MR.LANG ON RECENT ENGLISH LITERATURE.

By A.M.T.

Anything that Mr Andrew Lang may write is sure to he clever and readable and his article in The Argus of last Saturday, "Twenty Years of English Literature," fully bears out his reputation of being able to indite a lively and agreeable essay on almost any subject. On such a topic, too, as the literature of his own time, Mr Lang is undoubtedly one of the few who may claim to speak with authority. In the article under notice, however he has scarcely done justice either to his subject or to himself. There is an incompleteness, not to say superficiality, in the way he has put forward his views that is rather disappointing. Stated briefly, he is of opinion that the English literature of the last 20 years has been marked by little genius or originality. No new poet has come to the front, the verse writers of the day being content to echo the older masters In fiction we have produced no one to compare with Dickens or Thackeray, and our writers of novels and romances have been largely subject to exotic influences. History has fallen into the hands of specialists and Dryasdusts and there is none worthy to succeed to the throne in criticism left vacant by the death of Matthew Arnold. The age, in short, from a literary point of view, is a poor and barren one—an age of small books and small writers. The great race has either departed or is fast going, and has left no worthy successors. This is the burden of Mr Lang's strain and he is not the first by a long way who has touched the same keynote. Strange to say, the opinion that in literature and perhaps other matters, we are deteriorating is not altogether unpopular. There is a sort of melancholy pleasure in thinking that we live in an age of decadence, although of course the opposite and optimistic view is also strongly held, especially by the young and enthusiastic. It is not to be denied that there is a good deal of truth in Mr Lang's statement of the case, or that he has happily touched some of the leading tendencies and weaknesses of recent English literature. His objection is that it is incomplete and one sided that he has apparently not studied with quite enough care the facts and chronology of the period with which he deals. He has it would seem, contented himself with taking a few obvious facts which help to bear out his view, and has neglected others which, had they come under his notice, would, we can not help thinking, have led him to consider ably modify his opinions.

To begin with, is there not something like a fallacy at the basis of his argument? Is it not rather unfair in treating of a literary period to refuse it the credit of all the works it has produced which happen to be by writers who made their reputation in previous years? If, for instance, it is pointed out that Messrs Froude, Freeman, Ruskin, and Herbert Spencer, to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning contributed a good deal to the literature of the last 20 years, Mr Lang, in effect, answers " Oh, those don't count ; those are writers of a past age; I am only speaking of writers who have come to the front within my own period. The question arises to what period, then, do these works belong. . .

The foregoing are a few general considerations suggested by Mr. Lang's review of recent English literature. It may be as well to go a little more into detail, with a view of showing that our age has not been as barren in works of literary genius or high talent as our critic would have us believe. To begin with history, Mr. Lang tells us that "there is a great deal of the industry of the specialist, study of manuscripts and records, articles in the Historical Review, but, except Canon Creighton's History of the Popes, Mr. Gardiner's book, and Mr Lecky's unfinished work, there is little but essays and monographs, and brief biographies at a shilling, to show for the labour. We are getting together materials, rather than building such edifices as Macaulay, Mr. Froude, and Mr. Freeman have created." We shall say nothing of the fact that perhaps the most valuable portion of Mr. Freeman's work, certainly a good half of it, falls within our period, and that it is during the last 20 years that his influence as a teacher of history has become dominant. Nor need we refer to Mr. Froude's English in Ireland, or to the latter portion of Mr. Kinglake's history, as all these writers are excluded by Mr. Lang on the principles he has laid down in forming his estimate. But what about Bishop Stubbs, whose Constitutional History of England (1871 to 1878) is admittedly one of the most valuable historical works of our time. And what of the late John Richard Green, whose genius for this branch of literature Mr. Lang will scarcely deny, and whose Short History of the English People, which appeared in 1874, achieved a popularity almost equal to that of Macaulay, while this and his subsequent books, too few in number, show that a great literary artist as well as historical student was lost to the world by his early death. Among books, too, which, though not properly speaking historical, are yet inspired by the true spirit of historical research, some mention should be made of that monumental work, The American Commonwealth, published last year by Dr. Bryce, whose masterly little book, A Holy Roman Empire, appeared over twenty five years ago. Stranger still is Mr. Lang's omission to mention Mr. John Addington Symonds, whose Renaissance in Italy is the production not only of an admirable critic and historian, but also of a brilliant and original writer. Mr. Thomas Hodgkin, the author of an excellent history of the invasions of Italy in the fifth century, and Mr. J. B Bury, who published only the other day an elaborate history of the later Roman Empire, are worthily carrying on the succession of historical writers of whom our country and age has such good reason to be proud.

