I

At the end of the introduction to the section on Legend and History, page 211, it was pointed out that the selections in that part of the book illustrated some of the ways in which man as an individual has faced, nobly or ignobly, the facts of life. In the epic, for example, you are not conscious of the thoughts and feelings of the ordinary man, or even of his presence, save in the vague way that in battles there must have been masses of individuals who were fighting, not because of any will of their own, but at the command of some king or adventurer. The war before Troy lasted ten years; it was undertaken because the wife of a Greek king was carried off by a Trojan youth. The adventures of Ulysses among the Phæacians, and his story to them of his travels, were the adventures of a brave and fate-driven man. You know that he had companions, and you know the names of some of them, but they are little more than names, and nowhere do you get the idea of a society of men and women engaged in a common task or working out forms of government in which all might share. Aeneas was revered as the founder of the race whence sprang mighty Rome. The Romans, therefore, read the epic that told the story of his adventures, as the Greeks read the story of Troy and of the wanderings of Ulysses, because these stories were the stories of their national heroes. We read them today because of our interest in adventure, or because of the debt we owe to Greece and Rome, or because they were written by poets supremely gifted. But in all three of these great epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the main interest is in the deeds

of the heroes, however clearly we realize that into these poems there is also woven much that gives a picture of the ancient classical civilizations. If we consider our own old English epic, Beowulf, we find a similar situation. Beowulf went to the relief of King Hrothgar, whose warriors were being slain by a monster, and his last brave deed was the slaying of the dragon that was bringing death to his own subjects, but the real theme of the poet is the bravery of the hero, the spectacular deeds that brought him fame.

The same thing is true of the romances, whether we read the story of Arthur and the Round Table, or the romances of a modern writer like Sir Walter Scott. The heroes are men of high degree, who go out seeking renown. Often they win this renown through services rendered to others. They are men of high ideals who do great good in the world, but we feel, nevertheless, that it is the hero who counts for most and that the people whom he serves are altogether secondary in the story.

In a heroic drama like Julius Caesar the same thing is true. The main theme is found in the personal ambitions of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony. The mob, by which is meant the mass of common people, is treated with contempt. Shakespeare is not to be blamed for this. In his time few authors wrote about people of low rank. It is true that the reign of Elizabeth owes its greatness in large part to the fact that in her long and peaceful reign wealth increased and every subject, high or low, had better opportunities for decent living than England had known before. Of the "rights" of the people, however, or of the advantage

of allowing them to have a share in their government, we hear nothing.

All this may be summed up by saying that in most of the imaginative literature, ancient and modern, up to and including Shakespeare's time, the common man had small place and the idea of democratic government no place at all. Of course, there are exceptions. Chaucer wrote intimately and with full understanding about very ordinary people as well as about knights and squires, and in his own time, the fourteenth century, one of the greatest of English poems, Piers Plowman, dealt with some of the wrongs and the needs and aspirations of common folk. It is true, also, that the folk ballads dealt with peasants as well as with persons of rank, and that Robin Hood was a sort of champion of all who were oppressed by unjust laws. Still, these exceptions serve only to bring out in clearer relief the fact that the immense mass of epic, heroic poem or romance, and drama constituted a literature of lords and knights and ladies and of their deeds, and that the ideals set forth were those of the man who seeks personal distinction through the spectacular deed.

It was natural that this should be so for two reasons:

In the first place, literature, until quite recently, was written by educated men for people of high position who had both leisure and the necessary training to appreciate it. In ruder times, and always among ruder people, it is true, the minstrel or ballad maker found a hearing, and, as we have seen, ballads were made by men and women who had no book-learning, and were handed down, orally, from generation to generation. But literature as a fine art, carefully composed and written down to be read, whether in manuscript before the invention of printing in the fifteenth century, or printed by Caxton or some other early printer, found little or no circulation outside what used to be called the upper classes. It was courtly literature. Naturally, its subjects and its heroes were related to courtly life. If peasants appeared in it, they were merely the mob. They could not read. Literature required a reading public. It ref11, therefore, only that public.

