boys in amoebaean song for a floral wreath; enterprise is hunting of the stag; the wisdom of age is a Meliboeus who has been at court and come back to the simple life; music is Colin Clout piping apace; even controversial theology can come in as Palinodie and Piers' translating into rural terms the Catholic and Protestant sentiment. So artificial a thing would hardly have maintained itself, but for the power of this principle of literary echoing. And so pastoral poetry is seen at its best when, in the hands of the great masters, this echoed motive is made to mingle with other motives of poetry. The Sixth Book of the Faerie Queene gives several cantos to a pastoral episode; but flavors it with the motive of chivalry represented in Calidore, and brings it into contact with the rude realities of life in another conventional motive of brigandage. And, more elaborately still, Shakespeare, in As You Like It, gives full scope to the pastoral matter, but proceeds to play upon it a triple stream of humor-the humor of Jaques, of Orlando and Rosalind, and of Touchstone until the artificial has been dissipated into common-sense, and unreality has been led to the practical conclusion of a quadruple wedding.3 'Spenser's Shepheards Calender (Maye). 2 Cantos ix-xi of Book VI. 3 This has been worked out in detail in chapter xv of my Shakespeare as Artist. CHAPTER XXVI LANGUAGE AS A FACTOR IN LITERARY ART Language, as the medium in which literature expresses itself, has a natural place in literary art. At the same time, language is an independent study, or group of studies, wide in field and copious in matter, a large part of which has little or nothing to do with literature. It thus becomes a difficult problem to determine how far language is a factor in literary art. The traditional study of literature has signally failed to solve this problem. It began with a great principle-its recognition of the Greek and Latin Classics as a citadel of literary study. This was theoretically sound, though theoretically imperfect, since (as we have seen) the Hebrew Classics have the same claim on us. But in passing from the theory to the practice of education the traditional study fell into the confusion between language and literature, in its tacit assumption that these Classical literatures were to be studied only in the original languages, an assumption that ignored the importance of translation as a substitute for or addition to study in the original. Now, in the competing claims of language and literature, language study has the advantage that it lies on the outer surface of literature. Language study is like the mediaeval barons who built castles at the mouths of rivers, and exacted toll of those who wished to pass to their destination in the interior. The Classical languages make a heavy toll for those who are seeking the Classical literatures. For the large majority of those educated in schools and colleges the interpretation of exegesis in Latin and Greek, with its machinery of grammar and dictionary, excludes the interpretation of perspective on which literary culture depends. No doubt there is a minority who, through linguistic aptitude or other advantages, come to read the foreign languages with ease: for these there is a rich literary culture, though this is combined with loss of perspective for literature in general. For the majority, their literary education has come to an end before it has been in a position to begin. The traditional study has failed, not through its insistence upon the Classical literatures, but through its failure in practice to give the average man or woman any heart knowledge of these literatures. It has been a foundation principle of this work that we must recognize an outer and an inner study of literature: the inner study is the essential; what of the outer study can be combined with this must be decided for each case as it arises. Language belongs to the outer literary study: we are concerned here with literary art. What this chapter attempts is to indicate some points of practical discrimination in linguistic study, as to where it does and where it does not bear upon literary art. Distinguish I Etymology (linguistic science-outer study) Metaphorical Vitality of Words (literary artinner study) An important point in literary art is the force and vitality of words. But metaphor is a great element in the vitality of a word, and an element that fluctuates with its history. Here then is a point at which linguistic and literary study meet. Etymology, the history of words, belongs to linguistic study: it is a science of facts and language connections. Of such etymological history only a very small part-as it were the accidents of etymology-has any bearing upon the literary quality of words: but so far as it has relevance it is of high literary importance. Metaphor is one of the principal sources from which the force of words, as distinguished from their meaning, is derived: but the metaphorical force of a particular word depends upon certain stages in its etymological history. After an association of ideas has been brought out, perhaps in the first instance by a simile, and then, becoming more familiar, has been sufficiently expressed by a metaphor, it becomes at length familiar enough to be suggested by a single word, and thus there is a gain to the vocabulary of the language. But as this metaphoric word is more and more used it becomes of wider and wider application, and the clearness of the original metaphor becomes gradually obscured, until often it is entirely lost, and (for aesthetic purposes) the word is dead. Thus the life history of a word may pass through three main stages, which we may think of as the stage of the seed, of the tree, of the wood. A. The word is a mere token for a particular idea; and so lifeless. BA. The word is metaphorically applied to a second idea, carrying with it the first idea as an associated image: it is now full of metaphorical vitality. B. By indiscriminate use of the word in the second significance the associated image is blurred and finally lost; the word is now a lifeless token for the second idea. So long as a word is a mere token for a particular thing, it has there is no force or beauty meaning, but nothing of vitality. 'Chair' is a token for one thing, 'table' for another thing; in such tokens; if usage permitted the chair might just as well be called a table, and the table a chair. In this token stage words are lifeless, like seed. But, by metaphor, the word may be used to signify a second thing, carrying with it its first significance as an associated image: this association of two significances in a single word fills the word full of metaphorical vitality, and it is a living thing like a tree. But as the word in its new significance is more and more indiscriminately applied, it becomes more and more difficult for it to retain the image of its first meaning: at last this is lost, and the word becomes a life less token for what was its second significance, as when a tree has been cut up into wood. Let us take a particular case, and follow the life history of a highly poetical word. A. Vast waste, desert (Bohemia and Sicilia) shook hands over a vast1 As long as a journey over a vast A vast journey (i. e., long, like crossing a desert) Vast strides, vastly pleased; (the trumpet) sounded B. Vast long or big Originally, vast is etymologically identical with waste, and signifies a desert or blank space: the two friends in Bohemia and Sicilia can shake hands as if there were only a blank space between; the vast of the night is the empty hours when nothing is doing. A simile connects the idea of desert with the idea of length, the two (as always in simile) keeping their distinctness. Then, by metaphor, the word vast is made to have the new significance of long, keeping its first significance as an image-long, like a journey over a desert; it is beautifully applied by Milton to Chaos in the phrase vast infinitude and vast vacuity.3 This is the stage (BA) in which the word has its highest vitality. The next stage (B a) shows vast, in its new significance of long, in miscellaneous applications, so that the metaphor of the desert is becoming obscured. At last the metaphor is lost, and vast can be used where such an image is impossible: as when we hear of Satan's vast strides, or the vast circumference of his I Winter's Tale, I, i, 32. 2 Hamlet, I, ii, 198. 3 Paradise Lost, iii, 711; ii, 932. Note also the striking use of the word in application to the precipitous beight of heaven above hell: vast abrupt (ii, 409): as if a desert were set up on end. |