency of linguistic correspondences, wherever we find them, to prove unity of origin and community of tradition, are truths which we need to bear in mind as we proceed with our inquiries into language. If we meet in different tongues with words which are clearly the same word, notwithstanding differences of form and meaning which they may exhibit, we cannot help concluding that they are common representatives of a single original, once formed and adopted by a single community, and that from this they have come down by the ordinary and still subsisting processes of linguistic tradition, which always and everywhere involve liability to alteration in outer shape and inner content. It is true that there are found in language accidental resemblances between words of wholly different origin: of such we shall have to take more particular notice in a later lecture (the tenth  ): but exceptions like these do not make void the rule; the possibility of their occurrence only imposes upon the etymologist the necessity of greater care and circumspection in his comparisons, of studying more thoroughly the history of the words with which he has to deal. It is also true that real historical correspondences may exist between isolated words in two languages without implying the original identity of those languages, or anything more than a borrowing by the one out of the stores of expression belonging to the other. Our own tongue, for instance, aside from its wholesale composition out of the tongues of two different races, draws more or less of its material from nearly every one of the languages of Europe, and from not a few of those of Asia, Africa, and America. Yet it is evident that such borrowing has its limits, both of degree and of kind, and that it may be within the power of the linguistic student readily to distinguish its results from the effects of a genuine community of linguistic tradition.

The method by which we are to proceed in grouping and classifying the languages spoken by mankind, now and in former times, results with necessary consequence from the principles which we have laid down. We have seen that no given form of speech remains permanently the same: each


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We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

'''Section. 1.''' All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

'''Section. 2.''' The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

[Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.] The actual Enumeration

1


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186 changes continually, in its structure and content, and tends to divide, with the progress of time, into varying forms or dialects. No existing language, no recorded language, is original; each is the descendant of some earlier one, from which, perhaps, other existing or recorded languages are equally descended. With this easy clew to guide us, the labyrinth of human speech is a labyrinth no longer; it is penetrated by paths which we may securely follow. We have simply to group together according to their affinities the languages known to us; connecting, first of all, those whose totality of structure, along with what history actually teaches us of their derivation, shows them so plainly to be forms of the same original that even the most exaggerated scepticism could not venture to deny their relationship; then going on to extend our classification from the more clearly to the more obscurely, from the more closely to the more remotely connected, until we have done the utmost which the nature of the case permits, until analysis and deduction will carry us no farther. The way is plain enough at first, and even the most careless may tread it without fear of wandering; but to follow it to the end demands, along with much labour and pains, no little wariness and clearness of vision.

Let us, then, turn aside for a time from pursuing the direct course of our fundamental inquiry, "why we speak so and so," to ask who "we" are to whom the inquiry relates; who, along with us that acknowledge the various forms of the English as our native speech, use languages which are, after all, only dialectic forms of one great original mother-tongue.

The results of such an investigation into the relationship of the English language have been, to a certain extent, taken for granted during our whole discussion. This was unavoidable: we could not otherwise have talked at all of genetic connection, or illustrated the processes of linguistic growth. Now, however, we have to take up the subject more systematically, showing the extent to which the tie of relationship reaches, and presenting some of the evidence which proves its reality.

To assert that the slightly differing forms of speech which


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V.] prevail in the various parts of our own country, and even the more noteworthy dialects found among the classes of the population of Britain, form together only one language, is to assert a truism: no man in his sober senses would presume to doubt it. Let any one, however ignorant of history he may be, go about the globe, finding on each side of the Atlantic, and scattered from island to island, communities who speak English, though tinged with local colouring, and it will not enter into his mind to doubt that they were scattered thither from some common centre, that they all have their accordant speech by community of linguistic tradition. A like conclusion is reached almost as directly, if we follow back to the continent of Europe the traces of those adventurous tribes which, as history distinctly informs us, colonized at no very remote date the British isles, and note what languages are still spoken upon the shores whence they set forth on their career of conquest. The larger and more indispensable part of English, as has been already pointed out, finds its kindred in Germany, whence came the Saxon and Anglian portion of our ancestry. The community of tradition between the English and the German, Netherlandish, Swedish, Danish, and so on, is so pervading, and its evidences are so patent to view, that no one, probably, who has ever added a knowledge of either of the languages named to that of his English mother-tongue has failed to be struck by it, and to be convinced that, in their main structure and material, the two were one speech. But his experience has also taught him that the difference between them is far from being inconsiderable, and that, unfortunately for him, he is by no means able to speak and write German or Swedish, because English, like them, is Germanic. If an American, he will talk readily with an educated Englishman; he will even make shift to understand a Yorkshireman, a broad Scotchman, or an Irishman fresh from his native bogs; but put him and a German together, and the two are well-nigh as deaf and dumb to each other as if the one of them were a Greek or a Hindu. Plainly enough, the explanation of their difficulty is simply this: these two Germanic dialects, originally one language and belonging to a single community,


