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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/18639-0.txt b/18639-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dcb5b80 --- /dev/null +++ b/18639-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4314 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Victorian Age in Literature, by G. K. Chesterton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Victorian Age in Literature + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: June 20, 2006 [EBook #18639] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Karina Aleksandrova, Juliet Sutherland and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + +OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + +No. 61 + +_Editors:_ + +THE RT. HON. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. + +PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A. + +PROF. SIR J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. + +PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + +_A complete classified list of the volumes of The Home University +Library already published to be found at the back of this book._ + + + + +THE VICTORIAN AGE +IN LITERATURE + +BY + +G. K. CHESTERTON + +NEW YORK +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + +LONDON +THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LTD. + +COPYRIGHT, 1913, + +BY + +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + INTRODUCTION 7 + + I THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES 12 + + II THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS 90 + + III THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS 156 + + IV THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE 204 + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 253 + + INDEX 255 + + +The Editors wish to explain that this book is not put forward as an +authoritative history of Victorian literature. It is a free and personal +statement of views and impressions about the significance of Victorian +literature made by Mr. Chesterton at the Editors' express invitation. + + + + +THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +A section of a long and splendid literature can be most conveniently +treated in one of two ways. It can be divided as one cuts a currant cake +or a Gruyère cheese, taking the currants (or the holes) as they come. Or +it can be divided as one cuts wood--along the grain: if one thinks that +there is a grain. But the two are never the same: the names never come +in the same order in actual time as they come in any serious study of a +spirit or a tendency. The critic who wishes to move onward with the life +of an epoch, must be always running backwards and forwards among its +mere dates; just as a branch bends back and forth continually; yet the +grain in the branch runs true like an unbroken river. + +Mere chronological order, indeed, is almost as arbitrary as alphabetical +order. To deal with Darwin, Dickens, Browning, in the sequence of the +birthday book would be to forge about as real a chain as the "Tacitus, +Tolstoy, Tupper" of a biographical dictionary. It might lend itself +more, perhaps, to accuracy: and it might satisfy that school of critics +who hold that every artist should be treated as a solitary craftsman, +indifferent to the commonwealth and unconcerned about moral things. To +write on that principle in the present case, however, would involve all +those delicate difficulties, known to politicians, which beset the +public defence of a doctrine which one heartily disbelieves. It is quite +needless here to go into the old "art for art's sake"--business, or +explain at length why individual artists cannot be reviewed without +reference to their traditions and creeds. It is enough to say that with +other creeds they would have been, for literary purposes, other +individuals. Their views do not, of course, make the brains in their +heads any more than the ink in their pens. But it is equally evident +that mere brain-power, without attributes or aims, a wheel revolving in +the void, would be a subject about as entertaining as ink. The moment we +differentiate the minds, we must differentiate by doctrines and moral +sentiments. A mere sympathy for democratic merry-making and mourning +will not make a man a writer like Dickens. But without that sympathy +Dickens would not be a writer like Dickens; and probably not a writer at +all. A mere conviction that Catholic thought is the clearest as well as +the best disciplined, will not make a man a writer like Newman. But +without that conviction Newman would not be a writer like Newman; and +probably not a writer at all. It is useless for the æsthete (or any +other anarchist) to urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart +from his attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his +individuality: men are never individual when alone. + +It only remains for me, therefore, to take the more delicate and +entangled task; and deal with the great Victorians, not only by dates +and names, but rather by schools and streams of thought. It is a task +for which I feel myself wholly incompetent; but as that applies to every +other literary enterprise I ever went in for, the sensation is not +wholly novel: indeed, it is rather reassuring than otherwise to realise +that I am now doing something that nobody could do properly. The chief +peril of the process, however, will be an inevitable tendency to make +the spiritual landscape too large for the figures. I must ask for +indulgence if such criticism traces too far back into politics or ethics +the roots of which great books were the blossoms; makes Utilitarianism +more important than _Liberty_ or talks more of the Oxford Movement than +of _The Christian Year_. I can only answer in the very temper of the +age of which I write: for I also was born a Victorian; and sympathise +not a little with the serious Victorian spirit. I can only answer, I +shall not make religion more important than it was to Keble, or politics +more sacred than they were to Mill. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES + + +The previous literary life of this country had left vigorous many old +forces in the Victorian time, as in our time. Roman Britain and Mediæval +England are still not only alive but lively; for real development is not +leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from +a root. Even when we improve we never progress. For progress, the +metaphor from the road, implies a man leaving his home behind him: but +improvement means a man exalting the towers or extending the gardens of +his home. The ancient English literature was like all the several +literatures of Christendom, alike in its likeness, alike in its very +unlikeness. Like all European cultures, it was European; like all +European cultures, it was something more than European. A most marked +and unmanageable national temperament is plain in Chaucer and the +ballads of Robin Hood; in spite of deep and sometimes disastrous changes +of national policy, that note is still unmistakable in Shakespeare, in +Johnson and his friends, in Cobbett, in Dickens. It is vain to dream of +defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a +smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to +explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, +"Well, you know holly--mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this +logical method in the comparison of plants or nations. But if he had +said to the Teuton, "Well, you know Germany--England's the +opposite"--the definition, though fallacious, would not have been wholly +false. England, like all Christian countries, absorbed valuable elements +from the forests and the rude romanticism of the North; but, like all +Christian countries, it drank its longest literary draughts from the +classic fountains of the ancients: nor was this (as is so often loosely +thought) a matter of the mere "Renaissance." The English tongue and +talent of speech did not merely flower suddenly into the gargantuan +polysyllables of the great Elizabethans; it had always been full of the +popular Latin of the Middle Ages. But whatever balance of blood and +racial idiom one allows, it is really true that the only suggestion that +gets near the Englishman is to hint how far he is from the German. The +Germans, like the Welsh, can sing perfectly serious songs perfectly +seriously in chorus: can with clear eyes and clear voices join together +in words of innocent and beautiful personal passion, for a false maiden +or a dead child. The nearest one can get to defining the poetic temper +of Englishmen is to say that they couldn't do this even for beer. They +can sing in chorus, and louder than other Christians: but they must have +in their songs something, I know not what, that is at once shamefaced +and rowdy. If the matter be emotional, it must somehow be also broad, +common and comic, as "Wapping Old Stairs" and "Sally in Our Alley." If +it be patriotic, it must somehow be openly bombastic and, as it were, +indefensible, like "Rule Britannia" or like that superb song (I never +knew its name, if it has one) that records the number of leagues from +Ushant to the Scilly Isles. Also there is a tender love-lyric called "O +Tarry Trousers" which is even more English than the heart of _The +Midsummer Night's Dream_. But our greatest bards and sages have often +shown a tendency to rant it and roar it like true British sailors; to +employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half +humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants +of Victor Hugo. A piece of Hugo's eloquence is either a serious triumph +or a serious collapse: one feels the poet is offended at a smile. But +Shakespeare seems rather proud of talking nonsense: I never can read +that rousing and mounting description of the storm, where it comes to-- + + "Who take the ruffian billows by the top, + Curling their monstrous heads, and _hanging_ them + With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds." + +without seeing an immense balloon rising from the ground, with +Shakespeare grinning over the edge of the car, and saying, "You can't +stop me: I am above reason now." That is the nearest we can get to the +general national spirit, which we have now to follow through one brief +and curious but very national episode. + +Three years before the young queen was crowned, William Cobbett was +buried at Farnham. It may seem strange to begin with this great +neglected name, rather than the old age of Wordsworth or the young death +of Shelley. But to any one who feels literature as human, the empty +chair of Cobbett is more solemn and significant than the throne. With +him died the sort of democracy that was a return to Nature, and which +only poets and mobs can understand. After him Radicalism is urban--and +Toryism suburban. Going through green Warwickshire, Cobbett might have +thought of the crops and Shelley of the clouds. But Shelley would have +called Birmingham what Cobbett called it--a hell-hole. Cobbett was one +with after Liberals in the ideal of Man under an equal law, a citizen of +no mean city. He differed from after Liberals in strongly affirming that +Liverpool and Leeds are mean cities. + +It is no idle Hibernianism to say that towards the end of the eighteenth +century the most important event in English history happened in France. +It would seem still more perverse, yet it would be still more precise, +to say that the most important event in English history was the event +that never happened at all--the English Revolution on the lines of the +French Revolution. Its failure was not due to any lack of fervour or +even ferocity in those who would have brought it about: from the time +when the first shout went up for Wilkes to the time when the last +Luddite fires were quenched in a cold rain of rationalism, the spirit of +Cobbett, of rural republicanism, of English and patriotic democracy, +burned like a beacon. The revolution failed because it was foiled by +another revolution; an aristocratic revolution, a victory of the rich +over the poor. It was about this time that the common lands were finally +enclosed; that the more cruel game laws were first established; that +England became finally a land of landlords instead of common +land-owners. I will not call it a Tory reaction; for much of the worst +of it (especially of the land-grabbing) was done by Whigs; but we may +certainly call it Anti-Jacobin. Now this fact, though political, is not +only relevant but essential to everything that concerned literature. The +upshot was that though England was full of the revolutionary ideas, +nevertheless there was no revolution. And the effect of this in turn was +that from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the +nineteenth the spirit of revolt in England took a wholly literary form. +In France it was what people did that was wild and elemental; in England +it was what people wrote. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the +English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were +rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms. + +It has been well and wittily said (as illustrating the mildness of +English and the violence of French developments) that the same Gospel of +Rousseau which in France produced the Terror, in England produced +_Sandford and Merton_. But people forget that in literature the English +were by no means restrained by Mr. Barlow; and that if we turn from +politics to art, we shall find the two parts peculiarly reversed. It +would be equally true to say that the same eighteenth-century +emancipation which in France produced the pictures of David, in England +produced the pictures of Blake. There never were, I think, men who gave +to the imagination so much of the sense of having broken out into the +very borderlands of being, as did the great English poets of the +romantic or revolutionary period; than Coleridge in the secret sunlight +of the Antarctic, where the waters were like witches' oils; than Keats +looking out of those extreme mysterious casements upon that ultimate +sea. The heroes and criminals of the great French crisis would have been +quite as incapable of such imaginative independence as Keats and +Coleridge would have been incapable of winning the battle of Wattignies. +In Paris the tree of liberty was a garden tree, clipped very correctly; +and Robespierre used the razor more regularly than the guillotine. +Danton, who knew and admired English literature, would have cursed +freely over _Kubla Khan_; and if the Committee of Public Safety had not +already executed Shelley as an aristocrat, they would certainly have +locked him up for a madman. Even Hébert (the one really vile +Revolutionist), had he been reproached by English poets with worshipping +the Goddess of Reason, might legitimately have retorted that it was +rather the Goddess of Unreason that they set up to be worshipped. +Verbally considered, Carlyle's _French Revolution_ was more +revolutionary than the real French Revolution: and if Carrier, in an +exaggerative phrase, empurpled the Loire with carnage, Turner almost +literally set the Thames on fire. + +This trend of the English Romantics to carry out the revolutionary idea +not savagely in works, but very wildly indeed in words, had several +results; the most important of which was this. It started English +literature after the Revolution with a sort of bent towards independence +and eccentricity, which in the brighter wits became individuality, and +in the duller ones, Individualism. English Romantics, English Liberals, +were not public men making a republic, but poets, each seeing a vision. +The lonelier version of liberty was a sort of aristocratic anarchism in +Byron and Shelley; but though in Victorian times it faded into much +milder prejudices and much more _bourgeois_ crotchets, England retained +from that twist a certain odd separation and privacy. England became +much more of an island than she had ever been before. There fell from +her about this time, not only the understanding of France or Germany, +but to her own long and yet lingering disaster, the understanding of +Ireland. She had not joined in the attempt to create European democracy; +nor did she, save in the first glow of Waterloo, join in the +counter-attempt to destroy it. The life in her literature was still, to +a large extent, the romantic liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane +truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and +to natural rights. But that which in Rousseau was a creed, became in +Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and +their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of +those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his +decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley and Godwin; +Lamb with his bibliomania and creed of pure caprice, the most unique of +all geniuses; Leigh Hunt with his Bohemian impecuniosity; Landor with +his tempestuous temper, throwing plates on the floor; Hazlitt with his +bitterness and his low love affair; even that healthier and happier +Bohemian, Peacock. With these, in one sense at least, goes De Quincey. +He was, unlike most of these embers of the revolutionary age in letters, +a Tory; and was attached to the political army which is best represented +in letters by the virile laughter and leisure of Wilson's _Noctes +Ambrosianæ_. But he had nothing in common with that environment. It +remained for some time as a Tory tradition, which balanced the cold and +brilliant aristocracy of the Whigs. It lived on the legend of Trafalgar; +the sense that insularity was independence; the sense that anomalies are +as jolly as family jokes; the general sense that old salts are the salt +of the earth. It still lives in some old songs about Nelson or Waterloo, +which are vastly more pompous and vastly more sincere than the cockney +cocksureness of later Jingo lyrics. But it is hard to connect De Quincey +with it; or, indeed, with anything else. De Quincey would certainly have +been a happier man, and almost certainly a better man, if he had got +drunk on toddy with Wilson, instead of getting calm and clear (as he +himself describes) on opium, and with no company but a book of German +metaphysics. But he would hardly have revealed those wonderful vistas +and perspectives of prose, which permit one to call him the first and +most powerful of the decadents: those sentences that lengthen out like +nightmare corridors, or rise higher and higher like impossible eastern +pagodas. He was a morbid fellow, and far less moral than Burns; for when +Burns confessed excess he did not defend it. But he has cast a gigantic +shadow on our literature, and was as certainly a genius as Poe. Also he +had humour, which Poe had not. And if any one still smarting from the +pinpricks of Wilde or Whistler, wants to convict them of plagiarism in +their "art for art" epigrams--he will find most of what they said said +better in _Murder as One of the Fine Arts_. + +One great man remains of this elder group, who did their last work only +under Victoria; he knew most of the members of it, yet he did not belong +to it in any corporate sense. He was a poor man and an invalid, with +Scotch blood and a strong, though perhaps only inherited, quarrel with +the old Calvinism; by name Thomas Hood. Poverty and illness forced him +to the toils of an incessant jester; and the revolt against gloomy +religion made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the direction of +a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that +includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really +employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), +but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is +said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three +meanings, for there was also the abstract truth that would have been +there with no pun at all. The pun of Hood is underrated, like the "wit" +of Voltaire, by those who forget that the words of Voltaire were not +pins, but swords. In Hood at his best the verbal neatness only gives to +the satire or the scorn a ring of finality such as is given by rhyme. +For rhyme does go with reason, since the aim of both is to bring things +to an end. The tragic necessity of puns tautened and hardened Hood's +genius; so that there is always a sort of shadow of that sharpness +across all his serious poems, falling like the shadow of a sword. +"Sewing at once with a double thread a shroud as well as a shirt"--"We +thought her dying when she slept, and sleeping when she died"--"Oh God, +that bread should be so dear and flesh and blood so cheap"--none can +fail to note in these a certain fighting discipline of phrase, a +compactness and point which was well trained in lines like "A +cannon-ball took off his legs, so he laid down his arms." In France he +would have been a great epigrammatist, like Hugo. In England he is a +punster. + +There was nothing at least in this group I have loosely called the +Eccentrics that disturbs the general sense that all their generation was +part of the sunset of the great revolutionary poets. This fading glamour +affected England in a sentimental and, to some extent, a snobbish +direction; making men feel that great lords with long curls and whiskers +were naturally the wits that led the world. But it affected England also +negatively and by reaction; for it associated such men as Byron with +superiority, but not with success. The English middle classes were led +to distrust poetry almost as much as they admired it. They could not +believe that either vision at the one end or violence at the other could +ever be practical. They were deaf to that great warning of Hugo: "You +say the poet is in the clouds; but so is the thunderbolt." Ideals +exhausted themselves in the void; Victorian England, very unwisely, +would have no more to do with idealists in politics. And this, chiefly, +because there had been about these great poets a young and splendid +sterility; since the pantheist Shelley was in fact washed under by the +wave of the world, or Byron sank in death as he drew the sword for +Hellas. + +The chief turn of nineteenth-century England was taken about the time +when a footman at Holland House opened a door and announced "Mr. +Macaulay." Macaulay's literary popularity was representative and it was +deserved; but his presence among the great Whig families marks an +epoch. He was the son of one of the first "friends of the negro," whose +honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre +smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his +colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly +gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of the +Puritan tenets but retention of the Puritan tone which marked his class +and generation), lifted him into a sphere which was utterly opposite to +that from which he came. This Whig world was exclusive; but it was not +narrow. It was very difficult for an outsider to get into it; but if he +did get into it he was in a much freer atmosphere than any other in +England. Of those aristocrats, the Old Guard of the eighteenth century, +many denied God, many defended Bonaparte, and nearly all sneered at the +Royal Family. Nor did wealth or birth make any barriers for those once +within this singular Whig world. The platform was high, but it was +level. Moreover the upstart nowadays pushes himself by wealth: but the +Whigs could choose their upstarts. In that world Macaulay found Rogers, +with his phosphorescent and corpse-like brilliancy; there he found +Sydney Smith, bursting with crackers of common sense, an admirable old +heathen; there he found Tom Moore, the romantic of the Regency, a +shortened shadow of Lord Byron. That he reached this platform and +remained on it is, I say, typical of a turning-point in the century. For +the fundamental fact of early Victorian history was this: the decision +of the middle classes to employ their new wealth in backing up a sort of +aristocratical compromise, and not (like the middle class in the French +Revolution) insisting on a clean sweep and a clear democratic programme. +It went along with the decision of the aristocracy to recruit itself +more freely from the middle class. It was then also that Victorian +"prudery" began: the great lords yielded on this as on Free Trade. +These two decisions have made the doubtful England of to-day; and +Macaulay is typical of them; he is the _bourgeois_ in Belgravia. The +alliance is marked by his great speeches for Lord Grey's Reform Bill: it +is marked even more significantly in his speech against the Chartists. +Cobbett was dead. + +Macaulay makes the foundation of the Victorian age in all its very +English and unique elements: its praise of Puritan politics and +abandonment of Puritan theology; its belief in a cautious but perpetual +patching up of the Constitution; its admiration for industrial wealth. +But above all he typifies the two things that really make the Victorian +Age itself, the cheapness and narrowness of its conscious formulæ; the +richness and humanity of its unconscious tradition. There were two +Macaulays, a rational Macaulay who was generally wrong, and a romantic +Macaulay who was almost invariably right. All that was small in him +derives from the dull parliamentarism of men like Sir James Mackintosh; +but all that was great in him has much more kinship with the festive +antiquarianism of Sir Walter Scott. + +As a philosopher he had only two thoughts; and neither of them is true. +The first was that politics, as an experimental science, must go on +improving, along with clocks, pistols or penknives, by the mere +accumulation of experiment and variety. He was, indeed, far too +strong-minded a man to accept the hazy modern notion that the soul in +its highest sense can change: he seems to have held that religion can +never get any better and that poetry rather tends to get worse. But he +did not see the flaw in his political theory; which is that unless the +soul improves with time there is no guarantee that the accumulations of +experience will be adequately used. Figures do not add themselves up; +birds do not label or stuff themselves; comets do not calculate their +own courses; these things are done by the soul of man. And if the soul +of man is subject to other laws, is liable to sin, to sleep, to +anarchism or to suicide, then all sciences including politics may fall +as sterile and lie as fallow as before man's reason was made. Macaulay +seemed sometimes to talk as if clocks produced clocks, or guns had +families of little pistols, or a penknife littered like a pig. The other +view he held was the more or less utilitarian theory of toleration; that +we should get the best butcher whether he was a Baptist or a +Muggletonian, and the best soldier whether he was a Wesleyan or an +Irvingite. The compromise worked well enough in an England Protestant in +bulk; but Macaulay ought to have seen that it has its limitations. A +good butcher might be a Baptist; he is not very likely to be a Buddhist. +A good soldier might be a Wesleyan; he would hardly be a Quaker. For the +rest, Macaulay was concerned to interpret the seventeenth century in +terms of the triumph of the Whigs as champions of public rights; and he +upheld this one-sidedly but not malignantly in a style of rounded and +ringing sentences, which at its best is like steel and at its worst like +tin. + +This was the small conscious Macaulay; the great unconscious Macaulay +was very different. His noble enduring quality in our literature is +this: that he truly had an abstract passion for history; a warm, poetic +and sincere enthusiasm for great things as such; an ardour and appetite +for great books, great battles, great cities, great men. He felt and +used names like trumpets. The reader's greatest joy is in the writer's +own joy, when he can let his last phrase fall like a hammer on some +resounding name like Hildebrand or Charlemagne, on the eagles of Rome or +the pillars of Hercules. As with Walter Scott, some of the best things +in his prose and poetry are the surnames that he did not make. And it is +remarkable to notice that this romance of history, so far from making +him more partial or untrustworthy, was the only thing that made him +moderately just. His reason was entirely one-sided and fanatical. It +was his imagination that was well-balanced and broad. He was +monotonously certain that only Whigs were right; but it was necessary +that Tories should at least be great, that his heroes might have foemen +worthy of their steel. If there was one thing in the world he hated it +was a High Church Royalist parson; yet when Jeremy Collier the Jacobite +priest raises a real banner, all Macaulay's blood warms with the mere +prospect of a fight. "It is inspiriting to see how gallantly the +solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies formidable separately, and, +it might have been thought, irresistible when combined; distributes his +swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh, +treads the wretched D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet; and +strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden." +That is exactly where Macaulay is great; because he is almost Homeric. +The whole triumph turns upon mere names; but men are commanded by +names. So his poem on the Armada is really a good geography book gone +mad; one sees the map of England come alive and march and mix under the +eye. + +The chief tragedy in the trend of later literature may be expressed by +saying that the smaller Macaulay