THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN LITERATURE.* Mn. WILLIAM RENTON has produced
a little book about English literature, which, though a most profitless perform- ance, may be studied with a considerable measure of profit, as, reductio ad absurdum, of the so-called "scientific" method of studying the products of literature. It belongs to a series of "University Extension Manuals" which is being published under the editorship of Professor Knight, and which is appa- rently designed to supplement and systematise the oral instruction imparted in the various courses of Extension lee. tures that have of late years become so remarkably popular. We do not suppose that there is among students any very. eager demand for an addition to the long list of volumes which serve up literature and science in a Liebig extract, but from the general preface we gather that the new series is to be• something very different from, and superior to, everything that has preceded it. The "University Extension Manuals' are to educate rather than to inform ;" they are to exhibit a "combination of scientific treatment with popularity" and a "union of simplicity with thoroughness ;" the "statement of details is meant to illustrate the working of general laws while the historical evolution of the subject dealt with is kept in view along with its philosophical significance." One would think that the compiler of a harmless unnecessary text-book of English literature might well feel appalled at the neces- sity of writing up to such a very imposing programme; but Mr. Renton, so far from being daunted, rises to the height of his opportunity, and makes it evident that he does not in. tend his performance to disoredit the high-sounding promises
" Outlines of Bnglieh Litirature, By William Renton. With Diagrams, London : John Murray.
of his editorial chief. He tells us that in the treatment of the theme allotted to him he has been careful to set about his task in such manner "that the consideration given to an author individually is subordinated to that given him as belonging to a type or school, and the examination of a period supported by reference to its position in the history of Litera- ture as one of organic growth from first to last." These sentences, and especially the words we have italicised, exhibit Mr. Renton's enthusiasm for the scientific method; and with an almost comical consistency he has crowded his pages with such an array of tables, diagrams, and algebraically expressed statements, that any one casually opening the volume might suppose he had found a text-book of astronomy, geology, or -engineering.
The diagrams, which are announced on the title-page as a prominent attraction of the volume, are fearful and wonderful affairs. They consist of circles, triangles, squares, and all sorts of figures, with sections and sub-sections, and
patches of shading, and names arranged here and there in a - fashion which evidently has some meaning, but which is so bewildering that, instead of the diagrams being elucidatory of the text, it is only by the most arduous study of the latter that we come near to grasping the significance of the former. A description of one of the simplest of them may give some idea of Mr. Renton's new method of literature. At the end of the chapter on the Reformation, we have a right-angled triangle drawn like a pyramid standing on its apex. At the -base, or top side, appear the words, "Drama, Sbakspere ; " at the two other sides, "Pastoral, Spenser," and "Essay, Bacon ;" at the corners are the names of Marlowe, Lyly, and Sidney ;
and in the middle of the triangle, in larger type than the rest, the name of Jonson. A casual glance at the figure sug- gests the idea that in the opinion of the designer Ben Jonson -is the most important literary figure in the England of the Reformation, that Shakespeare, Spenser, and Bacon are sub- ordinates of equal rank, and that, after them, also in a posi- tion of equality, come Marlowe, Lyly, and Sidney, "which," as Euclid says in relation to, many other inferences from tri- angles, "is absurd." Oddly enough, however, the absurdity, -which is only suggested by the figure, is explicitly affirmed in the text ; and we have the following deliverance, perhaps the most extraordinary to be found in any manual of English . literature :— "The student who takes an interest in tracing the relations of
• 'the Pastoral and Essay in this ago to the Drama may readily do so by means of the diagram, where the names of Spenser. Bacon, and Shakspere, representing each a single department, are con- Inected with the minor authors (at the corners of the triangle) who excel in two. It is noticeable that the author to whom the 'others converge, who excels in all three departments, and who in that respect is the most central writer of the age, is Ben Jonson."
Just so. It is indeed " noticeable ;" and it is not less notice- able that, by parity of reasonable or similarity of grotesque diagram, the first Lord Lytton or Mr. Andrew Lang, each so
Successful in many of the departments of nineteenth-century literature, might be accepted as the leading writer of the 'Victorian age, with his place in the centre of a triangle, while Carlyle, Thackeray, Macaulay, Tennyson, Mr. Ruskin, and Ardinal Newman, might be distributed somehow among the sides and angles.
