CONTENTS

  Preface

  Publisher’s Note

  Chapter 1 - De Descriptione Temporum

  Chapter 2 - The Alliterative Metre

  Chapter 3 - What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato

  Chapter 4 - The Fifteenth-Century Heroic Line

  Chapter 5 - Hero and Leander

  Chapter 6 - Variation in Shakespeare and Others

  Chapter 7 - Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?

  Chapter 8 - Donne and Love Poetry in the Seventeenth Century

  Chapter 9 - The Literary Impact of the Authorised Version

  Chapter 10 - The Vision of John Bunyan

  Chapter 11 - Addison

  Chapter 12 - Four-Letter Words

  Chapter 13 - A Note on Jane Austen

  Chapter 14 - Shelley, Dryden, and Mr Eliot

  Chapter 15 - Sir Walter Scott

  Chapter 16 - William Morris

  Chapter 17 - Kipling’s World

  Chapter 18 - Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare

  Chapter 19 - High and Low Brows

  Chapter 20 - Metre

  Chapter 21 - Psycho-Analysis and Literary Criticism

  Chapter 22 - The Anthropological Approach

  Notes

  About the Author

  Also by C. S. Lewis

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PREFACE

  This book contains all C. S. Lewis’s essays on literature, with the exception of his Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature and four other essays which I am unable to reprint here. All have been published before either in periodicals or collections of essays by various hands. As a good many are out of print, however, and the cost of owning the volumes in which the others are contained would be prohibitive, it has seemed to me a good time to gather them into one volume. Before mentioning each in turn, I hope to throw some light on the background out of which these essays arose.

  From his schooldays Lewis’s major ambition was to be a great poet, and what appeared to be his first step in that direction came early in his life. In 1919, a few months after his return from the war to read Honour Moderations at University College, Oxford, he published his first book, Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics, under the pseudonym of Clive Hamilton—forty poems, most of which were written during his years at Malvern College (1913–14) and while he studied privately under W. T. Kirkpatrick at Great Bookham in Surrey (1914–17). Though Lewis’s academic record at Oxford is most impressive—a First in ‘Mods’ (1920), a First in ‘Greats’ (1922), and a First in English (1923)—the diary he kept from 1919 to 1929 is anything but optimistic. It is, in the main, a chronicle of his efforts to write and publish his poems. Although his chief interest lay in the long narrative poems he was writing at the time, he sought to keep the name of Clive Hamilton before the public by posting one short poem after the other to the editor of such-and-such a magazine. With one exception,1 all were returned. And though he continued to write narrative poems up to the middle 1930s, the only one ever published was Dymer in 1926. Most of the others were eventually lost or destroyed.2 If we did not have Lewis’s forty-odd books of literary criticism, literary history, theology, novels—as well as the volume or essays in your hands at the moment—his diary would tell a very unhappy story indeed.

  While Lewis was trying—and failing—to join the ranks of his favourite poets, he was at the same time anxious to defend them against the vogue for vers libre and the modern contempt for narrative poetry. Opportunities lay close at hand.

  One was the Martlet Society, a literary society in University College limited to twelve undergraduate and former graduate members. The minute-books of the society are lodged in the Bodleian Library. And though the quality of the writing of the minutes varies over the years, there emerges from the pages a most lively account of Lewis’s participation in the fortnightly meetings.

  Lewis was elected Secretary of the Martlets at their 188th meeting on 31 January 1919. At the 191st meeting on 12 March 1919 (while Lewis was acting as scribe), a fellow-member read Lewis’s paper on William Morris. It was by no means as thoughtful and developed a paper as that printed in this book, but some of the same ideas appear in both. At the 196th meeting on 15 October 1919 Lewis was elected President of the Martlets, and on 3 November 1920 Lewis (still President) read a paper at the 211th meeting, the basic ideas of which continued to be those he held for the rest of his life. The Secretary records that:

