grow,

Whatever change may be,

You never can teach either oak or beech

To be aught but a greenwood tree.

And English is one with its own greenwood trees in this respect. It will grow as it likes or not at all; and if you try the ars topiaria upon it you will only make stunted abortions or playthings at the best, pretty enough, but obviously out of their kind and element. When a certain French poet undertook to teach poetry in twenty (or was it thirty?) lessons he was not in reality uttering either a paradox or a bravado. Not only can a very great deal of what makes poetry in French be taught in lessons (the precise number does not matter), but what is much more important, the greatest poet in the world could not write good French poetry without such lessons given orally or by reading. No amount of genius will teach a man, except by pure accident, to break his twelve-syllabled lines at the sixth, and his ten-syllabled ones at the fourth syllable; to tip alternate, and only alternate, pairs of rhymes with e and so forth. Of such rules, of such form as this there is practically nothing in English verse or prose, both of which justify themselves by the effect, or not at all. In the same way, English is much more tolerant than French, if French can be said to be tolerant and if English can be said to be intolerant, of peculiarities and neologisms of phrase. I know that there is just now a school of Frenchmen who are trying to break the intolerance down in France; and I know that there not only is, but always has been, a school of Englishmen who strongly object to the tolerance in England. I can only say that, as usual, I look at history and judge by it securus. All the greatest Frenchmen, with hardly an exception, have been on the side of rigor; all the greatest Englishmen, with hardly an exception, have been on the side of latitude. If I were a Frenchman, I should be the fiercest of purists; as I am an Englishman, I choose to follow with unequal steps the seven-leagued strides of Shakespeare and Dryden and the rest, in taking a new word or a new construction, whenever it seems to me that the word or the construction is not intrinsically objectionable, that it is defensible by English analogy, and that it either supplies an actual want or furnishes a useful or ornamental alternative. But because I am thus for liberty in English, do I maintain that English has no form of its own that it is

En

case of " go as you please?" Most assuredly this is not the case. glish is probably if not certainly, a more difficult language to write really well than French; and it could not possibly be that if it were a mere "pidgin " dialect, composition in which were limited to the hanging together anyhow of a sufficient number of words to express the thought. It has its own forms, and very severe ones they are in their own way. But they are in some cases not easy, in others impossible to formulate in the ordinary way and sense. They are something like those ancient laws of various peoples which were never written down, and which it was a sort of sacrilege and violation of them to write down. They are transmitted by observance of the elders, by inference and calculation, sometimes, as it were, almost by an inherited and otherwise incommunicable instinct. A great Greek philosopher has been sometimes laughed at, and sometimes made a text to preach the weakness of philosophy, because he added to a definition, "and as the intelligent man would define it." That addition is essential to all our English laws and forms of literature. Where the Frenchman has a clear, positive enactment which is to take or to leave, the Englishman finds only a caution "as the intelligent man shall decide," or "unless the intelligent man shall decide otherwise."

It has always seemed to me that consideration of these points ought specially to affect the discussion of a question which is always being renewed in England (whether with entire seriousness or not it is difficult to say), the question whether a French Academy adjusted to the meridian of Greenwich would be a good thing for England. That question has been revived lately with increasing frequency, and it is particularly well-suited to certain characteristics of public life to-day. On one side of the matter, the personal side, I need say nothing here. I have no doubt at all that we could get together a very respectable, not to say a brilliant, Forty in England; and I have less than no doubt that some at least of those who were not included would be exceedingly angry at their exclusion. These things are incidental to Academies even in the countries where they exist. But an incident is not an essential. What I cannot see is the good that the Academy is to do in England when it is got together. The good that it is to do, and to some extent does, in France is quite clear. The "Forty Geese that guard the capitol " (it is only fair to

remember that that excellent jest was made by a goose who had failed of appointment as a guard) know exactly what they are appointed to do. They have to maintain the hard and fast rules to which we have already referred, to exemplify them in their own writing, to denounce the breach of them in others. Further, as even the hardest and fastest rules must sometimes admit of enlargement after a fashion, they have from time to time to signify certain relaxations and easements, not of the strictest form of French, for that is irrelaxable, but of what may be called the attitude of French official criticism, by admitting some innovator of undoubted genius or prevailing popularity to the charmed circle. They do this part of their duty a little less well than the other, but they do it fairly; and they do the other very well indeed. For you will observe that it is a duty which can be done by men not exactly of genius, almost as well as by men of genius, and perhaps even better. In the worst times, by the least distinguished of immortals, provided only that the individual members (which is ex hypothesi certain) are fairly educated and not in their rashest youth, the traditions of French form, which are so clear and so valuable, can be observed and championed. In the best times, the very best writers can but exemplify them with additions, can but show how the greatest talent or even genius can put up with them and yet suffer no loss. The advantage of this is obvious. It is not metaphor, but simple expression of fact, to say that a French Academician is in the position of a French judge. He has a clear code to expound and apply; and he can hardly be so abnormally stupid or so abnormally clever as not to be able to do so. The danger is that the code should lapse for want of exposition and application; and that is what he exists to prevent, and what his mere existence, such as he must almost necessarily be, does prevent of itself.

