The impulse to scholarship with which he inspired his graduate students is reflected so well in this volume that it hardly needs further emphasis. The mingled strains of Dutch and English ancestry probably account for the fact that while his students were ever impressed with the necessity of accuracy, they also never were allowed to lose that sense of proportion in scholarship to which a purely Germanic training is apt to lead. It has been this keen sense of proportion, too, which, notwithstanding the stern responsibilities of teaching, the conduct of a growing department, and the constant interruptions of local demands upon his time, has enabled Professor Schelling to make his significant contribution to printed scholarship. He started the University series of Monographs in Literature with his Poetic and Verse Criticism of the Reign of Elizabeth in 1891. In 1892 his edition of Ben Jonson's Discoveries drew from Dr. Horace Howard Furness the epigram: "At last rare Ben Jonson has been well done." His monograph on The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne came next in 1893, and his excellent judgment in separating the permanent from the passing was illustrated in his Book of Elizabethan Lyrics (1896) and his Book of Seventeenth Century Lyrics (1899). In 1898 he presented in "Ben Jonson and the Classical School," a brilliant study of the origins and sources of the Age of Pope. For many years all other work was but a by-product to his study of the Elizabethan dramatists, and in 1902 he published his preliminary account of one phase of the subject in The English Chronicle Play. It was a notice to the world of scholarship that the best manner of treating a literary form was through the types into which it ran rather than through the men who had produced its examples. In 1904 came his charming essays, The Queen's Progress and other Elizabethan Sketches, in which he reflected the spirit of the age which he has so thoroughly made his own. The crowning work of his life so far, appeared in 1908, his Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642, a History of the Drama in England from the Accession of Queen Elizabeth to the Closing of the Theaters, to which is prefixed a Résumé of the Earlier Drama from its Beginnings. These two volumes have taken their place as the definitive work on the subject. Next came his English Literature During the Lifetime of Shakespeare, in 1910; and in 1913 his volume on The English Lyric, the field in which, next to the drama, his keenest interest lay. In some respects this book pleases his friends the most. The charm of the style reflects the Schelling they know in actual life. If the History of the Elizabethan Drama presents his most solid achievement as an historian of literature, The English Lyric reveals him as the discriminating critic, the master of the illuminating generalization and the distinguished phrase. In 1914 Professor Schelling was asked by Mr. Ernest Rhys to write in a series under his direction a History of English Drama in which he dealt with the entire field. The war and the many consequent activities which for all men of scholarship were naturally interruptions to their normal routine, turned Professor Schelling towards an earlier form of expression. From the very beginning of the conflict in 1914, he took a firm stand on the side of civilization, and his resentment at the conduct of Germany found vent in literary form in his war verses which were collected and published under the title of Thor and Other War Verses in 1918. One cannot write in the past tense concerning Professor Schelling's productions in scholarship. At present he is writing from a new point of view an account of the Elizabethan Drama. Among the many articles, a complete list of which will be found in the Bibliography, may be mentioned the chapter on the Restoration Drama in the Cambridge History of English Literature, the Introduction to Ben Jonson's Plays in the Everyman edition, and the masterly review of the fifth and sixth volumes of the Cambridge History for the Modern Language Review. Among the many addresses which Professor Schelling has delivered on public occasions on this side of the Atlantic, perhaps those which will be the longest remembered by his audiences were his words at the meeting at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1912 in memory of Horace Howard Furness, the Phi Beta Kappa Oration at the University of Pennsylvania in 1902, and his Commencement Address in 1915. There was a singular appropriateness in the choice of Professor Schelling to describe the life work of the great Shakespearean scholar whose mantle had descended upon his own shoulders. Often when a great scholar dies, it seems as though no successor could be found. It is a rare chance that in his own city and in the University with which he was so long associated as a Trustee, there should be already a man who could justifiably be assigned the position of leadership in the field Dr. Furness left vacant. The Phi Beta Kappa address was upon "Humanities Gone and to Come." It was a bugle call to those who believe in preserving the permanent values in education. One sentence of the address, "Depend upon it, the sword is best whetted upon that which it is intended never to cut," remains in the memory of many an auditor. This address has been re-printed in Phi Beta Kappa Addresses. The international scope of Professor Schelling's reputation has made him an appropriate choice to represent the University or the Nation on many occasions abroad. In 1900 he attended in the first capacity the four hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the University of Glasgow. In 1914 he was chosen, as the one American to be so honored, an Honorary Member of the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, and attended the celebration at Weimar, April 21-24, of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of