History of English Literature

ment, which easily tends to extremes of expression. We are therefore compelled to read M. Taine with some degree of caution when we are seeking exact statement and strict limitation.

Again, M. Taine is sometimes inaccurate or unjust from a lack of sympathy. He sometimes finds it impossible to rid himself of his Gallic predilections and aversions, especially when treating of the Puritan character or the stolid English morality. He cannot appreciate the religious conditions that surround his subject. He is always the Frenchman discussing the English writer. He cannot forbear to contrast the effect or the reception accorded to an author's work in England with that which it would have received in France; as when he says, concerning Addison's lay sermons in the "Spectator": "I know very well what success a newspaper full of sermons would have in France "; and again: "If a Frenchman was forbidden to swear, he would probably laugh at the first word of the admonition." A little farther on he objects to what he calls, with certainly picturesque concreteness, "the sticky plaster of his (Addison's) morality "-an expression that has led to Minto's sharp retort that Addison's morality was something which it is quite impossible for the Gallic conscience to conceive. Another illustration of that bias which compels us to be somewhat on our guard in reading Taine is found in his treatment of Milton. Although we may admit that the great Puritan poet peopled his paradise with characters having altogether too strong a British tinge, we are almost shocked to hear Taine and his disciple, Edmond Scherer, dilate upon Milton's Adam as "your true paterfamilias, with a vote; an M. P., an old Oxford man," etc., etc., or to hear them exclaim, "What a great many votes she (Eve) will gain among the country squires when Adam stands for Parliament!" Quite as striking is M. Taine's inability to understand Wordsworth.

But, after making these and all other due admissions concerning Taine's work, the fact stands that his "History of English Literature" meets fully Lowell's quaint definition of a classic, when he says, " After all, to be delightful is a classic." In reading this work we never feel that we have in our hands a textbook or even a history. It is rather a living, moving panorama. We see again the old miracles and moralities, with their queer shifts and their stark incongruities; we see the drawing-rooms and hear the conversation of the reign of Queen Anne, and walk through Fleet Street with Johnson. In a word, we realize in no

small degree the full meaning of Leslie Stephen's dictum, in that we really feel that we know, in some degree at least, "the human being who is partially revealed to us in his written and spoken words."

Of course, no introduction to this work would be complete without some reference to the psychological theory on which it is based. We have reserved this point to the last because, for the general reader, what Taine says and how he says it, are far more interesting considerations than any theories on which the book may be based. In a word, the author held that both the character and the style of a writer are the outgrowth of his social and natural environment. And this environment, in Taine's opinion, affects not only the individual but the national character as manifested in the national literature. In discussing any literary production he would first ask: To what race and nation does the author belong? What is the influence of his geographical position and of his nation's advance in civilization? What about the duration of the literary phase represented by the writer in question? In developing this theory of the influence of environment M. Taine doubtless sometimes treats as permanent scientific factors influences and circumstances that are in their very nature variable. Yet this application of the theory is as consistent and plausible as it is everywhere apparent. A few illustrations of his psychological theory will make more plain than much abstract discussion the almost fatalistic nature of his method. For example, after vividly portraying the political and social conditions that had surrounded Milton from his birth, the French critic askx: "Can we expect urbanity here?" Again, in tracing Dryden's beginnings, he says: "Such circumstances announce and prejstre, not an artist, but a man of letters." Much might be written of the detailed application of M. Taine's psychological theory. But the reader has already been too long detained from a porosal of the riches that fill the following pages. Charles Lamb once wrote: "I prefer the affections to the sciences." The msporty of the readers of M. Taine will doubtless find so much to enjoy in his brillant pages that they will care little for his theories, and will not allow certain defects in his sympathies to war their enjoyment of this monumental work.

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