PEOOBEDINGS FOE 1891. XXXVII 



nest, it is true, of extraordinary promise — but the full harvest is yet to come. In giving this estimate 

 of what our own age has done, there is no intention of doing any injustice to the great literary pro- 

 ducts of England and America throughout the whole of this century ; but in judging from the highest 

 point of view, it is possible to be impartial and not to allow ourselves to be unduly influenced by 

 the bulk which the present has when it is too close to our vision. Matthew Arnold i-ightly says that 

 " the burst of creative activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about 

 it something premature ; . . . in other words, that it did not know enough. This makes Byron so 

 empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Wordsworth even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in com- 

 pleteness and variety." Neither can any of their successors be said to have attained absolutely the 

 first rank. Tennyson is too much of the mere Englishman. Faultless artist, so far as form is con- 

 cerned, his substance is due to Milton and Keats, with the local colouring of the insular English life 

 of his own time. Robert Browning is far wider in outlook, in thought, in sympathy and in scholar- 

 ship, but he will not be accepted as the full and final interpreter of our century. America, of course, 

 could not be expected to produce such a man, for " the life and the world of modern times are very 

 complex things," and America is so big that it has scarcely been able to realize itself, still less to under- 

 stand the modern world. Longfellow is little more than a reflection of the English poets. Whittier's 

 verse flows sweetly and is always pure, but can much more be honestly said ? That he is a Quaker is his 

 strength and his weakness. Everyone respects the Quakers, but the whole world will never put on their 

 sober garb. Walt Whitman is in sj'mpathy with the democratic spirit of the age, but he is hopelessly 

 formless and chaotic. Lowell ismaster of an original form of satire, but satire is not by any means the 

 highest expression of literature. Emerson is the greatest literary man that America has produced, 

 but he is too ethereal to become daily food for millions. When literature is on so vast a scale and of 

 so many varied and continually changing types of excellence, when its functions are so lofty and all- 

 pervasive, and when the history to which we have referred proves the incapacity of the ablest men to 

 fix its bounds, it is clear that it would be folly for the English Literature Section of the Royal Society 

 of Canada to undertake anything like the work of the French Academy. A society in London would 

 not be allowed to exercise the function of preserving the purity of the language or of fixing literary 

 standards ; much less would a society in the United States, Canada or Australia. The question, then, 

 comes up: What function can we discharge ? Can we be of any use to the State? For if not, the 

 section may serve the society best by performing the " happy-despatch." It seems to me that there is 

 a function that our section might discharge, a work related to the condition of things in Canada and 

 to practical life, both in the lower and higher sense of the word practical, and therefore more useful to 

 the State than either of the aims which the French Academy set before itself. It might organize a 

 course of study that should bring out the educational value that is implicit in English literature, and 

 especially its practical relations to life, for use in Canadian schools from the lowest to the highest. 

 For what is the highest university but a school I As Carlyle says, all that a university can do for us 

 is still but what the first school began doing — teach us to read. If we could do anything towards 

 organizing such a course of study, we would help to solve a pressing problem in education and confer 

 an inestimable boon on the State, for the highest object of the State must be the education of the 

 people. 



Let me explain more fully what is included in this object which I contemplate, its practical 

 value, the means now being taken to secure its realization, and the relation that our section would 

 occupy to provincial and local societies that have the same end in view. 



The fundamental principle in education must be to develop all that is best in man, and so fit him 

 for the best work that he can do in the world, and for the destiny to which we believe him to be heir. 

 That only can be called a liberal education which deals with each scholar as a man and not a creature 

 intended to be a mere craftsman, which lifts the individual out of his self-life and puts him in proper 

 relations to the past and to his work. The great mass of men mast get this education through actual 

 connection with the world in their discharge of daily duties and their relations to the family, the 



