Studies in Literature and History
Mr. Stephen, however, is well aware that empirical certitude will not
supply the place of religion. In his concluding pages he states,
fairly and forcibly, the great problems by which men are still
perplexed. Religion, as J. S. Mill felt, is a name for something far
wider than the Utilitarian views embrace.
'Men will always require some religion, if religion corresponds not
simply to their knowledge, but to the whole impression made upon
feeling and thinking beings by the world in which they must live.
The condition remains that the conception must conform to the
facts; our imagination and our desires must not be allowed to
over-ride our experience, or our philosophy to construct the
universe out of _a priori_ guesses.... To find a religion which
shall be compatible with all known truth, which shall satisfy the
imagination and the emotions, and which shall discharge the
functions hitherto assigned to the churches, is a problem for the
future.'
The Utilitarian doctrines, in short, though propagated by leaders of
high intellectual power, and inspired by a pure unselfish morality,
achieved little success in the enterprise of providing new and firmer
guidance and support to mankind in their troubles and perplexities.
But they were not content to look down from serene heights upon the
world, leaving the crowd
'Errare atque viam palantes quaerere vitae.'
They laboured devotedly to dispel ignorance and to advance knowledge;
they spared no pains to promote the material well-being of society.
They helped to raise the wind that filled the sails of practical
reform; they headed the attack upon legal and administrative abuses;
they stirred up the national conscience against social injustice; they
proclaimed a lofty standard of moral obligation. They laid down
principles that in the long run accord with human progress, yet in
their hopes of rapidly modifying society by the application of those
principles they were disappointed; for their systematic theories were
blocked by facts, feelings, and misunderstandings which had not been
taken into calculation. They were averse to coercion, as an evil in
itself; but though they would have agreed with Mr. Bright's dictum
that 'Force is no remedy,' they were latterly brought to perceive that
in another sense there is no remedy except force, and that the vested
interests and preconceptions of society make a stiff and prolonged
opposition to enlightened persuasion. They were disposed to rely too
confidently upon the spread of intelligence by general education for
preparing the minds of people to accept and act upon doctrines that
were logically demonstrable, and to reject what could not be proved.
Mr. Stephen has somewhere written that to support a religion by force
instead of by argument is to admit that argument condemns it. The
proposition is too absolutely stated even for the domain of spiritual
authority, since it might be replied that no great religion, certainly
no organised Church, has existed by argument alone, and it has usually
been supported by laws. But at any rate the temporal power subsists
and operates by coercion, and the sphere of the State's direct action,
instead of diminishing, as the earlier Utilitarians expected it to do,
with the spread of education and intelligence, is perceptibly
extending itself. The Utilitarians demurred to religion as an ultimate
authority in morals, and substituted the plain unvarnished criterion
of utility. Upon this ground the State steps in, replaces religious
precept by positive law, and public morality is enforced by Acts of
Parliament. They were for entrusting the people with full political
power, to be exercised in vigilant restraint of the interference by
Government with individual rights and conduct; the people have
obtained the power, and are using it more and more to place their
affairs and even their moral interests under the control of organised
authority. We do not here question the expediency of the movement; we
are simply registering the tendency.
There are few literary enterprises more arduous than the task of
following and demarcating from the written record of a period the
general course of political and philosophic movements. The tendencies
are so various, the conditions which determine them are so
complicated, that it is difficult to keep hold of the clue which
guides and connects them. Mr. Leslie Stephen's _History of English
Thought in the Eighteenth Century_ took the broad ground that is
denoted by its title; but, as he now tells us in his preface, he has
found it expedient to reduce his present work within less
comprehensive limits, by confining it to 'an account of the compact
and energetic school of the English Utilitarians.' This reduction of
its scope has not, however, damaged the continuity of the narrative,
since in the great departments of morals, religion, and political
philosophy the Utilitarians were mainly the lineal heirs of the
characteristic English writers in the preceding century. It is true
that Mr. Stephen has not been able to bring within the compass of his
three volumes the subject of general literature, especially of poetry
and novels, which in the nineteenth century have given their vivid
expression to the doubts and the hopes, to the aims and aspirations of
the time. But we can see that such an enlargement of his plan would
have rendered it unmanageable, and that Mr. Stephen may have wisely
considered the example of Buckle's _History of Civilisation in
England_, which was projected on too large a scale, exhausted the
author's strength, and remains unfinished. Mr. Stephen's present work
fulfils its promise and completes its design. The Utilitarians are
very fortunate in having found a historian whose vivacity of style,
consummate literary knowledge, and masculine power of thought will
have revived their declining reputations, and secured to them their
proper place in the literature of the nineteenth century.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] _The English Utilitarians._ By Leslie Stephen. 3 vols. London,
Duckworth and Co., 1900.--_Edinburgh Review_, April 1901.
