PREFATORY NOTE.

The following chapters were originally delivered as public lectures at Johns Hopkins University, in the winter and spring of 1881. Had Mr. Lanier lived to prepare them for the press, he would probably have recast them to some extent; but the present editor has not felt free to make any changes from the original manuscript, beyond the omission of a few local and occasional allusions, and the curtailment of several long extracts from well-known writers.

Although each is complete in itself, this work and its foregoer, The Science of English Verse, were intended to be parts of a comprehensive philosophy of formal and substantial beauty in literature, which, unhappily, the author did not live to develop.

W. H. B.

[1]

THE ENGLISH NOVEL

AND THE

PRINCIPLE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT.

I.

The series of lectures which I last had the pleasure of delivering in this hall was devoted to the exposition of what is beyond doubt the most remarkable, the most persistent, the most wide-spread, and the most noble of all those methods of arranging words and ideas in definite relations, which have acquired currency among men—namely, the methods of verse, or Formal Poetry. That exposition began by reducing all possible phenomena of verse to terms of vibration; and having thus secured at once a solid physical basis for this science, and a precise nomenclature in which we could talk intelligibly upon this century-befogged subject, we advanced gradually from the most minute to the largest possible considerations upon the matter in hand.

Now, wishing that such courses as I might give here should preserve a certain coherence with each other, I have hoped that I could secure that end by successively treating The Great Forms of Modern Literature; and, wishing further to gain whatever advantage of entertainment for you may lie in contrast and variety, I have[2] thought that inasmuch as we have already studied the Verse-Form in General, we might now profitably study some great Prose-Forms in Particular, and in still further contrast; that we might study that form not so much analytically—as when we developed the Science of Formal Poetry from a single physical principle—but this time synthetically, from the point of view of literary art rather than of literary science.

I am further led to this general plan by the consideration that so far as I know—but my reading in this direction is not wide, and I may be in error—there is no book extant in any language which gives a conspectus of all those well-marked and widely-varying literary forms which have differentiated themselves in the course of time, and of the curious and subtle needs of the modern civilized man which, under the stress of that imperious demand for expression which all men's emotions make, have respectively determined the modes of such expression to be in one case The Novel, in another The Sermon, in another The Newspaper Leader, in another The Scientific Essay, in another The Popular Magazine Article, in another The Semi-Scientific Lecture, and so on: each of these prose-forms, you observe, having its own limitations and fitnesses quite as well-defined as the Sonnet-Form, the Ballad-Form, the Drama-Form, and the like in verse.

And, with this general plan, a great number of considerations which I hope will satisfactorily emerge as we go on, lead me irresistibly to select the Novel as the particular prose-form for our study.

It happens, indeed, that over and above the purely literary interest which would easily give this form the first place in such a series as the present, the question of the Novel has just at this time become one of the most[3] pressing and vital of all the practical problems which beset our moral and social economy.

The novel,—what we call the novel—is a new invention. It is customary to date the first English novel with Richardson in 1740; and just as it has been impossible to confine other great inventions to the service of virtue—for the thief can send a telegram to his pal as easily as the sick man to his doctor, and the locomotive spins along no less merrily because ten car-loads of rascals may be profiting by its speed—so vice as well as virtue has availed itself of the novel-form, and we have such spectacles as Scott, and Dickens, and Eliot, and Macdonald, using this means to purify the air in one place, while Zola, in another, applies the very same means to defiling the whole earth and slandering all humanity under the sacred names of "naturalism," of "science," of "physiology." Now I need not waste time in descanting before this audience upon the spread of the novel among all classes of modern readers: while I have been writing this, a well-considered paper on "Fiction in our Public Libraries," has appeared in the current International Review, which, among many

suggestive statements, declares that out of pretty nearly five millions (4,872,595) of volumes circulated in five years by the Boston Public Library, nearly four millions (3,824,938), that is about four-fifths, were classed as "Juveniles and Fiction;" and merely mentioning the strength which these figures gain when considered along with the fact that they represent the reading of a people supposed to be more "solid" in literary matter than any other in the country—if we inquire into the proportion at Baltimore, I fancy I have only to hold up this copy of James's The American, which I borrowed the other day from the Mercantile Library, and which I think I may[4] say, after considerable rummaging about the books of that institution, certainly bears more marks of "circulation" than any solid book in it. In short, as a people, the novel is educating us. Thus we cannot take any final or secure solace in the discipline and system of our schools and universities until we have also learned to regulate this fascinating universal teacher which has taken such hold upon all

minds, from the gravest scholar down to the boot-black shivering on the windy street corner over his dime-novel,—this educator whose principles are fastening themselves upon your boy's mind, so that long after he has forgotten his amo and his tupto, they will be controlling his relations to his fellow-man, and determining his happiness for life.

But we can take no really effective action upon this matter until we understand precisely what the novel is and means; and it is, therefore, with the additional pleasure of stimulating you to systematize and extend your views upon a living issue which demands your opinion, that I now invite you to enter with me, without further preliminary, upon a series of studies in which it is proposed, first, to inquire what is that special relation of the novel to the modern man, by virtue of which it has become a paramount literary form; and, secondly, to illustrate this abstract inquiry, when completed, by some concrete readings in the greatest of modern English novelists.

