Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 30:120 (Oct 1873)
Article: Taine’s English Literature
Author: John Bascom

BSac 30:120 (Oct 1873) p. 628

Taine’s English Literature1

Rev. John Bascom

Many works on English literature have appeared within a few years, varying from the large volumes of Craik and Morley to brief manuals. None of these have excited so much attention, or received so favorable criticism, as Taine’s History of English Literature, a work of more than a thousand compact octavo pages. The generous reception of these volumes is justified by their merits. They are certainly more interesting, if not more instructive, than any other history on this topic. As a storehouse of facts they do not rival some other works; but in their interpretation of facts, and in the clearness with which they present the spirit of the persons and times discussed, they are unsurpassed. We gratefully acknowledge the excellence of this work, and glance at its leading merits before we offer any qualifying criticism.

The style is clear, animated, highly figurative. It is one that flows from a vigorous imagination, sustained by sharp insight. It tends to short snatches of assertion, often in a metaphorical form. When the sentences are lengthened, their members are gathered into them, as persons, in procession, that march briskly, each with varying devise. There is so much to please the fancy, one can hardly fail to be interested, whatever one may think of the final philosophy which marshals these figures, and explains their purpose. The work has also primary characters, leading events, controlling forces, and sinks the mass of persons and events into their shadow. It thus secures composition, proportion, and decided effect.

BSac 30:120 (Oct 1873) p. 629

This is with it a chief merit. The writers of an epoch are not delivered in tale, as so many bricks; nor marched before us as a regiment of scarcely distinguished soldiers, each labelled with his name, moving on into the distance. Wise neglect is a first condition of interesting and instructive history. Absolute justice is not to be thought of. Significant forces, typical persons, are to find bold relief, and the mind is to be left under the clearness of an anatomy whose complexity is something less than that of the facts. Every writer overlooks much; the difference of merit lies in the things overlooked. Grand outlines are to be first drawn, and left for each to fill up, as his leisure and taste may enable him. Taine has philosophy in him; he is in search of controlling natural forces, that these may give unity, form, impression to his work. He does not collect material, he uses it. We are not left to lose our way amid secondary facts, or to stumble over them. The edifice, according to his idea, is finished, and the rubbish cleared away.

A third merit, allied to the la...