The fact is that absurdities of this kind—and it is im- qmssible to use a milder term—are the inevitable result of treating the material of literature as if it were essentially one with the material of physical science. The grouping and classification, the telling of the links of cause and effect, which are so helpful—indeed, absolutely essential—to the fruitful study of geology or chemistry, can be applied with profit to the study of literature only by a student who remem- bers the essential difference in the nature of the facts which have to be dealt with. The various authors of a well-marked , period (say, the period of the Renaissance and Reformation) have much in common, just as the members of a group of • stratified rocks or of vegetable alkaloids have much in - common ; but it is clearly impossible to generalise with the same confidence or to define with the same exactitude • in the case of the first as in the case of the other two. The action of a glacier on the rocks subjected to its abrasion -must needs have a uniformity which cannot be predicated of the action of a great public event upon the men brought
,within the range of its infiu nee ; because, though there is something that may be called individuality in a rock
or in a salt, the individuality of a man is a much more complex affair, which has to be reckoned with after a very different fashion. The flood of the French Revolution landed Wordsworth in a calm conservatism • it landed Hazlitt in vehement Radicalism ; on Keats and Lamb it seemed to have no influence whatever ; and yet every one of these four men was a noteworthy product of his period, and, according to Mr. Renton's method, they ought to bear a common impress.
Indeed, with the fine passion of the enthusiastic generaliser, he is wont to insist that this common impress shall be borne by all authors who happen to be contemporaries. Thus, the whole of the seventeenth century is labelled "The Serious Age ;" though Mr. Renton is, of course, compelled to include in the chapter bearing this title such names as those of Waller, Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace, which suggest any- thing rather than seriousness. Of course, however, Mr. Renton is bound to make the most of every trifle that can be utilised in justification of his " scientific " method, and Herrick, who himself felt bound to make some apology for his "jocund" muse, is treated as if he were pre-eminently a serious and even a sombre poet. In one line there is certain'y a mention of his "sprightliness," but the reader who does not know Herrick—and it is for the learner that such a volume as this is compiled—will carry away an altogether erroneous impression of the peculiar quality of Herrick'e genius. The on'y poems mentioned by name are the Lines to his Dying Brother, his "Mad Maid's Song," his Dirges, and his Address to his Winding-Sheet, which are declared to be "among the most striking poems in our literature;" and in the final sentence of a brief characterisation which, in its entirety, does not fill a page, Mr. Renton is bold to say :—
" It is precisely the charm of this graceful writer that he com- bines these qualities [Imagination and fancy] q.EI he combines lyric inspiration with meditation, devotional feeling with tender-. nese; giving to the death-sweat, the winding-sheet, and the grave the sweetness of affection, and to affection the symbolism and solemnity of religion."
If such grotesquely misleading characterisation as this is the natural result of a method by which the "consideration given to an author individually is subordinated to that given him as belonging to a type or school" or, in the present case, period, and if the method be the true scientific fashion of dealing with literature, we can only say that the sooner the fashion is discredited the better for all concerned. We have dwelt with special emphasis on this one feature of Mr. Renton's book because it is the feature which at once dis- tinguishes it from its crowd of competitors, and largely deprives it of such educational value as it might have possessed. Its worth is still further impaired by that vagueness of expression and whimsicality of judgment which should be specially eschewed by the writer of a manual the aim of which is either to educate or to in- form. What instruction can be derived from the pre- tentious and meaningless metaphor of the sentence in which we read that Herrick is not "a golden writer like Shakspere or Tennyson, but he is among the first of the silver school;" or from the confusing sentence in which Mr. Renton tells his readers that "as Dickens bears the relation to Thackeray that Scott does to Eliot, he bears the relation to Scott that Thackeray does to Eliot"P—a jumble which would remind us of the ancient riddle, 1 If Dick's father were Tom's son, what relation was Dick to Tom P " were it not that the latter has some meaning, whereas the former seems to have none. Mr. Renton's occasional recklessness of judgment is shown in his extraordinary statement that in humour and satire Hudibras "is superior to Don Quixolc," and he can even lapse into such an outrageous inaccuracy as that of the sentence in which Congreve is credited with Steele's fine and famous remark concerning Lady Elizabeth Hastings, that "to love her was a liberal education." It must, indeed, be regret- fully declared that, apart altogether from their scientific and diagrammatic pretensions, Mr. Renton's " Outlines " are sadly out of drawing.
Previous page