[29] _The Greek Theory of the State_, by Charles John Shebbeare, B.A.,
1895.
[30] Sir Robert Peel's speech on Reform, March 1831.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MR. SWINBURNE'S POETRY[31]
There is probably some foundation for the belief, often held in these
days, that the production of high poetry is becoming more difficult,
partly because the environment of modern civilisation lends itself
less and less to artistic treatment, as mechanism supersedes human
effort, and partly through the operation of other causes. It has been
plausibly argued that most things worth saying have been said already;
that even the words best fitted for poetic expression have been worn
out, have been weakened by familiar usage or soiled by misuse, and
that the resources of language for adequate presentation of ideas and
feelings are running very low. Nevertheless, we all look forward
hopefully to the coming of the original genius who is to strike a
fresh note and inaugurate a new era, as pious Mohammedans expect
another Imam. Yet his coming may not be in our time, and meanwhile the
poetic lamp is burning dimly; it is just kept alight by the assiduous
trimming of the disciples of the great men who have passed or are
passing away, by the minor poets who strike a few musical chords that
catch the ear, but who are not recalled by the audience when they have
played their part and left the stage. The stars that shone in the
bright constellation of Victorian poets have been setting one by one,
until two only remain of those who were the pride of the generation
to which they belong, for whom we may predict that they will hold a
permanent place in English literature. It is now nearly sixty years
since Mr. Meredith's first poems were published. Mr. Swinburne is
about ten years his junior, both in age and in authorship; one may
perhaps assume that the work upon which their reputations will rest is
finished for both of them. Mr. Meredith's poetry has very recently
been the subject of a very complete and sympathetic study by Mr.
George Trevelyan. In this article we shall make an attempt to
delineate, briefly of necessity and therefore inadequately, the
characteristic qualities of form and thought, the technical methods
and intellectual temperament which distinguish the younger poet, who
may be destined to be the last survivor of an illustrious company.
If we accept the theory that art, like nature, follows the principle
of continuous development, that its existing state is closely linked
with its past, it is not easy to affiliate Mr. Swinburne to any direct
literary predecessors. Undoubtedly we may assign to him poetical
kinship with Shelley; he has the same love for classical myths and
allegories, for the embodiment of nature in the beautiful figures of
the antique. Light and shade, a quiet landscape, a tumultuous storm,
stir him with the same sensuous emotion. He has Shelley's passion for
the sea; he is fond of invoking the old divinities who presided over
the fears, hopes, and desires of mankind. He has also Shelley's
rebellious temper, the unflinching revolt against dogmatic authority
and fundamental beliefs which rightly shocked our grandfathers in
'Queen Mab' and a few other poems; he is even less disposed than
Shelley to the hypocrisy which does unwilling homage to virtue. On the
other hand, Mr. Swinburne's pantheism has not Shelley's metaphysical
note; the conception of an indwelling spirit guiding and moulding the
phenomenal world has dropped out; there is no pure idealism of this
sort in Mr. Swinburne's verse.
It may be said, truly, that some of Mr. Swinburne's poetry shows the
influence of the later French Romanticists, of the reaction toward
mediaevalism which is represented in England by Scott, and which
culminated in France with Victor Hugo, for whom the English poet's
admiration is unmeasured. That movement, however, had almost ceased on
our side of the Channel at the time when it had reached, or was just
passing, its climax in France. And, indeed, by 1835 the style and
sentiment of English poetry was undergoing a remarkable change. Its
magnificent efflorescence, which the first quarter of the nineteenth
century had seen in full bloom, had faded away. It had sprung up in an
era of great wars and revolution, amid the struggles of nations to
shake off the incubus of despotisms, to free themselves from the yoke
of foreigners. The cause of political liberty inspired the noblest
verse of Shelley, Coleridge, and Byron:
Yet Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like a thunderstorm against the wind--'
But in England this ardent spirit had evaporated during the years of
industrial prosperity and mechanical progress which came in with a
long peace after twenty years of fighting; and during the next
generation a milder tone prevailed. For an interval we had only
second-rate artists in verse. The fiery enthusiasts, the despisers of
respectability, were succeeded by poets who were decently emotional,
pensive in thought, tame or affected in style, domestic in theme, with
feeble echoes of the true romantic note in Mrs. Hemans and others.
Next, in the fulness of time, came Tennyson and Browning, to raise
the level of English poetry by their deeper views of life, their
elevation of thought, and their incomparably greater imaginative
power. Tennyson's composition is pellucid and exquisitely refined.
Browning is rugged and often obscure; he cares more for the force than
for the form of expression. The great problems of religion and
politics are seriously and cautiously handled. Browning analyses them
with caustic irony, while Tennyson, after making vain attempts to