Royal Society of Literature

“ A Literary Society has also been formed for the encouragement of popular literature, and the formation of a complete dictionary of the language—the seal of which represents an uncultivated field, with the rising sun shining on a monument bearing the arms of Servia. ”

“ The political, social, ecclesiastical, and economical factors, and their complex actions and reactions, would all have to be taken into account, the literary historian would be concerned with the ideas which find utterance through the poet and philosopher, and with the constitution of the class which at any time forms the literary organ of the society. The critic who deals with the individual work would find such knowledge necessary to a full appreciation of his subject ”

“ I have felt that the Poetry Society of America, an organization whose activities certainly are stimulating and encouraging to every friend of the art, might serve poetry better if its members were to place more emphasis on creation and less312 on criticism. ”

“ We are heartily thankful for our admission to a closer acquaintance with an author who has drawn some immortal pictures of English society, its manners, prejudices, and characteristic types, in novels that will always hold the first rank in our lighter literature. ”

“ The well of English undefiled is sadly muddy, nowadays, and any roaring screamer of English or American slang is as welcome to those who call themselves critics as though he wrote like Matthew Arnold or John Morley. Lacking an Academy of Letters, and the writers who would make one, there is in London what is called a Society of Authors, which is supposed to resemble the Société des Gens de Lettres in Paris, but the English Society appears to be chiefly an association for the multiplication and publication of inferior works, and its authority on literature is nil. ”

“ What a crisis for genius, for its development and its destruction!
This was an event in the history of our literature which has not occurred in the literary history of any other European people. It was about the middle of the reign of Elizabeth that a race of dramatic writers burst forth on the nation—writers, not easily numbered, of innumerable dramas.
Literature now opened a new avenue for a poor scholar, the first step of advancement in society from a collegiate 517 life for those who found their future condition but ill provided for. ”

“ Now the masses of men begin to be educated, begin to think for themselves, and a host of periodicals appear in answer to their demand for reading matter. Poets, novelists, essayists, historians,—all serious writers feel the inspiration of a great audience, and their works have a thousand readers where formerly they had but one. In a word, English government, society and literature have all become more democratic. ”

“ He devoted much time and attention to the history of art in England, and made a collection of the catalogues of the Royal Academy, the Society of Artists of Great Britain, and the Free Society of Artists, which he copiously illustrated with drawings, autographs, and portraits. ”

“ Never was literature in any age closer to the ideals of a social class. So true is this that it is difficult to determine whether social practices called forth the literature, or whether, as in the case of the seventeenth-century pastoral romance in France, it is truer to say that literature suggested to society its ideals. ”

“ Scholars, acquainted with classical models and classical rules, began to exercise their judgment on their own poetry, to construct theories, to review the performances before them, to suggest plans for the improvement of the poetic art. Their essays are curious, as the beginnings of that great critical literature, which in England, in spite of much infelicity, has only been second to the poetry which it judged. But in themselves they are crude, meagre, and helpless ”

“ While the older literary class was dying out, a glance beneath the surface shows us the stir of a new interest in knowledge amongst the masses of the people itself. The very character of the authorship of the time, its love of compendiums and abridgements of such scientific and historical knowledge as the world believed it possessed, its dramatic performances or mysteries, the commonplace morality of its poets, the popularity of its rimed chronicles, are proof that literature was ceasing to be the possession of a purely intellectual class, and was beginning to appeal to the nation at large. ”

“ They show what the writers of the greatest genius, that is, of the greatest insight, see as types of the actual ideas and characters surrounding them; and the fact of their works being popular shows that the types are recognised as true. Now it is certain that the English literature of fiction and its latest development, that of the American novelists, show an ever-increasing recognition of the female individual as an equal unit with the male in the constitution [112] of modern society. ”

“ His works are marked by taste and skill rather than by power or originality. He exhibited four works at the Royal Academy, ten at the British Institution, and nineteen at the Society of British Artists between 1835 and 1856. ”

“ Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are their literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily. ”

“ It is as obsolete as the fashion of long finger-nails, which in some parts of the East are still the distinctive mark of those who labour not with their hands. All classes are now brought within the reach of your current literature, that literature which, like a moral atmosphere, is as it were the medium of intellectual life, and on the quality of which, according as it may be salubrious or noxious, the health of the public mind depends. There is, if not a general desire for knowledge, a general appearance of such a desire. Authors of all kinds have increased and are increasing among you. ”

“ In lyric poetry and in romance our age has names second only to the greatest; its researches into nature and history are at least equal to those of any previous epoch; and, if it has not many great philosophers, it has developed the latest, most arduous, most important of all the sciences. This is the age of Sociology: its central achievement has been the revelation of social laws. This social aspect of thought colours the poetry, the romance, the literature, the art, and the philosophy of the Victorian Age. Literature has been the gainer thereby in originality and in force. ”

