EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: GUY CARLETON LEE, Ph. D., OF JOHNS HOPKINS AND COLUMBIAN UNIVERSITIES. y Twenty Distinguished Authors, Assisted by a Board of Forty College Presidents, Forty Professors, and many Men of Affairs. EAST n exceptionally capacious and valuable work."-The Sun, New York. WEST innot be superseded or its value impaired."-The Herald, Oakland, Cal. vishly illustrated."-The Chronicle, San Francisco. nest illustrated history of any country."-The Oregonian. NORTH complete history of North America."-The Herald, Montreal. magnificent work."-The Minneapolis Journal. history built on modern lines."-The Blade, Toledo. SOUTH ands absolutely alone, nothing to compare with it."-The Constitution, Atlanta. magnificent work-invaluable."-The American, Nashville. popularity is absolutely beyond question."-The Evening News, Atlanta, ENGLAND he illustrations are magnificent."-The Pall Mall Gazette, London. SCOTLAND every respect surpassing any previous history."-The Scotsman, Edinburgh. IRELAND traordinary thoroughness deserves the highest praise." -The Northern Whig, Bel TWENTY-FOUR PAGE PAMPHLET SENT ON THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. 399.-JULY, 1904. Art. I.-THE MEANING OF LITERARY HISTORY. 1. A History of English Poetry. By W. J. Courthope. Four vols (in progress). London: Macmillan, 1895-1903. 2. A Short History of English Literature. By George Saintsbury. Second edition. London: Macmillan, 1903. 3. Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature. New edition. By David Patrick. Three vols. London and Edinburgh Chambers, 1901-3. 4. English Literature: an illustrated record. By Richard Garnett and Edmund Gosse. Four vols. London: Heinemann, 1903. 5. L'Histoire comparée des Littératures. Par Joseph Texte. 1896. In Études de Littérature européenne. Paris: A. Colin, 1898. 6. La Littérature comparée: Essai bibliographique. Par Louis P. Betz. Strassburg, 1900. 7. Columbia University Studies in Comparative Literature. 1898-1904. THE idea that literature, being an art, must disown the antipathies of nations and belong to the world is now strongly rooted, and can but grow in power to quicken and to liberate. We think of the peoples of Europe and America, to go no farther, as one day forming a league of intellectual republics, where each absorbs from the others whatever conceptions, whatever forms of art, it can take without loss of independence. Such a federal hope, having once come to mankind, can hardly prove a mere vision of the night; for there is nothing higher to supersede it, and yet it can never be exhausted by realisation. Like all formative ideas, it began to work in men's minds long before it was consciously apprehended; Vol. 200.-No. 399. B for it has received a blind tribute whenever any literature, from the Roman onwards, has submitted to foreign influence. Its clear proclamation is one of the debts of modern Europe to the German mind, and is found, as might be expected, in a noble form in Goethe. In a note written in 1828 on 'The Edinburgh Review' and 'The Foreign Quarterly Review,' Goethe lays down the higher aim of all such journals. 'As they win, step by step, a larger public, they will contribute in a most effectual way to what we hope for-an universal world-literature. We only repeat, there can be no question of the nations thinking in accord. But they must simply become aware of and comprehend one another; and, if they cannot attain to mutual love, they must at least learn to bear with one another.' Goethe owed something here to pioneers like Herder. The same voice is heard again in Matthew Arnold: 'The criticism which alone can much help us for the future is a criticism which regards Europe as being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a common result.' In this direction Goethe worked more effectively than any other man. By his activity and fame, by his curious and remote reading, his translating, his dismissal of politics and of the illusions counter to his ideal that politics may generate, and by his transference to art of the universal spirit of science, he is the apostle of the federal conception of literature, to which he found Europe ready, while he made it readier, to listen. 'Great talents,' he says himself, are the finest peacemakers.' Our aim here, after noting some other origins of this federal conception, and some obstacles to its fulfilment, is to ask how its presence affects the methods of writing literary history. The variety of these methods is evident in the current histories of our own literature. The hope of a free international exchange for thought and knowledge, and even for poetry and letters, is, we are now beginning to forget, an old one. There was once a suzerain general language, beside which all others had the air of pretenders. The rise of the modern states and tongues had broken up, at the beginning of the Middle Age, the traditional primacy of Latin as the organ of verse and eloquence; and the Latin Renaissance, while it gave a fresh and artificial lease to the language, only ended in quickening the vernaculars through acquaintance with ancient art, thought, and life; whilst the Reformation gave some of them new rank as languages of ritual and religion. Still, down into the seventeenth century, Latin was often chosen by the strongest brains, from Grotius and Bacon to Spinoza and Newton, as the natural voice of science and philosophy, which have no frontiers, and was used by many theologians, Protestant as well as Catholic, and some poets. But soon afterwards the words of Hobbes may be transferred to Latin: it is 'the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof.' The works of Leibnitz are in three languages. Latin is there, but French is paramount, and philosophical German is proving its muscles in its cradle. But French, far as it spread, could never take the lost place of Latin. Apart from any incapacities of its own, it was always being checked by English; and the growth of German was hardly needed to abolish for ever the notion of a master-language. With such aid the federal idea has had to dispense; and yet that idea has grown until, for the purposes of positive knowledge, and in a less measure for those of speculation, it is clear in every mind. But in applying it to art there is a natural hindrance; and this must be got over, or it may seem fatal, before we can safely think of Europe and America as one republic of letters. Knowledge is international or it is nothing; its matter does not alter with the language in which it is conveyed. Science, or the body and method of knowledge, is impersonal and above race; it cares nothing for the personality or nature of its servants, except as possible sources of error. Thus science, being federal, unites and confounds, while art, being personal, sunders and identifies. The aim and power of art is to realise, in unique unchanging form, the spirit of the individual. Nothing but art saves his identity; for the children that he leaves, the polity that he forms, and all the other works of his hands, alter when he is gone, only what has received form retaining permanence. Also the aim of art, in contrast with science, is to give pleasure through beauty. And the beauty |