SECTION C ENGLISH LITERATURE 



(Hall 1, September 22, 10 a. TO.) 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR FRANCIS B. GUMMERE, Haverford College. 

 PROFESSOR JOHANNES HOOPS, University of Heidelberg. 



THE RELATION OF ENGLISH LITERATURE TO OTHER 



SCIENCES 



BY FKANCIS BARTON GUMMERE 



[Francis Barton Gummere, Professor of English, Haverford College, b. Burlington, 

 New Jersey, 1855. A.B. Haverford College, 1872; A.B. Harvard College, 1875; 

 Ph.D. Freiburg University, 1881; studied at University of Christiania, Norway, 

 and University of Berlin, 1887-88. Instructor in English, Harvard College, 

 1881-82; Head Master of Swain Free School, New Bedford, 1882-87. Member 

 of American Philosophical Society, Modern Language Association of America. 

 Advisory Editor Modern Philology. Author of Germanic Origins; Old English 

 Ballads; Beginnings of Poetry.} 



ANY literature in the vernacular must always pay a heavy price 

 for that quality which may indeed insure it against neglect, but 

 which cannot fail to invite the charlatan and the unprofessional 

 patron. The accessibility of English literature is in vivid contrast 

 to the professional safeguards of such studies I take the late 

 President Porter's example as quaternions; those forts and towers, 

 one ma}' be sure, shall never be " a joy of wild asses." But the abuse 

 of this accessibility is by no means confined to Baconians and other 

 lithe creatures who snuff up the wind of literary doctrine; scholars 

 themselves have not been free from blame. What Bernheim says l 

 of history is true in even greater degree of literature; the represent- 

 atives of other sciences think themselves justified in dealing with 

 literature from their own point of view, for their own purposes, with 

 their own methods, and without any special preparation within 

 the literary pale. They apply theories and formulas, which may be 

 valid for their own science, but which are inapplicable to the pro- 

 blems of literature until tested by the control of literary facts and 

 submitted to methods of literary research. In this relation of English 

 literature to other sciences, the scholar's one duty is defense; and 

 defense, obviously enough, lies in a rigorous demand for adequate 

 preparation, for exact knowledge of the English tongue in all its 

 stages, for acquaintance, in reasonable degree, with the sources and 

 the texts, and with their mutual relations as documents of literature. 

 1 Lrhrbuch dcr hi-storischen Methode, 1894, p. GS. 