But how different is our state! I do not myself see how an English Academy could do any good, how it could even refrain from doing considerable harm, unless its members were, in large and permanent majority, men of genius endowed at once with consummate judgment and with almost superhuman catholicity. For we have no fixed rules to apply; we cannot take down a code and turn to article so and so, clause so and so, with a certainty of finding that it meets the case in hand. Unless we could always count on that

standing majority of men of genius, tempered in each case by judgment and sympathy, we should have mere stupidity dominant at one time, mere crotchet at another, mere exaggeration at a third. So far from having a fixed central exponent of the literary standard we should have ups and downs considerably worse than at present. We should not only neglect but crucify our Chattertons and our James Thomsons at one time; at another we should endow them all, Chattertons and others, for fear of accidents, at the public expense, to the intolerable annoyance of future generations. Now to maintain a standing majority of men of genius doubled with judgment and doubled again with catholicity on such a board is, I should imagine, a very dangerous attempt indeed. Allowing for illness and accident, we must keep at least thirty such out of the forty. Are we prepared always to do so? Could any country that literary history tells us of have done so? Remember, they must be men who have produced and can produce masterpieces in their own kind, or they will not here be respected. They must be able also to recognize masterpieces and promises of masterpieces in kinds the most different from their own. They must have at once the qualities of the chief justice and those of the wild Prince and Poins. They must be academic and Bohemian, creative and critical, full of intense individuality, and full of catholic appreciation. I have a very high idea of the powers of my countrymen, but I think we might try them too high in setting them such a task. It has not been invariably achieved to admiration even in France, where the conditions of themselves facilitate success. Is it worth while trying it here, where they are such as almost to assure failure?

If we turn to another point of the contrast—a point which has been more than once mentioned the contrast of spirit, we shall find ourselves on somewhat more perilous ground. The contrasts of outward form may be misinterpreted, but cannot be wholly missed. Yet, as the poet says:

Soul is form and doth the body make. And to the soul we must go. It is far harder and far more apparently presump. tuous to attempt to sum up the spirit of literature in a few words and minutes than in a few words to define its outwardly formal characteristics. It is especially hard in the case not of French but of English. Yet those whose minds have been

long in contact with the two literatures are here, even less than elsewhere, likely to come to any serious disagreement about them. There are five pairs of opposites, or at least of differences in the two, which I think would be acknowledged by most such persons. The first is the sobriety of French as opposed to that characteristic of English which presents itself to foreigners in the light that suggests to them the famous phrase "mad Englishman." The second, closely allied, is the predominant wit of French literature as opposed to the predominant humor of English. The third is the singular abundance of what may be called the mechanical inventiveness in French balanced by the discursive imagination of the English. The fourth is the clearness and precision which seem to be, as they were once boasted to be, wedded to the genius of the French language as opposed to our own proneness to the vague and obscure. The fifth is the prevalence of the critical spirit in French as opposed to a certain impatience of criticism proper which is extremely noticeable in English. Pray do not let these divisions of mine mislead anybody. I am not saying that all Frenchmen are witty, that all Englishmen are humorous (I wish to heaven they were!); that no Englishmen are witty, which would be conspicuously false, or that no Frenchmen are humorous, which would be though very generally by no means universally true. In the same way, no one of the other qualities mentioned is either universally present in the literature of the one nation, or universally absent in the literature of the other. But the division holds on the average of the two cases, and what holds still more strongly is that combination of these and other qualities which is present in the highest examples of each. Thus the French have never produced any man with that combination of sense of the vague, of imagination, and of humor which goes to make the very highest poetry; and I am not sure that we have ever produced any one with that mixture of sobriety, inventiveness, precision, wit, and critical spirit which goes to make the most perfect prose. The difference is the same at the other end of the scale. It is almost impossible for a Frenchman to write such bad prose as an Englishman writes easily and with joy; and though there is a strange characteristic about very bad poetry which makes all nations of the earth akin, I am not quite sure that an Englishman can write it quite so badly, with a badness so little relieved by mere absurdity, so little

SO

dependent upon technical faults, sheerly, purely, hopelessly bad, as that which comes naturally to some Frenchmen. For the mere sound of English is poetical, while that of French (third par ties, the only judges, will tell us this) is not; and so the English poetaster may blunder into a success, as the wandering and unconscious wind draws music from a harp. In French that is not to be done; and with the absence of art there is the absence of everything.

Yet another set of differences arises almost necessarily from the combination of the results of these two; but they are not on that accountless interesting. Although all languages more or less attempt, and attempt with more or less success, different kinds, still most of them, especially when they have such strong idiosyncrasies as the pair we are now surveying, devote themselves with peculiar success to this kind or to that. Of poetry proper we need say little, for what has been just said accounts for and disposes of it with fair completeness; but in prose and drama the case is different. With respect to drama I am not a very good judge, taking myself little pleasure in the theatre, and knowing little about it except as the incidental producer of some excellent and much execrable literature. I suppose we may not borrow from Marmontel his famous apol ogy that the English succeed better in poetry than the French because their genius is more poetical. But I never could see myself why the countrymen of Shakespeare, and Congreve, and Sheridan should have to borrow plays even from the countrymen of Molière. Probably, however, that mechanical and or derly inventiveness of which we have spoken is at the bottom of it. In prose it is much plainer sailing. We should almost be prepared to find from th considerations already advanced, and we do find as a matter of fact that the French excel us in oratory, in a certain kind of history, and, generally speaking, in the exposition of clearly understood facts and theories. The superiority of literary hack| work in France is a commonplace, a tru ism, almost (I am myself inclined to think) what some ingenious person called a fals ism. I have never been able to admit that the usual newspaper article in France, for instance, is better than with us, though it no doubt has a certain superficial air of superior order, logic (which is often desperately illogical), and general arrange. ment. But what in my years of constant miscellaneous reading of books fresh