Chapter XXIII: Conclusion

Three distinctive moral influences in English literature specially impress us,--the call to strenuous manhood:--

"...this thing is God,
To be man with thy might,"

the increasing sympathy with all earth's children:--

"Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call,
Ye to each other make,"

and the persistent expression of Anglo-Saxon faith. As we pause in our study, we may hear in the twentieth-century song of Alfred Noyes, the echo of the music from the loom of the Infinite Weaver:--

"Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years."[18]

REFERENCE FOR FURTHER STUDY

Kennedy's _English Literature_, 1880-1895 (Shaw, Wells, Fiona Macleod, Yeats).

Kelman's _Mr. Chesterton's Point of View_ (in _Among Famous Books_).

Cooper's _Some English Story Tellers_.

Conrad's _A Personal Record_.

Phelps's _Essays on Modern Novelists_ (De Morgan).

Yeats's _Celtic Twilight_.

Figgis's _Studies and Appreciations_ (_Mr. W.B. Yeats's Poetry_. _The Art of J.M. Synge_.)

More's _Drift of Romanticism_ (Fiona Macleod).

Borsa's _The English Stage of To-day_.

Jones's (Henry Arthur) _The Foundation of a National Drama: A Collection of Essays, Lectures, and Speeches, Delivered and Written in the Years 1896-1912_.

Hamilton's _The Theory of the Theater_.

Hunt's _The Play of To-day_.

Hale's _Dramatists of To-day_.

Henderson's _George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works_, 2 vols.

Chesterton's _George Bernard Shaw_.

Weygandt's _Irish Plays and Playwrights_ (excellent).

Krans's _William Butler Yeats and the Irish Literary Revival_.

Howe's _J.M. Synge: A Critical Study_.

Yeats's _J.M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time_ (in _The Cutting of an Agate_, 1912).

Bickley's _J.M. Synge and the Irish Dramatic Movement_.

Elton's _Living Irish Literature_ (in _Modern Studies_).

SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Essays.--From A.C. Benson, read one of these collections of essays: _The Altar Fire, Beside Still Waters, Thy Rod and Thy Staff_, and one or more of these biographies: _Tennyson, John Ruskin, Rossetti_ (E.M.L.), _Walter Pater_ (E.M.L.); from Chesterton, one of these collections of essays: _Varied Types, Heretics, Orthodoxy_, and one or more of these biographies: _George Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning_ (E.M.L.). For other twentieth-century essays, see the preceding bibliography and the paragraph following this.

The Novel.--From Conrad, read _Youth, Typhoon, Lord Jim_; from Bennett, _The Old Wives' Tale, Clayhanger_; from Galsworthy, _The Man of Property, The Patrician_; from Wells, _The Time Machine, Kipps, The Future in America_ (essay); from Phillpotts, _Children of the Mist, Demeter's Daughter_; from Hewlett, _Life and Death of Richard Yea and Nay, The Stooping Lady_; from Quiller-Couch, _The Splendid Spur, The Delectable Duchy_; from De Morgan, _Joseph Vance, Somehow Good_; from Locke, _The Beloved Vagabond, The Adventures of Aristide Pujol_; from Zangwill, _The Children of the Ghetto, The Melting Pot_ (play).

Poetry.--From _The Poetical Works of William B. Yeats_ (Macmillan), read _The Wanderings of Oisin, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, The Hosting of the Sidhe, The Voice of the Waters_; from Fiona Macleod's _Poems and Dramas_ (Duffield), _The Vision, The Lonely Hunter, The Rose of Flame_; from Masefield, the part of _Dauber_ describing the rounding of Cape Horn, beginning p. 119, in _The Story of a Round-House_ (Macmillan); from Gibson's _Fires_ (Macmillan), _The Crane, The Machine_; from Noyes's _Poems_ (Macmillan, 1906), _The Song of Re-Birth, The Barrel Organ, Forty Singing Seamen, The Highwayman_;