conquered the larger. Later men had +less and less of that hot love of history he had inherited from Scott. +They had more and more of that cold science of self-interests which he +had learnt from Bentham. + +The name of this great man, though it belongs to a period before the +Victorian, is, like the name of Cobbett, very important to it. In +substance Macaulay accepted the conclusions of Bentham; though he +offered brilliant objections to all his arguments. In any case the soul +of Bentham (if he had one) went marching on, like John Brown; and in the +central Victorian movement it was certainly he who won. John Stuart Mill +was the final flower of that growth. He was himself fresh and delicate +and pure; but that is the business of a flower. Though he had to preach +a hard rationalism in religion, a hard competition in economics, a hard +egoism in ethics, his own soul had all that silvery sensitiveness that +can be seen in his fine portrait by Watts. He boasted none of that +brutal optimism with which his friends and followers of the Manchester +School expounded their cheery negations. There was about Mill even a +sort of embarrassment; he exhibited all the wheels of his iron universe +rather reluctantly, like a gentleman in trade showing ladies over his +factory. There shone in him a beautiful reverence for women, which is +all the more touching because, in his department, as it were, he could +only offer them so dry a gift as the Victorian Parliamentary Franchise. + +Now in trying to describe how the Victorian writers stood to each other, +we must recur to the very real difficulty noted at the beginning: the +difficulty of keeping the moral order parallel with the chronological +order. For the mind moves by instincts, associations, premonitions and +not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will +occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. +Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: +notions will be first defined long after they are dead. It is no good +getting the almanac to look up moonshine; and most literature in this +sense is moonshine. Thus Wordsworth shrank back into Toryism, as it +were, from a Shelleyan extreme of pantheism as yet disembodied. Thus +Newman took down the iron sword of dogma to parry a blow not yet +delivered, that was coming from the club of Darwin. For this reason no +one can understand tradition, or even history, who has not some +tenderness for anachronism. + +Now for the great part of the Victorian era the utilitarian tradition +which reached its highest in Mill held the centre of the field; it was +the philosophy in office, so to speak. It sustained its march of +codification and inquiry until it had made possible the great victories +of Darwin and Huxley and Wallace. If we take Macaulay at the beginning +of the epoch and Huxley at the end of it, we shall find that they had +much in common. They were both square-jawed, simple men, greedy of +controversy but scornful of sophistry, dead to mysticism but very much +alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence +of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was +much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that +when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror +of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, +rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric +as Ruskin himself could have managed. The difference that the period had +developed can best be seen if we consider this: that while neither was +of a spiritual sort, Macaulay took it for granted that common sense +required some kind of theology, while Huxley took it for granted that +common sense meant having none. Macaulay, it is said, never talked about +his religion: but Huxley was always talking about the religion he hadn't +got. + +But though this simple Victorian rationalism held the centre, and in a +certain sense _was_ the Victorian era, it was assailed on many sides, +and had been assailed even before the beginning of that era. The rest of +the intellectual history of the time is a series of reactions against +it, which come wave after wave. They have succeeded in shaking it, but +not in dislodging it from the modern mind. The first of these was the +Oxford Movement; a bow that broke when it had let loose the flashing +arrow that was Newman. The second reaction was one man; without teachers +or pupils--Dickens. The third reaction was a group that tried to create +a sort of new romantic Protestantism, to pit against both Reason and +Rome--Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, Maurice--perhaps Tennyson. Browning +also was at once romantic and Puritan; but he belonged to no group, and +worked against materialism in a manner entirely his own. Though as a boy +he bought eagerly Shelley's revolutionary poems, he did not think of +becoming a revolutionary poet. He concentrated on the special souls of +men; seeking God in a series of private interviews. Hence Browning, +great as he is, is rather one of the Victorian novelists than wholly of +the Victorian poets. From Ruskin, again, descend those who may be called +the Pre-Raphaelites of prose and poetry. + +It is really with this rationalism triumphant, and with the romance of +these various attacks on it, that the study of Victorian literature +begins and proceeds. Bentham was already the prophet of a powerful sect; +Macaulay was already the historian of an historic party, before the true +Victorian epoch began. The middle classes were emerging in a state of +damaged Puritanism. The upper classes were utterly pagan. Their clear +and courageous testimony remains in those immortal words of Lord +Melbourne, who had led the young queen to the throne and long stood +there as her protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian +religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into +private life----" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne +became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is +well mirrored in his novels--for he was a man who felt at home in +mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the +accidents that must always eat the edges of any systematic +circumference, it may still be said that the Utilitarians held the fort. + +Of the Oxford Movement what remains most strongly in the Victorian Epoch +centres round the challenge of Newman, its one great literary man. But +the movement as a whole had been of great significance in the very +genesis and make up of the society: yet that significance is not quite +easy immediately to define. It was certainly not æsthetic ritualism; +scarcely one of the Oxford High Churchmen was what we should call a +Ritualist. It was certainly not a conscious reaching out towards Rome: +except on a Roman Catholic theory which might explain all our unrests by +that dim desire. It knew little of Europe, it knew nothing of Ireland, +to which any merely Roman Catholic revulsion would obviously have +turned. In the first instance, I think, the more it is studied, the more +it would appear that it was a movement of mere religion as such. It was +not so much a taste for Catholic dogma, but simply a hunger for dogma. +For dogma means the serious satisfaction of the mind. Dogma does not +mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought. It was a revolt +against the Victorian spirit in one particular aspect of it; which may +roughly be called (in a cosy and domestic Victorian metaphor) having +your cake and eating it too. It saw that the solid and serious +Victorians were fundamentally frivolous--because they were +fundamentally inconsistent. + +A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent +talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So +long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a +shape. Mahomet created, when he forbade wine but allowed five wives: he +created a very big thing, which we have still to deal with. The first +French Republic created, when it affirmed property and abolished +peerages; France still stands like a square, four-sided building which +Europe has besieged in vain. The men of the Oxford Movement would have +been horrified at being compared either with Moslems or Jacobins. But +their sub-conscious thirst was for something that Moslems and Jacobins +had and ordinary Anglicans had not: the exalted excitement of +consistency. If you were a Moslem you were not a Bacchanal. If you were +a Republican you were not a peer. And so the Oxford men, even in their +first and dimmest stages, felt that if you were a Churchman you were not +a Dissenter. The Oxford Movement was, out of the very roots of its +being, a rational movement; almost a rationalist movement. In that it +differed sharply from the other reactions that shook the Utilitarian +compromise; the blinding mysticism of Carlyle, the mere manly +emotionalism of Dickens. It was an appeal to reason: reason said that if +a Christian had a feast day he must have a fast day too. Otherwise, all +days ought to be alike; and this was that very Utilitarianism against +which their Oxford Movement was the first and most rational assault. + +This idea, even by reason of its reason, narrowed into a sort of sharp +spear, of which the spear blade was Newman. It did forget many of the +other forces that were fighting on its side. But the movement could +boast, first and last, many men who had this eager dogmatic quality: +Keble, who spoilt a poem in order to recognise a doctrine; Faber, who +told the rich, almost with taunts, that God sent the poor as eagles to +strip them; Froude, who with Newman announced his return in the arrogant +motto of Achilles. But the greater part of all this happened before what +is properly our period; and in that period Newman, and perhaps Newman +alone, is the expression and summary of the whole school. It was +certainly in the Victorian Age, and after his passage to Rome, that +Newman claimed his complete right to be in any book on modern English +literature. This is no place for estimating his theology: but one point +about it does clearly emerge. Whatever else is right, the theory that +Newman went over to Rome to find peace and an end of argument, is quite +unquestionably wrong. He had far more quarrels after he had gone over to +Rome. But, though he had far more quarrels, he had far fewer +compromises: and he was of that temper which is tortured more by +compromise than by quarrel. He was a man at once of abnormal energy and +abnormal sensibility: nobody without that combination could have written +the _Apologia_. If he sometimes seemed to skin his enemies alive, it was +because he himself lacked a skin. In this sense his _Apologia_ is a +triumph far beyond the ephemeral charge on which it was founded; in this +sense he does indeed (to use his own expression) vanquish not his +accuser but his judges. Many men would shrink from recording all their +cold fits and hesitations and prolonged inconsistencies: I am sure it +was the breath of life to Newman to confess them, now that he had done +with them for ever. His _Lectures on the Present Position of English +Catholics_, practically preached against a raging mob, rise not only +higher but happier, as his instant unpopularity increases. There is +something grander than humour, there is fun, in the very first lecture +about the British Constitution as explained to a meeting of Russians. +But always his triumphs are the triumphs of a highly sensitive man: a +man must feel insults before he can so insultingly and splendidly +avenge them. He is a naked man, who carries a naked sword. The quality +of his literary style is so successful that it succeeds in escaping +definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate +patience, which waits until he has fixed all corners of an iron trap. +But the quality of his moral comment on the age remains what I have +said: a protest of the rationality of religion as against the increasing +irrationality of mere Victorian comfort and compromise. So far as the +present purpose is concerned, his protest died with him: he left few +imitators and (it may easily be conceived) no successful imitators. The +suggestion of him lingers on in the exquisite Elizabethan perversity of +Coventry Patmore; and has later flamed out from the shy volcano of +Francis Thompson. Otherwise (as we shall see in the parallel case of +Ruskin's Socialism) he has no followers in his own age: but very many in +ours. + +The next group of reactionaries or romantics or whatever we elect to +call them, gathers roughly around one great name. Scotland, from which +had come so many of those harsh economists who made the first Radical +philosophies of the Victorian Age, was destined also to fling forth (I +had almost said to spit forth) their fiercest and most extraordinary +enemy. The two primary things in Thomas Carlyle were his early Scotch +education and his later German culture. The first was in almost all +respects his strength; the latter in some respects his weakness. As an +ordinary lowland peasant, he inherited the really valuable historic +property of the Scots, their independence, their fighting spirit, and +their instinctive philosophic consideration of men merely as men. But he +was not an ordinary peasant. If he had laboured obscurely in his village +till death, he would have been yet locally a marked man; a man with a +wild eye, a man with an air of silent anger; perhaps a man at whom +stones were sometimes thrown. A strain of disease and suffering ran +athwart both his body and his soul. In spite of his praise of silence, +it was only through his gift of utterance that he escaped madness. But +while his fellow-peasants would have seen this in him and perhaps mocked +it, they would also have seen something which they always expect in such +men, and they would have got it: vision, a power in the mind akin to +second sight. Like many ungainly or otherwise unattractive Scotchmen, he +was a seer. By which I do not mean to refer so much to his +transcendental rhapsodies about the World-soul or the Nature-garment or +the Mysteries and Eternities generally, these seem to me to belong more +to his German side and to be less sincere and vital. I mean a real power +of seeing things suddenly, not apparently reached by any process; a +grand power of guessing. He _saw_ the crowd of the new States General, +Danton with his "rude flattened face," Robespierre peering mistily +through his spectacles. He _saw_ the English charge at Dunbar. He +_guessed_ that Mirabeau, however dissipated and diseased, had something +sturdy inside him. He _guessed_ that Lafayette, however brave and +victorious, had nothing inside him. He supported the lawlessness of +Cromwell, because across two centuries he almost physically _felt_ the +feebleness and hopelessness of the moderate Parliamentarians. He said a +word of sympathy for the universally vituperated Jacobins of the +Mountain, because through thick veils of national prejudice and +misrepresentation, he felt the impossibility of the Gironde. He was +wrong in denying to Scott the power of being inside his characters: but +he really had a good deal of that power himself. It was one of his +innumerable and rather provincial crotchets to encourage prose as +against poetry. But, as a matter of fact, he himself was much greater +considered as a kind of poet than considered as anything else; and the +central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child. + +He first emerged, as it were, as a student and disciple of Goethe. The +connection was not wholly fortunate. With much of what Goethe really +stood for he was not really in sympathy; but in his own obstinate way, +he tried to knock his idol into shape instead of choosing another. He +pushed further and further the extravagances of a vivid but very +unbalanced and barbaric style, in the praise of a poet who really +represented the calmest classicism and the attempt to restore a Hellenic +equilibrium in the mind. It is like watching a shaggy Scandinavian +decorating a Greek statue washed up by chance on his shores. And while +the strength of Goethe was a strength of completion and serenity, which +Carlyle not only never found but never even sought, the weaknesses of +Goethe were of a sort that did not draw the best out of Carlyle. The one +civilised element that the German classicists forgot to put into their +beautiful balance was a sense of humour. And great poet as Goethe was, +there is to the last something faintly fatuous about his half +sceptical, half sentimental self-importance; a Lord Chamberlain of +teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. +Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got +into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic +idealism, absurdly unaware of the complexity of things; as when he +perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that +people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote +Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. +Yet, though his general honesty is unquestionable, he was by no means +one of those who will give up a fancy under the shock of a fact. If by +sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to +admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy +cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most +sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great--these passages +are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a +generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, +not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic +historian. It bears most resemblance to the incurable prejudices of a +woman. + +For the rest there hovered behind all this transcendental haze a certain +presence of old northern paganism; he really had some sympathy with the +vast vague gods of that moody but not unmanly Nature-worship which seems +to have filled the darkness of the North before the coming of the Roman +Eagle or the Christian Cross. This he combined, allowing for certain +sceptical omissions, with the grisly Old Testament God he had heard +about in the black Sabbaths of his childhood; and so promulgated +(against both Rationalists and Catholics) a sort of heathen Puritanism: +Protestantism purged of its evidences of Christianity. + +His great and real work was the attack on Utilitarianism: which did real +good, though there was much that was muddled and dangerous in the +historical philosophy which he preached as an alternative. It is his +real glory that he was the first to see clearly and say plainly the +great truth of our time; that the wealth of the state is not the +prosperity of the people. Macaulay and the Mills and all the regular run +of the Early Victorians, took it for granted that if Manchester was +getting richer, we had got hold of the key to comfort and progress. +Carlyle pointed out (with stronger sagacity and humour than he showed on +any other question) that it was just as true to say that Manchester was +getting poorer as that it was getting richer: or, in other words, that +Manchester was not getting richer at all, but only some of the less +pleasing people in Manchester. In this matter he is to be noted in +connection with national developments much later; for he thus became the +first prophet of the Socialists. _Sartor Resartus_ is an admirable +fantasia; _The French Revolution_ is, with all its faults, a really +fine piece of history; the lectures on Heroes contain some masterly +sketches of personalities. But I think it is in _Past and Present_, and +the essay on _Chartism_, that Carlyle achieves the work he was chosen by +gods and men to achieve; which possibly might not have been achieved by +a happier or more healthy-minded man. He never rose to more deadly irony +than in such _macabre_ descriptions as that of the poor woman proving +her sisterhood with the rich by giving them all typhoid fever; or that +perfect piece of _badinage_ about "Overproduction of Shirts"; in which +he imagines the aristocrats claiming to be quite clear of this offence. +"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse _us_ of overproduction? We +take the Heavens and the Earth to witness that we have produced nothing +at all.... He that accuses us of producing, let him show himself. Let +him say what and when." And he never wrote so sternly and justly as when +he compared the "divine sorrow" of Dante with the "undivine sorrow" of +Utilitarianism, which had already come down to talking about the +breeding of the poor and to hinting at infanticide. This is a +representative quarrel; for if the Utilitarian spirit reached its +highest point in Mill, it certainly reached its lowest point in Malthus. + +One last element in the influence of Carlyle ought to be mentioned; +because it very strongly dominated his disciples--especially Kingsley, +and to some extent Tennyson and Ruskin. Because he frowned at the +cockney cheerfulness of the cheaper economists, they and others +represented him as a pessimist, and reduced all his azure infinities to +a fit of the blues. But Carlyle's philosophy, more carefully considered, +will be found to be dangerously optimist rather than pessimist. As a +thinker Carlyle is not sad, but recklessly and rather unscrupulously +satisfied. For he seems to have held the theory that good could not be +definitely defeated in this world; and that everything in the long run +finds its right level. It began with what we may call the "Bible of +History" idea: that all affairs and politics were a clouded but unbroken +revelation of the divine. Thus any enormous and unaltered human +settlement--as the Norman Conquest or the secession of America--we must +suppose to be the will of God. It lent itself to picturesque treatment; +and Carlyle and the Carlyleans were above all things picturesque. It +gave them at first a rhetorical advantage over the Catholic and other +older schools. They could boast that their Creator was still creating; +that he was in Man and Nature, and was not hedged round in a Paradise or +imprisoned in a pyx. They could say their God had not grown too old for +war: that He was present at Gettysburg and Gravelotte as much as at +Gibeon and Gilboa. I do not mean that they literally said these +particular things: they are what I should have said had I been bribed to +defend their position. But they said things to the same effect: that +what manages finally to happen, happens for a higher purpose. Carlyle +said the French Revolution was a thing settled in the eternal councils +to be; and therefore (and not because it was right) attacking it was +"fighting against God." And Kingsley even carried the principle so far +as to tell a lady she should remain in the Church of England mainly +because God had put her there. But in spite of its superficial +spirituality and encouragement, it is not hard to see how such a +doctrine could be abused. It practically comes to saying that God is on +the side of the big battalions--or at least, of the victorious ones. +Thus a creed which set out to create conquerors would only corrupt +soldiers; corrupt them with a craven and unsoldierly worship of success: +and that which began as the philosophy of courage ends as the philosophy +of cowardice. If, indeed, Carlyle were right in saying that right is +only "rightly articulated" might, men would never articulate or move in +any way. For no act can have might before it is done: if there is no +right, it cannot rationally be done at all. This element, like the +Anti-Utilitarian element, is to be kept in mind in connection with after +developments: for in this Carlyle is the first cry of Imperialism, as +(in the other case) of Socialism: and the two babes unborn who stir at +the trumpet are Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Kipling also +carries on from Carlyle the concentration on the purely Hebraic parts of +the Bible. The fallacy of this whole philosophy is that if God is indeed +present at a modern battle, He may be present not as on Gilboa but +Golgotha. + +Carlyle's direct historical worship of strength and the rest of it was +fortunately not very fruitful; and perhaps lingered only in Froude the +historian. Even he is more an interruption than a continuity. Froude +develops rather the harsher and more impatient moral counsels of his +master than like Ruskin the more romantic and sympathetic. He carries on +the tradition of Hero Worship: but carries far beyond Carlyle the +practice of worshipping people who cannot rationally be called heroes. +In this matter that eccentric eye of the seer certainly helped Carlyle: +in Cromwell and Frederick the Great there was at least something +self-begotten, original or mystical; if they were not heroes they were +at least demigods or perhaps demons. But Froude set himself to the +praise of the Tudors, a much lower class of people; ill-conditioned +prosperous people who merely waxed fat and kicked. Such strength as +Henry VIII had was the strength of a badly trained horse that bolts, not +of any clear or courageous rider who controls him. There is a sort of +strong man mentioned in Scripture who, because he masters himself, is +more than he that takes a city. There is another kind of strong man +(known to the medical profession) who cannot master himself; and whom it +may take half a city to take alive. But for all that he is a low +lunatic, and not a hero; and of that sort were too many of the heroes +whom Froude attempted to praise. A kind of instinct kept Carlyle from +over-praising Henry VIII; or that highly cultivated and complicated +liar, Queen Elizabeth. Here, the only importance of this is that one of +Carlyle's followers carried further that "strength" which was the real +weakness of Carlyle. I have heard that Froude's life of Carlyle was +unsympathetic; but if it was so it was a sort of parricide. For the +rest, like Macaulay, he was a picturesque and partisan historian: but, +like Macaulay (and unlike the craven scientific historians of to-day) he +was not ashamed of being partisan or of being picturesque. Such studies +as he wrote on the Elizabethan seamen and adventurers, represent very +triumphantly the sort of romance of England that all this school was +attempting to establish; and link him up with Kingsley and the rest. + +Ruskin may be very roughly regarded as the young lieutenant of Carlyle +in his war on Utilitarian Radicalism: but as an individual he presents +many and curious divergences. In the matter of style, he enriched +English without disordering it. And in the matter of religion (which +was the key of this age as of every other) he did not, like Carlyle, set +up the romance of the great Puritans as a rival to the romance of the +Catholic Church. Rather he set up and worshipped all the arts and +trophies of the Catholic Church as a rival to the Church itself. None +need dispute that he held a perfectly tenable position if he chose to +associate early Florentine art with a Christianity still comparatively +pure, and such sensualities as the Renaissance bred with the corruption +of a Papacy. But this does not alter, as a merely artistic fact, the +strange air of ill-ease and irritation with which Ruskin seems to tear +down the gargoyles of Amiens or the marbles of Venice, as things of +which Europe is not worthy; and take them away with him to a really +careful museum, situated dangerously near Clapham. Many of the great men +of that generation, indeed, had a sort of divided mind; an ethical +headache which was literally a "splitting headache"; for there was a +schism in the sympathies. When these men looked at some historic +object, like the Catholic Church or the French Revolution, they did not +know whether they loved or hated it most. Carlyle's two eyes were out of +focus, as one may say, when he looked at democracy: he had one eye on +Valmy and the other on Sedan. In the same way, Ruskin had a strong right +hand that wrote of the great mediæval minsters in tall harmonies and +traceries as splendid as their own; and also, so to speak, a weak and +feverish left hand that was always fidgeting and trying to take the pen +away--and write an evangelical tract about the immorality of foreigners. +Many of their contemporaries were the same. The sea of Tennyson's mind +was troubled under its serene surface. The incessant excitement of +Kingsley, though romantic and attractive in many ways, was a great deal +more like Nervous Christianity than Muscular Christianity. It would be +quite unfair to say of Ruskin that there was any major inconsistency +between his mediæval tastes and his very unmediæval temper: and minor +inconsistencies do not matter in anybody. But it is not quite unfair to +say of him that he seemed to want all parts of the Cathedral except the +altar. + +As an artist in prose he is one of the most miraculous products of the +extremely poetical genius of England. The length of a Ruskin sentence is +like that length in the long arrow that was boasted of by the drawers of +the long bow. He draws, not a cloth-yard shaft but a long lance to his +ear: he shoots a spear. But the whole goes light as a bird and straight +as a bullet. There is no Victorian writer before him to whom he even +suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De +Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a +rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I +have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the +turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence +branches into brackets and relative clauses as a straight strong tree +branches into boughs and bifurcations, rather shaking off its burden +than merely adding to it. It is interesting to remember that Ruskin +wrote