English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 19th century
Some of these forces however have been in the main reactionary. Side by
side with the movement of science, which has on the whole tended to
positivism, agnosticism, and in a word to negative views of things
spiritual, there has gone on a remarkable revival of conceptions
diametrically opposed to these. The old narrow Protestantism of England
was powerful enough to struggle against Catholic Emancipation until the
delay became a danger to the state. Yet hardly was this act of justice
done when the great reaction known as the Oxford Movement began. It was,
as its consummate literary expression, the _Apologia_ of Newman, proves,
the product of a double discontent,--a discontent, on the one hand, with
that movement of science just spoken of; and a discontent, on the other
hand, with what was felt to be the 'creed outworn' of English
Protestantism. As against the latter it has achieved, among those who
hungered for a more emotional religion, a wonderful success. As against
the former its utter failure has been veiled only by that success.
Kindred in spirit and almost contemporaneous in origin was the movement of
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. On the surface, this seems quite unrelated
to Tractarianism; for while the Tractarians were all for dogma, the
Pre-Raphaelites were indifferent to it. But both movements were in essence
protests on behalf of the imaginative and æsthetic in human nature against
the exclusive nourishment of the intellectual element; and they proved
their kinship by each in its own way seeking to bring about a revival of
Mediævalism. In this fact moreover we see wherein their value consisted.
They fought a battle on behalf of aspects of the truth temporarily
threatened with neglect. In so far as they asserted or implied the
incompleteness of the scientific view of life they were almost wholly
right. In so far as they asserted its positive falsity they were almost
wholly wrong. The latter was however the error principally of the
religious movement. The Pre-Raphaelites may have been wrong in many
respects in their conceptions of art; but at least they generally confined
themselves within their own domain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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