  There being no further private business, the President commenced his paper on narrative poetry. He took up, from the first, a fighting attitude. In an age of lyrical activity he was come to defend the epic against the prejudice of contemporaries. Edgar Allan Poe had said that a long poem was impossible, but he was sufficiently answered by the extreme richness of our literature in good narrative poetry. The real objection of the moderns was based on the fact that they would not make the effort to read a long poem. That effort, the reader contended, was necessary to the true appreciation of the epic: for art demands co-operation between the artist and his audience. He went on to speak of the poetic ‘fullness’ of narrative poetry, illustrating the power for tragedy by a quotation from the Tenth Book of Paradise Lost, and mentioning Masefield’s Jane in Reynard the Fox as an example of the portrayal of character. Quotations from Spenser showed to what advantage a great artist could use external surroundings as a background to develop a mood. After an interesting digression on the nature and value of ‘simile’, the President brought his paper to a close. It was as able a vindication of the narrative form as could well be constructed; and it was strengthened by a varied, though certainly not excessive, use of quotation.3

  After his examination in Greats, financial and domestic worries set Lewis hunting for a job. As he was unable to obtain a fellowship in any of the Oxford colleges to which he applied, his father offered to support him for another year. Lewis had already come to the conclusion that ‘it is impossible to be a poet’4 and so decided to read for the English School, hoping that by adding a second string to his bow he might be in a stronger position should a fellowship in philosophy fall vacant the next year. The English School was at first a disappointment. Up till now he had thought of English literature as something essentially private; it had now to be treated as a ‘subject’. Besides this, the change from Greats to English seemed a step down and on returning from the first lecture in the English School he records (his diary for 16 October 1922) ‘a certain amateurishness in the talk and look of the people’.5

  His disappointment was not long-lasting. He was fortunate in having Professor F. P. Wilson for his tutor and on that same day he began an essay on Chaucer’s debt to the Filostrato—the germ, no doubt, of the third essay in this book. The entry in his diary for the next day will, perhaps, come as a surprise to those of us who have long admired the beauty and clarity of Lewis’s prose. ‘From lunch till tea time’, he wrote, ‘I worked at an essay on Troilus. My prose style is really abominable, and between poetry and work [i.e. domestic chores] I suppose I shall never learn to improve it.’6 His interest in the Martlets, which had flagged during his reading for Greats, was rekindled and he became a more regular and serious member.

  Though Lewis continued to devote some time every day to his own poems, his interest in English literature flourished and broadened under the guidance of F. P. Wilson and his tutor in Anglo-Saxon, Miss Elizabeth Wardale. It is interesting to discover from his diary how many of the essays in this book had their origin in the weekly essays Lewis wrote for Professor Wilson. Besides the one on Chaucer, I find, for instance, him writing on 18 January 1923: ‘I went on with Donne and read the Second Anniversary which is “a new planet”: I never imagined or hoped for anything like it.’7 And on 22 January: ‘After tea . . . I attacked my essay on the influence of Donne on the 17th century lyric.’8 A few days earlier he had begun his paper on Spenser for Professor George Gordon’s discussion class.

  It was at this class, held in an upstairs room in the Schools overlooking High Street, that Lewis on 2 February 1923 first remembered seeing Mr (now Professor) Nevill Coghill whose turn it was to read a paper on ‘Realism’. Lewis was immensely impressed by the man and his paper, and was delighted when they met a few days later at a tea given by Miss Wardale. ‘Coghill’, he wrote that evening, ‘did most of the talking, except when contradicted by me. He said that Mozart had remained a boy of six all his life. I said nothing cd. be more delightful: he replied (and quite right) that he could imagine many things more delightful.’9

  It had been decided at the outset that the minutes of Professor Gordon’s class were to be kept in Chaucerian verse, an inducement in itself to Lewis and Coghill. Though Professor Coghill has told us of the paper on Spenser which Lewis read to the class on 9 February 1923,10 he omitted to say that it was he who wrote the minutes of this meeting. As the minute-book of the discussion class was given to me by Lewis,11 I am able to offer the following extracts of the minutes which Professor Coghill wrote at the time. Lewis’s own manuscript has not survived, but Professor Coghill, writing close on the heels of the event, tells us in his notes as much as we shall probably ever know of Lewis’s paper:

  In Oxenford some clerkés of degree

  Were gadréd in a goodbye companye

  And I was oon, and here will yow devise

  Our felaweshipe that worthy was and wys . . .

