It is a humbling experience to realize, as I speak to you this evening, that I have said many times before the things that are on my mind to say. It is even more humbling to know that all that I can say has been better said by other men before me. But I make no apology for reaffirming my faith that the study of man is the heart of a liberal education, that the understanding of man's spiritual power is our last, best hope in a world distraught. And so tonight I shall try to define what I believe to be the proper scope of that study.

There are fords in the scholar's stream of consciousness and I can prove it. For the benefit of future historians I report to you a phenomenon of our time. Last year the Rockefeller Foundation made a grant of $120,000 to this Association and I have ever since been getting letters from people referring to our Ford Foundation grant of $200,000 or $250,000 (the sum is always larger than what we got). Several times I have even seen the Ford generosity to us mentioned in print. Only once has anybody congratulated me on shaking down the Carnegie Corporation. It is all very confusing, and I wouldn't mention the matter at all if it did not seem to me significant. From the moment the Ford Foundation started giving away millions like crazy, the whole teaching profession has been smiling in its sleep, dreaming of plump subsidies or fellowships with few strings attached. Today there is only one Maecenas in the scholar's mind. It makes me feel rather sad for our good friend the Rockeford Foundation. I want to take this occasion publicly to assure our benefactors that they are still our favorite Fordation.

The imagination is the great discovery of modern self-consciousness. We have come to suppose that supreme moments of vision—whether these be the “shewings” of Dame Julian of Norwich or the “résurrections de la mémoire” of Marcel Proust—are the fruit merely of a human power to transform the ordinary appearances of daily life into transparent images on which the mind can rest. It could follow that all spiritual clarifications of reality, like great works of art, reveal no more than successful conjunctions of matter and consciousness.

Bringing together the names of Sherwood Anderson and Eduardo Mallea at first only emphasizes differences between the writers—differences that appear in common beliefs about them and their respective countries. Place, time, and critical tradition set them apart. In the first instance, geographical separation would appear still important despite easy modern communications; and cultural variance is, of course, even more to be considered than spatial distance. Such matters as the quite different colonial impulses creating the present-day United States and Argentina, the “Anglic” tradition as opposed to the Hispanic, Protestantism to Catholicism, and pragmatism to idealism lead one to expect that if Anderson and Mallea conform to the general patterns of their native areas they will have little in common.

It has become fashionable in some circles to say that Conrad's prefaces and autobiographical utterances are to some extent oversimplifications and therefore misleading. And, of course, brief essayistic statements of overtly moral intent cannot adequately suggest the interplay of emotional struggles, ideals, and human depravity so richly and variously presented in the conflicts of Conrad's fictional world. Indeed, there may lurk beneath the conscious artifice of fiction subconscious psychic depths, hinted at in such symbols as may reasonably be exploited in terms of Jungian archetypes. I do not for a moment doubt the validity and plausibility of such approaches to Conrad.

The irreverend and not always to be reverenced Frank Harris, in his book on Shaw, has sarcastically quoted Shaw's remark when the playwright was once told that he enjoyed a great reputation in America: “Which? I am a philosopher, novelist, sociologist, critic, statesman, dramatist, and theologian. I have therefore seven reputations.” Conceding his willingness to make Shaw a present of the last six, Harris nevertheless maintained that for the life of him he couldn't see how Shaw got in as a philosopher—even a laughing philosopher. A court jester, perhaps, or a “wit of the first water.” But being a philosopher entails, first, the formulation of a system of thought, and, second, the founding of a school of disciples to carry that thought on. Since, in spite of the “heaps of notes” Harris claimed to have gathered in a vain investigation of this subject, he could discover neither any system of thought nor any body of followers, he announced magisterially that, as a philosopher, Shaw “simply doesn't exist.”

The idea that Spanish literature is essentially national and popular is no longer so kindly received as it used to be. Dámaso Alonso has repeatedly attacked this interpretation, and in recent years several distinguished scholars, among them Ernst Robert Curtius, have joined him in demanding a complete re-evaluation of the Spanish literary tradition. The force of their attacks is itself the best indication of how deeply-rooted the older view had become.

The women that Hawthorne created divide rather neatly into three groups. Such fragile creatures as Alice Pyncheon and Priscilla, who are easily dominated by other personalities, form one of these groups. Another is made up of bright, self-reliant, and wholesome girls, such as Ellen Langton, Phoebe, and Hilda. The third consists of women whose beauty, intellect, and strength of will raise them to heroic proportions and make them fit subjects for tragedy. Hester Prynne, Zenobia, and Miriam—these women are capable of tilting with the world and risking their souls on the outcome. With them in particular Hawthorne raises and answers the question of the proper status of women in society and the relation, whether subordinate or superior, that love should bear to the other demands that life makes upon the individual. With the other types Hawthorne fills out his response to that question.