In treating of poetry and fiction, Mr. Lang is on more familiar ground, and writes with a firmer grasp of the subject, though a few errors and omissions may be pointed out here too. As already mentioned, Mr. Swinburne and Mr. William Morris may be fairly claimed as belonging to the last 20 years, and still more is this the case with the late Mr. Rossetti, whose first and memorable volume of poem was published in 1870. Among the novelists Mr. Lang mentions Mr. Meredith, Mr. Norris, Mr. Black, Mr. Stevenson, and a few lesser lights, but says nothing about Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Blackmore, Mr. Christie Murray, Miss Thackeray, and the author of Vice Versa (Mr. James and Mr. Howells are perhaps excluded as being Americans), although their works should certainly be taken into account in estimating the fictional literature of the last 20 years. Nor should we have expected the absence of all reference to the late Richard Jefferies, whose exquisite descriptions of rural life have never been excelled ; Mr. Grant Allen, not as the writer of strange stories and sensation novels, but as author of The Evolutionist at Large, Vignettes from Nature, and other delightful essays full of original thought and literary power ; and Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton, admirable as a critic both of art and of life.

Broadly speaking, it may be said that though the last 20 years has produced no novelist equal to Dickens, Thackeray, or George Eliot, it can boast of a greater number of really meritorious writers of fiction than any former age. The novel-reader has had such a surfeit of late years that he is apt to underrate books that are poured out in such profusion. Mr. Lang admits that it is too much to expect a great poet every 20 years, and the same may be said of a great novelist. The fact is that 20 years is rather too short a time in which to estimate the literary tendencies of an age. Thirty years is better, and in the period under notice the additional 10 years brings out all the more strongly the characteristics of what is really a great literary era, one of the most distinctive and remarkable in our history. Just cast a glance over the years that lie between 1800 and 1890, and see what a gap there would be in the intellectual equipment of all of us if it were possible to obliterate from our minds the influences we have received from the authors of that period. In history there is a brilliant array of names— Froude, Freeman, Kinglake, Lecky, Stubbs, Green, Bryce, Gardiner writers who have revolutionised our way of looking at the past and added some immortal pages to English literature. In fiction we have George Eliot, George Meredith, Mrs. Gaskell, Mrs. Oliphant, Anthony Trollope, Charles Reade, George Macdonald, Miss Thackeray, Black, Blackmore, Hardy, Besant, Marion Crawford, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christie Murray, and Anstey, to mention only the leading names. In poetry there is perhaps not as much to boast of, the really important names, omitting the veterans Tennyson and Browning, being only four or five—Matthew Arnold, Swinburne, William Morris and the Rossetti's. In literary history and criticism, the list is anything but insignificant, including as it does the names of Matthew Arnold, Symonds, Palgrave, Hamerton, Leslie Stephen, Saintsbury, Gosse, Hutton, Austin Dobson, and Mr. Lang himself.

It must be confessed, however, that the age is greater in the more solid and weighty than in the lighter departments of literature, and it is by its contributions in this direction chiefly that it will be valued by future generations Darwin and Herbert Spencer, Tyndall and Huxley, Wallace, Maine, Tylor, Lewes, Lubbock, Max Muller, and Walter Bagehot—a true literary artist it ever there were one— these, with the historians already enumerated, are the great names of our generation. They represent a philosophical movement that has changed the entire current of opinion on the most important questions that can engage the human mind, and cannot be omitted in any account of the literary activity of the age. The movement has had a direct influence upon every branch of literature, and the writers themselves, or some of them, have shown in the exposition of their doctrines literary ability of a very high order. While fully admitting the justness of some of Mr. Lang's strictures and they refer chiefly to the lighter and more ephemeral features of the literature of the day—it is a serious mistake to suppose that ours has been a barren or puny age as regards its literary achievements. There is, indeed, as Mr. Lang says, a great deal in the way of mere essays and monographs, shilling biographies, and shilling shockers, but beneath all these temporary manifestations of the popular taste the deep current of our literature has flowed steadily on. Nor can it be said that in our best writers there are as yet any of the signs that portend the approaching decadence of a great literature.

 The Argus 11 October 1890,