that society. Among the six other foreigners who received a similar distinction were Lord Haldane for England, and M. Jusserand for France, and Professor Schelling became by a curious fate, the bearer of the society's diploma to M. Jusserand, who had been unable to be present. In July, 1921 he represented the University at the re-laying of the cornerstone of the library of the University of Louvain. Although he has been in continuous service since 1886, Professor Schelling has not confined his teaching entirely to Pennsylvania. In 1906-1907 he was invited to give courses in "Shakespeare" and in "The Drama from Jonson to the closing of the Theaters" at Johns Hopkins University. He has lectured at the Summer Session of the University of Chicago, conducted graduate work at New York University, and was the Clyde Fitch Lecturer in Drama at Amherst College. There has never been anything of the recluse about Felix Schelling. Movements of the right kind, professional, national, or local, have had his constant interest and support. For many years he has been an active member of the Modern Language Association of America and was its President in 1912. Other organizations of which he has been President are the Society of the Alumni of the University of Pennsylvania and the Contemporary Club of Philadelphia. Recognition of his achievements in literature and scholarship has come in the form of elections to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Philosophical Society, and to the office of Senator of Phi Beta Kappa. From his own University such recognition has been expressed by the Trustees' action in awarding him the honorary degrees of Litt.D. in 1903 and of LL.D. in 1909. Happily, the record is still incomplete. The world of scholarship may still hope for productions from Felix Schelling. His friends and colleagues may still look forward with confidence to years in which his genial presence and his stimulating influence may be theirs. The Department of English, no matter what its form of organization may become, will still recognize him as its spiritual head, and will not lose the impress he has given it. The College and the University of Pennsylvania may expect to retain his wisdom and his courage in their service. When that service terminates, it will be but to mark the point at which will begin another of those great traditions, to be carried on in the minds and hearts of his students, which have enriched the history of Pennsylvania and of the nation. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF FELIX E. SCHELLING FROM 1889 TO 1923. 1889 Review: Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54. The American, XVII (1889), 218-19. E. Gosse: A History of Eighteenth Century Literature. The American, XVII (1889), 361-62. "A Word on English Literature in America," Poet-Lore, I (1889), 210-13. Review: J. G. R. McElroy: The Structure of English Prose. The "The Scope of English Literature in Education," Modern Language "The Unscientific Method," The Academy, A Journal of Secondary Education, IV (1889), 495-500. 1890 Two Essays on Robert Browning: I. Robert Browning and the Poetry of the Future; II. Robert Browning and the Arabesque in Art. Privately printed, 1890. Review: A. H. Smyth: American Literature. Modern Language "Antipodean Verse," Atlantic Monthly, LXV (1890), 281-83. "Spenser's Lost Work, "The English Poete,'" Modern Language Notes, V (1890), 273-76. Review: A. C. Swinburne: A Study of Ben Jonson. Modern Language A. H. Welsh: A Digest of English and American Literature. "The Inventor of the English Hexameter," Modern Language Notes, V (1890), 423-27. Review: "An Elizabethan Classic": Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy, ed. A. S. Cook. Modern Language Notes, V (1890), 483-87. 1891 Poetic and Verse Criticism of the Reign of Elizabeth, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, Vol. I, No. 1, 1890. Review: J. J. Jusserand: The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare. Modern Language Notes, VI (1891), 222-26. "University Extension in Its Practical Workings," Book News, IX (1891), 356-58. 1892 Ben Jonson: Timber or Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter, ed. with Intro. and Notes, Boston, 1892. 1893 "How Can the Highest Educational Efficiency Be Secured for English in American Colleges?" The University Magazine, Jan., 1893, pp. 5-10. The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne, with Three Poems heretofore not Reprinted. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, Vol. II, No. 4 [1893]. "In the Tribunal of Literary Criticism: Bacon vs. Shakespeare. Part II, Closing Arguments for the Defence," Arena, VII (1893), 753-59. 1894 "English at the University of Pennsylvania," Dial, XVII (1894), 146-47. Reprinted in W. M. Payne, English in American Universities, Boston, 1895, pp. 130-34. 1895 A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics, selected and edited with an Introduction, Boston [1895]. 1896 "Poems of Shirley attributed to Carew and Goffe," Modern Language Notes, XI (1896), 273-77. 1898 "Studies in the Evolution of Dramatic Species from the Beginnings of the English Drama to the Year 1660," University of Pennsylvania Bulletin, Jan. 1898. Review: D. Hanney: The Later Renaissance. The Citizen, IV (1898), 85-87. "Shakespeare and Elizabethan Sport," D. H. Madden: The Diary of Master William Silence. The Citizen, V (1898), 277-80. "Ben Jonson and the Classical School," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, XIII (1898), 221-49. Reprinted, Publications of the University of Pennsylvania, Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, Vol. XIII, No. 2, 1898. 1899 "The Poetry and Satire of Andrew Marvell," City and State, VI (1899), 11. A Book of Seventeenth Century Lyrics, selected and edited with an "The Countess of Pembroke Epitaph," N. Y. Evening Post, May 20, 1899. |