In the course of this inquiry I shall be called on to bring before you some of the very largest conceptions of which the mind is capable; and inasmuch as several of the minor demonstrations will begin somewhat remotely from the Novel, it will save me many details which would be otherwise necessary, if I indicate in a dozen words the four special lines of development along one or other of which I shall be always travelling.

[5]

My first line will concern itself with the enormous growth in the personality of man which our time reveals when compared, for instance, with the time of Æschylus.

I shall insist with the utmost reverence that between every human being and every other human being exists a radical, unaccountable, inevitable difference from birth; this sacred Difference between man and man, by virtue of which I am I, and you are you; this marvellous separation which we express by the terms "personal identity," "self-hood," "me,"—it is the unfolding of this, I shall insist, which since the time of Æschylus (say) has wrought all those stupendous changes in the relation of man to God, to physical nature, and to his fellow, which have culminated in the modern cultus. I can best bring upon you the length and breadth of this idea of modern personality as I conceive it, by stating it in terms which have recently been made prominent and familiar by the discussion as to the evolution of genius; a phase of which appears in a very agreeable paper by Mr. John Fiske in a recent Atlantic Monthly on "Sociology and Hero Worship." Says Mr. Fiske, in a certain part of this article, "Every species of animals or plants consists of a great number of individuals which are

nearly, but not exactly alike. Each individual varies slightly in one characteristic or another from a certain type which expresses the average among all the individuals of the species.... Now the moth with his proboscis twice as long as the average ... is what we call a spontaneous variation; and the Darwin or the Helmholtz is what we call a 'genius'; and the analogy between the two kinds of variation is obvious enough." He proceeds in another place: "We cannot tell why a given moth has a proboscis exactly an inch and a quarter in length, any more than we can tell why Shakspeare was[6] a great dramatist," there being absolutely no precedent conditions by which the most ardent evolutionist could evolve William Shakspeare, for example, from old John Shakspeare and his wife. "The social philosopher must simply accept geniuses as data, just as Darwin accepts his spontaneous variations."

But now if we reflect upon this prodigious series of spontaneous variations which I have called the sacred difference between man and man,—this personality which every father and mother are astonished at anew every day, when out of six children they perceive that each one of the six, from the very earliest moment of activity, has shown his own distinct individuality, differing wholly from either parent; the child who most resembles the parent physically, often having a personality which crosses that of the parent at the sharpest angles; this radical, indestructible, universal personality which entitles every "me" to its privacy, which has in course of time made the Englishman's house his castle, which has developed the Rights of Man, the American Republic, the supreme prerogative of the woman to say whom she will love, what man she shall marry; this personality, so precious that not even the miserablest wretch with no other possession but his personality has ever been brought to say he would be willing to exchange it entire for that of the happiest being; this personality

which has brought about that, whereas in the time of Æschylus the common man was simply a creation of the State, like a modern corporation with rights and powers strictly limited by the State's charter, now he is a genuine sovereign who makes the State, a king as to every minutest particle of his individuality so long as that kinghood does not cross the kinghood of his fellow,—when we reflect upon this awful spontaneous variation of personality, this "mystery in us[7] which calls itself I" (as Thomas Carlyle has somewhere called it), which makes every man scientifically a human atom, yet an atom endowed above all other atoms with the power to choose its own mode of motion, its own combining equivalent,—when farther we reflect upon the relation of each human atom to each other human atom, and to the great Giver of personalities to these atoms,—how each is indissolubly bound to each, and to Him, and yet how each is discretely parted and impassably separated from each and from Him by a gulf which is simply no less deep than the width between the finite and the infinite,—when

we reflect, finally, that it is this simple, indivisible, radical, indestructible, new force which each child brings into the world under the name of its self; which controls the whole life of that child, so that its path is always a resultant of its own individual force on the one hand, and of the force of its surrounding circumstances on the other,—we are bound to confess, it seems to me, that such spontaneous variations carry us upon a plane of mystery very far above those merely unessential variations of the offspring from the parental type in physique, and even above those rare abnormal variations which we call genius.

In meditating upon this matter, I found a short time ago a poem of Tennyson's floating about the newspapers, which so beautifully and reverently chants this very sense of personality, that I must read you a line or two from it. I have since observed that much fun has been made of this piece, and I have seen elaborate burlesques upon it. But I think such an attitude could be possible only to one who had not passed along this line of thought. At any rate the poem seemed to me a very noble and rapturous hymn to the great Personality above us, acknowledging the mystery of our own personalities as finitely[8] dependent upon, and yet so infinitely divided from His Personality.

This poem is called De Profundis—Two Greetings, and is addressed to a new-born child. I have time to read only a line or two here and there; you will find the whole poem much more satisfactory. Please observe, however, the ample, comforting phrases and summaries with which Tennyson expresses the poetic idea of that personality which I have just tried to express from the point of view of science, of the evolutionist:

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[10] 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[11] 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[12] 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.