it is thus, and incurably thus, that we see England; as it was thus that Horace, the true Roman, saw Italy: and though in Britain

Today the Roman and his trouble

Are ashes under Uricon

we keep the lesson learnt. Other nations extend, or would extend, their patriotism over large spaces superficially: ours (or so much of it as, in Meredith's phrase, is ‘accepted of song') ever cuts down through the strata for its wellsprings, intensifies itself upon that which, untranslatable to the foreigner, is comprised for us in a single easy word— Home. We do not, in our true hours as all our glorious poetry attests-brag of England as a world-power, actual or potential. Blame it who will upon our insularity, we do habitually narrow and intensify our national passion upon the home and the hearths now to be defended. And I say this, who said just now that our Rhine was seven

seas.

PATRIOTISM IN ENGLISH

WE

LITERATURE. II.

I

E talked last time, Gentlemen, of a certain shyness -often translating itself into irony-shared by our nation with great nations of the past when it comes to talking of that sacred emotion, love of one's country. In ordinary social life we know that a well-bred man naturally inclines to let his ancestry (or his rank; or his riches, if he have them; or any personal distinction he has won) go silently for granted; not undervaluing them, but taught to see them in their true value as gifts at the best held in trusteeship from the gods. We know the instinct of such a man towards his fellows; that it is constantly courteous, that it never says or seems to say, 'I am as good as you,' but always prefers the implication, 'You are as good as I.' We know that he keeps his heart as a mirror for other men's feelings, lest he should wound them; that even in controversy (as Newman says) his disciplined intellect is candid, considerate, indulgent, since he throws himself into the minds of his opponents and accounts for their mistakes.

So a nation such as France, or England, whose titledeeds time can no longer question, may cherish indeed certain inveterate foibles-even certain inveterate vices of character-which its fellows will smile at or deplore: but it will long ago have realised that it cannot have the moon, that (as the saying is) all sorts go to make a world, that

civilised men must give and take. It will long ago have rid itself of bumptiousness, of that itch for self-assertion which is the root-bane of good manners.

Now the general good manners of Europe have been vexed for a generation by a people, raw in character and uncouth of speech, which has prospered by dint of bravery to a very high degree. Having prospered beyond hope by this pugnacious self-assertion, it has set itself since 1870 not only to philosophise its primitive instincts but to impose that philosophy upon the civilised nations into whose circle it had so complacently forced a seat.

"The be-all and end-all of a State is Power'-'True Patriotism consists in Self-assertiveness'-'What we want, it follows that we must have'-I will not weary you, today, Gentlemen, with confuting this doctrine. Long ago, on a hot day in a courtyard in Athens, Thrasymachus announced it, rehearsing all the advantages of the unjust man; and was laid on his back, wondering what had happened.

II

The high teaching of the world was not to be put down by Thrasymachus, in his day, and is not to be put down in ours by the neo-Darwinists who teach that life, for nations as for individuals, is a kind of dog-fight, and its object self-assertion. Christ at any rate taught that he who would save his soul must first lose it: and that doctrine informs good literature, even down to the artless self-surrender of our own Nut Browne Mayde:

Sith I have here been partynere

With you of joy and bliss,
I must also part of your woe
Endure, as reason is:

Yet I am sure of one pleasure,

And shortly it is this—

That where ye be, me seem'th, pardè,

I could not fare amiss.

In good literature, as in the Gospel, the self-assertor is, like Malvolio, a self-deceiver. 'What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' 'Love thy neighbour as thyself." "This law,' says a muchquoted German general, 'can claim no significance for the relations of one country to another, since its application to politics would lead to a conflict of duties.'

Believe me, a man who talks like that has been educated —that is to say, has had himself ‘drawn out'-beyond his capacity to bear the strain. These are no times for men to make fetishes of tall words, even of words so tall as 'education' and 'religion.' These are times for clear sight into the values of things. Without clear thinking religion will not help us: for a stupid man, who cannot see clearly what he means by it, religion may easily be-and indeed not seldom is the wickedest influence in the world. His heart will bleed over Louvain while he sacks it, and with gathering confidence he will promise, so he be allowed to do the same to Calais, to reward the Almighty (Who knows about crosses) with the decoration of an iron one. So with education: some men may as easily have too much education as too much religion. It is admittedly bad to have none; it is possibly, nay certainly, worse to have more than by character or intelligence you are adapted for. It has been the curse of Germany that, mistaking the human end of education and misconceiving what 'power' means in the saying 'Knowledge is Power,' she has strained herself to it beyond preparation of ancestry or manners.

III

Now I propose to examine for a few minutes this morning, first the rationale, and afterwards some results, of this German self-assertiveness as it has invaded in our day the field of study with which we here are particularly concerned -I mean the study of English literature. Into what error soever the course of my examination may betray me, I at least commit none in starting from a fact which is one of common knowledge-that German professors and scholars have invaded that field with great assiduity.

You will not so readily agree-maybe you will not agree at all—with what I am going to say next. But I say it nevertheless. Every literature being written in a language -every great literature commanding a masterly style of its own language and appealing to an almost infinitely delicate acquaintance with its meanings, an almost infinitely delicate sense of its sounds, even to semi-tones and demi-semi-tones -no foreigner can ever quite penetrate to the last excellence of an unfamiliar tongue. I know this to be a hard saying: and I utter it very reluctantly because it is wormwood to me to own myself congenitally debarred-though it be in common with all modern men- -from entering the last shrine of beauty (say) in a chorus of Sophocles. But I am sure that it is so. Lovely as we may divine the thrill to be (or rather to have been for those who had ears to hear)— educative as it may be even in tantalising our thirst—I am sure that no modern Englishman can ever quite reach back to the lilt of a Sophoclean chorus; still less to its play of vowel notes. I doubt even if by taking most careful thought he can attain to the last beauties of a sonnet by Leconte de Lisle or Heredia.

You may urge that, Latin and Greek being dead languages which we are agreed in various ways to mispro