Valedictory address to the University of Oxford

by John Ronald Ruel Tolkien

  We hold, I suppose, that the study of Letters in all languages that possess them is ‘humane’, but that Latin and Greek are ‘more humane’. It may, however, be observed that the first part of the School of Humaner Letters is stated to be ‘The Greek and Latin Languages'; and that this is defined as including ‘the minute critical study of authors ... the history of Ancient Literature’ (that is Lit) ‘and Comparative Philology as illustrating the Greek and Latin Languages' (that is Lang).

  But of course it can be objected that English, in an English-speaking university, is in a different position from other Letters. The English language is assumed to be, and usually is, the native language of the students (if not always in a Standard form that would have been approved by my predecessor). They do not have to learn it. As a venerable professor of Chemistry once said to me – I hasten to add that he is dead, and did not belong to Oxford – ‘I do not know why you want a department of English Language; I know English, but I also know some chemistry.’

  Nonetheless I think that it was a mistake to intrude Language into our title in order to mark this difference, or to warn those who are ignorant of their own ignorance. Not least because Language is thus given, as indeed I suspect was intended, an artificially limited and pseudo-technical sense which separates this technical thing from Literature. This separation is false, and this use of the word ‘language’ is false.

  The right and natural sense of Language includes Literature, just as Literature includes the study of the language of literary works. Litteratura, proceeding from the elementary sense ‘a collection of letters; an alphabet’, was used as an equivalent of Greek grammatike and philologia: that is, the study of grammar and idiom, and the critical study of authors (largely concerned with their language). Those things it should always still include.

  But even if some now wish to use the word ‘literature’ more narrowly, to mean the study of writings that have artistic purpose or form, with as little reference as possible to grammatike or philologia, this ‘literature’ of theirs remains an operation of Language. Literature is, maybe, the highest operation or function of Language, but it is none the less Language. We may except only certain subsidiaries and adminicles: such as those enquiries concerned with the physical forms in which writings have been preserved or propagated, epigraphy, palaeography, printing, and publishing. These may be, and often are, carried on without close reference to content or meaning, and as such are neither Language nor Literature; though they may furnish evidence to both.

  Only one of these words, Language and Literature, is therefore needed in a reasonable title. Language as the larger term is a natural choice. To choose Literature would be to indicate, rightly as I think, that the central (central if not sole) business of Philology in the Oxford School is the study of the language of literary texts, or of those that illuminate the history of the English literary language. We do not include some important parts of linguistic study. We do not teach directly ‘the language as it is spoken and written at the present day’, as is done in Schools concerned with modern languages other than English. Nor are our students expected to compose verses or to write proses in the archaic idioms that they are supposed to learn, as are students of the Greek and Latin languages.

  But whatever may be thought or done about the title of our School, I wish fervently that this abuse in local slang and of the word language might be for ever abandoned! It suggests, and is used to suggest, that certain kinds of knowledge concerning authors and their medium of expression is unnecessary and ‘unliterary’, the interest only of cranks, not of cultured or sensitive minds. And even so it is misapplied in time. In local parlance it is used to cover everything, within our historical range, that is medieval or older. Old and Middle English literature, whatever its intrinsic merit or historical importance, becomes just ‘language’. Except of course Chaucer. His merits as a major poet are too obvious to be obscured; though it was in fact Language, or Philology, that demonstrated, as only Language could, two things of first-rate literary importance: that he was not a fumbling beginner, but a master of metrical technique; and that he was an inheritor, a middle point, and not a ‘father’. Not to mention the labours of Language in rescuing much of his vocabulary and idiom from ignorance or misunderstanding. It is, however, in the backward dark of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘Semi-Saxon’ that Language, now reduced to the bogey Lang, is supposed to have his lair. Though alas! he may come down like Grendel from the moors to raid the ‘literary’ fields. He has (for instance) theories about puns and rhymes!