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188 have been now so long separated, and their independent changes in the interval have been so great, that free and intelligent communication is no longer possible between those who have learned to speak them: one must have somewhat of instruction in both in order to be able to discover the fact of their relationship.

Not all the Germanic languages, however, are allied with the English in equal degree. The Low-German dialects, as they are called, those which occupy the northern shores and lowlands of the country, stand notably nearer to our tongue than do the dialects of central and southern Germany, the literary High-German and its next of kin. This relation is readily and sufficiently accounted for by the circumstances of the Germanic emigration to Britain: our ancestors came from the shore provinces, and brought with them the forms of speech there prevailing. And there is yet another principal group of Germanic languages, coördinate with the two already mentioned: it occupies the outliers of Germany to the north, namely Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and their remote colony of Iceland. It is usually called the Scandinavian group. We have in our own present speech not a few traces of its peculiar words and usages, imported into England by those fierce Northmen—or Danes, as English history is accustomed to style them-whose incursions during many centuries so harassed the Saxon monarchy.

These three groups or classes of existing dialects, the Low-German, the High-German, and the Scandinavian, with their numerous subdivisions, constitute, then, a well-marked family of related languages; although those who speak them can only to a very limited extent understand one another, the same sentence or paragraph could not be written in any two of them without bringing to light such and so many resemblances as even to a superficial examination would appear sure proof of a genetic connection. It is past question that all the Germanic dialects are descendants and joint representatives of a single tongue, spoken somewhere, at some time in the past, by a single community, and that all the differences now exhibited by them are owing to the


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40 to reorganise the affair on a plan which he had seen carried out by the Temperance Societies at Ashford, of which place he is a native. They got every society of working men or boys in the town to send delegates to form a Carnival Society, as they drolly call it. Every member of this society pays one penny a week through the year, which entitles him to a ticket for their annual dinner, and leaves a margin for the expenses of the procession. They also obtain subscriptions towards the expenses from the leading men of the town, so that all the money collected on the line of march is clear profit, and is handed over to the Victoria Hospital in the town. They carry no effigies, and "strictly avoid personalities", said Mr. Buzan; neither is there any bonfire. The result is curiously like a mediaeval trades procession, such as lingered within memory at Shrewsbury, and, as I believe, still exists in some Midland towns. But the present form of the custom is quite modern, though it reverts apparently to an old type. Still, the changing forms of an old custom, and the history of the circumstances and influences which have led to a change in one ascertained case, may not be without interest to members of the Folk-lore Society, though I scarcely think with Mrs. Buzan, to whom I explained the reason of my questions, that the result of my inquiries will be "a little en-courage-ment" to them.

[Substantially the same practices and the same modes of carrying them but obtain at Hampstead. I have, unfortunately, not kept my programme of the last fifth of November procession, but a good account, with illustrations, may be found in the Daily Graphic for November 6th. —A. N.]

Mrs. sent from Kashmir a description of "Masōck", a game played by Cinghalese fisher-boys near Colombo, in Ceylon:—


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V.] separation of this community, in the progress of time, into detached and somewhat isolated portions, with the consequent breaking up into diverging lines and currents of the common stream of their linguistic tradition. It is even clear that, so far as concerns the surviving dialects, the divergence was primarily into three main branches, now represented by the three groups of languages which have been defined above.

How it happens that our vocabulary also contains so large a store of words that are foreign to all the other Germanic dialects, but are shared with us by the nations of southern Europe, was fully set forth in the last lecture. We saw that the Normans—who, though a people of Germanic blood, had lived long enough in France to substitute the idiom of that country for their own forgotten tongue—imported into England a new current of linguistic tradition, which, after a time, mingled peacefully in the same bed with the former one. The languages with which ours is thus brought into a kind of relationship by marriage were seen to be the French, the Spanish and Portuguese, the Italian, the Rhæto-Romanic, and the Wallachian, each including a host of minor dialects. The descent of these tongues, constituting together the Romanic group or family, from a common mother, the Latin, is written down in full upon the pages of history, and has been by us already briefly reviewed.

