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intention of the book-that is to say, the right ordering of a Christian's life (institutio). Thus it came at last to us, and we hear that, though many criticise and censure, there are more still who reap benefit from it."

All this time the head tutor had been speaking with great fluency, as one who by natural ability and constant practice was thoroughly used to communicating knowledge, and delighted in it. Nor were his hearers less pleased to listen than he to speak.1

1 Our author seems to have considered that a lofty-minded, pure, and edifying novel or romance, written with the style and diction of a master artist, was the very highest type of literary endeavour, and one of the most well-adapted means for permeating and uplifting the whole body of public opinion and morals.

He seems to have placed such a work above both oratory and poetry, as being the most free from all arbitrary fetters, and so comprehensive both in matter and style that both rhetoric and poetry could be intermingled with it, as he has shown by his excellent example in the present book.

Our author puts forward the opinion, an extremely original one at the time he wrote, that a prose romance dealing in a pure and natural manner with the ordinary incidents of human life, especially the life of the immense middle class, would be an extremely effective literary instrument for promoting the general good of the commonwealth. It should not, he thought, deal either in impossibilities or in puerilities, much less in immoralities or conventional follies. It should have a healthy Christian tone and should aim high, and in that case, as to general effect, it would rank higher than even history, poetry, or the drama.

Surely these thoughts were before their time, and showed much literary foresight. I think it will be a surprise to those who are acquainted with the Elizabethan and early Stuart romances when they discover how in Nova Solyma the foolish love episodes, the ridiculous euphuisms, the impossible escapades of knights and dames, and the many other literary abominations of the period are singularly absent, while every now and then the delicacy and sentiment of the modern love story or the tale of manners is most unexpectedly present.

Our anonymous writer evidently saw with clear vision the immense power of the novel, romance, or prose epic, if found worthy to live beyond the passing fashion of the hour and age. He ranked it as supreme, the last pen, ultimus calamus, the most finished expression of literary style. And now, after two hundred and fifty years, the increasing experience of many generations has confirmed his early forecast.

It is the novel in its many varieties that now claims millions of readers, while other branches of literature can only claim thousands and hundreds. It is the novel that can alter the very habits of thought of a generation or a people, even as Sir Walter Scott's Waverley Novels are by many considered to have started that wave of High Church principles and aristocratic feudal conservatism which spread so rapidly later on among our universities and cultured classes. Indeed, a novel or romance which has been found worthy to live, and to stir the hearts of unnumbered readers from generation to generation, has surely a right to rank with the never-dying epics of the world, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedia, and our Paradise Lost and Regained. For such a novel as our author imagined is an epic-a prose epic-and they are almost as few in number as the world-epics above. This has been well shown by the following line of argument, which I accept and amplify.

Poetry is the metrical literature of the imagination; the novel or romance is the prose literature of the imagination. Just as there are three kinds of poetry-lyric, narrative or epic, and the dramaticso also a corresponding threefold division can be made with regard to the prose literature of the imagination, the novel or romance. Το lyric poetry corresponds oratory and rhetorical prose rhapsodies; to drama in verse corresponds drama in prose; and there remains narrative poetry (including epic), which corresponds to or is the counterpart of the novel. And as of all narrative poetry that class which contains the great epics of the world is the most permanent and most worthy to endure from generation to generation; so of novels and romances, those that belong in any way to the epic class (though, alas! worthy specimens are rare) are the ones that alone can hold their own through the course of passing centuries. Baron Bunsen seems to deserve the credit for this ingenious piece of literary criticism, and he declares it to be verified by experience. "If we pass in review," he says, "the romances of the three last centuries, we shall find that those only have arrested the attention of more than one or two generations which have satisfied this (ie. the epic) requirement." And we are told further what this epic aim or requirement is for verse-viz. "A poetic representation of a course of events consistent with the highest laws of moral government, whether it delineate the general history of a people [the Iliad as type], or narrate the fortunes of a chosen hero [the Odyssey as type]."

This lofty epic standard or aim by which a novel or romance can endure through the centuries is indeed a trying one, and how few modern authors seem likely to attain to it! What shall we say of Kipling, or Hall Caine, or Corelli, or Ouida? And what of many names more popular than theirs? Why, surely this-that the winnowing fan of an exacting and continuous criticism will leave but little solid wheat sound and weighty enough to be garnered in the granaries of the ages. Bunsen gives one example of the lasting kind of prose epical

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literature-Don Quixote-a solid grain of wheat not blown to the winds, but garnered for the common use of the Republic of Letters now for many years; and there are others.