  Sir Lewis was ther; a good philosopher

  He hadde a noble paper for to offer.

  Wel couth
e he speken in the Greeké tongue;

  And yet, his countenance was swythe yong . . .

  Then to Sir Lewis turned the Professour

  (That was our tales juge and governour)

  And cried unto hym “Now by Pigges bones,

  “Thou shallt a noble tale for the nones,

  “Somewhat to quite Daun Darlow and the Cogge.

  “Rede us of Spenser, by Seint Jamés dogge.

  “Lordynges, attend, and hear our philosópher

  “That hath both wit and beauty in his coffer!”

  Anon turned Lewis to a bluë boke

  He swalwed thrice; hys dewy fingers shooke

  And he bigan with right a myrie cheere

  His tale anoon; and spake in this mannere.

  Heere bigynneth Sir Lewis’

  TALE OF DAUN SPENSER.

  “Desert the lesser groves of Poesy;

  No more of Cuddie or the nuptial scene

  All Spenser’s magic and his melody

  Find sweet perfection in the Faery Queene.

  There, Elegy and Pastoral, I weene

  And moral virtue chorus their full song;

  The mind of Spenser grew not; it had been,

  And still was, gentle; only a new throng

  Of words more beautifully bear his verse along.

  “And fifty years taught nothing more than this;

  To bend his vowels to a gracious line;

  Grandeur and thunder, magic and the bliss

  Of Heavenly Music, and the inner shine

  Of γάνος, or the gleaming of divine

  Moist, quiet woodland things; all these he found

  Distilled old myths and thoughts into new wine,

  But not new thoughts; and though the Queene is crowned

  With many beauties, oft she is most falsely gowned.

  “But leave her faults admitted, leave his passion

  Untrue, mere copy: Love, he did not know

  But amorous reverie in a sensuous fashion

  He well could sing, and make his verses grow

  One to another, like a forest row

  Of deepening trees; no drama, but a mood

  Of queer archaic dream, and spacious flow

  Of changing rhythms, till then not understood.

  He was a pioneer, that did not cut, but plant a wood.

  “And his sweet satisfying poesy

  Offers no problem to the gnawing mind,

  But pours the balm of pure simplicity

  In allegories old as is mankind;

  Vague and indefinite, they lie behind

  The purpose of the poem; for all speech

  Of men is allegory, ill-defined

  Spenserian and dim: and who can teach

  How fact and symbol are related each to each?

  “So leave him, more than lovely, less than great;

  He was a poet; he was nothing more:

  Nay—but a poet’s poet; and there sate

  Milton and Keats within his forest door.

  Young dreamy boys delight in Spenser’s lore

  And eat his satisfying faery food

  And Wordsworth on his native mountain shore

  Caught echoes from that dim enchanted wood;

  Then enter ye who dare, ye who have understood.”

  There is not space enough here to reproduce Professor Coghill’s verse-notes on the discussion which followed the reading of Lewis’s paper. Lewis was, I expect, as delighted with the disagreement as with the agreement, and it may have been his habitual desire for ‘rational opposition’ which led him to read the same paper to the Martlets the following week. The discussion that followed the second reading may well have been one of the liveliest the Martlets had ever known. The Secretary tried to capture it in the minutes,12 and Lewis recorded as much of it as he could remember in his diary. Most of the Martlets took the view that a work of art ought to be judged simply as an expression of the artist’s experience whether it communicated anything to anyone else or not. Lewis, on the other hand, contended that ‘taking art as an expression, it must be the expression of something: and one can’t abstract the “something” from the expression’.13 This may not seem of much importance as I have reduced it here, but my reason for mentioning it at all is because the discussion was probably a literary milestone for Lewis: he understood how differently others read and judge literature, and he was forced to defend what he loved and believed to be true. He argued his case more clearly years later in An Experiment in Criticism,14 but he was already at work marshalling his ideas and trying them out in the cut-and-thrust debates with his fellow students.

