Literary history

“ In its literary productions, a nation bequeaths to posterity an ever-speaking record of its inner life.
The history of literature traces the progress of the human mind from age to age, by landmarks erected by the mind itself. ”

“ From such a combination of event, scene and characters our historians wrote a dramatic narrative, giving it the heroic cast without which history, the prose epic of liberty, is little better than a dull catalogue. Another very important matter was that they cultivated their style as well as their knowledge; they were literary men no less than historians, and in the conviction that the first object of literature is to give pleasure they produced works that have charmed as well as instructed a multitude of readers. ”

“ Now as in the nation, so in the individual, poetry springs up before prose. Look at the history of English literature, how completely it is the history of our own childhood and adolescence, in its successive fashions. ”

“ One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. ”

“ The literature of the eighteenth century, despite the many great names which adorn it, and the extraordinary practical influence which it exercised, is, from the point of view of strict literary criticism, which busies itself with form rather than matter, a period of decadence. ”

“ On the form side, this work is prose and it is art—the first English prose fiction, so announced and so taken. It is literary legend. An artist conscious of his art offered the material not as history or religion, but as a thing of beauty. ”

“ This study in turn should aim first at an understanding of the literature as an expression of the authors' views of life and of their personalities and especially as a portrayal and interpretation of the life of their periods and of all life as they have seen it; it should aim further at an appreciation of each literary work as a product of Fine Art, appealing with peculiar power both to our minds and to our emotions, not least to the sense of Beauty and the whole higher nature. ”

“ In a measure it varies with the department of literature to which the work belongs. The purpose of history, which brings before us the achievements of the past, is chiefly instruction. The oratory of the pulpit and the forum aims at persuasion. Fiction aims primarily at entertainment, though it may also be made the vehicle for religious, sociological, or moral teachings. Poetry aims at pleasure by means of melody, felicity of expression, the picturing of moods and scenes, and the narration of interesting incidents or important events. ”

“ Authors and even books, rather than groups and kinds, demand principal attention.
The result of this revolution is naturally most remarkable in the belles-lettres and the kindred department of history. Poetry, not dramatic, has been revived; prose romance and literary criticism have been brought to a perfection previously unknown; and history has produced works more various, if not more remarkable, than at any previous stage of the language. ”

“ Almost all writers who have attempted literary histories in a small compass have recognised the difficulty, or rather impossibility, of treating contemporary or recent work on the same scale as older authors. In treating, therefore, of literature subsequent to the appearance of the Romantic movement, I shall content myself with giving a rapid sketch of the principal literary developments and their exponents. ”

“ Like the poetry, these materials were handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth, and when at length the conditions for a real literary activity were at hand a most remarkable literature was produced out of these traditions. ”

“ There are, he says, three kinds of criticism—the historical, the philosophic, and the purely literary.
'Every form of genuine criticism is directed towards creation. The historical or philosophic critic of poetry is criticising poetry in order to create a history or a philosophy ”

“ The freshness of the romantic ideal is being superseded by the more acute spirit of the drama, which even at this early time is faintly foreshadowed. Another more modern feature that at once strikes the observer is that the age of anonymity is passing away. Though many of the texts still lack named authors, the greater number of the books can be definitely ascribed. Moreover, we have for the first time a figure of outstanding literary importance, who gives to the age the form and pressure of his genius.
3. Prose. This era sees the foundation of an English prose style. ”

“ To write the history of a literature extending over at least eight centuries would entail an appalling amount of reading; and besides, only a few, say a couple of dozen writers out of some hundreds, are of the slightest literary interest, and very few indeed of any real aesthetic value. ”

“ Even when no such incentive has existed, the temptation to adopt a novel view of some celebrated man or woman whose character and career have floated down the tide of history cast in a conventional mould has occasionally proved highly attractive from a mere literary point of view. ”

“ History must supply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospection and anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds, and different shades, of vice and virtue; from policy, and the practice of life, he has to learn the discriminations of character, and the tendency of the passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with illustrations and images. ”

“ Perhaps there is as much need for Wit, an Acquaintance with Mankind, and the Knowledge of the Passions, to compose a Romance as to write a History. The only Qualification to paint Manners and Customs, is a long Experience ”

“ All primeval literary works consist of a legend, a story historical or mythical, the tale of what some man or some god has done. To the very end, novels, plays, and biography, the most human in their interest, are the favorite forms of literature. ”

“ The solemn march of historical narration, the sublime hymns of triumph, praise and rejoicing, the records of battles and heroic deeds, the familiar narrative, the interesting parable, the pithy proverb, the terse and vigorous delineation of character, the sublime visions of inspired prophecy, are all there. Of almost every style of literary composition there is an example, captivating alike to the humblest reader and the most cultivated critic. ”

