THE "FEDERAL IDEA" IN LITERATURE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 229, 20 June 1908, Page 12

THE "FEDERAL IDEA" IN LITERATURE.

' One comes from time to time in the critical "writing "of our day across a principle which in his recent boot Professor Elton lias • happily called the " federal idea "■ in literature. It is the conception of literature as: a unifying principle among the nations. Literature does not, :as.such a pursuit as cominorco does, separate nation from .nation and maka each the rival ,of all the others. It . rather unites them in partnership, so. that • they, co-operate in the advancement of tho \ intellectual interests of man. This concep- ■ ,' tion is well known to all'readers oft Matthew Arnold, becaueo ono of its master texts is his saving that "the criticism which alone C3n help us for the future is the criticism which regards Europe as heing, for intellectual and spiritual .purposes, one great fedoration hound to a. joint action and working to a common result." was in those words, perhaps, that-the idea was .first prc- , ~ seated to the-English mind, but-Mr. Elton not only reminds us that it was actcd on long before it found conscious " expression at '? all, but that, before the days of Arnold, it had found expression in the pages of .Goe.tho, and, before Goetho even, in the pages of the philosopher Herder. This is useful work, foi thero are few quests in literature more interesting than tho working out of. the genealogy of a great idea. Tho genealogy of an idea, however, is one thing and tho idea itself is another, and tho federal conception of literature becomes • all tho clearor for tho .drawing of certain distinctions. For one thing, its application,to tho literature of ideas is clear. There is no reason why ideas should. be shut up within arbitrary political boundaries.; leather thero is nothing that can be moro easily internationalised. As a matter of fact, the internationalisation of ideas goos on very briskly in these days.' Fiance builds no tariff wall against. the importation of ideas from Germany, nor does England against ideas that hail from Scandinavia or ithe United States. A medical discovery in Berlin is "almost inBtantly utilised iii all the hospitals in Eu-' rope, and," in the same way ,110 sooner does a great thinker spring up than lie begins to stir up critics or popularisors of his thoughts in all .the intellectual centres. One must, of course, distinguish between .ideas and corivictious. The ideas thus made common, property among the nations are 'not necessarily adopted everywhere as - true.,- Th6y are adopted for purposes of examination and discussion. National temperament must still assert itself in accepting some and rejecting others and modifying oven those accepted. But tho "federal" idea commends itself to. one's mind from tho fact that, as Mr. Elton puts it, " there is nothing higher to supersede it." . 1 ... Apart from tho literature of ideas, how. ever, there is what may be called the literature of imagination. The distinction is only a , rough ono, because such a form as didactic fiction partakes of the nature of both kinds.; One may see it at work, how-

ever, in the . case of that fiction which ia written mainly to entertain, a tendoncy that t is quite the opposite of cosmopolitanism—a tenderioy to provincialism or even parochial, ism. Those novelists of our day who special, isb on somo particular territory furnish instances; They peg out 6ome district with which thoy aro profoundly familiar, and lay within it the scene of novel after novel, finding their material—of description, character, and incident—within its limits. This is what the' Italians call regionalismo, and the novelist who practises it does not tie . himself down so much as he seems to. Por- ' haps he does so most in the matter of incident, for, although inherently there .is no reason;-why melodramatic or romantic incidents "should not,happen in one place as well as!in another, still they happen so seldom anywhere that a whole series of them represented as happening in the same district awakens a sense of unreality. Tho ■ regionalist school, accordingly, tends to Be- ' come domestic, idyllic, realistic, or all three mixed. In respect of characters the limitation is : much less. There is no stretch ,of

countryside ten miles long by ton miles broad—it is Lowell who says it—but will J yield specimens, inore or lees clearly; differ-.

entiatbd, of ovory type of man'fromtho days of ; the Protoplasts Moreover,'if things come to' a pugh -ib;.novelist can, import an oxotio chara6terpj.to..' makes Eustacia Greek bandmaster from .the noighbou'riiigrtown of Biiduiouth. Oh the other, hand,', the 'advantages are great. The placing Vof. . the»scene. in .volume after volume uiiih'e';,same "region has on the rondi as a woll-kept linity of 'place-has Mn|»a/; single volume. It makes.a' nch'attfospEoiS'j. it makes oho familiar with one's surroundings,, so that every rccurrohce.of a familiar feature increases the sovereign conviction of/l'palit,v., ' The throwing of stones at Europeans, tho Southern India riots, and othor recent incidents show that the rope allowed the political agitator has already been far too long, and the measures adopted for his punisliraont far too"' lbniont.—"Pioneer," Allahabad. Still, tho federal .idea-applies to the literature of imagination, also. It applies to the form, however, not "to the substance; to the method, not . the "material. It is tho principles on'which a'regional novel,is constructed that are : capable of being generalised, and, as a matter of fact, in all the great nations .to-day thoy are being as -assiduously practised as'in this good realm of England.—-"Manchester Guardian."