  Though Lewis attended the Martlets regularly, the next time he addressed the Society was on 18 June 1924. The Secretary records that:

  The minutes of the last meeting were read and carried; the President then called upon Mr. Lewis to read his paper on James Stephens. Mr. Lewis began by congratulating himself on his entire ignorance of biographical detail and proceeded forthwith to a critical appreciation of his author’s works . . .15

  I italicise ‘his entire ignorance of biographical detail’ because the words illustrate how early in his life Lewis came to believe that a book ought to be judged on its own merits rather than as a means whereby one steeps oneself in the personality of the author. This may well have been the seed out of which eventually grew his famous essay on ‘The Personal Heresy in Criticism’.16

  We are so accustomed to thinking of Lewis as an English critic that we usually forget—if we ever knew, for it is not common knowledge—that at this time he considered himself a candidate for a fellowship in philosophy. Thus, it was quite natural that he be asked to deputise for E. F. Carritt (the philosophy tutor at University College) during 1924 when Carritt was teaching in the United States. At this time Lewis attended the meetings of the Oxford Philosophical Society and, despite his love for English literature, disapproved of English as a final honour school. Before the year was out he had applied for several fellowships, but the only one offered him was a fellowship in English language and literature at Magdalen College. This was not the work Lewis had been expecting to undertake and his reasons for accepting it are, I expect, quite honestly expressed in a letter to his father in which he says:

  . . . I am rather glad of the change. I have come to think that if I had the mind, I have not the brain and nerves for a life of pure philosophy. A continued search among the abstract roots of things, a perpetual questioning of all that plain men take for granted, a chewing the cud for fifty years over inevitable ignorance and a constant frontier watch on the little tidy lighted conventional world of science and daily life—is this the best life for temperaments such as ours? . . . I am not condemning philosophy. Indeed in turning from it to literary history and criticism, I am conscious of a descent: and if the air on the heights did not suit me, still I have brought back something of value . . . At any rate I escape with joy from one definite drawback of philosophy—its solitude. I was beginning to feel that your first year carries you out of the reach of all save other professionals. No one sympathizes with your adventures in that subject because no one understands them: and if you struck treasure trove no one would be able to use it.17

  It is interesting to imagine how different Lewis’s career might have been had he been offered, and accepted, a fellowship in philosophy. Would he, I wonder, have eventually found his way into the English School? If not, what sort of books (if any) would he have written? Though I never spoke with Lewis about this, he would, I expect, have reminded us that the ‘road’ not taken has no reality and, therefore, offers no answers.18 What is abundantly clear in Lewis’s writings, both critical and imaginative, is the influence of his foundation in philosophy and Greek and Latin literature. Speaking of Lewis’s move from Greats to English, Professor Coghill says, ‘Lewis . . . was finding all that he knew of Greek and Latin poetry reflected in his English studies, and he was learning to illuminate the latter by the former with sudden comparisons and contrasts that sparkled and exploded in his conversation.’19

  Not only was Lewis striking treasure-trove almost daily in his English studies, but he found that a large part of English literature, particularly the Anglo-Saxon, would give up its treasures only after one had dug deep and hard enough. But Lewis was never loath to do his ‘prep’; indeed, he found satisfaction in tackling those problems in scholarship which often deter less determined men. I inherited from Lewis’s library most of the texts he used while reading Greats and English. Every page has a running headline in the upper margin and he usually compiled an index at the back of each book. A lover of clarity, Lewis was impatient with authors whose books he considered needlessly obscure. One such text was H. C. K. Wyld’s A Short History of English (London, 1921) which he used in the study of Old English. In his diary of 15 February 1923 he complained: ‘I attempted to get some useful information out of Wyld’s Short History (The Cad) which is full of facts most painfully collected but presented in a very muddled way and extraordinarily difficult to work on.’20 A few years later, when he was teaching Old English to his pupils at Magdalen, he decided to ‘find out what Wyld says in spite of all Wyld does to prevent me’.21 For several weeks he worked with great enjoyment on turning the section on ‘West Germanic to Primitive O.E.’ into a mnemonic poem. It began (and I omit Lewis’s footnotes to the poem):