some of the best of these sentences in the attempt to show that he +did understand the growth of trees, and that nobody else did--except +Turner, of course. It is also (to those acquainted with his perverse and +wild rhetorical prejudices) even more amusing to remember that if a +Ruskin sentence (occupying one or two pages of small print) does not +remind us of the growth of a tree, the only other thing it does remind +of is the triumphant passage of a railway train. + +Ruskin left behind him in his turn two quite separate streams of +inspiration. The first and more practical was concerned, like Carlyle's +_Chartism_, with a challenge to the social conclusions of the orthodox +economists. He was not so great a man as Carlyle, but he was a much more +clear-headed man; and the point and stab of his challenge still really +stands and sticks, like a dagger in a dead man. He answered the theory +that we must always get the cheapest labour we can, by pointing out that +we never do get the cheapest labour we can, in any matter about which we +really care twopence. We do not get the cheapest doctor. We either get a +doctor who charges nothing or a doctor who charges a recognised and +respectable fee. We do not trust the cheapest bishop. We do not allow +admirals to compete. We do not tell generals to undercut each other on +the eve of a war. We either employ none of them or we employ all of them +at an official rate of pay. All this was set out in the strongest and +least sentimental of his books, _Unto this Last_; but many suggestions +of it are scattered through _Sesame and Lilies_, _The Political Economy +of Art_, and even _Modern Painters_. On this side of his soul Ruskin +became the second founder of Socialism. The argument was not by any +means a complete or unconquerable weapon, but I think it knocked out +what little remained of the brains of the early Victorian rationalists. +It is entirely nonsensical to speak of Ruskin as a lounging æsthete, who +strolled into economics, and talked sentimentalism. In plain fact, +Ruskin was seldom so sensible and logical (right or wrong) as when he +was talking about economics. He constantly talked the most glorious +nonsense about landscape and natural history, which it was his business +to understand. Within his own limits, he talked the most cold common +sense about political economy, which was no business of his at all. + +On the other side of his literary soul, his mere unwrapping of the +wealth and wonder of European art, he set going another influence, +earlier and vaguer than his influence on Socialism. He represented what +was at first the Pre-Raphaelite School in painting, but afterwards a +much larger and looser Pre-Raphaelite School in poetry and prose. The +word "looser" will not be found unfair if we remember how Swinburne and +all the wildest friends of the Rossettis carried this movement forward. +They used the mediæval imagery to blaspheme the mediæval religion. +Ruskin's dark and doubtful decision to accept Catholic art but not +Catholic ethics had borne rapid or even flagrant fruit by the time that +Swinburne, writing about a harlot, composed a learned and sympathetic +and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. + +With the poets I deal in another part of this book; but the influence of +Ruskin's great prose touching art criticism can best be expressed in the +name of the next great prose writer on such subjects. That name is +Walter Pater: and the name is the full measure of the extent to which +Ruskin's vague but vast influence had escaped from his hands. Pater +eventually joined the Church of Rome (which would not have pleased +Ruskin at all), but it is surely fair to say of the mass of his work +that its moral tone is neither Puritan nor Catholic, but strictly and +splendidly Pagan. In Pater we have Ruskin without the prejudices, that +is, without the funny parts. I may be wrong, but I cannot recall at this +moment a single passage in which Pater's style takes a holiday or in +which his wisdom plays the fool. Newman and Ruskin were as careful and +graceful stylists as he. Newman and Ruskin were as serious, elaborate, +and even academic thinkers as he. But Ruskin let himself go about +railways. Newman let himself go about Kingsley. Pater cannot let himself +go for the excellent reason that he wants to stay: to stay at the point +where all the keenest emotions meet, as he explains in the splendid +peroration of _The Renaissance_. The only objection to being where all +the keenest emotions meet is that you feel none of them. + +In this sense Pater may well stand for a substantial summary of the +æsthetes, apart from the purely poetical merits of men like Rossetti and +Swinburne. Like Swinburne and others he first attempted to use mediæval +tradition without trusting it. These people wanted to see Paganism +_through_ Christianity: because it involved the incidental amusement of +seeing through Christianity itself. They not only tried to be in all +ages at once (which is a very reasonable ambition, though not often +realised), but they wanted to be on all sides at once: which is +nonsense. Swinburne tries to question the philosophy of Christianity in +the metres of a Christmas carol: and Dante Rossetti tries to write as if +he were Christina Rossetti. Certainly the almost successful summit of +all this attempt is Pater's superb passage on the Mona Lisa; in which he +seeks to make her at once a mystery of good and a mystery of evil. The +philosophy is false; even evidently false, for it bears no fruit to-day. +There never was a woman, not Eve herself in the instant of temptation, +who could smile the same smile as the mother of Helen and the mother of +Mary. But it is the high-water mark of that vast attempt at an +impartiality reached through art: and no other mere artist ever rose so +high again. + +Apart from this Ruskinian offshoot through Pre-Raphaelitism into what +was called Æstheticism, the remains of the inspiration of Carlyle fill a +very large part in the Victorian life, but not strictly so large a part +in the Victorian literature. Charles Kingsley was a great publicist; a +popular preacher; a popular novelist; and (in two cases at least) a very +good novelist. His _Water Babies_ is really a breezy and roaring freak; +like a holiday at the seaside--a holiday where one talks natural history +without taking it seriously. Some of the songs in this and other of his +works are very real songs: notably, "When all the World is Young, Lad," +which comes very near to being the only true defence of marriage in the +controversies of the nineteenth century. But when all this is allowed, +no one will seriously rank Kingsley, in the really literary sense, on +the level of Carlyle or Ruskin, Tennyson or Browning, Dickens or +Thackeray: and if such a place cannot be given to him, it can be given +even less to his lusty and pleasant friend, Tom Hughes, whose +personality floats towards the frankness of the _Boy's Own Paper_; or to +his deep, suggestive metaphysical friend Maurice, who floats rather +towards _The Hibbert Journal_. The moral and social influence of these +things is not to be forgotten: but they leave the domain of letters. The +voice of Carlyle is not heard again in letters till the coming of +Kipling and Henley. + +One other name of great importance should appear here, because it cannot +appear very appropriately anywhere else: the man hardly belonged to the +same school as Ruskin and Carlyle, but fought many of their battles, and +was even more concentrated on their main task--the task of convicting +liberal _bourgeois_ England of priggishness and provinciality. I mean, +of course, Matthew Arnold. Against Mill's "liberty" and Carlyle's +"strength" and Ruskin's "nature," he set up a new presence and entity +which he called "culture," the disinterested play of the mind through +the sifting of the best books and authorities. Though a little dandified +in phrase, he was undoubtedly serious and public-spirited in intention. +He sometimes talked of culture almost as if it were a man, or at least a +church (for a church has a sort of personality): some may suspect that +culture was a man, whose name was Matthew Arnold. But Arnold was not +only right but highly valuable. If we have said that Carlyle was a man +that saw things, we may add that Arnold was chiefly valuable as a man +who knew things. Well as he was endowed intellectually, his power came +more from information than intellect. He simply happened to know certain +things, that Carlyle didn't know, that Kingsley didn't know, that Huxley +and Herbert Spencer didn't know: that England didn't know. He knew that +England was a part of Europe: and not so important a part as it had been +the morning after Waterloo. He knew that England was then (as it is now) +an oligarchical State, and that many great nations are not. He knew +that a real democracy need not live and does not live in that perpetual +panic about using the powers of the State, which possessed men like +Spencer and Cobden. He knew a rational minimum of culture and common +courtesy could exist and did exist throughout large democracies. He knew +the Catholic Church had been in history "the Church of the multitude": +he knew it was not a sect. He knew that great landlords are no more a +part of the economic law than nigger-drivers: he knew that small owners +could and did prosper. He was not so much the philosopher as the man of +the world: he reminded us that Europe was a society while Ruskin was +treating it as a picture gallery. He was a sort of Heaven-sent courier. +His frontal attack on the vulgar and sullen optimism of Victorian +utility may be summoned up in the admirable sentence, in which he asked +the English what was the use of a train taking them quickly from +Islington to Camberwell, if it only took them "from a dismal and +illiberal life in Islington to a dismal and illiberal life in +Camberwell?" + +His attitude to that great religious enigma round which all these great +men were grouped as in a ring, was individual and decidedly curious. He +seems to have believed that a "Historic Church," that is, some +established organisation with ceremonies and sacred books, etc., could +be perpetually preserved as a sort of vessel to contain the spiritual +ideas of the age, whatever those ideas might happen to be. He clearly +seems to have contemplated a melting away of the doctrines of the Church +and even of the meaning of the words: but he thought a certain need in +man would always be best satisfied by public worship and especially by +the great religious literatures of the past. He would embalm the body +that it might often be revisited by the soul--or souls. Something of the +sort has been suggested by Dr. Coit and others of the ethical societies +in our own time. But while Arnold would loosen the theological bonds of +the Church, he would not loosen the official bonds of the State. You +must not disestablish the Church: you must not even leave the Church: +you must stop inside it and think what you choose. Enemies might say +that he was simply trying to establish and endow Agnosticism. It is +fairer and truer to say that unconsciously he was trying to restore +Paganism: for this State Ritualism without theology, and without much +belief, actually was the practice of the ancient world. Arnold may have +thought that he was building an altar to the Unknown God; but he was +really building it to Divus Cæsar. + +As a critic he was chiefly concerned to preserve criticism itself; to +set a measure to praise and blame and support the classics against the +fashions. It is here that it is specially true of him, if of no writer +else, that the style was the man. The most vital thing he invented was a +new style: founded on the patient unravelling of the tangled Victorian +ideas, as if they were matted hair under a comb. He did not mind how +elaborately long he made a sentence, so long as he made it clear. He +would constantly repeat whole phrases word for word in the same +sentence, rather than risk ambiguity by abbreviation. His genius showed +itself in turning this method of a laborious lucidity into a peculiarly +exasperating form of satire and controversy. Newman's strength was in a +sort of stifled passion, a dangerous patience of polite logic and then: +"Cowards! if I advanced a step you would run away: it is not you I fear. +_Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis._" If Newman seemed suddenly to fly +into a temper, Carlyle seemed never to fly out of one. But Arnold kept a +smile of heart-broken forbearance, as of the teacher in an idiot school, +that was enormously insulting. One trick he often tried with success. If +his opponent had said something foolish, like "the destiny of England is +in the great heart of England," Arnold would repeat the phrase again and +again until it looked more foolish than it really was. Thus he recurs +again and again to "the British College of Health in the New Road" till +the reader wants to rush out and burn the place down. Arnold's great +error was that he sometimes thus wearied us of his own phrases, as well +as of his enemies'. + +These names are roughly representative of the long series of protests +against the cold commercial rationalism which held Parliament and the +schools through the earlier Victorian time, in so far as those protests +were made in the name of neglected intellect, insulted art, forgotten +heroism and desecrated religion. But already the Utilitarian citadel had +been more heavily bombarded on the other side by one lonely and +unlettered man of genius. + +The rise of Dickens is like the rising of a vast mob. This is not only +because his tales are indeed as crowded and populous as towns: for truly +it was not so much that Dickens appeared as that a hundred Dickens +characters appeared. It is also because he was the sort of man who has +the impersonal impetus of a mob: what Poe meant when he truly said that +popular rumour, if really spontaneous, was like the intuition of the +individual man of genius. Those who speak scornfully of the ignorance of +the mob do not err as to the fact itself; their error is in not seeing +that just as a crowd is comparatively ignorant, so a crowd is +comparatively innocent. It will have the old and human faults; but it is +not likely to specialise in the special faults of that particular +society: because the effort of the strong and successful in all ages is +to keep the poor out of society. If the higher castes have developed +some special moral beauty or grace, as they occasionally do (for +instance, mediæval chivalry), it is likely enough, of course, that the +mass of men will miss it. But if they have developed some perversion or +over-emphasis, as they much more often do (for instance, the Renaissance +poisoning), then it will be the tendency of the