  But this popular picture is of course absurd. It is the product of ignorance and muddled thinking. It confuses three things, quite different. Two of them are confined to no period and to neither ‘Side’; and one though it may attract and need specialist attention (as do other departments of English studies) is also confined to no period, is neither dark, nor medieval, nor modern, but universal.

  We have first: the linguistic effort and attention required for the reading of all texts with intelligence, even those in so-called modern English. Of course this effort increases as we go back in time, as does the effort (with which it goes hand in hand) to appreciate the art, the thought and feeling, or the allusions of an author. Both reach their climax in ‘Anglo-Saxon’, which has become almost a foreign language. But this learning of an idiom and its implications, in order to understand and enjoy literary or historical texts, is no more Lang, as an enemy of literature, than the attempt to read, say, Virgil or Dante in their own tongues. And it is at least arguable that some exercise of that kind of effort and attention is specially needed in a School in which so much of the literature read seems (to the careless and insensitive) to be sufficiently interpreted by the current colloquial speech.

  We have second: actual technical philology, and linguistic history. But this is confined to no period, and is concerned with all aspects of written or living speech at any time: with the barbarous forms of English that may be met today as much as with the refined forms that may be found a thousand years ago. It may be ‘technical’, as are all departments of our studies, but it is not incompatible with a love of literature, nor is the acquisition of its technique fatal to the sensibility either of critics or of authors. If it seems too much concerned with ‘sounds', with the audible structure of words, it shares this interest with the poets. In any case this aspect of language and of the study of language is basic: one must know sounds before one can talk; one must know one's letters before one can read. And if philology seems most exercised in the older periods, that is because any historical enquiry must begin with the earliest available evidence. But there is also another reason, which leads to the third thing.

  The third thing is the use of the findings of a special enquiry, not specially ‘literary’, for other and more literary purposes. Technical philology can serve the purposes of textual and literary criticism at all times. If it seems most exercised in the older periods, if the scholars who deal with them make most use of philology, that is because Philology rescued the surviving documents from oblivion and ignorance, and presented to lovers of poetry and history fragments of a noble past that without it would have remained for ever dead and dark. But it can also rescue many things that it is valuable to know from a past nearer than the Old English period. It seems strange that the use of it seems by some to be regarded as less ‘literary’ than the use of the evidence provided by other studies not directly concerned with literature or literary criticism; not only major matters such as the history of art and thought and religion, but even minor matters such as bibliography. Which is nearer akin to a poem, its metre or the paper on which it is printed ? Which will bring more to life poetry, rhetoric, dramatic speech or even plain prose: some knowledge of the language, even of the pronunciation, of its period, or the typographical details of its printed form ?

  Medieval spelling remains just a dull department of Lang. Milton's spelling seems now to have become part of Lit. Almost the whole of the introduction in the Everyman edit
ion of his poems, which is recommended to the students for our Preliminary, is devoted to it. But even if not all of those who deal with this facet of Milton criticism show an expert grasp of the history of English sounds and spelling, enquiry into his orthography and its relation to his metre remains just Lang, though it may be employed in the service of criticism.

  Some divisions in our School are inevitable, because the very length of the history of English letters makes mastery all along

  the line difficult even to the widest sympathy and taste and a long life. These divisions should not be by Lang and Lit (one excluding the other); they should be primarily by period. All scholars should be to an adequate degree, within any period to which they are devoted, both Lang and Lit, that is both philologists and critics. We say in our Regulations that all candidates taking papers in English Literature (from Beowulf to A.D. 1900) ‘will be expected to show such knowledge of the history of England as is necessary for the profitable study of the authors and periods which they offer’. And if the candidates, the teachers too, one may suppose. But if the history of England, which though profitable is more remote, why not the history of English ?

