IS ENGLISH DOOMED?
By C. S. LEWIS
GREAT changes in the life of a nation often pass unnoticed. Probably few are aware that the serious study of English at English Universities is likely to become extinct. The death-warrant is not yet signed, but it has been made out. You may read it in the Norwood Report. A balanced scheme of education must try to avoid two evils. On the one hand the interests of those boys who will never reach a University must not be sacrificed by a curriculum based on academic requirements. On the other, the liberty of the University must not be destroyed by allowing the requirements of schoolboys to dictate its forms of study. It is into this second trap that the writers of the Report have fallen. Its authors are convinced that what they mean by " English " can be supplied "by any teacher" (p. 94). "Premature external examination" in this sub- ject is deprecated (p. 96) ; and I am not clear when, if ever, the moment of " maturity " is supposed to arrive. English scholars are not wanted as teachers. Universities are to devise "a general honours degree involving English and . . . some other subject" (p. 97) ; not because English studies will thus flourish, but to suit the schools.
No instructed person to whom I have talked doubts that these proposals, if accepted, mean the end of English as an academic dis- cipline. A subject in which there are no external examinations will lead to no State scholarships ; one in which no school teachers are required will lead to no livelihoods. The door into academic English, and the door out of it, have both been bricked up. The English Faculty in every University thus becomes a faculty without students. At some of the largest Universities, no doubt, there will still be a Professor of English, as there is a Professor of Sanskrit or of Byzan- tine Greek, and four or five students (in a good year) may attenct his lectures. But as an important element in the intellectual life of the country the thing will be dead. We may confidently hope, indeed, that English scholarship will survive abroad, notably in America and Germany ; it will not survive here.
There are some who will welcome this result. English faculties have a habit of being obtrusive. The strongly modernist and radical character of the Cambridge Tripos, and what has been called (with exaggeration) the disquietingly Christian flavour of the Oxford "Schools," may each, in its different way, offend. Taken together, they are certainly a warning that if you want a mass-produced orthodoxy you will be ill-advised to let the young study our national literature, for it is a realm where tout arrive ; but I do not think the Report was inspired by such considerations. If it kills English scholarship it will probably have done so inadvertently ; its views are the result of honest misunderstanding. It believes that "any teacher" in the course of teaching his own special subject can teach clear and logical English. The view would have been plausible when the oldest of those who made the Report were themselves at school. For them all teachers had been trained in the Classics. The results of that discipline on English style were not, it is true, so good as is often claimed, but it removed at least the worst bar- barisms. Since then the Classics have almost been routed. Unless English, seriously studied, succeeds to their place, the English which "any teacher" inculcates in the course of teaching something else will be at best the reflection of his favourite newspaper and at worst the tectmicaL jargon of his own subject.
The danger is lest the views of the Report should be generally
approved (as they were possibly formed) under a misunderstanding of the real nature of English scholarship. Many will think it reason- able to examine children in geography or (Heaven help us!) in Divinity, yet not in English, on the ground that geography and Divinity were never intended to entertain, whereas Literature was. The teaching of English Literature, in fact, is conceived simply as an aid to "appreciation." And appreciation is, to be sure, a sine qua non. To have laughed at the jokes, shuddered at the tragedy, wept at the pathos—this is as necessary as to have learned grammar. But neither grammar nor appreciation is the ultimate End.
The true aim of literary studies is to lift the student out of his provincialism by making him "the spectator," if not of all, yet of much, "time and existence." The student, or even the schoolboy, who has been brought by good (and therefore mutually disagreeing) teachers to meet the past where alone the past still lives, is taken out of the narrowness of his own age and class into a more public
world. He is learning the true Phaenomenologie des Geistes ; dis-
covering what varieties there are in Man. " History " alone will not do, for it studies the past mainly in secondary authorities. It is
possible to "do History" for years Without knowing at the end what it felt like to be an Anglo-Saxon earl, a cavalier, an eighteenth- Century country gentleman. The gold behind the paper currency is to be found, almost exclusively, in literature. In it lies deliverance from the tyranny of generalisations and catchwords. Its students know (for example) what diverse realities—Launcelot, Baron Brad- wardine, Mulvaney—hide behind the word militarism. If I regard the English Faculties at our Universities as the chief guardians (under modern conditions) of the Humanities, I may doubtless be misled by partiality for studies to which I owe so much ; yet in a way I am well placed for judging. I have been pupil and teacher alike in Literae Humaniores, pupil and teacher alike in English ; in the History School (I confess) teacher only. If anyone said that English was now the most liberal—and liberating—discipline of the three, I should not find it easy to contradict him.
"In this time, place, and fortune," said Sidney's Musidorus, "it is lawfull for us to speake gloriously "—for he spoke in the condemned cell. If England, departing from the practice of Greece and Rome, is about to banish the systematic study of her own literature, it is an honest pride to remember before the blow falls what fruits that study has borne during its short existence. They challenge com- parison with those of any discipline whatever. We have lived scarcely a hundred years, we English scholars. In that time we have given our country the greatest dictionary in the world. We have put into print a vast body of mediaeval literature hitherto imprisoned in manu- script. We have established the text of Shakespeare. We have interpreted that of Chaucer. We have transmitted to our most recent poets the influence of our most ancient. We can claim as our own the rich humanity of Raleigh, the more astringent genius of W. P. Ker, the patient wisdom of R. W. Chambers, and (further back) such tough old giants as Skeat, Furnivall, York Powell, Joseph Wright. More recently at Cambridge we have begun an enquiry into the nature of literary experience which has no real precedent later than Aristotle. Most recently of all, at Oxford, we have (first of all Faculties in all Universities) conducted an Examination for Englishmen now behind barbed wire in Germany. We felt, as we read and re-read the answers; which told of so many hours usefully and delightedly passed in prison, that the labour had been immensely worth while. Here, we thought, was an incontestable witness to the value, not simply of "appreciation," but of a steady march down centuries of changing sentiment, thought, and manners. Here, we thought, was a good augury for the future. We did not yet know that our prize, like Launcelot's, was death.
The Board of Education carries heavier metal than those who are merely scholars and Englishmen. If it resolves to sink us, it can. But it is desirable that a rather larger public should know what exactly it is that is going down.
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