English Literature
concentration. All this, however, is on the surface. A careful study of any
of these three famous speeches reveals certain admirable qualities which
account for the important place they are given in the study of English.
First, as showing the stateliness and the rhetorical power of our language,
these speeches are almost unrivaled. Second, though Burke speaks in prose,
he is essentially a poet, whose imagery, like that of Milton's prose works,
is more remarkable than that of many of our writers of verse. He speaks in
figures, images, symbols; and the musical cadence of his sentences reflects
the influence of his wide reading of poetry. Not only in figurative
expression, but much more in spirit, he belongs with the poets of the
revival. At times his language is pseudo-classic, reflecting the influence
of Johnson and his school; but his thought is always romantic; he is
governed by ideal rather than by practical interests, and a profound
sympathy for humanity is perhaps his most marked characteristic.
Third, the supreme object of these orations, so different from the majority
of political speeches, is not to win approval or to gain votes, but to
establish the truth. Like our own Lincoln, Burke had a superb faith in the
compelling power of the truth, a faith in men also, who, if the history of
our race means anything, will not willingly follow a lie. The methods of
these two great leaders are strikingly similar in this respect, that each
repeats his idea in many ways, presenting the truth from different view
points, so that it will appeal to men of widely different experiences.
Otherwise the two men are in marked contrast. The uneducated Lincoln speaks
in simple, homely words, draws his illustrations from the farm, and often
adds a humorous story, so apt and "telling" that his hearers can never
forget the point of his argument. The scholarly Burke speaks in ornate,
majestic periods, and searches all history and all literature for his
illustrations. His wealth of imagery and allusions, together with his rare
combination of poetic and logical reasoning, make these orations
remarkable, entirely apart from their subject and purpose.
Fourth (and perhaps most significant of the man and his work), Burke takes
his stand squarely upon the principle of justice. He has studied history,
and he finds that to establish justice, between man and man and between
nation and nation, has been the supreme object of every reformer since the
world began. No small or merely temporary success attracts him; only the
truth will suffice for an argument; and nothing less than justice will ever
settle a question permanently. Such is his platform, simple as the Golden
Rule, unshakable as the moral law. Hence, though he apparently fails of his
immediate desire in each of these three orations, the principle for which
he contends cannot fail. As a modern writer says of Lincoln, "The full,
rich flood of his life through the nation's pulse is yet beating"; and his
words are still potent in shaping the course of English politics in the way
of justice.
EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1794)
To understand Burke or Johnson, one must read a multitude of books and be
wary in his judgment; but with Gibbon the task is comparatively easy, for
one has only to consider two books, his _Memoirs_ and the first volume of
his _History_, to understand the author. In his _Memoirs_ we have an
interesting reflection of Gibbon's own personality,--a man who looks with
satisfaction on the material side of things, who seeks always the easiest
path for himself, and avoids life's difficulties and responsibilities. "I
sighed as a lover; but I obeyed as a son," he says, when, to save his
inheritance, he gave up the woman he loved and came home to enjoy the
paternal loaves and fishes. That is suggestive of the man's whole life. His
_History_, on the other hand, is a remarkable work. It was the first in our
language to be written on scientific principles, and with a solid basis of
fact; and the style is the very climax of that classicism which had ruled
England for an entire century. Its combination of historical fact and
literary style makes _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ the one
thing of Gibbon's life that is "worthy to be remembered."
GIBBON'S HISTORY. For many years Gibbon had meditated, like Milton, upon an
immortal work, and had tried several historical subjects, only to give them
up idly. In his _Journal_ he tells us how his vague resolutions were
brought to a focus:
It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst
the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers
in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of
the city first started to my mind.
Twelve years later, in 1776, Gibbon published the first volume of _The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;_ and the enormous success of the work
encouraged him to go on with the other five volumes, which were published
at intervals during the next twelve years. The History begins with the
reign of Trajan, in A.D. 98, and "builds a straight Roman road" through the
confused histories of thirteen centuries, ending with the fall of the
Byzantine Empire in 1453. The scope of the History is enormous. It includes
not only the decline of the Roman Empire, but such movements as the descent
of the northern barbarians, the spread of Christianity, the reorganization
of the European nations, the establishment of the great Eastern Empire, the
rise of Mohammedanism, and the splendor of the Crusades. On the one hand it
lacks philosophical insight, being satisfied with facts without
comprehending the causes; and, as Gibbon seems lacking in ability to
understand spiritual and religious movements, it is utterly inadequate in
its treatment of the tremendous influence of Christianity. On the other
hand, Gibbon's scholarship leaves little to criticise; he read enormously,
sifted his facts out of multitudes of books and records, and then marshaled
them in the imposing array with which we have grown familiar. Moreover, he
is singularly just and discriminating in the use of all documents and
authorities at his command. Hence he has given us the first history in
English that has borne successfully the test of modern research and
scholarship.
