KEBLE'S Johio. LECTURES ON POETRY 1832-1841 TRANSLATED BY EDWARD KERSHAW FRANCIS IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M DCCCC XII 039-235814 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE THE history of these Lectures-originally delivered in Latin (1832-41)-since their publication in 1844 is rather curious. They have been continuously honoured with high praise, culminating in the considered and critical tribute, which by his kind permission is quoted below, of Mr. George Saintsbury, Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, Edinburgh, in 1904 (History of Criticism, iii. 621). The question of translation was more than once discussed during Mr. Keble's lifetime, notably at the instance of Sir John Coleridge, who himself half contemplated the task and has given us a specimen of his manner (Memoir of John Keble, c. x). Since Mr. Keble's death a translation has been called for, expressly or impliedly, over and over again by critics of unquestioned reputation. And I am told that 'several people have started on it', but none of them seem to have got very far. These conditions form my apology for submitting the present attempt. I propose, in this note, first, to offer quotations from a few of the notices and criticisms referred to above, and, secondly, to add some brief remarks upon the aims and circumstances of the present translation. 1. 'The Lectures in question had been delivered terminally while he held the Professorship of Poetry, and were afterwards collected in a volume: and various circumstances combined to give them a peculiar character. Delivered one by one at intervals, to a large, cultivated and critical audience, they both demanded and admitted of special elaboration of the style. As coming from a person of his high reputation for Latinity they were displays of art' (J. H. Newman, Idea of a University: Elementary Studies, §3 (2). His greatest literary work, his Lectures on Poetry, so full of acute remark and so beautiful in language, is in Latin' (J. H. Newman in Keble's Occasional Papers and Reviews, Preface, p. xii). 'This outline fails to do justice to a volume which Dean Church has called "the most original and memorable course ever delivered from the Chair of Poetry in Oxford": and Bishop Moberly,2 in even stronger praise, "One of the most charming and valuable volumes of classical criticism that ever issued from the press." But it may serve to draw the attention of a later generation to it and may suggest the advisability of an English translation' (Dr. Lock, John Keble: A Biography, p. 49). 'An English edition would be most welcome and would do much to enhance the lecturer's reputation' (National Observer, then edited by the late Mr. W. E. Henley, vol. ix (New Series), p. 420 in a review of Dr. Lock's Biography). 'Not the least critical genius that ever adorned the Oxford chair was possessed by John Keble. . . . Still the Praelectiones themselves must of course always be Keble's own touchstone or rather his ground and matter of assay. And he comes out well. The dedication (a model of stately enthusiasm) to Wordsworth as non solum dulcissimae poeseos verum etiam divinae veritatis antistes strikes the key-note of the whole. But it may be surprising to some to find how "broad Keble is in spite of his inflexible morality and his uncompromising churchmanship. He was kept right partly, no doubt, by holding fast as a matter of theory to the "Delight "test; pure and virtuous delight of course, but still delight, first of all and most of all. But mere theory would have availed him little without the poetic spirit which everywhere in him translates itself into the critical, and almost as little without the wide (and whether deliberately or not) comparative reading of 1 The Oxford Movement, p. 273. 2 Preface to J. K.'s Miscellaneous Poems, p. xxi. ancient and modern verse which he displays. His general definition of poetry here is slightly different from that given above (i.e. in Keble's Occasional Papers and Reviews). . . . But his working out-necessarily in its main lines obvious, but interesting to compare with his successor Mr. Arnold's undogmatized and secularized application of the same idea-(those who make the contrast will, however, I think, find out that Arnold owes more to his forerunner than might be gathered from his published lectures)—is less interesting to us in itself than the aperçus on different poets ancient and modern to which it gives rise. Few pages deserve to be skipped by the student: even technical discussion of the tenuis et arguta kind, as he modestly calls it, becomes alive under his hand on such subjects as the connexion of Poetry and Irony (Prael. v)... On his narrower subject the judgement of Sophocles in Prael. xxviii is singularly weighty, and I should much like to have heard Mr. Arnold answer on behalf of his favourite. I wish he had written more on Dante himself: what he has is admirable (ii. 678 and elsewhere). . . . But, in fact, Keble always is noteworthy and more. Mere moderns may dismiss him with or without a reading as a mill-horse treader of academic rounds. He is nothing so little. He is in fact almost the first representative of the Romantic movement who has applied its spirit to the consecrated subjects of study: and he has shown-unfortunately to too limited a circle-how fresh, how interesting, how inspiring the results of this and of the true comparison of ancient and modern can be. ... ... Literary criticism-indeed literature itself as suchwas with him, it is true, only a by-work, hardly more than a pastime. But had it been otherwise, he would, I think, twenty years before Arnold, have given us the results of a more thorough scholarship, a reading certainly not less wide, a taste nearly as delicate and catholic, a broader |