"THREE GREAT ROMANTICS."
Mr. Wannan dealt with the literature and romance of the 19th century. He spoke of the works of Robert Browning, William Morris and Robert Louis Stevenson.Before outlining and quoting from the works of these writers he gave reasons for the birth of romance. He said romance arose from the desire of people to escape from the mass, from the ordinary routine, or from their environment. In the individual there was more of the romanticist than the realist. He often wondered which was the more romantic sex. He thought men were. Most of the romantic novels had been written by men. Women writers of to-day were too realistic. Most romantic revivals were closely associated with religious revivals. There was a desire of the people to examine themselves, a desire for different personalities or revolt against existing conditions. Romance gave a new sense of values. Shelley said: "The poet lifts the veil of the familiar from the face of the world and makes that which is commonplace not commonplace." We talked of the "golden age" of the past, but if we could go back to those times we would be disappointed. The Victorian age was drab, the buildings and furniture were ugly and the industrial conditions sordid. No wonder such men as Stevenson, Browning and Morris attacked its repression. Stevenson was born in the middle of the century. His whole life, as was his death, was romantic. As well as being a romanticist he was a great moralist. His moral allegory, "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" was a probing of our own natures.
Mr. Wannan concluded his lecture with a talk of the romantic side of the life of William Morris and the reading of extracts from the works of Browning. He said he thought the greatest romanticist of all was Jesus Christ Who said: "The Kingdom of God is within you." Could we live without faith? The way of faith was the only way for the world. It was necessary for our progress to have ideals.
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL.
In his address entitled "The Romantic Revival," Mr. Ian Maxwell said:
"It is perhaps a pity that one of the most complex movements in the history of English literature, should have been labelled "The Romantic Revival." In many ways it was far from romantic, and those who played a part in it expressed many fundamentally different views. It is therefore more profitable to attempt a description of the thing than a definition of the word. Eighteenth-century thought is something of a closed system. Radicals and infidels existed but society did not feel itself seriously threatened. The literature of the time reflects many of the limitations of society and was itself based upon a set of generally accepted critical principles. The so-called romantic movement was in part the result of reaction but it involved, enormous constructive developments of thought and feeling which went far beyond any mere revolt against restrictions of the past. One symptom of the changing past was an increased interest in concrete things for their own sakes. Dr. Woodward, who collected fossils and founded the first professorship of geology at Cambridge, was ridiculed by the wits of Queen Anne's time; and Horace Walpole said of Sir Hans Sloane's collection of rarities which were bought for the nation and became the nucleus of the British Museum, that they might be worth £80,000 to anyone who loved hippopotamuses, sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese. Yet the Elizabethans had loved such rarities as one may learn from the writings of their voyagers as well as from their literature, and a similar curiosity and love of detail characterised much early 19th century poetry.
"Evoe" in "London Punch" has amusingly parodied the neat and vague abstractions of 18th century verse as compared with the loving particularly of later poets.
"The taste for collecting which gradually manifested itself toward the close of the 18th century is also significant in that it is a symptom of a growing interest in history, and a growing sense of the romance of past times. The historic past, the feeling that only through a knowledge of their growth can one truly understand human institutions, appears gradually during, the later 18th century and finds vivid, though not complete expression, in the works of Burke and Sir Walter Scott. And it brought with it a sense of the grandeur of tradition and the mystery of time itself; (for instance) Wordsworth's sonnet 'On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic.' It involved, that is to say, the conquest of a new domain of imagination. But one may go further. Both history and literature reveal a quickening of the sympathies and emotions and an increasing tendency to interpret life through these rather than through mere common-sense. This tendency, though it sometimes led to ridiculous sentimentality, was far reaching in its effects.
"The romantic poets had not merely a delight in beauty, but a deepened sense of the awe and mystery of the universe. This sense is sometimes expressed in that romantic melancholy which colours so much of the work of Shelley and Keats and which, among lesser poets, often ran to mere affectation; but it is expressed also in the overwhelming splendour and profound reverence of the great poetic masterpieces of the time.
"Sense of wonder it may be said, is the very stuff of all imaginative work but in the early 19th century it led to something very characteristic of the period. It led to that search after transcendental truth. Wordsworth saw in the bleak ravines of the Simplon Pass 'the types and symbols of eternity.' Even Keats was stung to the philosophic affirmation 'beauty is truth, truth beauty.' Byron, the cynic, was sometimes troubled by problems he could not solve.
"When man ceases to seek the unattainable he will have ceased to be a man and will have become an adding machine."
"THE MODERN REVOLT."