If we assume that recurrent images, structure, tone, and literary allusions contribute to the meaning of “Rappaccini's Daughter”— and students of Hawthorne will agree, I think, that such an assumption is valid—the traditional interpretation of the story as a warning against intellectual pride appears inadequate. Such an interpretation, as I hope to make clear in this paper, overlooks the basic paradox of Giovanni's position as he wavers between the two aspects of evil represented by Rappaccini and Baglioni. Achievement of a fully satisfactory reading is difficult, however, because this is Hawthorne's most complex story, one which presents what he elsewhere describes as “a more perplexing amalgamation of vice and virtue than we witness in the outward world” (II, 377).

As Henry Seidel Canby pointed out in his life of Thoreau fifteen years ago, there is a strange gap in the biography of Thoreau that has never been filled. In Sanborn's edition of the Familiar Letters of Thoreau (Boston, 1894), there is a letter of 14 November 1847 to Emerson, traveling in England at the time, stating in part:

The importance of the organic metaphor in Emerson's thinking and writing has been increasingly recognized in recent years. The formerly prevalent notion that Emerson was a great writer in spite of obvious faults and in the absence of most of the familiar virtues, that as a thinker he was rescued from his own contradictions only by some unexplainable, perhaps mystical, consistency in his character, has been forced into the background, though it still persists in many people's minds and in some published criticism. It has been progressively corrected by such investigations as those of Henry D. Gray, Norman Foerster, Joseph Warren Beach, F. O. Matthiessen, Robert E. Spiller, Vivian C. Hopkins, and Sherman Paul, in which the romantic origins of Emerson's thought and art are explored, and in which organic theories are increasingly used to explain his meanings and to evaluate his aesthetic achievements. I should like to carry this line of inquiry a little further, because I believe that Emerson should be placed more wholly in the romantic tradition than he has yet been, and that his importance depends on a more fundamental, consistent, and logical use than he has yet been shown to have made of the organic principle, which is one of the central concepts of romantic philosophy.

Because none of Wordsworth's later poems has been so neglected as his sonnet cycle The River Duddon, the pleasant task remains of doing it critical justice. O. J. Campbell has used it as an illustration of Wordsworth's later symbolic art, and the geographical features of the landscape through which the Duddon flows have been adequately described. Furthermore, the English river is a happier symbol than the deer in The While Doe of Rylstone and has simpler, more natural virtues than the mystic Holy River which is the life-stream of pure religion in the Ecclesiastical Sonnets. Most of the Duddon poems, it is true, fall less sublimely upon the ear and have less nobility and perfection than the finest he composed before 1806. Even so, their level is consistently high, part of their attractiveness being a sometimes bleak austerity. In several ways too, as Wordsworth generously says in his “Postscript,” the sequence is related to Coleridge's project, The Brook, outlined in Biographia Literaria. More important, however, is the final development of an extended theme based upon water imagery, for after 1797 Wordsworth's profoundest insights are often associated with it. We have also Robert Arnold Aubin's comment that “the greatest river-poem of all is Wordsworth's River Duddon (1820)… . With its use of apostrophe, local pride, historical reflection, catalogue, moralizing, genre scenes, episode, early memories, prospect, ruin-piece, and Muse-driving ( On, loitering muse—the swift stream chides us—on!'), it is not wonderful that a reviewer perceived that the work belonged in the main stream of topographical poetry.”

We cannot be sure that Blake knew Thomas Taylor personally, but we can be sure that he knew by reputation the then famous translator. Even a cursory examination, moreover, of the works of the two writers will show that Blake undoubtedly was thoroughly indoctrinated in the dogmas of Taylor's writings. The great difference in symbolism and philosophical content between Blake's early poetry and the Prophetic Books may be attributed in no small degree to Taylor's translations and his interpretations of Neo-Platonic doctrines. One of the most interesting of these to both Blake and Taylor was the concept of time and eternity.

I the extensive literature on Schiller of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century shows surprisingly little concern with his philosophy of history. To Körner, who had expressed his reservations concerning his friend's endeavors in this line of thought, Schiller complained: “Du willst mich im Philosophieren über Geschichte noch gar nicht gelten lassen. Meine Uebersicht macht bei vielen Sensation … Bekehre Dich also ja.” Could Schiller make this same complaint today? Until recently students seem to have followed Körner in their reluctance to recognize the value of Schiller's early contribution to the philosophy of history. The reaction of the romantics against the enlightenment's philosophy of history may well have delayed any whole-hearted reception of Schiller into the field. Signal acknowledgment of his historical thinking may have been retarded by the genuine distrust for all speculation on human evolution with which Ranke and Burckhardt have imbued generations of good historians. In our own time an awareness of crisis makes us both tolerant of present-day speculation upon history and its course, and interested in previous philosophies of history. Any efforts we make to grant Schiller's wish to be taken seriously as a philosopher of history (specifically as in his lectures and writings of the years 1789-90) may help us with our own problems. An examination of his ideas might also help to clarify our view of his Weltanschauung, which, as proof of its vitality, is now again being vigorously argued.

We are confronted today with a persistent tradition, whose veracity has been less questioned with the passing years, that Diderot not only contributed extensively to the thought and style, but also wrote many of the pages, of D'Holbach's works.