That these two important families of human language, the Germanic and the Romanic, are also in remoter degree related to one another and to other ancient and modern families, as joint branches of a yet more extensive family, is a truth equally undeniable, although not equally obvious. That it might be so is evident enough, according to the principles which we have already established respecting the life of language. There is no limit assignable to the extent to which the descendants of a common linguistic stock may diverge and become separated from one another. The question is one of fact, of evidence. Only a careful and thorough sifting of their linguistic material can determine how far the ramifications of genetical relationship may bind together languages apparently diverse. If two kindred tongues can, by divergent growth, come to differ from each other as much


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 108 ST. NICOLAS AND ARTEMIS.

BY EUGENE ANICHKOF.

In the Middle Ages the belief in St. Nicolas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, as a patron of sailors was widely spread. Many churches were built in his honour on the sea-shore. Among his numerous miracles, many were supposed to have been worked at sea. It is, for example, related that a merchant, before embarking on a ship, went to the church of St. Nicolas at Constantinople, and there prayed eagerly. When he was at sea the weather suddenly became very rough, and he was threatened with great danger. But St. Nicolas did not forget the prayers addressed to him, and abated the storm. Many similar miracles could be added.

The old French romance of St. Nicolas, by Wace, relates an analogous miracle. Once a ship was in great danger—


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 Hold the head over toward the left side with the chin slightly elevated. With the fingers of the left hand, draw the skin tight under the jaw. Shave downward if the beard grows in that direction; if not reverse the stroke. You should never shave against the growth when going over the face the first time, if it can be avoided. Keep the skin as tightly drawn as possible, for a better shaving surface is thus presented to the razor, and there is less liability of cutting yourself.

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 Place the fingers of the left hand in front of and just above the ear and press upward so as to draw the skin smooth on the upper left cheek. With the razor in the right hand, toe pointing upward, reach across the face as shown above, and shave downward. In shaving the lower part of the cheek and chin, follow downward with the left hand, keeping the skin tightly drawn.

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 For many, this is the most difficult part of the face to shave as the skin is very tender, and unless treated gently will soon become irritated and sore. To shave easily, raise the chin, incline the head toward the right, and draw the skin as tight as possible with the left hand. Shave downward unless, as sometimes happens, the beard grows in the opposite direction, in which case you will, of course, reverse the stroke.

To shave the upper lip, draw the lip down as much as possible, to tighten the skin. Owing to the strong muscle in the lip, you will hardly need to use the left hand for this purpose.

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 Throw the head backward and elevate the chin. Hold the razor in the right hand, and with the fingers of the left hand draw the skin downward. You should always endeavor to keep the skin drawn as smooth as possible, for by so doing you will greatly lessen the liability of cutting yourself and will be able to shave much more easily.

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 If you desire a really clean shave, you must go over the face the second time. Strop the razor a few times before beginning. Lather the face as before, though it is unnecessary to rub the lather in with the fingers. Simply put it on with the brush.

In shaving over the face the second time, some reverse the stroke. That is, they shave upward against the growth of the beard, instead of downward, as during the first time over. This gives an exceedingly close shave and if the beard is stiff and heavy and the skin thin and tender, it may make the face sore, and cause the hairs to grow inward, under the skin. Perhaps the best way will be to shave lightly over the face the second time, in the same direction as at first. Each man should decide this point according to his own experience.

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HEN the great European movement known as the Renaissance reached England, it found its fullest and most lasting expression in the drama. By a fortunate group of coincidences this intellectual and artistic impulse affected the people of England at a moment when the country was undergoing a rapid and, on the whole, a peaceful expansion—when the national spirit soared high, and when the development of the language and the forms of versification had reached a point which made possible the most triumphant literary achievement which that country has seen.

