MR. BALFOUR ON LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1479, 29 June 1912, Page 11

MR. BALFOUR ON LITERATURE.

Proposing the toast, of "Literature" at the Royal Literary Fund dinner in London last month, 3ir. Balfour ■ delivered a brilliant speech. We print it in full. Mr. Balfour said:

Prom the point of view of ih9 afterdinner speaker, I suppose all toasts may be divided, according to the magnitude of their subject-matter into three categories. You may havi those which are so small that it is hardly possible to beat them out thin enough to fill up a speech. (La,ughter.) You ■ may have those which are., of that degree of complexity- with which the speaker, may be expected adequately to (leal. ■ And you may have those which are . so obviously large that to cover such a vast ■ area neither an after-dinnon speech nor even the volumes which industry and .research pour forth, year after year can hope .finally to compass or to exhaust. Of those three categories I have no doubt that the last, is the most convenient for the afterdiimer rpsech. If you have got to deal with , the your difficulty is to find the material. If you have, got to deal with tho second, yoa are severely criti(issd if you do not cover the. ground. (Laughter.) No human being expects von to cover t.ho ground of Literature, and criticism disappears almost before the speaker rises by the consciousness of almost 'every ono of his hearers that even if he be gifted with the tongue of angels ho can neither cover the ground nor can ho say anything which will give the smallest impetus or impulse to those great movements of the human spirit of which Literature itself is the product. LITERATURE AS AX AFTER-DINNER TOPIC. And yet, though Literature be thus in the third and most agreeable category of subjects of after-dinner speaking, it has some defects. Is it to deal with the past, the present, or the future? It is folly totry to touch upon the past. We do not drink the health of the immortals. Their position is assured. Nothing which any speaker can bay, whether he be an after-dinner speaker or in whatever position he may be to address the public, can add to their fame. He cannot illustrate their merits, lis cannot alter the opinion of any human being as to the claim which they have upon our affcction and our regard. Is a, speaker to deal with the future? Of tho future of Literature, luckily, no man shall know anything. I say luckily because I am not one of those who believe that such a subject can be so far brought under the rulo of scientific law that you can prophesy from ■ the present .what is to.

sent? Who would venture on tliis or, indeed, 011. any other occasion to try to appreciate the merits, the comparative merits, of living authors, or to say what nicho of Fame they are going to occupy in the future cr how they' will comparo with their predecessors or how thoy will influence those wlio may come after them: But you have only (jot to look sit tho writings of distinguished critics to see how carefully they fight ; shy of any estimate of contemporary merit. They deal with the past splendidly, adequately; they deal with it in theso days in a manner which our forefathers never dreamt of and which our forefathers could not rival. But of the present they do not feel themselves, so far as I caii form an opinion, to ho adequate judges. They neither pronounce their views of the merits of the living nor do they attempt to forecast the relative fame which they will occupy in the future. Therefore it will be admitted that if yon arc neither to deal with the past nor tho future, and if yon are confined to tho present under the conditions which I have endeavoured to describe, the task of any man touching on the topic of Literature is not an easy one. And yet, diflicult though it may be, how interesting it is for we are told by great critics, that tho literature of an age is its picture, that if you look at the past and really grasp the character of the literature which appealed to it you understand that past, that a generation ihnot express itself more clearly than in the literature it produces and the literature it encourages. W<s must, therefore, conceive ourselves— we of this generation, we sitting at this table, and tho whole society of which we form ft fraction—we mast conceive ourselves as having our photographs, our kinematograph, taken month after month by the literature which wo buy, which we read, which we admire, and which we absorb. That is going to represent us to tho future critic. By that, according to this theory, we shall be judged. That is the pieturo which is going down to posterity. PUBLIC TASTE AND GENIUS.

