FOREWORD CONTENTS SOCIAL IDEALS IN ENGLISH LETTERS FOREWORD THIS book is to consider English literature in its social aspect. It will study the imaginative expression of some of the most interesting moments in the long struggle by which democracy and freedom are slowly realizing themselves, and the earth is becoming in substantial sense the heritage of all the children of men. We are living to-day in one of the most dramatic periods of that great struggle. Year by year adds new episodes to its history both written and unwritten, and quickens in earnest minds the sense of the special responsibility borne by our generation toward its solution. To allow the social questions which preoccupy us to invade even our enjoyment of poetry, essays, and novels may seem uninviting and needless; for many of us have a way of turning to books as an escape from life and its sorrows and puzzles. Yet if we are to dwell with pain and problem in considering the social bearing of some representative English books, we are to dwell with beauty also. Great literature is always the record of some great struggle; and it is wonderful testimony to life's essential blessedness that, no matter how agonizing the struggle, it becomes a source of undying joy when translated into art. However strenuous the problems of life may be, however dark its issues, the world lingers on them with a pain that is delight, when once they are expressed by a noble artist. The fatal wrath of Achilles, the tortures of Dante's Francesca, the remorse of Macbeth, the sorrow of Lear, are records of experiences supremely terrible; and they are numbered among the chief treasures of the race. Therefore we need not shrink from watching, in some few phases of our literature, the expression of social life with its anomalies, and social ideals with their wistfulness, or even, at times, of social despair. For "art sees as God sees," and is therefore always calm, blending all phases of fear and strife into a lovely whole. This it does, not from heartlessness, but from its recognition of eternal values, and also from that mysterious compulsion which enables, yes, forces it, through har mony of form, to subdue all discord of subject. And so it is good to look at the questions that beset us, at the wrongs that torment us, through their reflection in art. We shall not be hardened into carelessness by so looking. The better thought of our generation, signaled as it is by the growth of a great compassion, is in slight danger of indifference, or of æsthetic frivolity. Rather, we need to preserve our recognition of true values and proportions, our real as distinguished from our morbid delicacy of feeling, in a word, our sanity. This larger view, this purer sense, we are at |