mass of men to miss that +too. The point might be put in many ways; you may say if you will that +the poor are always at the tail of the procession, and that whether they +are morally worse or better depends on whether humanity as a whole is +proceeding towards heaven or hell. When humanity is going to hell, the +poor are always nearest to heaven. + +Dickens was a mob--and a mob in revolt; he fought by the light of +nature; he had not a theory, but a thirst. If any one chooses to offer +the cheap sarcasm that his thirst was largely a thirst for milk-punch, I +am content to reply with complete gravity and entire contempt that in a +sense this is perfectly true. His thirst was for things as humble, as +human, as laughable as that daily bread for which we cry to God. He had +no particular plan of reform; or, when he had, it was startlingly petty +and parochial compared with the deep, confused clamour of comradeship +and insurrection that fills all his narrative. It would not be gravely +unjust to him to compare him to his own heroine, Arabella Allen, who +"didn't know what she did like," but who (when confronted with Mr. Bob +Sawyer) "did know what she didn't like." Dickens did know what he didn't +like. He didn't like the Unrivalled Happiness which Mr. Roebuck praised; +the economic laws that were working so faultlessly in Fever Alley; the +wealth that was accumulating so rapidly in Bleeding Heart Yard. But, +above all, he didn't like the _mean_ side of the Manchester philosophy: +the preaching of an impossible thrift and an intolerable temperance. He +hated the implication that because a man was a miser in Latin he must +also be a miser in English. And this meanness of the Utilitarians had +gone very far--infecting many finer minds who had fought the +Utilitarians. In the _Edinburgh Review_, a thing like Malthus could be +championed by a man like Macaulay. + +The twin root facts of the revolution called Dickens are these: first, +that he attacked the cold Victorian compromise; second, that he +attacked it without knowing he was doing it--certainly without knowing +that other people were doing it. He was attacking something which we +will call Mr. Gradgrind. He was utterly unaware (in any essential sense) +that any one else had attacked Mr. Gradgrind. All the other attacks had +come from positions of learning or cultured eccentricity of which he was +entirely ignorant, and to which, therefore (like a spirited fellow), he +felt a furious hostility. Thus, for instance, he hated that Little +Bethel to which Kit's mother went: he hated it simply as Kit hated it. +Newman could have told him it was hateful, because it had no root in +religious history; it was not even a sapling sprung of the seed of some +great human and heathen tree: it was a monstrous mushroom that grows in +the moonshine and dies in the dawn. Dickens knew no more of religious +history than Kit; he simply smelt the fungus, and it stank. Thus, again, +he hated that insolent luxury of a class counting itself a comfortable +exception to all mankind; he hated it as Kate Nickleby hated Sir +Mulberry Hawke--by instinct. Carlyle could have told him that all the +world was full of that anger against the impudent fatness of the few. +But when Dickens wrote about Kate Nickleby, he knew about as much of the +world--as Kate Nickleby. He did write _The Tale of Two Cities_ long +afterwards; but that was when he _had_ been instructed by Carlyle. His +first revolutionism was as private and internal as feeling sea-sick. +Thus, once more, he wrote against Mr. Gradgrind long before he created +him. In _The Chimes_, conceived in quite his casual and charitable +season, with the _Christmas Carol_ and the _Cricket on the Hearth_, he +hit hard at the economists. Ruskin, in the same fashion, would have told +him that the worst thing about the economists was that they were not +economists: that they missed many essential things even in economics. +But Dickens did not know whether they were economists or not: he only +knew that they wanted hitting. Thus, to take a last case out of many, +Dickens travelled in a French railway train, and noticed that this +eccentric nation provided him with wine that he could drink and +sandwiches he could eat, and manners he could tolerate. And remembering +the ghastly sawdust-eating waiting-rooms of the North English railways, +he wrote that rich chapter in _Mugby Junction_. Matthew Arnold could +have told him that this was but a part of the general thinning down of +European civilisation in these islands at the edge of it; that for two +or three thousand years the Latin society has learnt how to drink wine, +and how not to drink too much of it. Dickens did not in the least +understand the Latin society: but he did understand the wine. If (to +prolong an idle but not entirely false metaphor) we have called Carlyle +a man who saw and Arnold a man who knew, we might truly call Dickens a +man who tasted, that is, a man who really felt. In spite of all the +silly talk about his vulgarity, he really had, in the strict and +serious sense, good taste. All real good taste is gusto--the power of +appreciating the presence--or the absence--of a particular and positive +pleasure. He had no learning; he was not misled by the label on the +bottle--for that is what learning largely meant in his time. He opened +his mouth and shut his eyes and saw what the Age of Reason would give +him. And, having tasted it, he spat it out. + +I am constrained to consider Dickens here among the fighters; though I +ought (on the pure principles of Art) to be considering him in the +chapter which I have allotted to the story-tellers. But we should get +the whole Victorian perspective wrong, in my opinion at least, if we did +not see that Dickens was primarily the most successful of all the +onslaughts on the solid scientific school; because he did not attack +from the standpoint of extraordinary faith, like Newman; or the +standpoint of extraordinary inspiration, like Carlyle; or the standpoint +of extraordinary detachment or serenity, like Arnold; but from the +standpoint of quite ordinary and quite hearty dislike. To give but one +instance more, Matthew Arnold, trying to carry into England constructive +educational schemes which he could see spread like a clear railway map +all over the Continent, was much badgered about what he really thought +was _wrong_ with English middle-class education. Despairing of +explaining to the English middle class the idea of high and central +public instruction, as distinct from coarse and hole-and-corner private +instruction, he invoked the aid of Dickens. He said the English +middle-class school was the sort of school where Mr. Creakle sat, with +his buttered toast and his cane. Now Dickens had probably never seen any +other kind of school--certainly he had never understood the systematic +State Schools in which Arnold had learnt his lesson. But he saw the cane +and the buttered toast, and he _knew_ that it was all wrong. In this +sense, Dickens, the great romanticist, is truly the great realist also. +For he had no abstractions: he had nothing except realities out of which +to make a romance. + +With Dickens, then, re-arises that reality with which I began and which +(curtly, but I think not falsely) I have called Cobbett. In dealing with +fiction as such, I shall have occasion to say wherein Dickens is weaker +and stronger than that England of the eighteenth century: here it is +sufficient to say that he represents the return of Cobbett in this vital +sense; that he is proud of being the ordinary man. No one can understand +the thousand caricatures by Dickens who does not understand that he is +comparing them all with his own common sense. Dickens, in the bulk, +liked the things that Cobbett had liked; what is perhaps more to the +point, he hated the things that Cobbett had hated; the Tudors, the +lawyers, the leisurely oppression of the poor. Cobbett's fine fighting +journalism had been what is nowadays called "personal," that is, it +supposed human beings to be human. But Cobbett was also personal in the +less satisfactory sense; he could only multiply monsters who were +exaggerations of his enemies or exaggerations of himself. Dickens was +personal in a more godlike sense; he could multiply persons. He could +create all the farce and tragedy of his age over again, with creatures +unborn to sin and creatures unborn to suffer. That which had not been +achieved by the fierce facts of Cobbett, the burning dreams of Carlyle, +the white-hot proofs of Newman, was really or very nearly achieved by a +crowd of impossible people. In the centre stood that citadel of atheist +industrialism: and if indeed it has ever been taken, it was taken by the +rush of that unreal army. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS + + +The Victorian novel was a thing entirely Victorian; quite unique and +suited to a sort of cosiness in that country and that age. But the novel +itself, though not merely Victorian, is mainly modern. No clear-headed +person wastes his time over definitions, except where he thinks his own +definition would probably be in dispute. I merely say, therefore, that +when I say "novel," I mean a fictitious narrative (almost invariably, +but not necessarily, in prose) of which the essential is that the story +is not told for the sake of its naked pointedness as an anecdote, or for +the sake of the irrelevant landscapes and visions that can be caught up +in it, but for the sake of some study of the difference between human +beings. There are several things that make this mode of art unique. One +of the most conspicuous is that it is the art in which the conquests of +woman are quite beyond controversy. The proposition that Victorian women +have done well in politics and philosophy is not necessarily an untrue +proposition; but it is a partisan proposition. I never heard that many +women, let alone men, shared the views of Mary Wollstonecraft; I never +heard that millions of believers flocked to the religion tentatively +founded by Miss Frances Power Cobbe. They did, undoubtedly, flock to +Mrs. Eddy; but it will not be unfair to that lady to call her following +a sect, and not altogether unreasonable to say that such insane +exceptions prove the rule. Nor can I at this moment think of a single +modern woman writing on politics or abstract things, whose work is of +undisputed importance; except perhaps Mrs. Sidney Webb, who settles +things by the simple process of ordering about the citizens of a state, +as she might the servants in a kitchen. There has been, at any rate, no +writer on moral or political theory that can be mentioned, without +seeming comic, in the same breath with the great female novelists. But +when we come to the novelists, the women have, on the whole, equality; +and certainly, in some points, superiority. Jane Austen is as strong in +her own way as Scott is in his. But she is, for all practical purposes, +never weak in her own way--and Scott very often is. Charlotte Brontë +dedicated _Jane Eyre_ to the author of _Vanity Fair_. I should hesitate +to say that Charlotte Brontë's is a better book than Thackeray's, but I +think it might well be maintained that it is a better story. All sorts +of inquiring asses (equally ignorant of the old nature of woman and the +new nature of the novel) whispered wisely that George Eliot's novels +were really written by George Lewes. I will cheerfully answer for the +fact that, if they had been written by George Lewes, no one would ever +have read them. Those who have read his book on Robespierre will have +no doubt about my meaning. I am no idolater of George Eliot; but a man +who could concoct such a crushing opiate about the most exciting +occasion in history certainly did not write _The Mill on the Floss_. +This is the first fact about the novel, that it is the introduction of a +new and rather curious kind of art; and it has been found to be +peculiarly feminine, from the first good novel by Fanny Burney to the +last good novel by Miss May Sinclair. The truth is, I think, that the +modern novel is a new thing; not new in its essence (for that is a +philosophy for fools), but new in the sense that it lets loose many of +the things that are old. It is a hearty and exhaustive overhauling of +that part of human existence which has always been the woman's province, +or rather kingdom; the play of personalities in private, the real +difference between Tommy and Joe. It is right that womanhood should +specialise in individuals, and be praised for doing so; just as in the +Middle Ages she specialised in dignity and was praised for doing so. +People put the matter wrong when they say that the novel is a study of +human nature. Human nature is a thing that even men can understand. +Human nature is born of the pain of a woman; human nature plays at +peep-bo when it is two and at cricket when it is twelve; human nature +earns its living and desires the other sex and dies. What the novel +deals with is what women have to deal with; the differentiations, the +twists and turns of this eternal river. The key of this new form of art, +which we call fiction, is sympathy. And sympathy does not mean so much +feeling with all who feel, but rather suffering with all who suffer. And +it was inevitable, under such an inspiration, that more attention should +be given to the awkward corners of life than to its even flow. The very +promising domestic channel dug by the Victorian women, in books like +_Cranford_, by Mrs. Gaskell, would have got to the sea, if they had been +left alone to dig it. They might have made domesticity a fairyland. +Unfortunately another idea, the idea of imitating men's cuffs and +collars and documents, cut across this purely female discovery and +destroyed it. + +It may seem mere praise of the novel to say it is the art of sympathy +and the study of human variations. But indeed, though this is a good +thing, it is not universally good. We have gained in sympathy; but we +have lost in brotherhood. Old quarrels had more equality than modern +exonerations. Two peasants in the Middle Ages quarrelled about their two +fields. But they went to the same church, served in the same semi-feudal +militia, and had the same morality, which ever might happen to be +breaking it at the moment. The very cause of their quarrel was the cause +of their fraternity; they both liked land. But suppose one of them a +teetotaler who desired the abolition of hops on both farms; suppose the +other a vegetarian who desired the abolition of chickens on both farms: +and it is at once apparent that a quarrel of quite a different kind +would begin; and that in that quarrel it would not be a question of +farmer against farmer, but of individual against individual. This +fundamental sense of human fraternity can only exist in the presence of +positive