In the evening Mr. Maxwell delivered an address entitled "The Modern Revolt". . . He said:—
It is now rather old-fashioned to decry the Victorian age, and we are beginning to rate more highly the achievements of Victorian genius. But, for all its virtues, it had very serious limitations. Social and moral codes tended to ossify, and the same may be said of spiritual and imaginative conceptions. Tennyson's thought may or may not be true, but it certainly lacks the strong pulse of individual experience; Browning's robust optimism makes philosophical pretensions which appear to us unjustified; Carlyle's vast generalisations are often half-empty and untested by close reasoning. It all has an air of magniloquent exaggeration which grates on the modern ear, and the Victorian insistence upon moral or spiritual dogmas is alien to the modern spirit of untramelled enquiry. Some of the most distinctive impulses of modern thought and literature owe their existence, in part at least, to a reaction against the Victorian system both of life and of ideas.
Perhaps the fullest and clearest expression of that reaction is to be found in the work of Samuel Butler— a prophet unrecognised in his own day who leapt into fame shortly before the war, and inspired much of Bernard Shaw's thought. Butler was a man of many talents. A classic by training, he was also a man of science, novelist, philosopher and art critic. He composed music and was a painter of some ability. He is the author of works on biology which, though opposed to the theories current in his day, express ideas which are very seriously considered in our own time. His most famous book is his satirical Utopian Study "Erehon" ; but his masterpiece is "The Way of All Flesh." It is said that each man has it in him to write one good novel, and this book perfectly illustrates the theory. It is the work of a dozen years or more, and contains the garnered experience and matured reflection of a highly original thinker. It does not, of course, present a reasoned formal philosophy, but it expresses an illuminating attitude to life.
It is based largely on Butler's own life, and records his emancipation from the outlook of the Victorian parsonage in which he was brought up. It admirably satirises the pontificial educational system which, imposed its ideas upon young minds without a fair presentation of difficulties and without any attempt to awaken the power of honest and independent thought; and, it exposes with deadly insight the cramping effect of a parental discipline which was applied with no real understanding of the child's requirements. "All was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity, and impatience." The selfishness of the father and the hot-house emotionalism of the mother are drawn with relentless precision; and their legacy is uncertainty, a sense of inferiority, complete ignorance of the real world, and a burden of ideas imposed from without, from which the youth must free himself as best he can. The story of Ernest Pontifex is the story of Butler's own emancipation.
The philosophy which emerges from this and Butler's other books is partly negative. He attacked science, the church, the educational system, accepted morality, and stereotyped ideas in general. His great positive doctrine is that of intellectual freedom. "I had to steal my birthright," he says. "I stole it and was bitterly punished. But I saved my soul alive." He insists that each man must keep his mind alive and in close contact with facts, and must hammer out his own views for himself. He is the opponent of all rigid systems. "Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule." His attitude is most clearly realised in his views upon morality. Men have always sought to push their ideals to their logical conclusion, and have been forced to make a tacit compromise for the benefit of the weaker brethren; and they have always sought to elevate their moral standards into laws laid down by some eternal and omnipotent authority. Butler holds what is probably the commonest view to-day, that moral laws are worked out in practice and are justified by their practical efficiency. "The laws of God are the laws of our own well-being." If we agree that moral principles are not inexplicable taboos but that they represent simply the highest expediency, it follows that they are not to be followed blindly; one may often have to give place to another. "Truth generally is kindness; but when the two diverge or collide kindness should override truth." Moreover, it is well for a man not to be too good. "When the righteous man turneth away from his righteousness that he hath committed and doeth that which is neither quite lawful not quite right, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in holiness."
One other profound saying deserves quotation: "I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy." It implies a shifting of emphasis from "virtues" to "values" which is characteristic of much modern thought. We are to think more of the integrity of knowledge than of our wretched individual merits. But perhaps the most significant phase of Butler's thought is his insistence upon the fact that ultimate explanations are beyond us, and that the deepest purposes of life are, and should remain, unconscious. The transcendental affirmations of the Romantics must give place to generalisations depending, not on the voice of revelation or the lonely insight of inspired men, but on the practical experience of generations of mankind.
Butler represents fully, subtly, and with a delightful flavour of ironic humor, one important current in modern literature; and his insistence upon the right and duty of free enquiry and the careful practical testing of beliefs has, we may hope, had a permanent effect. But the times change swiftly. Butler's doctrine of the mean has been left behind by many of his contemporaries and successors, and signs are not wanting that the literature of our day is again attempting to answer those insoluble questions which challenge eternally the intellect and imagination of man.
Frankston and Somerville Standard (Vic. : 1921 - 1939), Saturday 11 June 1932, page 3
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