“ Criticism fell into the prevailing theory: so did history, and even romance. Philosophy and Science are not the best foster-mothers of Poetry and Romance. Philosophy and Science grew more solemn than ever; and Poetry and Romance lost something of their wilder fancy and their light heart. Literature grew less spontaneous, more correct, more learned, and, it may be, more absorbed in its practical purpose of modifying social life. ”

“ It will embrace in its scope every department of elegant literature, comprising tales of romance, sketches of society and manners, sentiment, and every day life, piquant essays, domestic and foreign correspondence, literary intelligence, wit and humor, fashion and gossip, poetry, the fine arts, and literary, musical and dramatic criticisms. Its reviews of new works will be careful, discriminating and impartial. It will aim to foster a literature suited to the taste and desires of the age and country. Its tendency will be cheerful and enlivening as well as improving. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After discussing the character of modern French literature, there remains the important question to determine, how far the state of literature represents the state of society—how far the one is a faithful picture of the other. ”

“ Even the middle ranks of the community, who in this country form the great mass of readers, and from which, moreover, almost all literary men arise, have no literature of their own: they have to read a literature which has been calculated for the sphere above them, and in which, of course, their sympathies must be of an imperfect character. And thus, after all that has been done, it still appears a desideratum that there should be both a literature and a philosophy for the human race. ”

“ To-day we know that certain novels are as dangerous to the soul as leprosy to the body, but we have become more discriminating. We have learned that the right type of fiction, read in moderation, cultivates the imagination, broadens the sympathetic powers, and opens up a new, interesting, and easily accessible land of enjoyment.
A quarter of a century before the Declaration of Independence, the great eighteenth-century English writers of fiction had given a new creation to the literature of England. ”

“ The furtherance of a cult and the specializing of work have also given rise to many new associations in Great Britain, besides the Royal Academy (see Academy, Royal) . At the outset, therefore, it will be well to mention the leading art societies thus described. The (now Royal) Society of Painters in Water Colours, founded in 1804, and the (now Royal) Society of British Artists (1823) , are typical of those societies which exist merely for purposes of holding exhibitions and conferring diplomas of membership. ”

“ But we must come to an end ourselves. We would, in short, advocate the claims of literature in general, and its high title to consideration, as it commends itself to all men in common; and we plead guilty to the ambition of adding to the numerous honourable characteristics of our countrymen, that of being in an eminent degree a reading people. ”

“ But of the millions of the English-speaking readers, who to-day assimilates the masterpieces of English literature? Generations come, and generations go. The classic writers keep their reputation; but do they hold their readers? Do the readers hold to the masters? Not the masters sway the public taste, not the writers of the first rank, not the giants ”

“ He must look to his contemporaries, to those touched by the same issues and responsive to the same ideals. To aid in creating this atmosphere for the poet, to be the nucleus of a movement for the wider knowledge of contemporaneous verse, the Poetry Society of America took form and in its brief period has, I think, justified the idea of its promoters. ”

“ Much less do I permit myself to speak of those living lights of literature from whom we may yet receive work even surpassing that of those who are gone. My aim has been not so much to weigh each writer in the delicate balance of mere literary merit, but rather, from the point of view of the historian of ideas and of manners, to record the successive influences which, in the last fifty years or so, have moulded or reflected English opinion through printed books, be they of the dogmatic or of the imaginative order. ”

“ Noblemen and Men of Fortune who have manifested a marked predilection for Literature; Authors of Fortune and others sympathising with, and interested in the labours of literary men.
Participating Subscribers, consisting of Professional Authors, and that large mass of writers who produce the current literature of the age in Works of Science, Imagination, Education, and the Periodical and Newspaper Press of the Empire.
The Constitution of the Society is such that the general body of its members hold the directing power. ”

“ The dominion of popular writing is being increased at a most marvellous rate. Literature is now crowned as the very chiefest monarch of these times. On many topics we differ, but editors, authors, critics, and all the disseminators of literature, are unanimous as to the necessity of the diffusion of knowledge. ”

“ By the eighteenth, in all countries, the tendency becomes irresistible. The interest in literature, the bent and occupations of men of letters great and small, the new institution of periodicals—all combine to strengthen it: and every kind of critical estimate, from the elaborate literary history to the brief review, begins to be written, and is written, ever more copiously.
This was what criticism wanted; and it could not but do good. Yet the results illustrated, as mere abstract treatises never could have done, the deficiencies of the common critical theory. ”

“ As the field, however, is so ample that even to do justice to an outline will require much attention to arrangement, it will be necessary to distribute what we have to offer, in this stage of our work, under the heads of Bibliography, Philology, Criticism, History, General, Local, and Personal, and Miscellaneous Literature; premising that as we confine ourselves, in the strictest sense, to elegant literature, or what has been termed the Belles Lettres, science, theology, and politics, will, of course, be excluded. ”

“ These stories enjoyed a wide vogue in France and England, and formed matter for the exploitation of every class of our Elizabethan dramatists or writers of fiction. They have a particular interest to students of English literature as having furnished, whether directly or indirectly, the plots of 'Measure for Measure', and 'Othello'. ”