until the present time has been not more in method than in charm. A good French review-a review, for example, by Jules Lemaître-delights like a good story, while it instructs in the best possible way. Not infrequently it happens that the review of a book is much more interesting than the book itself. On the other hand, German criticism, being especially scientific, is likely to be somewhat dry, and never can appeal to an equally large class of minds. English critics have perceived this educational value in the French method, and it is noteworthy that such a critic as Mr. Gosse, who has obtained distinction both as a German and a Scandinavian scholar, never allowed himself to be influenced by German methods of critical analysis. Now the literature of English criticism during the latter part of the present century, has been made almost entirely by French influence. In what other directions is the same influence to be seen?

In the beginning I said that I was going to speak of the general relation between French and contemporary English literature. We owe to French influence also something in poetry, and something in fiction, but not so much as might be supposed. In poetry the French of today had little to teach Englishmen, for English poetry is much more developed than English prose. There are, however, marks of the great French romantic poets in the work of our own Victorian poets-in Swinburne a great deal, in Rossetti a little, in Tennyson scarcely anything. This is curious, that the poet of all who most influenced modern English is the one Englishman who had least to learn from the French. The forms of which English poetry is capable have almost been exhausted. Therefore the influence of French forms could not be much. What could be borrowed from French poetry would be feeling; and the poets who have borrowed from the French have been those who allowed certain influences to appear in their poetry not in accordance with real English. feeling. Baudelaire and Gautier, who particularly helped Swinburne to colour his verse, were poets of sensation-sen

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sation of a kind which English feeling usually rejects. may say that the influence of French poetry upon English poetry has been very small during the Victorian poetry, and has been chiefly in the direction of increased colour and sensuous charm.

As for the novel, the French do not appear to have taught us anything. No great English novelist of the period has successfully attempted to write upon French models. Of course, the naturalistic school, the school of Zola and the others, had its message for English novel writers, and experiments were made, but none of them has been very successful. If we can speak of any French influence in this direction, it can only be the influence of theory-the theory of Realism. Moreover, it is remarkable that at the present time literary novels have almost ceased to be written by Englishmen. Take any French novel, noteworthy or not, and you will find that it is beautifully written; the style is always admirable. But although fifteen hundred new books are promised for the month of December-that is, next month-by English publishers, I doubt whether among them all will be one beautifully written novel. The novel is multiplying; but it is also deteriorating. It would indeed be a very good thing if English writers of novels could be induced to imitate the workmanship of the French. The trouble is money. Novel-writing in English has become a money-making business, and the public do not care about style. The last great writer of novels who had a style was Stevenson.

In another direction, however, French fiction is influencing English fiction-the direction of the Short Story. You may think it strange, but it is nevertheless true that until within very recent times the English reading public did not care for English short stories, and English publishers would not publish them. Yet the very same public would buy thousands of volumes of short stories in French, and read them with delight. Perhaps it was thought that only

Frenchmen could write really great stories of this kind. The thought was altogether wrong. Perhaps no English writer living can write a short story quite as well as a Frenchman, except Rudyard Kipling. But there is now a growing demand for short stories, and many clever writers are trying to imitate the French in this way, even in the matter of style. But it is curious to observe how the change was brought about. French literature directly influenced, not English literature in this matter, but American. America first yielded to this influence; the work of Poe, Hawthorne, and later Bret Harte, considerably influenced by French writers, at last yielded fruit. An immense number of books of little stories were produced in America after 1860 or 1870; the best of these became popular in England; and then came the short stories of Stevenson and Kipling. Before that some English writers, like Dickens and Lytton, wrote wonderful short stories, but the public only read them because they were already familiar with the novels of the same authors. I remember a most beautiful little story called "A Bird of Passage" by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, published in England early in the seventies; it was ignored in England, but the American public were delighted with it. Now we can fairly state that the English prejudice in favour of the novel, as against the short story, is breaking down, and that this again is due to French influence.

Thus we have evidence of French influence in criticism, a little in poetry, and a little in fiction. But in other departments of literature the English remain very much behind their neighbours. In the drama the French remain incomparably superior. Indeed, French plays are constantly being translated for English theatres; while no great English drama, of an actable kind, has appeared during the period. And there is yet another department of literature in which the French have much to teach the English-the Sketch, the essay of observation. In that we are still immeasurably behind.

CHAPTER VII

THE PROSE OF SMALL THINGS

THERE can be no doubt that in spite of what is called the "tyranny of fiction" the novel is slowly dying, and changing shape. There will be some new form of novel developed, no doubt, but it must be something totally different from the fiction which has been tyrannizing over literature for nearly a hundred years. Also poetry is changing; and the change is marked here, much more than it is in fiction, by a period of comparative silence.

Our business today is chiefly with prose; but some of the remarks which I shall have to make will also apply to poetry. A branch of literature dies only when the subject has been exhausted-at least this is the rule under natural conditions. What subjects have been exhausted in English literature to such a degree that further treatment of them has become impossible, or seemingly impossible? It is an interesting question, and will repay attention.

First of all we should remember that literature has its fashions, like everything else. Some fashions live but for a season, just like some particular fashion in dress. But there are other fashions or habits which last for very long periods, just as the custom of wearing silk or wool, irrespective of the shape of the garments, may last for hundreds of years or even longer. We are apt, on account of the length of time during which certain literary customs last, to imagine them much more natural and indispensable than they really are. The changes now likely to take place in English literature are not changes in the form of the garment, so much as changes in the material of which the garment is to be made. But so long has this material been used that many of us have been accustomed to think of the sub

stance as literature itself, and as indispensable to literary creation.

To illustrate better what I mean let me ask you to think for a moment about what has most strongly impressed you as making a great difference between Western literatures generally and your own. You will understand at once that I am not speaking of form. When you read English poetry or fiction, French poetry or fiction, German poetry or fiction, and I might say drama as well, the impression you receive has a certain strangeness, a certain tone in it particularly foreign; and in every case or nearly every case this tone is about the same. Am I not right in suggesting that the sense of strangeness which you receive from foreign literature is particularly owing to the way in which the subject of sex-relations is treated in all literature of the West? Love has been the dominant subject throughout Western literature for hundreds of years, and that is why I think you feel that literature especially foreign to your own habits of thinking and feeling.

But the very fact that you do so find this difference, ought to have suggested to you that, after all, there must be something unnatural, artificial, in this passionate element of Western verse. Human character and human feeling are not essentially different on opposite sides of the world. The fundamental sentiments of society are everywhere pretty nearly the same, because they are based upon very nearly the same kinds of moral and social experience. If the descendant of one civilization finds something extremely different in the thinking and acting of the descendant of another civilization, he has a right to suppose that the difference is really a difference of custom. And customs must change just like fashions.

Fifty years ago-no, even twenty-five years ago-it would have been considered almost absurd to say that the subject of love in European literature was only a passing thing, a fashion, a custom assuredly destined to give place