THE DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE

Throughout the Middle Ages the English drama, like that of other European countries, was mainly religious and didactic, its chief forms being the Miracle Plays, which presented in crude dialogue stories from the Bible and the lives of the saints, and the Moralities, which taught lessons for the guidance of life through the means of allegorical action and the personification of abstract qualities. Both forms were severely limited in their opportunities for picturing human nature and human life with breadth and variety. With the revival of learning came naturally the study and imitation of the ancient classical drama, and in some countries this proved the chief influence in determining the prevalent type of drama for generations to come. But in England, though we can trace important results of the models given by Seneca in tragedy and Plautus in comedy, the main characteristics of the drama of the Elizabethan age were of native origin, and reflected the spirit and the interests of the Englishmen of that day.

THE CHRONICLE HISTORY

Of the various forms which this drama took, the first to reach a culmination was the so-called Chronicle History. This is represented


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Rh in The Harvard Classics by the "Edward II" of Marlowe, the greatest of the predecessors of Shakespeare; and Shakespeare himself produced some ten plays belonging to the type. These dramas reflect the interest the Elizabethans took in the heroic past of their country, and before the vogue of this kind of play passed nearly the whole of English history for the previous three hundred years had been presented on the stage. As a form of dramatic art the Chronicle History had many defects and limitations. The facts of history do not always lend themselves to effective theatrical representation, and in the attempt to combine history and drama both frequently suffered. But surprisingly often the playwrights found opportunity for such studies of character as that of the King in Marlowe's tragedy, for real dramatic structure as in Shakespeare's "Richard III," or for the display of gorgeous rhetoric and national exultation as in "Henry V." These plays should not be judged by comparison with the realism of the modern drama. The authors sought to give the actors fine lines to deliver, without seeking to imitate the manner of actual conversation; and if the story was conveyed interestingly and absorbingly, no further illusion was sought. If this implied some loss, it also made possible much splendid poetry.

ELIZABETHAN TRAGEDY

Closely connected with the historical plays was the early development of Tragedy. But in the search for themes, the dramatists soon broke away from fact, and the whole range of imaginative narrative also was searched for tragic subjects. While the work of Seneca accounts to some extent for the prevalence of such features as ghosts and the motive of revenge, the form of Tragedy that Shakespeare developed from the experiments of men like Marlowe and Kyd was really a new and distinct type. Such classical restrictions as the unities of place and time, and the complete separation of comedy and tragedy, were discarded, and there resulted a series of plays which, while often marked by lack of restraint, of regular form, of unity of tone, yet gave a picture of human life as affected by sin and suffering which in its richness, its variety, and its imaginative exuberance has never been equaled.


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376 The greatest master of Tragedy was Shakespeare, and in Tragedy he reached his greatest height. "Hamlet," "King Lear," and "Macbeth" are among his finest productions, and they represent the noblest pitch of English genius. Of these, "Hamlet" was perhaps most popular at the time of its production, and it has held its interest and provoked discussion as perhaps no other play of any time or country has done.

This is in part due to the splendor of its poetry, the absorbing nature of the plot, and the vividness of the drawing of characters who marvelously combine individuality with a universal and typical quality that makes them appeal to people of all kinds and races. But much also is due to the delineation of the hero, the subtlety of whose character and the complexity of whose motives constitute a perpetual challenge to our capacity for solving mysteries. "King Lear" owes its appeal less to its tendency to rouse curiosity than to its power to awe us with an overwhelming spectacle of the suffering which folly and evil can cause and which human nature can sustain. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its intricacy of motive and super-abundance of incident, it is the most overwhelming of all in its effect on our emotions. Compared with it, "Macbeth" is a simple play, but nowhere does one find a more masterly portrayal of the moral disaster that falls upon the man who, seeing the light, chooses the darkness.

Though first, Shakespeare was by no means alone in the production of great tragedy. Contemporary with him or immediately following came Jonson, Marston, Middleton, Massinger, Ford, Shirley, and others, all producing brilliant work; but the man who most nearly approached him in tragic intensity was John Webster. "The Duchess of Malfi" is a favorable example of his ability to inspire terror and pity; and though his range is not comparable to that of Shakespeare, he is unsurpassed in his power of coining a phrase which casts a lurid light into the recesses of the human heart in moments of supreme passion.