I thiuk there is force in this contention, which must impress everybody who reflects t upon it. Yet. I would venture to suggest to those who advance this theory in its | more extreme for,as that it may easily be pressed too far. As I understand the theory, it depends, upon this —th.it there is at each.epoch, at each moment of time, a public taste which admits certain funis of genius or talent to suit itself and which rushes out the remainder, which acts as stained glass acts upon light, letling through rays o£ a cei-tain quality and character and absorbing the rest. And if von aie going to accept this view that there-is a particular public taste at a particular moment depending wholly upon the character of the society of the time, then I think there may bo truth in that doctrine. But, let us always remember this taste itself— this taste which is supposed to act as a differentiating medium—that it is a thing which itself is capable of being changed by the action of literature, by the action of genius and of talent. It is not that talent finds itself face to face with this kind of transparent medium, only letting through certain rays and pitilessly rejecting others. That does not represent the facts. Taste can be changed. Taste is a matter of manufacture. Every great producer will tell you—every great producer of luxuries will tell you—that he has not only got to produce the things'which the public want, he has got to make the public want them. And when he has made the public want them we call that good business. A.similar process, but with a very different motive, is carried out by the man of genius, by the man of originality, by the man whose natural gifts do not run precisely in the line of contemporary fashion, but rather force him- ancl press him on to a new mode of expression of ideas' which may also "be new. He also can change the taste by which he is to be judged. Ho also can act upon this translucent screen which lets through some rays, rejects some, and absorbs others. And it is interesting to watch not how the public taste compels one kind of literature and ono kind of literature alone, or literature within a limited class of literary effort, to succeed, but how despite itself tho public is made by the force of genius to accept some;new. mode' of expression, some new ideal' of art, some living change in the perpetually living process of the human spirit. Do not let us look at artistic or literary production in too mechanical a fashion. Literature .is not tho. result of, merely what'are called sociological causes. It is not only not that result, but it is not determined by that. Tt is determined by the inter-action of those causes and the individual genius which no scientific generalisation can class, which no scientific prophecy can foretell. Therefore it is that I, for my part, am reluctant to see literature treated in what is called too scientific a spirit, because I think that science in dealing with this progress of the free human spirit is really going far beyond—l will not say its future capacity, for I do not wish to set bounds to tho "power.. of science—but far beyond anything which it can do at present. AVo must take genius as an accepted fact, and when we have so taken it it is folly to try and bind it down into the limits of any formula whatever. THE MEN IN THE ADVANCED GUARD. The making of taste by a great man of letters, or a great artist, or a great school of art, is one of the most interesting phenomena, as I think, in one of the most fascinating subjects of study—namely, literary and artistic history, and I sometimes feel as if imperfect justice was done to tliofje who begin to make the taste by which tho efforts of subsequent genius are rendered possible. Mo talk of tho forerunners of a particular movement, a particular literary development, a particular artistic or musical development, and wo analyse the gain which greater successors obtain from their works —how these greater successors borrow a particular method and develop a particular mode of using their artistic instruments. But I think we sometimes forget another and quite different service which these foreTunncrs did. They began to make the atmosphere, tho climate, possible in which their greater successors arc to flourish. They started the taste which their successors are going to use. You with constantly find, therefore, that the beginners of a great literary or artistic movement are far inferior to their successors, but you have to acknowledge that without them, without, in the first place, the additions and changes they have mado in frtistic method, and without the changes thev have made in that taste, that aesthetic climatc in which alone the new works can flourish, \ their greater successors would never have obtained the .deserved fame which lias, enshrined them in the love of posterity. _ I think I said earlier m my spoecli that I did not much care for attempts to reduce literary history to a science, and I feel that perhaps in tho observations I have made I havo rnn somewhat counter to my own ranon. The pleasures I derive personally from literary history are biographical. They are tho pleasures of feeling myself brought into direct contact by the writer with great men who have long passed away, and another pleasure not at all to be despised of being brought into contact with the living and contemporary taste of tho critic himself. That "double pleasure I individually derive from literary criticism and I think the two things together make up so friT as I am concerned the sum of those great feelings.of gratification which literary history lias always given me. If that tie the true way of considering those whose business it is to deal with the great men of letters of tho past I suppose I ought to try before I sit down—l will not say to offer a criticism upon the present, but to give expression to a personal predilection with regard to contemporary literature. THE CHEERFUL NOTE IN LITERATURE.

Thoro was a brilliant novel written by a contemporary author which narrated the cheerful successes of the hero who went from one fortunate enterprise to another until at. tho end he reached the goal of his ambitions. The novel ends with tho finol triumph of the hero, and a friendly critic observes: "After all, what has this man done?" With what great cause is ho identified?" The novel ends with tho answer of another friend to this carping critic: "After all he has contributed to tho great, cause of cheering us all up." I am constantly being asked to contribute to causes of ono sort or another. (Laughter.) Thoy are very seldom, I regret to say, causes which are likely to cheer us all up. I hope they are useful, I believe in many cases they are necessary; but that great function they do not perform. I think myself that is a great function, it is one of tho great functions, .of litercomo. Then are we to (leal with tho uro-

ature. I do not at all deny, of course, that things sad, sorrowful, tragic, even drab may be and are susceptible of artistic treatment, and that they have been and are admirably treated by great literary artists; but for my own part I prefer moro cheerful weather.

1 think that literature is less cheerful than it was when 1 was young. (Laughter.) _ It may be that it is because I am growing old that I take this gloomier view of literary effort. But still I personally liks tho spring-day and bright sun and the birds singing and .if there lie a shower or a storm that it should bo merely a passing episode in the landscape to bo followed immediately by a return to brilliant sunshine. Whiio that is what 1 prefer, I of courso admit that the great picturesquo tho striking storm is a inagnilicent subject for artistic treatment and as well worthy of the efforts of great artists. I am not quite sure whether tho dreary day in which nothing is seen, in which tho landscape does not change, in which thero is a steady but not violent downpour of rain, in wilich you feel that you can neither look out of tho window nor walk out of doors, in which every passer-by seems saddened by the perpetual and unbroken melancholy of tho scene —I do not say that that ought not- to bo treated .as a subject of literature. Everything, after all, which is real is a potential subject of literature as long as it is treated sincerely, as long as it is treated directly, as long as it is an immediate experience no man has tho right to complain of it. But it is not what I ask of literature.

What I ask from literature mainly Is that in a world which is. full of sadness and difficulty, in which you go through a day's stress and come back from your work weaTy, you should find in literature something which represents life, which is true, in the highest sense of truth, to what is or what is imagined to be true, but which does cheer us.' (Cheers.) Therefore when 1 ask you, as -1 now do, to drink the toast of Literature, I' shall myself sotto voce, as I drink it, say not literature merely, but that literature in particular which serves tho great caust of cheering us all up. (Cheers.) I couple the toast with the namo of ono of tho most distinguished of living critics, my friend Walter Raleigh. (Cheers.)