  No doubt this point of view is more widely understood than it once was, on both sides. But minds are still confused. Let us glance again at Chaucer, that old poet out in the No-man's land of debate. There was knifework, axe-work, out there between the barbed wire of Lang and Lit in days not so far back. When I was a young and enthusiastic examiner, to relieve the burden of my literary colleagues (at which they loudly groaned), I offered to set the Chaucer paper, or to help in reading the scripts. I was astonished at the heat and hostility with which I was refused. My fingers were dirty: I was Lang.

  That hostility has now happily died down; there is some fraternization between the barbed wire. But it was that hostility which, in the reformed syllabus of the early thirties (still in essentials surviving), made necessary the prescription of two papers dealing with Chaucer and his chief contemporaries. Lit would not allow the greedy hands of Lang to soil the poet. Lang could not accept the flimsy and superficial papers set by Lit. But now, with the latest reform, or mild modification, that comes into force next year, once more Chaucer is presented in one common paper. Rightly, I should have said. But alas! What do we see? ‘Candidates for Courses I and II[2] may be required to answer questions on language’!

  Here we have hallowed in print this pernicious slang misuse. Not ‘his language’, or ‘their language’, or even ‘the language of the period’; just ‘language’. What in the name of scholarship, or poetry, or reason, can that here mean? It should mean, in English fit to appear in documents of the University of Oxford, that certain candidates may be asked questions of general linguistic import, without limitation of time or place, on a paper testing knowledge of the great poetry of the Fourteenth Century, under the general heading ‘English Literature’. But since that is lunatic, one must suppose that something else is meant.

  What kind of question can it mean which no candidate of Course III need ever touch? Is it wicked to enquire, in paper or viva voce, what here or there Chaucer really meant, by word or form, or idiom? Is metre and verse-technique of no concern to sensitive literary minds? Must nothing in any way related to Chaucer's medium of expression be ever allowed to disturb the cotton wool of poor Course III? Then why not add that only Course I and II may be required to answer questions that refer to history or politics, to astronomy, or to religion?

  The logical result of this attitude, indeed its only rational expression, would be this direction: ‘Courses I and II may be expected to show knowledge of Chaucer in the original; Course III will use a translation into contemporary English’. But, if this translation, as may well happen, should at any point be erroneous, this may not be mentioned. That would be ‘language’.

  I have once or twice, not so long ago, been asked to explain or defend this language: to say (I suppose) how it can possibly be profitable or enjoyable. As if I were some curious wizard with arcane knowledge, with a secret recipe that I was unwilling to divulge. To compare the less with the greater, is not that rather like asking an astronomer what he finds in mathematics? Or a theologian what is the interest of the textual criticism of Scripture? As in Andrew Lang's fable a missionary turned on a critic with the words: ‘Did Paul know Greek?’ Some members of our School would probably have said: ‘Did Paul know language?’

  I did not accept the challenge. I did not answer, for I knew no answer that would not appear uncivil. But I might have said: ‘If you do not know any language, learn some — or try to. You should have done so long ago. The knowledge is not hidden. Grammar is for all (intelligent persons), though not all may rise to star-spangled grammar.[3] If you cannot learn, or find the stuff distasteful, then keep humbly quiet. You are a deaf man at a concert. Carry on with your biography of the composer, and do not bother about the noises that he makes!’

  I have said enough, perhaps more than enough for this occasion. I must now get out of the chair and finally stand down. I have not made any effective apologia pro consulatu meo, for none is really possible. Probably my best act in it is the leaving of it – especially in handing it on to its elected occupant, Norman Davis. Already one of the chair-borne, he will know that in the cosy cushions, which legend furnishes for professorial seats, many thorns lurk among the stuffing. He can have those too, with my blessing.

  If we consider what Merton College and what the Oxford School of English owes to the Antipodes, to the Southern Hemisphere, especially to scholars born in Australia and New Zealand, it may well be felt that it is only just that one of them should now ascend an Oxford chair of English. Indeed it may be thought that justice has been delayed since 1925. There are of course other lands under the Southern Cross. I was born in one; though I do not claim to be the most learned of those who have come hither from the far end of the Dark Continent. But I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.

