OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH A1' OXFORD
[Not only at Oxford but at Cambridge a fashion has spread of condemning the study of pre-Chaucerian literature. Under- graduates and the parents of undergraduates naturally take a lively interest in this subject. The article below is a spirited defence of the established practice.]
IT has been contended that to compel the study of pre-Chaucerian literature in the " English School ". at Oxford is pedantic, vexatious, and unprofitable. Those who hold this opinion argue that undergraduates are forced to waste their time in tedious and futile appli- cation to a language difficult and dead, and to texts of no literary merit ; further, that these pursuits lead them ultimately into the arms of that Bedlam's Procuress, Philology. Students, they assert, would gain, by ignor- ing Old and Early Middle English altogether, and by starting directly with Chaucer, the obscurities of whose dialect are not impenetrable, and the excellences of whose matter and style are admitted.
The official disregard of these suggestions is not, as is commonly supposed, part of the natural pedantry of Dons, but is founded in the conviction that the objections, however plausible, to the study of our older literature draw their substance from fallacy and superstition.
The charms of the Lady Philologia, her dangers and her delights, need not here be considered : compara- tively few lose their reason in a debauch of umlaute and mutations ; and it may be supposed that a sanity disordered by these would be disordered by any studies.
But it is a superstition (and one of comparatively modern growth) to suppose that nothing but what appeals easily and at once to a student's sensibility should be admitted to a curriculum, a fallacy to think that education can be achieved by eliminating " drudgery." Indeed, it is only by " drudgery " that a man can reach the deep heart of his work, the real vitality of its interest ; cursory appreciation is worthless and superficial. Idle- ness and inexactitude of thought, and a disposition to trust in those hopeless " general impressions " of a period, must be the only outcome of a system that makes its only and perpetual appeal to the voluptuous love of " fine passages " of easy reading : if it were not so, the business of the " English School " were easily accom- plished by some compendious anthology of selected delicacies from the great writers. .
But even so, students of Old English are not _asked to live by drudgery alone ; for it is a further delusion to imagine the ancient texts inferior in " literary" interest - to many of the more modern writings which no one would dream of excluding from the syllabus. Anyone who has taken the trouble to read Beowulf will recogniie an economy and a proportion in it superior to those in, say, The Duchess of Malfi, a presentation of living characters, and a beauty of phrase not much, if at all, inferior. If Laweman's Brut is dull, what can be said of Euphues ? The Dunciad is too often a " Triumph of Dullness " ; and many students would agree with the verdict of Miss Thorpe in Northanger Abbey (if not quite in the sense she intended) that Sir Charles Grandison is " an amazing horrid book."
But, as has been said, the intrinsic interest of any one piece of writing, or group of writings, has nothing to do with its suitability for inclusion in the " English School " . syllabus. For if many books are dull and difficult in themselves, none are not endowed with the interest of their place in the evolution of our literature. Suppose a student to be started at Chaucer : is he to accept him as a sudden emanation in the void, a poetic First Cause, the Adam of English Poetry ? And how is he to regard Langland, Chaucer's contemporary, or to explain the phenomenon of two such diverse styles, each perfect in its kind, as appear in Piers Plowman and Troilus and Criseyde ? It is not enough for him to be told that the former is the swan-song of a long and moribund tradition into which he need not enquire, and the latter a child of the Anglo-Norman manner, with Boccaccio for god-father, about whom he need not trouble his head. And is he to remain ignorant of the fact that shortly before Chaucer, England produced a very perfect but anonymous exponent of both these styles, who bequeathed The Pearl and Sir Gawain to the puzzlement and admir- ation of posterity ?
But apart from the necessity for a student of English literature to have an understanding of its evolution (without which it is impossible for him to have any very valuable opinion on the merits of Chaucer—or on those of the Sitwells, for that matter), it is necessary to offer his mind some exercise more intense than that of perusing texts in his own familiar tongue. The very, ease of reading a modern (Jane Austen, for instance) lulls the faculty of critical awareness ; a syllabus which' included nothing but easily intelligible texts would atrophy discrimination ; for those who are allowed to' " settle zirt's business " by ignoring lin, are not fitted for greater matters.
Slipshod work is the chief danger against which all " Schools," but particularly the " English School,"1 have to contend. It is well known how easy it is to offer plausible and even ecstatic criticisms of books that have not been read, and what facilities there are for imitating the rhapsodies of the Romantic Critics, without betraying fundamental ignorance. Old and Middle English offer a training of conscientious work, and Dryasdust teaches his pupils to discriminate, and to feel genuinely for their personal perspectives ; and if the School of English Language and Literature does not produce these qualities; it may as well acquiesce at once in Pope's gloomy pre- diction that " such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be." N. C.
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