religion. Man is merely man only when he is seen against the +sky. If he is seen against any landscape, he is only a man of that land. +If he is seen against any house, he is only a householder. Only where +death and eternity are intensely present can human beings fully feel +their fellowship. Once the divine darkness against which we stand is +really dismissed from the mind (as it was very nearly dismissed in the +Victorian time) the differences between human beings become +overpoweringly plain; whether they are expressed in the high caricatures +of Dickens or the low lunacies of Zola. + +This can be seen in a sort of picture in the Prologue of the _Canterbury +Tales_; which is already pregnant with the promise of the English novel. +The characters there are at once graphically and delicately +differentiated; the Doctor with his rich cloak, his careful meals, his +coldness to religion; the Franklin, whose white beard was so fresh that +it recalled the daisies, and in whose house it snowed meat and drink; +the Summoner, from whose fearful face, like a red cherub's, the children +fled, and who wore a garland like a hoop; the Miller with his short red +hair and bagpipes and brutal head, with which he could break down a +door; the Lover who was as sleepless as a nightingale; the Knight, the +Cook, the Clerk of Oxford. Pendennis or the Cook, M. Mirabolant, is +nowhere so vividly varied by a few merely verbal strokes. But the great +difference is deeper and more striking. It is simply that Pendennis +would never have gone riding with a cook at all. Chaucer's knight rode +with a cook quite naturally; because the thing they were all seeking +together was as much above knighthood as it was above cookery. Soldiers +and swindlers and bullies and outcasts, they were all going to the +shrine of a distant saint. To what sort of distant saint would Pendennis +and Colonel Newcome and Mr. Moss and Captain Costigan and Ridley the +butler and Bayham and Sir Barnes Newcome and Laura and the Duchess +d'Ivry and Warrington and Captain Blackball and Lady Kew travel, +laughing and telling tales together? + +The growth of the novel, therefore, must not be too easily called an +increase in the interest in humanity. It is an increase in the interest +in the things in which men differ; much fuller and finer work had been +done before about the things in which they agree. And this intense +interest in variety had its bad side as well as its good; it has rather +increased social distinctions in a serious and spiritual sense. Most of +the oblivion of democracy is due to the oblivion of death. But in its +own manner and measure, it was a real advance and experiment of the +European mind, like the public art of the Renaissance or the fairyland +of physical science explored in the nineteenth century. It was a more +unquestionable benefit than these: and in that development women played +a peculiar part, English women especially, and Victorian women most of +all. + +It is perhaps partly, though certainly not entirely, this influence of +the great women writers that explains another very arresting and +important fact about the emergence of genuinely Victorian fiction. It +had been by this time decided, by the powers that had influence (and by +public opinion also, at least in the middle-class sense), that certain +verbal limits must be set to such literature. The novel must be what +some would call pure and others would call prudish; but what is not, +properly considered, either one or the other: it is rather a more or +less business proposal (right or wrong) that every writer shall draw the +line at literal physical description of things socially concealed. It +was originally merely verbal; it had not, primarily, any dream of +purifying the topic or the moral tone. Dickens and Thackeray claimed +very properly the right to deal with shameful passions and suggest their +shameful culminations; Scott sometimes dealt with ideas positively +horrible--as in that grand Glenallan tragedy which is as appalling as +the _Å’dipus_ or _The Cenci_. None of these great men would have +tolerated for a moment being talked to (as the muddle-headed amateur +censors talk to artists to-day) about "wholesome" topics and suggestions +"that cannot elevate." They had to describe the great battle of good and +evil and they described both; but they accepted a working Victorian +compromise about what should happen behind the scenes and what on the +stage. Dickens did not claim the license of diction Fielding might have +claimed in repeating the senile ecstasies of Gride (let us say) over his +purchased bride: but Dickens does not leave the reader in the faintest +doubt about what sort of feelings they were; nor is there any reason why +he should. Thackeray would not have described the toilet details of the +secret balls of Lord Steyne: he left that to Lady Cardigan. But no one +who had read Thackeray's version would be surprised at Lady Cardigan's. +But though the great Victorian novelists would not have permitted the +impudence of the suggestion that every part of their problem must be +wholesome and innocent in itself, it is still tenable (I do not say it +is certain) that by yielding to the Philistines on this verbal +compromise, they have in the long run worked for impurity rather than +purity. In one point I do certainly think that Victorian Bowdlerism did +pure harm. This is the simple point that, nine times out of ten, the +coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the +word that excuses it. A common evasion, for instance, substitutes for +the word that brands self-sale as the essential sin, a word which weakly +suggests that it is no more wicked than walking down the street. The +great peril of such soft mystifications is that extreme evils (they +that are abnormal even by the standard of evil) have a very long start. +Where ordinary wrong is made unintelligible, extraordinary wrong can +count on remaining more unintelligible still; especially among those who +live in such an atmosphere of long words. It is a cruel comment on the +purity of the Victorian Age, that the age ended (save for the bursting +of a single scandal) in a thing being everywhere called "Art," "The +Greek Spirit," "The Platonic Ideal" and so on--which any navvy mending +the road outside would have stamped with a word as vile and as vulgar as +it deserved. + +This reticence, right or wrong, may have been connected with the +participation of women with men in the matter of fiction. It is an +important point: the sexes can only be coarse separately. It was +certainly also due, as I have already suggested, to the treaty between +the rich _bourgeoisie_ and the old aristocracy, which both had to make, +for the common and congenial purpose of keeping the English people +down. But it was due much more than this to a general moral atmosphere +in the Victorian Age. It is impossible to express that spirit except by +the electric bell of a name. It was latitudinarian, and yet it was +limited. It could be content with nothing less than the whole cosmos: +yet the cosmos with which it was content was small. It is false to say +it was without humour: yet there was something by instinct unsmiling in +it. It was always saying solidly that things were "enough"; and proving +by that sharpness (as of the shutting of a door) that they were not +enough. It took, I will not say its pleasures, but even its +emancipations, sadly. Definitions seem to escape this way and that in +the attempt to locate it as an idea. But every one will understand me if +I call it George Eliot. + +I begin with this great woman of letters for both the two reasons +already mentioned. She represents the rationalism of the old Victorian +Age at its highest. She and Mill are like two great mountains at the end +of that long, hard chain which is the watershed of the Early Victorian +time. They alone rise high enough to be confused among the clouds--or +perhaps confused among the stars. They certainly were seeking truth, as +Newman and Carlyle were; the slow slope of the later Victorian vulgarity +does not lower their precipice and pinnacle. But I begin with this name +also because it emphasises the idea of modern fiction as a fresh and +largely a female thing. The novel of the nineteenth century was female; +as fully as the novel of the eighteenth century was male. It is quite +certain that no woman could have written _Roderick Random_. It is not +quite so certain that no woman could have written _Esmond_. The strength +and subtlety of woman had certainly sunk deep into English letters when +George Eliot began to write. + +Her originals and even her contemporaries had shown the feminine power +in fiction as well or better than she. Charlotte Brontë, understood +along her own instincts, was as great; Jane Austen was greater. The +latter comes into our present consideration only as that most +exasperating thing, an ideal unachieved. It is like leaving an +unconquered fortress in the rear. No woman later has captured the +complete common sense of Jane Austen. She could keep her head, while all +the after women went about looking for their brains. She could describe +a man coolly; which neither George Eliot nor Charlotte Brontë could do. +She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what +she did not know--like a sound agnostic. But she belongs to a vanished +world before the great progressive age of which I write. + +One of the characteristics of the central Victorian spirit was a +tendency to substitute a certain more or less satisfied seriousness for +the extremes of tragedy and comedy. This is marked by a certain change +in George Eliot; as it is marked by a certain limitation or moderation +in Dickens. Dickens was the People, as it was in the eighteenth century +and still largely is, in spite of all the talk for and against Board +School Education: comic, tragic, realistic, free-spoken, far looser in +words than in deeds. It marks the silent strength and pressure of the +spirit of the Victorian middle class that even to Dickens it never +occurred to revive the verbal coarseness of Smollett or Swift. The other +proof of the same pressure is the change in George Eliot. She was not a +genius in the elemental sense of Dickens; she could never have been +either so strong or so soft. But she did originally represent some of +the same popular realities: and her first books (at least as compared +with her latest) were full of sound fun and bitter pathos. Mr. Max +Beerbohm has remarked (in his glorious essay called _Ichabod_, I think), +that Silas Marner would not have forgotten his miserliness if George +Eliot had written of him in her maturity. I have a great regard for Mr. +Beerbohm's literary judgments; and it may be so. But if literature +means anything more than a cold calculation of the chances, if there is +in it, as I believe, any deeper idea of detaching the spirit of life +from the dull obstacles of life, of permitting human nature really to +reveal itself as human, if (to put it shortly) literature has anything +on earth to do with being _interesting_--then I think we would rather +have a few more Marners than that rich maturity that gave us the +analysed dust-heaps of _Daniel Deronda_. + +In her best novels there is real humour, of a cool sparkling sort; there +is a strong sense of substantial character that has not yet degenerated +into psychology; there is a great deal of wisdom, chiefly about women; +indeed there is almost every element of literature except a certain +indescribable thing called _glamour_; which was the whole stock-in-trade +of the Brontës, which we feel in Dickens when Quilp clambers amid rotten +wood by the desolate river; and even in Thackeray when Esmond with his +melancholy eyes wanders like some swarthy crow about the dismal avenues +of Castlewood. Of this quality (which some have called, but hastily, the +essential of literature) George Eliot had not little but nothing. Her +air is bright and intellectually even exciting; but it is like the air +of a cloudless day on the parade at Brighton. She sees people clearly, +but not through an atmosphere. And she can conjure up storms in the +conscious, but not in the subconscious mind. + +It is true (though the idea should not be exaggerated) that this +deficiency was largely due to her being cut off from all those +conceptions that had made the fiction of a Muse; the deep idea that +there are really demons and angels behind men. Certainly the increasing +atheism of her school spoilt her own particular imaginative talent: she +was far less free when she thought like Ladislaw than when she thought +like Casaubon. It also betrayed her on a matter specially requiring +common sense; I mean sex. There is nothing that is so profoundly false +as rationalist flirtation. Each sex is trying to be both sexes at once; +and the result is a confusion more untruthful than any conventions. This +can easily be seen by comparing her with a greater woman who died before +the beginning of our present problem. Jane Austen was born before those +bonds which (we are told) protected woman from truth, were burst by the +Brontës or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that +Jane Austen knew much more about men than either of them. Jane Austen +may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth +that was protected from her. When Darcy, in finally confessing his +faults, says, "I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice +_though not in theory_," he gets nearer to a complete confession of the +intelligent male than ever was even hinted by the Byronic lapses of the +Brontës' heroes or the elaborate exculpations of George Eliot's. Jane +Austen, of course, covered an infinitely smaller field than any of her +later rivals; but I have always believed in the victory of small +nationalities. + +The Brontës suggest themselves here; because their superficial +qualities, the qualities that can be seized upon in satire, were in this +an exaggeration of what was, in George Eliot, hardly more than an +omission. There was perhaps a time when Mr. Rawjester was more widely +known than Mr. Rochester. And certainly Mr. Rochester (to adopt the +diction of that other eminent country gentleman, Mr. Darcy) was simply +individualistic not only in practice, but in theory. Now any one may be +so in practice: but a man who is simply individualistic in theory must +merely be an ass. Undoubtedly the Brontës exposed themselves to some +misunderstanding by thus perpetually making the masculine creature much +more masculine than he wants to be. Thackeray (a man of strong though +sleepy virility) asked in his exquisite plaintive way: "Why do our lady +novelists make the men bully the women?" It is, I think, unquestionably +true that the Brontës treated the male as an almost anarchic thing +coming in from outside nature; much