The Review of English Studies/Volume 1/"The Review of English Studies"

“THE REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES”

In the preliminary announcement of this Review it was stated that its chief attention would be devoted to research in all departments of its subject. The word “research” is capable of several interpretations, and some amplification of this statement is perhaps desirable.

To the founders of the Review it seems that research as they understand it is the life-blood of literary history; that without it, without the constant discovery of new facts and of new relations between the old, the study can be little more than the reiteration of stale arguments, coloured perhaps by temporary likes and dislikes, by fashion and by prejudice, but still essentially the same; a weary study and one without pleasure or profit either to the teacher or to the taught.

But in matters of literary history “research” is not quite the same thing as in the natural sciences. We have less to do with that which has never previously been known, and more with that which has never been rightly interpreted. There is little for us to discover in the way of bare fact that was not known to some person or other before our day; much of our work must necessarily be rediscovery, but it is no less important on that account and no less worthy of the name of research. Much toil might indeed have been saved to us if our forefathers had thought fit to put on record a few of the familiar facts about their great contemporaries, their lives and their writings, which we now labour to infer from a hint or a jest. Had they done this we should have been many stages further on the endless road, but there would still have been need, as much and no more than there is to-day, for research. For bare facts are not all. Much of what we strive to find out was not and could not be known to those of the period which we study, for it was veiled from them by the life of everyday. They were like travellers in the forest who cannot see the greater conformation of the land for the undergrowth that presses round them too closely on every side. It is our task as researchers to discover not only the facts, the dry minutiæ, but the relations between them, their reactions upon one another, those slower changes and developments to which the most clear-sighted of contemporaries must be ever blind. This knowledge, if we can attain it, is new knowledge, and as well deserves the name of discovery as any secret wrested from nature by the astronomer or physicist.

It is in this sense that those who have planned this Review would use the name of research, in the sense of interpretation of material as well as that of amassing it; for though all honour is due to the laborious compiler of fact upon fact, a view of research which ranges no further than this misses in their opinion all that is best in it and most worthy of effort. This Review will therefore welcome new facts—however disconnected and in themselves seemingly unimportant they may be—but it will welcome no less cordially attempts to weave such facts into a larger unity, to interpret them in the light of their own time and of ours, and to place them in their true relation to the knowledge that we already possess. Its pages will be open to all new matter, to all new interpretation of the old; the one kind of article that it is hoped to exclude is the mere compilation which has nothing fresh to say. ***** But our aim is much more than the mere collection and printing of work already accomplished. English studies have in the past suffered greatly from want of co-ordination. Many of the best researchers have worked in ignorance of what others were doing in the same field, and much time has been wasted by duplication. It is our hope that this Review may serve as a centre for all such workers, that they may report in it what they themselves are doing, seek through its means the aid of others in their difficulties, and by its help be brought into touch with other workers in their own and neighbouring fields.

And then, too, research has suffered much from want of guidance. This is indeed now excellently supplied in at least one of the great schools of English, but there are still many who have great difficulty in obtaining the instruction that they need. It may be readily admitted that no amount of training will, in any branch of inquiry, make a competent researcher out of a student who has no natural talent in that direction. To those, however, with the requisite endowments it will certainly save much time, and it may save premature discouragement in the important first years of a student’s enthusiasm, when he feels that he has energy and life enough to undertake those longer tasks from which the man whose experience has been tediously acquired through many mistakes may well shrink. This Review will therefore not confine itself to the printing and criticism of work done; it will devote an important part of its space to the discussion of methods and to special articles intended to afford such instruction and information as may be useful to young students, and perhaps even to some of the older ones, in this field.

These then are some of the aims of those who have promoted this Review. But its success or failure does not lie in their hands, but in the hands of those who are interested in the study of English literature—in the hands of every one of them. If they will support it, make use of it, demanding from it what they require but bearing with its imperfections, at any rate in its early days, it will, before long, prove of real value for the progress of English studies. If not it will as surely fail.