  But even as I step off — not quite the condemned criminal, I hope, that the phrase suggests – I cannot help recalling some of the salient moments in my academic past. The vastness of Joe Wright's dining-room table (when I sat alone at one end learning the elements of Greek philology from glinting glasses in the further gloom). The kindness of William Craigie to a jobless soldier in 1918. The privilege of knowing even the sunset of the days of Henry Bradley. My first glimpse of the unique and dominant figure of Charles Talbut Onions, darkly surveying me, a fledgling prentice in the Dictionary Room (fiddling with the slips for WAG and WALRUS and WAMPUM). Serving under the generous captaincy of George Gordon in Leeds. Seeing Henry Cecil Wyld wreck a table in the Cadena Café with the vigour of his representation of Finnish minstrels chanting the Kalevala. And of course many other moments, not forgotten if not mentioned; and many other men and women of the Studium Anglicanum: some dead, some venerable, some retired, some translated elsewhither, some yet young and very much with us

  still; but all (or nearly all — I cannot say fairer than that and remain honest) nearly all dear to my heart.

  If then with understanding I contemplate this venerable foundation, I now myself fród in ferðe [4] am moved to exclaim:

  Hwǽr cwóm mearh, hwǽr cwóm mago? Hwér cwóm máððumgyfa?

  Hwǽr cwóm symbla gesetu? Hwǽr sindon seledréamas?

  Éalá, beorht bune! Éalá, byrnwiga!

  Éalá, þéodnes þrym! Hú seo þrág gewát,

  genáp under niht-helm, swá heo nó wǽre!

  (Where is the horse gone, where the young rider? Where now the giver of gifts? Where are the seats at the feasting gone? Where are the merry sounds in the hall? Alas, the bright goblet! Alas, the knight and his hauberk! Alas, the glory of the king! How that hour has departed, dark under the shadow of night, as had it never been!)

  (Where is the horse gone, where the young rider? Where now the giver of gifts? Where are the se
ats at the feasting gone? Where are the merry sounds in the hall? Alas, the bright goblet! Alas, the knight and his hauberk! Alas, the glory of the king! How that hour has departed, dark under the shadow of night, as had it never been!)

  But that is ‘Language’.

  Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen!

  Yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!

  Yéni ve lintë yuldar vánier [5] –

  Si man i yulma nin enquantuva?

  (Alas! as gold fall the leaves in the wind!

  Years innumerable as the wings of trees!

  Years like swift draughts of wine have passed away -

  Who now will fill again the cup for me?)

  But that is ‘Nonsense’.

  In 1925, when I was untimely elevated to the stól of Anglo-Saxon, I was inclined to add:

  Nearon nú cyningas ne cáseras

  ne goldgiefan swylce iú wǽron![6]

  (There are not now any kings or emperors, nor any patrons giving gifts of gold, such as once there were!)

  But now when I survey with eye or mind those who may be called my pupils (though rather in the sense ‘the apples of my eyes'): those who have taught me much (not least trawþe, that is fidelity), who have gone on to a learning to which I have not attained; or when I see how many scholars could more than worthily have succeeded me; then I perceive with gladness that the duguð has not yet fallen by the wall, and the dream is not yet silenced.[7]

  1

  An alternative would be the provision, beside the ordinary Preliminary, of an English Honour Moderations, which would enable the abler or more ambitious to spend four years in reading. It would, I think, be less useful in the English School, the variety and scope of which is little exhibited or understood at earlier stages. Our need is rather to provide for those who first at a university discover what there is to know and do, and what are their true bents and talents. [The suggestion is that in addition to the Preliminary Examination (at that time taken after two terms' work) there should be, as an option, a sterner examination (‘Honour Moderations', in which candidates would be classed) taken after two years: the whole course for such candidates thus taking four years. In the event, the ingenious decision was that all students reading English should take an examination called ‘Honour Moderations' after one year, the whole course taking three years as before. – Ed.]