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Rh ELIZABETHAN COMEDY

In the field of comedy, Shakespeare's supremacy is hardly less assured. From the nature of this kind of drama, we do not expect in it the depth of penetration into human motive or the call upon our profounder sympathies that we find in Tragedy; and the conventional happy ending of Comedy makes difficult the degree of truth to life that one expects in serious plays. Yet the comedies of Shakespeare are far from superficial. Those written in the middle of his career, such as "As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night," not only display with great skill many sides of human nature, but with indescribable lightness and grace introduce us to charming creations, speaking lines rich in poetry and sparkling with wit, and bring before our imaginations whole series of delightful scenes. "The Tempest" does more than this. While it gives us again much of the charm of the earlier comedies, it is laden with the mellow wisdom of its author's riper years.

"The Alchemist," representing the work of Ben Jonson, belongs to a type which Shakespeare hardly touched the—Realistic Comedy. It is a vivid satire on the forms of trickery prevailing in London about 1600—alchemy, astrology, and the like. The plot is constructed with the care and skill for which its author is famous; and though its main purpose is the exposure of fraud, and much of its interest lies in its picture of the time, yet, in the speeches of Sir Epicure Mammon, for instance, it contains some splendid poetry. Dekker's "The Shoemaker's Holiday" in a much gayer mood, shows us another side of London life, that of the respectable tradesfolk. Something of what Jonson and Dekker do for the city, Massinger does for country life in his best known play, "A New Way to Pay Old Debts," one of the few Elizabethan dramas outside of Shakespeare which have held the stage down to our own time. Massinger's characters, like Jonson's, are apt to be more typical embodiments of tendencies, less individuals whom one comes to know, than Shakespeare's; yet this play retains its interest and power of rousing emotion as well as its moral significance. The "


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378 " of Beaumont and Fletcher belongs to the same type of romantic drama as "The Tempest"—the type of play which belongs to Comedy by virtue of its happy ending, but contains incidents and passages in an all but tragic tone. Less convincing in characterization than Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher yet amaze us by the brilliant effectiveness of individual scenes, and sprinkle their pages with speeches of poetry of great charm.

The dramas of the Elizabethan period printed in The Harvard Classics serve to give a taste of the quality of this literature at its highest, but cannot, of course, show the surprising amount of it, or indicate the extreme literary-historical interest of its rise and development. Seldom in the history of the world has the spirit of a period found so adequate an expression in literature as the Elizabethan spirit did in the drama; seldom can we see so completely manifested the growth, maturity, and decline of a literary form. But beyond these historical considerations, we are drawn to the reading of Shakespeare and his contemporaries by the attraction of their profound and sympathetic knowledge of mankind and its possibilities for suffering and joy, for sin and nobility, by the entertainment afforded by their dramatic skill in the presentation of their stories, and by the superb poetry that they lavished so profusely on their lines.


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The Fight of the Mary Rose

In the volume of "Old Naval Prints" issued by the Studio in 1924, there was reproduced a print after Hollar of the Fight of the Mary Rose, Captain John Kempthorne, with seven Algerine pirates. The publication led to the discovery, or perhaps it should be said to the identification, of a picture by Van de Velde in the possession of Mr D. Bolderhey at Amsterdam, which represents the same fight, and was apparently painted after that of Hollar. By the courtesy of Mr J.F.L. de Balbian Verster, the brother-in-law of Mr. Bolderhey, the picture, and the sketch, also believed to be by Van de Velde, are reproduced in this issue of the MM. These gentlemen, with Mr CG 't Hooft, made a thorough investigation of both the picture and sketch, and are agreed that they may be ascribed to Willem Van de Velde the younger (1633-1707). It is remarkable how in close detail this painting follows that which was reproduced in "Old Naval Prints." As Hollar was an eye-witness of the fight, and Van de Velde was not, the suggestion is that the latter must have sketched and painted his picture after Hollar's engraving. It is also suggested that Van de Velde may have made his picture by order of Sir John Kempthorne or his family, and that the picture came to Amsterdam some years ago. It bears all the characteristics of Van de Velde's last period, that to which those at Hampton Court also belong. Like these, it has a very high horizon, and is a very good example of Van de Velde's best work. The painting is in good condition, and in brilliant colour.

