APPENDIX B
THE TEACHER'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Two things must be admitted at the start--first, that no person isqualified to judge the value of new books who is not well acquaintedwith the old ones; second, that the only test of the real greatness ofany book is Time. It is, of course, vain to hope that any remarks madeon contemporary authors will not be misrepresented, but I have placedtwo axioms at the beginning of this article in order to clear theground. I am not advocating the abandonment of the study of Homer andVergil, or proposing to substitute in their stead the study of HallCaine, Mrs. Ward, and Marie Corelli. I do not believe that Mr. Pinero isa greater dramatist than Sophokles, or that the mental discipline gainedby reading _The Jungle_ is equivalent to that obtained in the mastery ofEuclid.
I am merely pleading that every thoughtful man who is alive in this yearof grace should not attempt to live his whole life in the year 400 B.C.,even though he be so humble an individual as a teacher. The very word"teacher" means something more than "scholar"; and scholarship meanssomething more than the knowledge of things that are dead. A goodteacher will remember that the boys and girls who come under hisinstruction are not all going to spend their lives in the pursuit oftechnical learning. It is his business to influence them; and he cannotexert a powerful influence without some interest in the life and thoughtof his own day, in the environment in which his pupils exist. I believethat the cardinal error of a divinity-school education is that thecandidate for the ministry spends over half his time and energy in thelaborious study of Hebrew, whereas he should study the subjects thatprimarily interest not his colleagues, but his audience.
"Priests Should study passion; how else cure mankind, Who come for help in passionate extremes?"
A preacher who knows Hebrew, Greek, systematic theology, New Testamentinterpretation, and who knows nothing about literature, history, art,and human nature, is grotesquely unfitted for his noble profession.
In every age it has been the fashion to ridicule and decry the literaryproduction of that particular time. I suppose that the greatest creativeperiod that the world has ever known occurred in England during theyears 1590-1616, and here is what Ben Jonson said in 1607: "Now,especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing butribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and manis practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I darenot." In 1610 he wrote, "Thou wert never more fair in the way to becozened, than in this age, in poetry, especially in plays; wherein, nowthe concupiscence of dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run awayfrom nature and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that ticklesthe spectators." And in 1611 he said, "In so thick and dark an ignoranceas now almost covers the age ... you dare, in these jig-given times, tocountenance a legitimate poem." And the age which he damned is nowregarded as the world's high-water mark!
A man who teaches physics and chemistry is supposed to be familiar notonly with the history of his subject, but its latest manifestations;with the work of his contemporaries. A man who teaches political economyand sociology must read the most recent books on these themes both inEurope and America--nay, he must read the newspapers and study themarkets, or he will be outstripped by his own pupils. A man who teachesdrawing and painting should not only know the history of art, but itslatest developments. And yet, when the teacher of literature devotes asmall portion of the time of his pupils to the contemplation ofcontemporary poets, novelists, and dramatists, he is not only blamed fordoing so, but some teachers who are ignorant of the writers of their ownday boast of their ignorance with true academic pride.
A teacher cannot read every book that appears; he cannot neglect thestudy and teaching of the recognised classics; but his attitude towardthe writers of his own time should not be one of either indifference orcontempt. The teacher of English literature should not be the last manin the world to discover the name of an author whom all the world istalking about. And I believe that every great university should offer,under proper restrictions, at least one course in the contemporarydrama, or in contemporary fiction, or in some form of contemporaryliterary art. The Germans are generally regarded as the best scholars inthe world, and they never think it beneath their dignity to recogniseliving authors of distinction. While the British public were condemningin true British fashion an author whom they had not read--HenrikIbsen--German universities were offering courses exclusively devoted tothe study of his works. Imagine a course in Ibsen at Oxford!
But not only should the teacher take an intelligent interest incontemporary authors who have already won a wide reputation, he shouldbe eternally watchful, eternally hopeful--ready to detect signs ofpromise in the first books of writers whose names are wholly unknown.This does not mean that he should exaggerate the merits of every freshwork, nor beslobber with praise every ambitious quill-driver. On thecontrary,--if there be occasion to give an opinion at all,--he shouldnot hesitate to condemn what seems to him shallow, trivial, orcounterfeit, no matter how big a "seller" the object in his vision maybe. But his sympathies should be warm and keen, and his mind alwaysresponsive, when a new planet swims into his ken. One of the most joyfulexperiences of my life came to me some years ago when I read _Bob, Sonof Battle_ with the unknown name Alfred Ollivant on the title-page. Itwas worth wading through tons of trash to find such a jewel.
And is the literature of our generation really slight and mean? By"Contemporary Literature" we include perhaps authors who have written orwho are writing during the lifetime of those who are now, let us say,thirty years old. Contemporary literature would then embrace, in thedrama, Ibsen, Bjoernson, Victor Hugo, Henri Becque, Rostand, Maeterlinck,Sudermann, Hauptmann, Pinero, Jones, and others; in the novel, Turgenev,Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Bjoernson, Hugo, Daudet, Zola, Maupassant, Heyse,Sudermann, Hardy, Meredith, Stevenson, Kipling, Howells, Mark Twain,and many others; in poetry, to speak of English writers alone, Tennyson,Browning, Arnold, Swinburne, Morris, Kipling, Phillips, Watson,Thompson, and others. Those who live one hundred years from now willknow more about the permanent value of the works of these men than wedo; but are these names really of no importance to teachers whosespeciality is literature?