The second reason is what may be called political. Until quite recently-to be exact, until well along in the eighteenth century, the common man was not felt to have any special importance. He had small share in government. Even in a nation relatively free, such as England, in which the king had become distinctly subject to the Parliament, the people, in the sense in which we understand the term, were not represented in government. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the series of English Reform Bills beginning in 1832, were required in order to gain for the average man a real share in government. Until the life of common men, therefore, gained importance, their common life found only casual representation in literature. And until masses of men found their power, insisted on free government and free opportunity, one finds the individual hero and his exploits, the life of the man superior by birth and social position, the favorite theme of the greatest literature. Aeneas, wandering with a few companions through the seas from Troy to Carthage and then to Italy, founded Rome. But Walt Whitman, an American poet, writes of the pioneers, masses of them, not led by an Aeneas, but seeking ampler life by their own exertions, and guaranteed by free government the secure possession of what they achieved.

II

Literature, then, is of interest and value only to people who have attained sufficient worldly security and culture to enjoy it and who possess the mental training and leisure that go with such enjoyment. It has always been so. When, for example, France in the twelfth century had built up a civilization of high rank, courtly poets wrote for a courtly society the romances of Arthur and his knights. These were translated into English, or were read, in manuscripts, in the original French. One of the first English printed works was Malory's fine version of the Arthurian romances, printed by William Caxton near the end of the fifteenth century. Similarly, when England at the end of the sixteenth century attained a feeling of national security and prosperity it had

not previously known, the immediate result was a long line of dramas by Shakespeare and others, a national epic like Spenser's Faerie Queene, and a host of romances, lyrics, and novels such as appealed to the cultivated society of that time.

Near the end of the eighteenth century a new force appeared. Poets began to see in the lives of common people romance and mystery. Gray, in his "Elegy," wrote of "the short and simple annals of the poor." He saw, too, that many a man who might have gained fame was prevented from realizing his ability solely because of lack of opportunity. Another poet, George Crabbe, complained about the false way in which poets who lived near the court had described country life, with a patronizing praise of simplicity and rustic health and the advantages of the simple life that was not borne out by the facts. He set himself, he says, "to paint the cot (rustic home) as truth would have it and as bards will not." And greater than these in his representation of the tragedy or the simple dignity or the comedy of the peasant's life was Robert Burns, a Scottish plowboy, who wrote of the Cotter and his family and proclaimed that "the rank is but the guinea's stamp," that the honest man, no matter how poor, is king of men.

What Gray dimly felt, what Crabbe longed to see, what Burns poured forth with fiery eloquence, was in process of becoming reality. At last the great masses of the people were becoming awake to their rights and their possibilities. From this awakening America achieved independence, France cast off her outworn system, and England began the process of extending the right of participation in government to every man. And from this awakening a whole new literature was born.

III

Lowell's poem, The Vision of Sir Launfal, is an excellent example of the change in ideals. Its theme is the search for the Grail, a favorite theme in Arthurian romance since the twelfth century. Sir Launfal starts out, like the knights in the old romances, to win glory. But he learns

that the Grail is not to be found through the performance of the deed which dazzles the world, but through sharing his scanty food with a beggar. He found himself when he forgot himself. Hawthorne, in "The Ambitious Guest," handles the theme in a different way. He writes of a man who sought fame, one who could not bear to be forgotten in the grave. But the avalanche overwhelmed him, and his ambition was never realized.

In the poetry of Burns you approach the theme from still another angle. In the old days lords and ladies were the subjects of poetry; here, a simple Scottish peasant, his family, and his home life form the theme. There is poetry in the homecoming of the children on Saturday night. There is a healthfulness about them and the lives they lead that the courtier may lack. Again, in the old days Nature was ignored altogether, or was merely the background of the story, or was described daintily and in ornamental aspects. But Robert Burns writes a poem about a mouse, and does it so well that his poem will never be forgotten. You have also read some of the poems he wrote about the equality of men. "Liberty, equality, fraternity," the watchwords of the French Revolution, and the "rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" of our own Declaration of Independence these are the themes of the poems by the Scottish peasant. Poetry was reflecting the awakening that was bringing democracy to men.

Now the significance of this group of stories and poems, which are representative of dozens of others that might be included, is that they show how certain democratic ideals came to play a part in literature and that they define these ideals. They show that the happiness and prosperity of nations depend not upon a few chosen individuals, but upon all men, even the humblest. They show that every man ought to be given the opportunity to make the most of himself. They show that besides the service rendered by the individual hero, there is the service in which all men coöperate for the good of all.

In order to give even more concrete reality to these ideals, you will read, in the last half of Part IV, something more