English literature. Leaving out of consideration Shakspere, whom it is so hard to bring into any generalisation, one may roughly say that the spirit of English literature at its best is prophetic, that the essential characteristics of the books which are the record of the thoughts and feelings of the English race are virility, directness, unconsciousness, prepossession with the higher sides of life, and a noble and uplifting purpose. Spenser's Faerie Queene is a glorification of purity and the virtues of chivalry; Addison aimed to reform the licentious manners of his day; the one constant motive of Swift's morbid genius was to castigate the vices and follies of men; and Dr. Johnson, the stoutest Englishman of them all, was a conscious force for righteousness. The nineteenth century opened with the aspiring dreams of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley; and its great prose writers, Thackeray, Dickens, Carlyle, Emerson, and the rest, were all consciously preachers. The ideal of art merely for the sake of beauty has never taken a deep hold on the men of our race. Keats, who above all English poets revelled in sheer beauty and sensuousness of form, is commonly and naturally thought of as a poet's poet. It remains true, therefore, in a broad way with the substance of English literature as with the style, that the English Bible stands as the norm about which all the rest can be

arranged and as the standard by which it is not unreasonable to estimate it.

Certainly an intimate acquaintance with the English Bible is the best possible preparation for a study of English literature, or for the matter of that, of any literature. A chief difficulty in coming to any absolute and permanent judgment in such matters is the variety and the instability of taste. Few of the persons who own sets of Shakspere read much in his plays; for the character of his speech is far enough away from us to make it for most people something of an effort to acquire the taste for reading him. The fashions of the eighteenth century, moulded by Dryden and ossified by the followers of Dr. Johnson, are a weariness of the flesh to most readers to-day; and the only thing certain about our current literature is that much of its conscious simplicity and naturalness of expression will seem slipshod to the people of two or three generations from now, when the pendulum shall have swung back to other tendencies. Yet in all this incessant change of tastes and fashions the Bible holds its own. Indeed men were more familiar with it in the days of the Johnsonian supremacy, when all standards of style were almost diametrically opposed to it, than they are to-day. Men of all classes and all degrees of education have found equal delight in its stories and its teachings, from John Bunyan, the

tinker, and the peasant father of Robert Burns to Scott and Browning and even the supercilious genius of Matthew Arnold; and to-day, when it is so little read even by church-going people, one can be certain of one thing, and that is that its effect will be in no way limited by station or education. Here, then, is a work which it seems safe to say is of something like universal appeal to men of our race, a book which one may therefore look on as touching the soul of the race as a whole. For this reason, therefore, if for no other, one must hope to see the study of the Bible begin to take a place in the study of English literature.

APPENDIX

THE following books will prove useful to persons who desire further knowledge of the problems discussed and the results attained by the Higher Criticism through a historical study of both the Old and the New Testament, or of the history of the English Bible. The copious references which they contain will lead a student as far as he cares to go. I have selected for mention books which are moderate in tone, cautious in judgment, and copious in their statement of evidence.

For a general introduction to the Higher Criticism of the Old Testament: W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 2d edition, 1900.

For the background of the New Testament: A. C. McGiffert, A History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age, Revised edition, 1900.

For the Old Testament: S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 8th edition, 1898.

For the New Testament: Part II of A Biblical Introduction, by Bennett and Adeney, 2d edition, 1904.

For the English Bible: B. F. Westcott, A General View of the History of the English Bible, 3d edition (W. A. Wright), 1905; and R. Lovett, The Printed English Bible, in Present Day Primers, n.d.

For general reference Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.