It may be called to mind that among the Kirkall mezzotints is one entitled "Fight Against Seven Algerines, by Captain Kempthorne--E. Collectione Thomas Brodrick Armigeri. W. Van de Velde pinx, E. Kirkall fecit." The original of this engraving is supposed to be the painting in the gallery at Greenwich ascribed to W. Van de Velde and presented by Admiral of the Fleet the Hon. John Forbes in 1791. It has been questioned, however, whether this particular painting represented the action by Sir John Kempthorne in the Mary Rose, 1669, or that of Morgan Kempthorne, in the Kingfisher, 1681. This particular point might be cleared up by comparing the paintings with Hollar's original, under which there is the following inscription:

 * A TRUE RELATION OF CAPT. KEMPTHORN'S ENGAGEMENT IN THE MARY ROSE WITH SEVEN ALGIER MEN OF WAR.

 * Anno 1669, in the beginning of December, His Excellency the Lord Ambassador Henry Howard, having obtained from the Emperor of Barbary, Taffaleta, a Letter of Security, to his content had resolved to prosecute his Journey to the Court; to which end, he ordered his baggage, and most of his Retinue, to be embarked in the Mary Rose, which had Transported him from England; and purposd himself, with some few of his gentlemen and servants, to the number of fifteen or sixteen, to go by Land, and the Ship by Sea to to Salee; resolving as soon as we were under Sail, to begin his Journey also. Thus accordingly we set Sail on Wednesday the eighth of the said Month at two a clock in the morning, with the Wind at North-East, along the Shore of Barbary; and having past Arzila that evening, after Midnight, we overtook a great Flyboat of 300 Tuns; and finding her to be an English Vessel, fraighted with Deal, Malts, Salt, and Tobacco, coming from New England, or those parts, and taken by the Algier Men of War off the Cape St Vincent, being bound for Cadiz, we took and made prize of her, and having found 22 Turks aboard her; and three Christians, one a Russian, and two Englishmen, we transported them aboard us, and sent other men aboard her; and having examined the Principal of them, found them to belong to a squadron of Algier Men of War, who were cruising in those Seas: But the Prize being heavy loaden, and a bad Sailer (insomuch that we were forced to tow her) did much prolong our voyage, as that we could not arrive till Saturday at Noon before Salee; Yet that slowness did us a Courtesie for that time, though a Discourtesie afterwards; for having for the most part of the Forenoon taken notice of a Barque keeping betwixt us and the shore, and thinking her to be otherwise than she proved afterwards, Captain Kempthorn sent his Ketch to speak her: In the meantime we arriv'd before Salee; and having handsomly trimm'd our Ship with Pendants and other Ornaments, and cast Anchor, we Saluted the Town with 11 Guns, and received for Answer, Silence. However, we made ready for Landing; and first the Steward onely, in a Pinace with another Gentleman, rowed towards the Shore; and while that was doing, we saw at a distance, that our Ketch had overtaken the Barque, and after a little time of Conference let her go with discharging of a gun; which Barque made with full Sails towards us, to our great admiration; till coming nearer we perceiv'd that she bore the King of Englands Colours, and discharg'd two Guns; Then we concluded that some extraordinary Message from his Excellency; therefore the Captain commanded to discharge a Gun, and to make a Waft for those who were rowing towards the Shore, who seeing that, turned back again, and came aboard; and the Vessel, being a Brigantine belonging to Tangier, having aboard her a Gentleman of Quality, and a Captain, with 40 Soldiers and 6 Brass Guns, did also approach, and deliver'd his Message, which was, That we should not Land, but rather get aboard, if we could, all those who were ashore before, with the Goods also, matters at Tangiers since our departure being much alter'd; and had we not been retarded by the fore-mentioned Prize, this message would have come too late.

