ENGLISH LITERATURE AND OTHER SCIENCES 411 



on the scholar's domain; and there is as good evidence for the need 

 of a sane alliance with sociological theories in the unsatisfactory 

 results of those studies of authors which depend altogether on 

 psychological analysis; the sight of these inverted gentlemen diving 

 or burrowing into the alleged mind of a Goethe is not inspiring, and 

 Goethe himself would have been the first to recommend them a bout 

 with even sociological hard facts. 1 Sainte-Beuve's way was far 

 more productive. And for the scholar himself, even Taine's way is 

 not yet abandoned; with certain smoothings and straightenings it 

 will still prove the best way. As the atmosphere slowly clears up, 

 it is seen that of all the host who have tried the task, Taine alone 

 came near to writing a real history of English literature; he did not 

 quite do it, no; but only with him does one have the sense of a 

 whole literature in broad and general movement, yet without loss of 

 the sense of values and the delicate shading of the parts. To come 

 back to the old disconnected array of summaries and appreciations, 

 with more or less eloquence about the divinity of art, would be 

 suicidal. A recent historian of English literature has the air of intro- 

 ducing one to his club, and recommending the more important 

 members. This will never do. Suum cuique. The true history of 

 English literature should not be a series of criticisms, any more than 

 the criticism of some one English author should be a general history 

 and treatise on contemporary life, with a few apologetic individual 

 details. What is really needed by way of correction for Taine's method 

 is not only to reckon with the literary shortcomings of the work, 

 but to get a new and sound idea of environment and social conditions 

 from sociology in its modern form, and from history at its best. 



Taine's most vulnerable point, of course, was his treatment of the 

 Early English period; he knew little about it, and, when he wrote, 

 little was known about it by anybody except the Germans. Here his 

 theory of the milieu was at its worst, simply because he combined 

 a ton of theory with two or three ounces of fact. The Englishman 

 of that early period, reasoned Taine, gorged himself with pork, or 

 starved on acorns, and drank oceans of beer; he fought incessantly; 

 he had no manners and few books; hence a literature of pork or 

 acorns, beer, clownishness, ignorance, and turmoil of fight, a 

 literature which Taine read only in scanty excerpts of an inadequate 

 translation. But it does not follow that the modern historian should 

 give up Taine's sociological idea. He can well keep it, and practice 

 it. provided only that he cleave to his facts; and they are difficult 



1 They seldom refer to their great master's advice: 

 Wer die Dichtkunst will verstehen 

 Muss ins Land der Dichtung gehen; 

 Wer den Dichter will verstehen 

 Muss in Dichters Lande gehen, 

 which seems to cover the case. 



