The English Novel and the Principle of its Development. Sidney Lanier
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of ever-heightening life,
Thou comest.
O, dear Spirit, half-lost
In thine own shadows and this fleshly sign
That thou art thou—who wailest, being born
And banish'd into mystery and the pain
Of this divisible-indivisible world.
Our mortal veil
And shatter'd phantom of that infinite One
Who made thee inconceivably thyself
Out of his whole world—self and all in all—
Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grape
And ivy berry choose; and still depart
From death to death thro' life and life, and find—
This main miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thy own act and on the world.
We feel we are nothing—for all is Thou and in Thee;
We feel we are something—that also has come from Thee;
We are nothing, O Thou—but Thou wilt help us to be;
Hallowed be Thy name—Hallelujah!
I find some expressions here which give me great satisfaction: The Infinite One who made thee inconceivably thyself; this divisible, indivisible world, this main miracle that thou art thou, etc.
Now it is with this "main miracle," that I am I, and you, you—with this personality, that my first train of thought will busy itself; and I shall try to show by several concrete illustrations from the lines and between the lines of Æschylus and Plato and the like writers, compared with several modern writers, how feeble the sense and influence of it is in their time as contrasted with ours.
In my second line of development, I shall call your attention to what seems to me a very remarkable and suggestive fact: to-wit, that Physical Science, Music, and the Novel, all take their rise at the same time; of course, I mean what we moderns call science, music, and the novel. For example, if we select, for the sake of well-known representative names, Sir Isaac Newton (1642), John Sebastian Bach (1685), and Samuel Richardson (1689), the first standing for the rise of modern science, the second for the rise of modern music, the third for the rise of the modern novel, and observe that these three men are born within fifty years of each other, we cannot fail to find ourselves in the midst of a thousand surprising suggestions and inferences. For in our sweeping arc from Æschylus to the present time, fifty years subtend scarcely any space; we may say then these men are born together. And here the word accident has no meaning. Time, progress, then, have no accident.
Now in this second train of thought I shall endeavor to connect these phenomena with the principle of personality developed in the first train, and shall try to show that this science, music, and the novel, are flowerings-out of that principle in various directions; for instance, each man in this growth of personality feeling himself in direct and personal relations with physical nature (not in relations obscured by the vague intermediary, hamadryads and forms of the Greek system), a general desire to know the exact truth about nature arises; and this desire carried to a certain enthusiasm in the nature of given men—behold the man of science; a similar feeling of direct personal relation to the Unknown, acting similarly upon particular men,—behold the musician, and the ever-increasing tendency of the modern to worship God in terms of music; likewise, a similar feeling of direct personal relation to each individual member of humanity, high or low, rich or poor, acting similarly, gives us such a novel as the Mill on the Floss, for instance, when for a long time we find ourselves interested in two mere children—Tom and Maggie Tulliver—or such novels as those of Dickens and his fellow-host who have called upon our human relation to poor, unheroic people.
In my third train of thought, I shall attempt to show that the increase of personalities thus going on has brought about such complexities of relation that the older forms of expression were inadequate to them; and that the resulting necessity has developed the wonderfully free and elastic form of the modern novel out of the more rigid Greek drama, through the transition form of the Elizabethan drama.
And, fourthly, I shall offer copious readings from some of the most characteristic modern novels, in illustration of the general principles thus brought forward.
Here,—as the old preacher Hugh Latimer grimly said in closing one of his powerful descriptions of future punishment,—you see your fare.
Permit me, then, to begin the execution of this plan by bringing before you two matters which will be conveniently disposed of in the outset, because they affect all these four lines of thought in general, and because I find the very vaguest ideas prevailing about them among those whose special attention happens not to have been called this way.
As to the first point; permit me to remind you how lately these prose forms have been developed in our literature as compared with the forms of verse. Indeed, abandoning the thought of any particular forms of prose, consider for how long a time good English poetry was written before any good English prose appears. It is historical that as far back as the seventh century Cædmon is writing a strong English poem in an elaborate form of verse. Well-founded conjecture carries us back much farther than this; but without relying upon that, we have clear knowledge that all along the time when Beowulf and The Wanderer—to me one of the most artistic and affecting of English poems—and The Battle of Maldon are being written, all along the time when Cædmon and Aldhelm and the somewhat mythical Cynewulf are singing, formal poetry or verse has reached a high stage of artistic development. But not only so; after the Norman change is consummated, and our language has fairly assimilated that tributary stock of words and ideas and influences; the poetic advance, the development of verse, goes steadily on.
If you examine the remains of our lyric poetry written along in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—short and unstudied little songs as many of them are, songs which come upon us out of that obscure period like brief little bird-calls from a thick-leaved wood—if, I say, we examine these songs, written as many of them are by nobody in particular, it is impossible not to believe that a great mass of poetry, some of which must have been very beautiful, was written in the two hundred years just before Chaucer, and that an extremely small proportion of it can have come down to us.
But, in all this period, where is the piece of English prose that corresponds with The Wanderer, or with the daintier Cuckoo-Song of the early twelfth century? In point of fact, we cannot say that even the conception of an artistic prose has occurred to English literary endeavor until long after Chaucer. King Alfred's Translations, the English Chronicle, the Homilies of Ælfric, are simple and clear enough; and, coming down later, the English Bible set forth by Wyclif and his contemporaries. Wyclif's sermons and tracts, and Mandeville's account of his travels are effective enough, each to its own end. But in all these the form is so far overridden by the direct pressing purpose, either didactic or educational, that—with exceptions I cannot now specify in favor of the Wyclif Bible—I can find none of them in which the prose seems controlled by considerations of beauty. Perhaps the most curious and interesting proof I could adduce of the obliviousness of even the most artistic Englishman in this time to the possibility of a melodious and uncloying English prose, is the prose work of Chaucer. While, so far as concerns the mere music of verse, I cannot call Chaucer a great artist, yet he was the greatest of his time; from him, therefore, we have the right to expect the best craftsmanship in words; for all fine prose depends as much upon its rhythms and correlated proportions as fine verse; and, now, since we have an art of prose, it is a perfect test of the real excellence of a poet in verse to try his corresponding excellence in prose. But in Chaucer's time there is no art of English prose. Listen, for example, to the first lines of that one of Chaucer's Canterbury series which he calls The Parson's Tale, and which is in prose throughout. It happens very pertinently to my present discussion that in the prologue to this tale some conversation occurs which reveals to us quite clearly a current idea of Chaucer's time as to the proper distinction between prose and verse—or "rym"—and as to the functions and subject-matter peculiarly belonging to each of these forms; and, for that reason,