CHAPTER XVII. THE ETHICAL CURRENT. XVII. The diffi culty of unone's own HEN a painter draws his own portrait, CHAPTER he has the advantage of a mirror in which he can see himself at a proper distance. But when we attempt to derstanding understand or to delineate the age we live in, time. we are apt to forget that we have no chance of viewing it from a sufficient distance that we are too much in it to be able to see how it looks on the broad plain of history. Perhaps no collection of opinions would be more curious than those which even great thinkers have pronounced upon their own times. Thus we find Bacon expressing a "doubt that this age of the world is somewhat upon the descent of the wheel." Hooker complained that the same age was deficient in learning. Bishop King described it as "this prodigal and intemperate age of the CHAPTER World.” Michael Drayton summed it up as XVII. "this lunatic age." The period so decried is The opinions the grand Elizabethan epoch, which of Eliza bethans on extol as the proudest in our annals. the Eliza we now And yet bethan age. of Drayton, who could speak of the time in which he flourished as lunatic, Ben Jonson says, "I find in him, which is in most of my compatriots, too great an admiration of their country." The opinions of contem the present One naturally recurs to these opinions conporaries on cerning the Elizabethan age, when we hear what age. even men of ability can now assert regarding our Victorian era. Archdeacon Hare says it is an age of superficial character, feeble-minded, earthworshipping and self-idolizing. Mr. John George Phillimore assures us that all strength has gone from our literature, and that we are little better than the beasts. Mr. Matthew Arnold tells us that we have no ideas, and that England is hindmost in the intellectual race which Europe is now running. When amid this discontent of the present, which is the natural condition of the human mind, we venture to descry what good there may be in things as they are, then comes from Mr. Hare, and Mr. Phillimore, and Mr. Arnold, the echo of Jonson's chiding of Drayton, that we are too much given to love our own country and our own times. There is but one settled All this conflict of opinion is a warning to us opinion as not to be too certain that we ever quite under XVII. stand our age or our country. I know of but one CHAPTER settled opinion as to the character of the English race. From the dawn of modern literature there to the English has been a constant confession of its physical character. beauty. Upon other points it may be possible to raise a doubt. We pride ourselves on English honour; but the Spaniards of old accused us of falsehood, and the French to this day have a strong opinion as to the perfidy of Albion. We think that never was a nation more industrious than ours; but in the days of the last three Tudors our countrymen were denounced for their sloth and their idleness, and at a still later period George Herbert could cry out, "Oh, England! full of sin, but most of sloth." We talk of merry England; and there was a time when the joyful character of English singing was famous throughout Europe in a proverb of French origin (Galli cantant, Angli jubilant, Hispani plangunt, Germani ululant, Itali caprizant); but on the other hand we are also famous among foreigners for our melancholy. We boast of our philanthropy, our large-heartedness and our tolerance; but the nations upbraid us for lack of sympathy and for insular prejudice, while one of the most sober of French critics, M. St. Marc Girardin, speaks of "la misanthropie chagrine du génie Anglais." The one excellence allowed The beauty to us is the gift of personal beauty, which indeed lish race is nothing except it be the symbol of a higher undisputed. of the Eng is alone And so also the Spanish poet, Juan Lorenzo CHAPTER Segura, as translated by Bowring: Impetuous and light Are the citizens of Spain, The French of valiant knights And always in the van Are the young men of Champagne, The Bretons are renowned For their zealous love of art; The Lombards ever act An ostentatious part; The English are most fair But withal most false of heart. There is but one voice upon this subject ever since the Pope Gregory expressed his opinion in the quibble that the Angles might be taken for angels. XVII. thew opinion as master cur it is critical. It is with a diffidence inspired by these Mr. Matexamples of failure that we must now attempt Arnold's to ascertain the direction of the ethical current to the in our time-the master current which deter- rent of our mines the movement of art, as of life and of all times, that literature. And in setting about this inquiry we have first of all to come to terms with Mr. Matthew Arnold, who has pronounced a very decided opinion upon the subject. Mr. Arnold holds that the main movement of European thought just now is, what it has been for years past, a critical movement. The age is nothing if not critical; criticism is what Europe |