I have sometimes thought that Milton, who in his old age produced one of the very few verse epics destined to be eternal, did also in his youthful fervour half believe (for he had no mean opinion of his own powers) that he had produced to an audience fit but few a prose epic in Nova Solyma which might perchance be of the Aeonian order, or by a little further care and embellishment might be made to belong to it. If my conjecture be true, how strange has been the issue of this youthful hope of that immortal genius we Englishmen so much admire. Perhaps this is the best place to say something with regard to the objection that Milton, a constant Puritan throughout his life, would not be likely to write a Romance at all; but especially not likely to write one dealing with the follies and vagaries of Love, such as we see in Nova Solyma in the tales of Philander and in the strange incident of Antonia's immodesty. Indeed, this last incident struck a learned friend of mine as being one of the very few things in the book not consistent with Milton's known character. I recognise the primá facie force of this objection, and fortunately can meet it with very little difficulty. It is well known that Milton in his youth was an interested reader of romances of love and chivalry, for he tells us so himself: thither, he said, "my younger feet wandered.” 1 And in his Areopagitica he mentions two under the generic title of "Arcadias" and "Monte Mayors." We may thus reasonably infer that among the many romances he devoured in his boyhood the Diana of George of Montemayor, translated from the Spanish by Barth. Young in 1598, was undoubtedly one of them, and probably his favourite one, as he picks it out from all others along with Sidney's Arcadia. Now, there are clear signs that the history of Philander's love for Joseph, and her donning lad's attire so as to be near him, was written by one who knew his Diana very well, and had, consciously or unconsciously, framed his tale of Philander from the Spanish romance, I admit that for a lady to disguise herself as a page or otherwise so as to be near her lover is one of the most common incidents of the Italian novels and early British dramas of the period, and if we had nothing but Philander's history to go upon, the argument would be very weak. But the strange and rather repulsive episode of Antonia's passion for the boy who is really a girl comes from the Diana as well. The death of Antonia and her prototype, and the angry disappointment of the lady when the boy-girl would not accept her advances, are very similar both in Diana and in Nova Solyma. Now, these are not common incidents of Renaissance romance, and the fair inference is that the author of Nova Solyma borrowed from the Diana of George of Montemayor.

1 Apology for Smectymnuus, iii. 118 (Bohn).

CHAPTER V

THE GYMNASIUM VISITED—THE LOVE TROUBLES OF THE YOUNG ENGLISHMEN

BUT

UT at this juncture Joseph came in, which gave an opportunity for concluding the discourse. The papers were carefully replaced in their proper drawers, and the listeners, who were profuse in their thanks, were handed over to the further guidance of Joseph, who took them on to see the gymnasium. Here the boys went through all kinds of exercises and games-running, leaping, games of ball and the quoit, swimming in the baths, riding, drill, and evolutions in heavy marching order, as well as light skirmishing exercise.1 Just then they were at their studies, and when these were over, they were not only freely encouraged to do gymnasium work, but even obliged to go through it as a task if any try to shirk. Masters were present at these athletic contests, some to give hints or a little coaching, others to watch their behaviour and check. anything improper, for nowhere is a boy's natural disposition more clearly discovered than when in excited play.

"They warn the lads against any trickery or mean cunning in their sports as being a low and despicable thing for a boy to attempt. They impress upon them

1 With regard to these military evolutions and exercises, which are recommended both here and in Milton's Letter on Education of 1644, Professor Morris, of the University of Melbourne, in his Introduction to Milton's Letter, says: "The military nature of the exercise is probably due to the fact that the civil war was actually going on when the tractate was written and published." The war may have raised present interest in such exercises, but the original idea came from the old Humanist educators of Italy-Vergerius, Castiglione, etc.

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also that they should not be grasping after the money value of their athletic prizes,1 but consider it more as a spur to their exertions and a token of victory, reminding them of that law of Nature that a man is to live by toil and merit and mutual help, and not by games and play."

"If they show temper, or are sulky when they come off second best in a contest, the masters intervene and put a stop to angry discussion, making them see that if they cannot conquer others, they may, if they try, conquer themselves, and need not lose their prize and their temper too."

During these remarks Joseph had taken them all over the gymnasium, and they next passed into the room for general study. Perfect silence reigned here; not a sound, except the voices now and then of a master or a reciter. The rest were busy at their desks, and did not stir when the strangers entered, but each, like an automaton, went on with his task. Joseph gave a parting glance to his brother, and the three friends left the boys to their studies. As soon as they were outside, the subject of boys' training was naturally discussed.

"Ah! my friends," said Joseph, "it is not without the greatest reasons that we train our boys as you have seen. To take only this reason, is it not clear that religion has always flourished most in a learned age and among cultured people, in spite of the fact, which I admit, that religion has found its sturdiest opponents in the same circumstances?

"Religion is at its highest point of excellence when it best agrees with right reason and real goodness, viewed in the pure light of God's truth. Now, all the false religions break up that pure light as if by a prism into many gorgeous separate colours, and take pride in covering and adorning themselves in their vanity with showy rags, which are, after all, only part of God's Divine ray of truth,3 though His pure light does sometimes, to emotional souls,

1 As is the case with the "pot-hunter" of to-day.

• Bookmakers would be at a discount in Nova Solyma.

3 Ornate rites and ceremonies-a touch of Milton, surely.

VOL. I.

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