Adventures in Criticism | Page 2

may add that all the materials for a Life of Chaucer have
been sought out, examined, and pieced together with exemplary care.
All this has taken Professor Skeat twenty-five years, and in order to
pass competent judgment on his conclusions the critic must follow him
step by step through his researches--which will take the critic (even if
we are charitable enough to suppose his mental equipment equal to
Professor Skeat's) another ten years at least. For our time, then, and
probably for many generations after, this edition of Chaucer will be
accepted as final.
* * * * *
And the Clarendon Press.
And I seem to see in this edition of Chaucer the beginning of the
realization of a dream which I have cherished since first I stood within
the quadrangle of the Clarendon Press--that fine combination of the
factory and the palace. The aspect of the Press itself repeats, as it were,
the characteristics of its government, which is conducted by an elected
body as an honorable trust. Its delegates are not intent only on
money-getting. And yet the Clarendon Press makes money, and the
University can depend upon it for handsome subsidies. It may well
depend upon it for much more. As the Bank of England--to which in its
system of government it may be likened--is the focus of all the other
banks, private or joint-stock, in the kingdom, and the treasure-house,
not only of the nation's gold, but of its commercial honor, so the
Clarendon Press--traditionally careful in its selections and munificent
in its rewards--might become the academy or central temple of English
literature. If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's Chaucer with a
resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large an undertaking, all
the great English classics, edited with all the scholarship its wealth can
command, I believe that before long the Clarendon Press would be
found to be exercising an influence on English letters which is at
present lacking, and the lack of which drives many to call, from time to

time, for the institution in this country of something corresponding to
the French Academy. I need only cite the examples of the Royal
Society and the Marylebone Cricket Club to show that to create an
authority in this manner is consonant with our national practice. We
should have that centre of correct information, correct judgment,
correct taste--that intellectual metropolis, in short--which is the surest
check upon provinciality in literature; we should have a standard of
English scholarship and an authoritative dictionary of the English
language; and at the same time we should escape all that business of
the green coat and palm branches which has at times exposed the
French Academy to much vulgar intrigue.
Also, I may add, we should have the books. Where now is the great
edition of Bunyan, of Defoe, of Gibbon? The Oxford Press did once
publish an edition of Gibbon, worthy enough as far as type and paper
could make it worthy. But this is only to be found in second-hand
book-shops. Why are two rival London houses now publishing editions
of Scott, the better illustrated with silly pictures "out of the artists'
heads"? Where is the final edition of Ben Jonson?
These and the rest are to come, perhaps. Of late we have had from
Oxford a great Boswell and a great Chaucer, and the magnificent
Dictionary is under weigh. So that it may be the dream is in process of
being realized, though none of us shall live to see its full realization.
Meanwhile such a work as Professor Skeat's Chaucer is not only an
answer to much chatter that goes up from time to time about
nine-tenths of the work on English literature being done out of England.
This and similar works are the best of all possible answers to those
gentlemen who so often interrupt their own chrematistic pursuits to
point out in the monthly magazines the short-comings of our two great
Universities as nurseries of chrematistic youth. In this case it is Oxford
that publishes, while Cambridge supplies the learning: and from a
natural affection I had rather it were always Oxford that published,
attracting to her service the learning, scholarship, intelligence of all
parts of the kingdom, or, for that matter, of the world. So might she
securely found new Schools of English Literature--were she so minded,
a dozen every year. They would do no particular harm; and meanwhile,

in Walton Street, out of earshot of the New Schools, the Clarendon
Press would go on serenely performing its great work.
* * * * *
March 23, 1895. Essentials and Accidents of Poetry.
A work such as Professor Skeat's Chaucer puts the critic into a frame of
mind that lies about midway between modesty and cowardice. One
asks--"What right