The style of the work is as imposing as his great subject. Indeed, with
almost any other subject the sonorous roll of his majestic sentences would
be out of place. While it deserves all the adjectives that have been
applied to it by enthusiastic admirers,--finished, elegant, splendid,
rounded, massive, sonorous, copious, elaborate, ornate, exhaustive,--it
must be confessed, though one whispers the confession, that the style
sometimes obscures our interest in the narrative. As he sifted his facts
from a multitude of sources, so he often hides them again in endless
periods, and one must often sift them out again in order to be quite sure
of even the simple facts. Another drawback is that Gibbon is hopelessly
worldly in his point of view; he loves pageants and crowds rather than
individuals, and he is lacking in enthusiasm and in spiritual insight. The
result is so frankly material at times that one wonders if he is not
reading of forces or machines, rather than of human beings. A little
reading of his History here and there is an excellent thing, leaving one
impressed with the elegant classical style and the scholarship; but a
continued reading is very apt to leave us longing for simplicity, for
naturalness, and, above all, for the glow of enthusiasm which makes the
dead heroes live once more in the written pages.
This judgment, however, must not obscure the fact that the book had a
remarkably large sale; and that this, of itself, is an evidence that
multitudes of readers found it not only erudite, but readable and
interesting.
II. THE REVIVAL OF ROMANTIC POETRY
The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And God fulfills Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur."
THE MEANING OF ROMANTICISM. While Dryden, Pope, and Johnson were
successively the dictators of English letters, and while, under their
leadership, the heroic couplet became the fashion of poetry, and literature
in general became satiric or critical in spirit, and formal in expression,
a new romantic movement quietly made its appearance. Thomson's _The
Seasons_ (1730) was the first noteworthy poem of the romantic revival; and
the poems and the poets increased steadily in number and importance till,
in the age of Wordsworth and Scott, the spirit of Romanticism dominated our
literature more completely than Classicism had ever done. This romantic
movement--which Victor Hugo calls "liberalism in literature"--is simply the
expression of life as seen by imagination, rather than by prosaic "common
sense," which was the central doctrine of English philosophy in the
eighteenth century. It has six prominent characteristics which distinguish
it from the so-called classic literature which we have just studied:
1. The romantic movement was marked, and is always marked, by a strong
reaction and protest against the bondage of rule and custom, which, in
science and theology, as well as in literature, generally tend to fetter
the free human spirit.
2. Romanticism returned to nature and to plain humanity for its material,
and so is in marked contrast to Classicism, which had confined itself
largely to the clubs and drawing-rooms, and to the social and political
life of London. Thomson's _Seasons_, whatever its defects, was a revelation
of the natural wealth and beauty which, for nearly a century, had been
hardly noticed by the great writers of England.
3. It brought again the dream of a golden age[200] in which the stern
realities of life were forgotten and the ideals of youth were established
as the only permanent realities. "For the dreamer lives forever, but the
toiler dies in a day," expresses, perhaps, only the wild fancy of a modern
poet; but, when we think of it seriously, the dreams and ideals of a people
are cherished possessions long after their stone monuments have crumbled
away and their battles are forgotten. The romantic movement emphasized
these eternal ideals of youth, and appealed to the human heart as the
classic elegance of Dryden and Pope could never do.
4. Romanticism was marked by intense human sympathy, and by a consequent
understanding of the human heart. Not to intellect or to science does the
heart unlock its treasures, but rather to the touch of a sympathetic
nature; and things that are hidden from the wise and prudent are revealed
unto children. Pope had no appreciable humanity; Swift's work is a
frightful satire; Addison delighted polite society, but had no message for
plain people; while even Johnson, with all his kindness, had no feeling for
men in the mass, but supported Sir Robert Walpole in his policy of letting
evils alone until forced by a revolution to take notice of humanity's
appeal. With the romantic revival all this was changed. While Howard was
working heroically for prison reform, and Wilberforce for the liberation of
the slaves, Gray wrote his "short and simple annals of the poor," and
Goldsmith his _Deserted Village_, and Cowper sang,
My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man.[201]
This sympathy for the poor, and this cry against oppression, grew stronger
and stronger till it culminated in "Bobby" Burns, who, more than any other
writer in any language, is the poet of the unlettered human heart.