“ In this sense, the historical novel may become what epic poetry was in the time of the blooming youth of the nations,--a piece of national history, in the conception of the artist, who within a certain space, shows us a series of distinctly-drawn, clearly coloured figures, in whose individual lives, strivings and sufferings, the life and substance of the time in which they lived, is reflected as in a mirror. ”

“ To-day, for him who hath eyes to see, the marks of a like immoderation are upon our generation also. What a revelation of the taste of our age is found in the new love of highly spiced literature! All history holds no nobler literature than that in the English tongue. Our poetry furnishes nectar for angels! Our philosophies bread for giants! The essayists furnish food for the gods! Nevertheless, a multitude have turned from this glorious feast to the highly spiced literature of fiction. ”

“ NOVELS, ROMANCES, AND POPULAR LEGENDS.—Poetry and prose fiction form the general literature of a nation, and are distinguished from the literature of the study or from special literature, which consists chiefly of books for the use of distinct classes or parties. Fiction borders closely on the province of history, which, in its broad and comprehensive outlines, must necessarily leave unnoticed many of the finer lights and shades of human life, descriptions of motives, private characters, and domestic scenes. ”

“ The art of literature which weaves these living threads into its fabric lies closer to the common life and rises higher into the ideal life than any other art. In the lyric, the drama, the epic, the romance, the fable, the conte, the essay, the history, the biography, it not only speaks to the present hour, but also leaves its record for the future. ”

“ This literature proper was likely to take the form of verse in the eleventh century. A practical matter would be put in prose; but the effervescence of the soul, or the intended literary effort, would fall into rhyme or resort to metre. ”

“ To supply these in the picture of humanity is the distinct office of fiction, which, while free in many respects, should still be essentially true. The poetry and fiction of a country should be the worthy companion to its history. The true poet should be the interpreter and illustrator of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Art, literary style, study of character, and other of the higher, subtler elements of fiction, good as they are acknowledged to be, must yield first place to "the story," and afterwards shift for themselves the best way they may. ”

“ Though the instinct for a good story, on which the interest in fiction is based, is of immemorial antiquity, and may well be as old as human speech, the novel, as we understand it, is comparatively modern. ”

“ The lower kinds of literature admit of more apparent and striking freshness of exterior. And perhaps the most strikingly fresh, some might even say the distinctive, product of the nineteenth century, is its prose fiction. ”

“ When the nature of an historical work admits of its being invested with a dramatic interest—and all history is capable, more or less, of having that attraction—where minute details can fill up the whole outline of characters, events, and scenes, all bearing the impress of truth and certainty, real history, being often stranger than fiction, may be, and ought to be, so written as to bring to bear upon the reader, the charm, and work the spell, of what is called romance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He thus elevates literature, and especially poetry, far above the views of trivial and commonplace criticism, and regards it in its highest aspect as the product of human life and genius in various stages of cultivation. The history of the world of books is thus represented as no dry and pedantic study, but as one intimately connected with the best interests of humanity. ”

“ As a memorial of the literature and learning of the middle ages, it must always possess a permanent value. From it we may learn, and always with interest, what was the literary taste and social ideal of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. ”

“ What is permanent and universal in literature lives by the aid of no fashion of the day, but by virtue of its truth to nature. And hence is derived the authority of the ancient classics, which have been tried by time and have endured ”

“ All these various legends, though unsupported by history, have a great ethical importance, as well as poetic interest. The passions, habits, and adventures of a primitive and warlike race are presented by the poets with transcendent effect, and we read lessons of human nature as in the dramas of Shakespeare. ”

“ Your chairman has admirably said, in one of his charming essays, that ‘History may be abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be purely formal; but poetry must be full of human life’. This consideration, I think, may make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance of poetic expression. ”

“ It presented life itself in all its fulness and variety, great typical creations and figures of racy reality, which, without standing in symmetrical antithesis or parallelism to each other, moved freely over the boards where a never-to-be-forgotten history was enacted. ”

“ Unquestionably there are two forms of fiction—the one in which art, and style, and character are pre-eminent, and control the course of the story, and the one in which "the story's the thing," and often the only thing. ”

“ The object of our less ambitious history is to give to the general reader, as simply and briefly as we can, such incidents in the poet's career as seem to us authentic, and such criticism on his character and writings as our knowledge of both may suggest. ”

“ In fact it is not, as a writer of the present day has admirably observed, in the power of fiction to portray in words, or of the imagination to conceive in spirit, actions or characters of more exalted virtue, than those which thousands of years ago have existed upon earth, as we know from the records of authentic history. ”

“ The classical and romantic arts which we have now under examination therefore consist,—the first, in that which represented, under whatever symbols, truths respecting the history of men, which it is proper that all should know ”