 * However we stayed there till Monday, and seeing there could nothing be effected, in getting those People aboard (because they were detained) and a Storm being at hand and forcing us from the Shore, we took the Sea; and having fastened the said Brigantine astern, we Cruised that night and the day following, in a Storm, far in the Sea, all the men of the Brigantine being aboard her suffered much. This evening we saw two Turks Men of War afar off; and at night was a very great Storm, so that we forced to take the men of the Brigantine aboard us, and suffer her to be cast away. Next day the 15 the Weather continued; Toward evening we saw again the Turks Men of War chasing a Spanish vessel; but having perceived us making towards him, he fled; By and by we saw Land, it being La Rotta on the Spanish coast; which we could not reach, the Storm blowing out of the Levant, but were forced to keep at Sea further off, and there to be tossed all that night and the day after. The 17 came to us a French Canary Man, bound for Cadiz; by and by a Scotchman from the same place; we saw also two Turks Men of War; therefore those two ships came to us for protection. Next morning at break of day we discov'd seven Turks Men of War; and because their Course was towards us, therefore all possible Preparation was made aboard us for the fight, and all that might be hurtful, or hinder us, remov'd and thrown overboard, and our aforesaid Prize forsaken, the Men taken aboard into the Mary Rose and the Ship let drive before the wind. The same day before Noon the Turks passed us; but neither Party attempting anything; yet our Preparation went on to the utmost of our power. In the meantime one of the Turks ships being a slow Sailer and being full of Men (Being the Half Moon) lagg'd about an English Mile behind the rest; so that they were forced to stay for her, and to send out two Boats Mann'd to tow her. Our Captain seeing that, who was near betwixt them both sent also a Boat with Men to intercept theirs, which caus'd a small skirmish among them; but when we saw that the Turks put out another Boat strongly provided, our Captain commanded to make a Waft for our men to come back again; After that we saw them stand close together, no doubt to consult what was to be done; and we still preparing, till about three a clock they began to charge, whereupon ensued a hot Service, and much harm done on both sides; but the night being at hand, they retired a little way, and there stay'd till day, observing our Motion; and because they should not think that we would run away in the dark; Captain Kempthorn commanded Lights to be set out, that they might see where we were; and so, having taken some rest the same night, early in the morning we were alarmed again, and having performed Solemn Prayers immediately everyone repaired to his station for they were coming; and all things being well ordered, especially that every other Gun should be fired at every Ship to preserve the rest for the second; by which means every one of the Turks Men of War received a sufficient opposition. We had also besides our ordinary Ships Crew about 70 Land Soldiers of Tangier and about 40 of His Excellencies Retinue; in all about 250 Men. Thus began the fight with a great courage; and they coming in a Line from the South-East Quarter, the Half Moon was the foremost, and having come within Pistol-Shot gave us his small shot, and his Broadside, and receiv'd as much from us, and then having passed, bore off a little to the Starboard, North-East; the same order kept all the rest, the Golden Lion or Admiral being in the Rere, with the intention to board us. After we had received these five Broadsides, even as he was coming up, with more Sails spread than the rest, he received a shot between wind and water, another tore his Main-Sail from end to end, and being thus disabled stood off; His companions seeing that, tack'd about, and compassing him around, went away fore the Wind with all speed which put an end to the Fight, God be thanked. The seventh ship all that while was pursuing our Prize, by which means we had one enemy the less. Thus we followed our Course, having lost all that day in the time of our Fight our French Ship Companion and the following night the Scotchman and the Pink, which Pink having aboard a number of Jews, Armenians, and the like Companions, having during the Fight revolted against the Master of the vessel, endeavoured to comply with the Turks, and, having given some signal, bore towards them: they mistrusting it to be a Fire-ship, began to avoid; but our Captains providence hinder'd their design. There were killed aboard us 11 Persons, 17 wounded and the Ship much dammag'd. The next day in the evening we arriv'd in the Bay of Cadiz, being December 30 S.V. 1669.

Adverting to the picture at Amsterdam, the Algerine ships bear the Dutch flag, red, white and blue; another vessel flies the Scots' flag, with St Andrew's cross in the upper canton; another vessel has a white flag, presumably French; and yet another the flag of Hamburg, red with a castle. The dimensions of the painting are 70 by 42 inches, and the sketch, in black and white, 44 by 14 inches.

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456 made so much of what is best in the national culture both of China and of Japan will keep its vitality under change of forms and formulas. Western critics sometimes talk as if Confucius had held his countrymen's regard by a sort of infatuation. If so, it has been given to no other man to captivate the imagination of his kind with sheer reasonableness.


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Rh as such, irrespective of its special claims and beliefs, morality acquires a certain dignity and reinforcement. For religion encourages man to look at life roundly and seriously. It frees him from the obsession of passion and the circumscription of immediate interests. It keeps alive the cosmic imagination, and invites attention to the problem of life as a whole in all its bearings, internal and external.

Thus it is fair to conclude that religion is universal in two senses. On the one hand it springs from a universal need. On the other hand, it possesses a universal value, and cannot fail, however much of error or blindness there may be in it, to elevate and dignify life. True religion is better than false, but it is not less certain that religion is better than irreligion.


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 LECTURES ON THE

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION