The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1911. LORD MORLEY ON LITERATURE

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1080, 20 March 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1911. LORD MORLEY ON LITERATURE

The most subtle and significant thing in the fine address of Lord Morley on the English language and English literature, of which wc printed an abstract on Saturday last, was his conclusion: that the literary thrones are vacantThere is to-day no monarch in any tongue upon the literary throne, no sovereign world-name in poetry or prose, in whom—as has happened before now not so many generations ago, in royal succession, to Scott, Byron, Goethe, Jingo, Tolstoy—all the civilised world, Teuton, Latin, Celt,- Slav, Oriental, are interested, for whose new works it looks, or where it seeks the gospel of the day. ... It does not matter. . . . Nobody can tell how the wonders of language are performed, nor how a book comes into the world. GKaiius is gonitis. The lamp that to-day bomo may think burns low ■ will be replenished. New orbs will bring light. Literature may bo truster! to take care of itself, for it is a transcript of the drama of life, with all its actors, moods, and strange flashing fortunes. The curiosity that it meets is perpetual and insatiable, and the impulses that inspire it can never be extinguished. Now,, before deciding to agree or disagree with this optimistic statement upon what is considered a dull situation, it is wise to make one's mind clear about the actual meaning of "monarch" and "throne." There are two question?: Did any great writer ever exercise a wide dominion over the minds of the mass of men in his day 1 Was tl}e actual' monarchical power of any of Lord MorLEy's monarchs greater than is that of, say, Anatole France amongst the moderns? Lord Morley, we are sure, -would reserve his decision on questions put in that way. What we raean is, that it is more than probable that the monarchs of the past ruled over small kingdoms only, and that Anatole France is enthroned for as many of the elect as was even Goethe, the greatest of them all, in his day. One of the best articles on Loud Morley's speech was the IVest.minster. Gazette's, evidently written by Mr. Spender, and it is-not surprising that even Mr. Spender, with only two or three hours .to read the address and write his article, failed to consider these points, but went off into a little essay upon the reason why the thrones are vacant—an essay extremely attractive but extremely unsound. "The strangest, thing," he said, "about the modern men of letters is perhaps their deliberate abdication. They make no claim to rule the common opinion." They deliberately say, so the argument proceeds, that the best in literature will not reach the mass of the people, and that genius must therefore aim at a deep and delicate appeal to the cultured few: , So if we wished to assign one reason more than another for the fact that the thrones are vacant, we should say that the literary world in recent years has steadily cultivated a false ideal, an ideal which tends to produce a highly specialised hole-and-corner literature, not a generous, human, influential literature. . . Ho aims at art, not edification, and shivers at the faintest suggestion that his work is "didactic." ... In the old days, when the thrones were occupied, tho sovereigns and sovereign pontiffs poured an incessant stream of exhortation and remonstrance unon their listening subjects. They thundered about tho immensities and eternities, did battle with each other about religion and science and the true Church to an immense, eager, and immensely appreciative audience of ordinary men and women. They were unsparing of themselves in their zeal to convert the stiff-necked; and they tliTew their stuff hot and hot upon- the market without the slightest idea of nursing their reputations or limiting their output.

Much of this is unfair. One can easily make a list of a score of very fine moderns who would shudder at the creed of "art for art's sake" that .Mn- Spender charges against them all. Some of it, too, is simply wrong. Is "art, not edification," the purpose of our best modern playwrights? Is L'lle des I'ingouins— the charge is against all countriesanimated by the spirit of Bunthorne? As a matter of fact the foremost writers, in Europe, England, and America, are those who are notably didactic in intention. But there js still a fact in the Gazette's article—a little over-stated tliere, it is true—that becomes luminous when it is handled a little. The sovereigns in the old days thundered a great deal, no doubt.- Their thunder was often ineffective, and properly ineffective, however; and it was not their thunder that gave them their sovereignty in letters. The fact remains that they did greatly influence the thought of their age. That they have no full counterparts today is due to various causes, the principal of which is the enormously increased accessibility to men of the printed word. The second great reason for the vacancy of the thrones is the rise of socialisation in all departments of thought. No man any longer takes all knowledge for his The great kingdom of older days is divided into unnumbered provinces. The newspapers and .the reviews are doing intenser work than the old thundercrs about the immensities and the eternities. Mr. Spender's suggestion to "the literary folk" is that "the time has come for them to take at once a simpler and bigger view of their duties." And what does that mean? We really cannot guess. It implies that the best of our present-day arc not doing their best, which is quite obviously absurd! They may not be doing what either the Gazette or anyone else would like fheni to do. They are not, for example, writing novel-trilogies to fascinate and compel the people into a right view of the problems of the day. They arc not counteracting the noxious propaganda of such a brilliant wrcckcr as Mr. 11. (;, Wells, or as Mr. Shaw. But, after all, is it necessary that they should try to do so? Can their art make a stronger appeal to the mass of men than the art of the nameless jour-nalists-of tho multitudinous daily press, or tho named and numbered j

privates in the regiments of monthly and quarterly reviewers I In any event, is the only greatness, the only genius, the only claim to monarchy, the nower to influence the mob for a moment ? The business of literature is a truthful presentation of life, where life means, not the acts and relations of any given set of men and women, but the network of truths and permanences and forccs within which Man exists. If there are no recognisable Goetiies and Burkes and Balzacs to-day, even it there are no existent monarchs of literature, that is bccause the conditions permit neither of their recognition nor existence. Yet Truth is being as well and faithfully served as in an t v day ; the lamp is not burning low in the temple of Literature. As much is being done by tha leaders and the rank and file as could be done if the monarchs of fifty years ago were recalled to earth and set working again.