The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-12-11 00:00:00

PROFESSOR MORLEY on LITERATURE.

Taking for a subject "The Literature of To-Day,
with a Guess at To-Morrow's," Professor Henry
Morley, LLD., on Monday evening, delivered the
fifth and concluding lecture of a series given by him
to the members of • the Westbourne-park Institute,
London. 'The lecture-hall was filled with an audience
evidently appreciative alike of the touches of plea-
santry and satire which enlivened the lecture and of
the earnestness of purpose shown by the lecturer.
In trying, from the course which our literature had
taken in the past, to foretell the course it would take
in the future, the lecturer warned his hearers to re-
member that the literature we studied was but
a selection from the whole body of the written
speech of the England of bygone days, and equally,
in considering the literature of our own time, to
distinguish that which from its nature could not live
beyond the present from that which the people of
after days would treasure. Glancing at the result of
their study in the previous lectures, he said they had
found that the hope which had fired some aboutthe time
of the French Revolution of raising by a grand united
effort the whole hurhan race at once had been aban-
doned, and they had seen Robert Browning and
others following the lead of Wordsworth with a clear
understanding that it was possible to lift the human
race to a height far above the present level, but that
this could only be done by labouring for the develop-
ment of each individual citizen.

Considering next the literature of the 'day in its
various phases, the lecturer pointed out that in reli-
gious, scientific, and historical works the characteristic
of the best writers was the absolute sincerity with
which they wrote. Speaking hopefully of our litera-
ture in the departments of biography and fiction,
and with more qualifications, but still with hope,
of the drama, he came to journalism, and urged
the advantages which all would find from occasion-
ally reading journals that advocated views opposed
to those of the reader. It was useful even to look
at papers which reflected conditions of society we
might wish did not exist. In such journals he had found
wise counsel, and though we might regret the appear-
ance of some of the matter they contained, we must
reflect that it would not be wise of a man to break his
mirror because he did not like the shape of his nose.
We should rather try to mend what was amiss in our
social condition. Useful as the journal in its varied
forms of newspaper and magazine was, we ought, how-
ever, to bear in mind that it should be but an aid to
our reading, that it could not take the place of the
study of books. While all were in a busy age greatly
benefited by the currency which journalism gave to the
productions of authors, a sound and wholesome public
opinion could only be formed by each man reading for
himself the works about which he wished to talk and to
know something, and then modestly but fearlessly
expressing his views. As to the future, we might
reasonably hope that our literature would continue to
advance in the same direction 'as in the past—towards
a full, fearless, and untrammelled expression of indi-
vidual thought; and with a generation growing up
better educated than that which preceded it, and with
greatly exteisded opportunities of intellectual culture
opening to women, there was in every form of litera-
ture a chance of an increase rather than a diminution
of strength.