In his “‘Wit and Poetry and Pope’: Some Observations on his Imagery” Maynard Mack speaks of Pope's wide variety of patterns “that help supply the kind of unity which he is popularly not supposed to have.” An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot offers striking illustration of this conception : analysis reveals patterns of images running throughout, each one discrete yet all so related as to give to the whole a metaphoric value which helps to tie the poem together. I do not mean to suggest that Arbuthnot has no other kind of unity apart from that given to it by these patterns of imagery, or that this imagery functions autonomously.

To judge from most criticism of Swift's Tale of a Tub, the work is a skillful and powerful failure, because the faults Swift parodies have distilled into his own pen. For though the Tale is clearly meant to be an exposé of the literary sins of formless, ephemeral, and subjective writing, critics find that the brilliance of the book results from Swift's being guilty of just those sins. One critic finds in the Tale both confusion and the intrusion of Swift's “insane egotism” and his “sense of insecurity,” while other critics find order but at the expense of the other qualities. Mrs. Miriam K. Starkman examines the intellectual background of the book thoroughly and concludes that the confusion is the reader's rather than Swift's but that the Tale is a learned work of merely biographical and historical interest, a “meaningful and prodigiously skillful espousal of a lost cause.” Ricardo Quintana and Robert C. Elliott find that the Tale has unity but only because Swift's point of view, that man is essentially irrational, informs all sections of the book. Most of the critics, then, find Swift expressing his subjective attitudes and lacking a subject upon which he could comment with any objectivity and universality. “So diverse is this subject matter,” says Elliott, “that one can not possibly find in it alone a principle of organization.”

That interesting Devonshire worthy, Joseph Glanvill, has received a large share of attention in recent years because his interests so clearly reflect what he himself first termed his “climate of opinion.” He has been variously considered as a rational latitudinarian, a Cartesian, a spokesman for the “new science” in its Baconian aspect, a religious sceptic, and a revealing case of conformity to the Royal Society's demands for a “plain” style in prose. My aim is to point out that all of Glanvill's ostensibly diverse interests and attitudes fall into focus, and form a unified and consistent pattern, if we see him in the role of a religious and, at times, theological apologist for the Anglican settlement. The facility with which this popularizing writer turns the errors, facts, and philosophies of his age to the service of his particular ideology should remind us once again that ideas set in the continuity of their traditions are one thing; viewed as active participants in the life of a given generation of men they become quite another.

Milton's casual use of the word “vicissitude” provides a simple measure of our differences from him and of our difficulty with his epic. At the opening of Book VI of Paradise Lost occurs a descriptive passage of relaxed intensity:

There is a Cave
Within the Mount of God, fast by his Throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heav'n
Grateful vicissitude, like Day and Night. (4-8)

The phrase “Grateful vicissitude” delays or shocks almost any modern reader, for whatever our dictionary-makers say, it has been many years since “vicissitude” was used in ordinary English speech or writing in other than a pejorative sense. In Paradise Lost, however, “vicissitude” is always “grateful;” it is change, variety, movement, the mark of vitality and joy characteristic of both the divine and the human master artist's work. We cannot properly read the poem unless we can share imaginatively, at least for the moment, Milton's conception.

Although the principal subject of this paper is Ben Jonson's second tragedy, Catiline His Conspiracy (1611), a good deal of what I have to say is equally applicable to his earlier and somewhat more ambitious Sejanus His Fall (1603). The two plays are alike in many ways. For one thing, neither of them has ever been popular. Even among professed admirers, very few have been willing to praise them as highly as Jonson thought they deserved to be praised, and fewer still have seen any genuine tragedy in them. In fact, most criticism, favorable as well as unfavorable, has centered on such interesting but essentially peripheral matters as Jonson's use of the Senecan ghost and chorus (in Catiline), his portrayal of character, his reconstruction of the Roman scene, and, of course, his rhetoric. Discussions of Jonson's plots have scarcely gone beyond the problem of identifying his sources, and almost no one has touched upon the question of whether any real importance attaches to the use he made of those sources. This would not be particularly surprising, perhaps, if we were dealing with some competent journeyman, like Thomas Heywood for example, whose selection and use of sources is a matter of mainly academic interest; but in Jonson we have a playwright who not only aimed at something more than a popularly successful play but also set unusually great store by authenticity of fable—or “truth of argument,” as he called it—where tragedy was concerned (Works, IV, 350). His manipulation of material, therefore, especially at points where the disagreement of authoritative sources about a major issue forced him to make a choice, becomes a matter of considerable interest. It is certainly of interest to the historian, for it shows the sort of interpretation of history an intelligent and well-informed classical student of the seventeenth century might reasonably hold. My point, however, is that it is also a matter of literary interest. It can be shown, I think, that Jonson's ordering of his fable, rightly understood, gives the clue to why and how he expected these plays to be judged as tragedies rather than merely as serious history plays. In other words, it lets one see the conception of tragic drama that he worked by.