as people on this planet regard a +comet. Even the really delicate and sustained comedy of Paul Emanuel is +not quite free from this air of studying something alien. The reply may +be made that the women in men's novels are equally fallacious. The reply +is probably just. + +What the Brontës really brought into fiction was exactly what Carlyle +brought into history; the blast of the mysticism of the North. They were +of Irish blood settled on the windy heights of Yorkshire; in that +country where Catholicism lingered latest, but in a superstitious form; +where modern industrialism came earliest and was more superstitious +still. The strong winds and sterile places, the old tyranny of barons +and the new and blacker tyranny of manufacturers, has made and left that +country a land of barbarians. All Charlotte Brontë's earlier work is +full of that sullen and unmanageable world; moss-troopers turned +hurriedly into miners; the last of the old world forced into supporting +the very first crudities of the new. In this way Charlotte Brontë +represents the Victorian settlement in a special way. The Early +Victorian Industrialism is to George Eliot and to Charlotte Brontë, +rather as the Late Victorian Imperialism would have been to Mrs. Humphry +Ward in the centre of the empire and to Miss Olive Schreiner at the edge +of it. The real strength there is in characters like Robert Moore, when +he is dealing with anything except women, is the romance of industry in +its first advance: a romance that has not remained. On such fighting +frontiers people always exaggerate the strong qualities the masculine +sex does possess, and always add a great many strong qualities that it +does not possess. That is, briefly, all the reason in the Brontës on +this special subject: the rest is stark unreason. It can be most clearly +seen in that sister of Charlotte Brontë's who has achieved the real +feat of remaining as a great woman rather than a great writer. There is +really, in a narrow but intense way, a tradition of Emily Brontë: as +there is a tradition of St. Peter or Dr. Johnson. People talk as if they +had known her, apart from her works. She must have been something more +than an original person; perhaps an origin. But so far as her written +works go she enters English letters only as an original person--and +rather a narrow one. Her imagination was sometimes superhuman--always +inhuman. _Wuthering Heights_ might have been written by an eagle. She is +the strongest instance of these strong imaginations that made the other +sex a monster: for Heathcliffe fails as a man as catastrophically as he +succeeds as a demon. I think Emily Brontë was further narrowed by the +broadness of her religious views; but never, of course, so much as +George Eliot. + +In any case, it is Charlotte Brontë who enters Victorian literature. The +shortest way of stating her strong contribution is, I think, this: that +she reached the highest romance through the lowest realism. She did not +set out with Amadis of Gaul in a forest or with Mr. Pickwick in a comic +club. She set out with herself, with her own dingy clothes, and +accidental ugliness, and flat, coarse, provincial household; and +forcibly fused all such muddy materials into a spirited fairy-tale. If +the first chapters on the home and school had not proved how heavy and +hateful _sanity_ can be, there would really be less point in the +insanity of Mr. Rochester's wife--or the not much milder insanity of +Mrs. Rochester's husband. She discovered the secret of hiding the +sensational in the commonplace: and _Jane Eyre_ remains the best of her +books (better even than _Villette_) because while it is a human document +written in blood, it is also one of the best blood-and-thunder detective +stories in the world. + +But while Emily Brontë was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and +while Charlotte Brontë was at best like that warmer and more domestic +thing, a house on fire--they do connect themselves with the calm of +George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the +feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would have felt +rather ill if they had seen the things they foreran. This notion of a +hazy anticipation of after history has been absurdly overdone: as when +men connect Chaucer with the Reformation; which is like connecting Homer +with the Syracusan Expedition. But it is to some extent true that all +these great Victorian women had a sort of unrest in their souls. And the +proof of it is that (after what I will claim to call the healthier time +of Dickens and Thackeray) it began to be admitted by the great Victorian +men. If there had not been something in that irritation, we should +hardly have had to speak in these pages of _Diana of the Crossways_ or +of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. To what this strange and very local sex +war has been due I shall not ask, because I have no answer. That it was +due to votes or even little legal inequalities about marriage, I feel +myself here too close to realities even to discuss. My own guess is that +it has been due to the great neglect of the military spirit by the male +Victorians. The woman felt obscurely that she was still running her +mortal risk, while the man was not still running his. But I know nothing +about it; nor does anybody else. + +In so short a book on so vast, complex and living a subject, it is +impossible to drop even into the second rank of good authors, whose name +is legion; but it is impossible to leave that considerable female force +in fiction which has so largely made the very nature of the modern +novel, without mentioning two names which almost brought that second +rank up to the first rank. They were at utterly opposite poles. The one +succeeded by being a much mellower and more Christian George Eliot; the +other succeeded by being a much more mad and unchristian Emily Brontë. +But Mrs. Oliphant and the author calling herself "Ouida" both forced +themselves well within the frontier of fine literature. _The Beleaguered +City_ is literature in its highest sense; the other works of its author +tend to fall into fiction in its best working sense. Mrs. Oliphant was +infinitely saner in that city of ghosts than the cosmopolitan Ouida ever +was in any of the cities of men. Mrs. Oliphant would never have dared to +discover, either in heaven or hell, such a thing as a hairbrush with its +back encrusted with diamonds. But though Ouida was violent and weak +where Mrs. Oliphant might have been mild and strong, her own triumphs +were her own. She had a real power of expressing the senses through her +style; of conveying the very heat of blue skies or the bursting of +palpable pomegranates. And just as Mrs. Oliphant transfused her more +timid Victorian tales with a true and intense faith in the Christian +mystery--so Ouida, with infinite fury and infinite confusion of +thought, did fill her books with Byron and the remains of the French +Revolution. In the track of such genius there has been quite an +accumulation of true talent as in the children's tales of Mrs. Ewing, +the historical tales of Miss Yonge, the tales of Mrs. Molesworth, and so +on. On a general review I do not think I have been wrong in taking the +female novelists first. I think they gave its special shape, its +temporary twist, to the Victorian novel. + +Nevertheless it is a shock (I almost dare to call it a relief) to come +back to the males. It is the more abrupt because the first name that +must be mentioned derives directly from the mere maleness of the Sterne +and Smollett novel. I have already spoken of Dickens as the most homely +and instinctive, and therefore probably the heaviest, of all the +onslaughts made on the central Victorian satisfaction. There is +therefore the less to say of him here, where we consider him only as a +novelist; but there is still much more to say than can even conceivably +be said. Dickens, as we have stated, inherited the old comic, rambling +novel from Smollett and the rest. Dickens, as we have also stated, +consented to expurgate that novel. But when all origins and all +restraints have been defined and allowed for, the creature that came out +was such as we shall not see again. Smollett was coarse; but Smollett +was also cruel. Dickens was frequently horrible; he was never cruel. The +art of Dickens was the most exquisite of arts: it was the art of +enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a very human writer, had to be a very +human being; he had his faults and sensibilities in a strong degree; and +I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed everybody in his daily +life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and everybody has enjoyed +everybody in those books even till to-day. His books are full of baffled +villains stalking out or cowardly bullies kicked downstairs. But the +villains and the cowards are such delightful people that the reader +always hopes the villain will put his head through a side window and +make a last remark; or that the bully will say one thing more, even from +the bottom of the stairs. The reader really hopes this; and he cannot +get rid of the fancy that the author hopes so too. I cannot at the +moment recall that Dickens ever killed a comic villain, except Quilp, +who was deliberately made even more villainous than comic. There can be +no serious fears for the life of Mr. Wegg in the muckcart; though Mr. +Pecksniff fell to be a borrower of money, and Mr. Mantalini to turning a +mangle, the human race has the comfort of thinking they are still alive: +and one might have the rapture of receiving a begging letter from Mr. +Pecksniff, or even of catching Mr. Mantalini collecting the washing, if +one always lurked about on Monday mornings. This sentiment (the true +artist will be relieved to hear) is entirely unmoral. Mrs. Wilfer +deserved death much more than Mr. Quilp, for she had succeeded in +poisoning family life persistently, while he was (to say the least of +it) intermittent in his domesticity. But who can honestly say he does +not hope Mrs. Wilfer is still talking like Mrs. Wilfer--especially if it +is only in a book? This is the artistic greatness of Dickens, before and +after which there is really nothing to be said. He had the power of +creating people, both possible and impossible, who were simply precious +and priceless people; and anything subtler added to that truth really +only weakens it. + +The mention of Mrs. Wilfer (whom the heart is loth to leave) reminds one +of the only elementary ethical truth that is essential in the study of +Dickens. That is that he had broad or universal sympathies in a sense +totally unknown to the social reformers who wallow in such phrases. +Dickens (unlike the social reformers) really did sympathise with every +sort of victim of every sort of tyrant. He did truly pray for _all_ who +are desolate and oppressed. If you try to tie him to any cause narrower +than that Prayer Book definition, you will find you have shut out half +his best work. If, in your sympathy for Mrs. Quilp, you call Dickens the +champion of downtrodden woman, you will suddenly remember Mr. Wilfer, +and find yourself unable to deny the existence of downtrodden man. If in +your sympathy for Mr. Rouncewell you call Dickens the champion of a +manly middle-class Liberalism against Chesney Wold, you will suddenly +remember Stephen Blackpool--and find yourself unable to deny that Mr. +Rouncewell might be a pretty insupportable cock on his own dung-hill. If +in your sympathy for Stephen Blackpool you call Dickens a Socialist (as +does Mr. Pugh), and think of him as merely heralding the great +Collectivist revolt against Victorian Individualism and Capitalism, +which seemed so clearly to be the crisis at the end of this epoch--you +will suddenly remember the agreeable young Barnacle at the +Circumlocution Office: and you will be unable, for very shame, to +assert that Dickens would have trusted the poor to a State Department. +Dickens did not merely believe in the brotherhood of men in the weak +modern way; he was the brotherhood of men, and knew it was a brotherhood +in sin as well as in aspiration. And he was not only larger than the old +factions he satirised; he was larger than any of our great social +schools that have gone forward since he died. + +The seemingly quaint custom of comparing Dickens and Thackeray existed +in their own time, and no one will dismiss it with entire disdain who +remembers that the Victorian tradition was domestic and genuine, even +when it was hoodwinked and unworldly. There must have been some reason +for making this imaginary duel between two quite separate and quite +amiable acquaintances. And there is, after all, some reason for it. It +is not, as was once cheaply said, that Thackeray went in for truth, and +Dickens for mere caricature. There is a huge accumulation of truth, +down to the smallest detail, in Dickens: he seems sometimes a mere +mountain of facts. Thackeray, in comparison, often seems quite careless +and elusive; almost as if he did not quite know where all his characters +were. There is a truth behind the popular distinction; but it lies much +deeper. Perhaps the best way of stating it is this: that Dickens used +reality, while aiming at an effect of romance; while Thackeray used the +loose language and ordinary approaches of romance, while aiming at an +effect of reality. It was the special and splendid business of Dickens +to introduce us to people who would have been quite incredible if he had +not told us so much truth about them. It was the special and not less +splendid task of Thackeray to introduce us to people whom we knew +already. Paradoxically, but very practically, it followed that his +introductions were the longer of the two. When we hear of Aunt Betsy +Trotwood, we vividly envisage everything about her, from her gardening +gloves to her seaside residence, from her hard, handsome face to her +tame lunatic laughing at the bedroom window. It is all so minutely true +that she must be true also. We only feel inclined to walk round the +English coast until we find that particular garden and that particular +aunt. But when we turn from the aunt of Copperfield to the uncle of +Pendennis, we are more likely to run round the coast trying to find a +watering-place where he isn't than one where he is. The moment one sees +Major Pendennis, one sees a hundred Major Pendennises. It is not a +matter of mere realism. Miss Trotwood's bonnet and gardening tools and +cupboard full of old-fashioned bottles are quite as true in the +materialistic way as the Major's cuffs and corner table and toast and +newspaper. Both writers are realistic: but Dickens writes realism in +order to make the incredible credible. Thackeray writes it in order to +make us recognise an old friend. Whether we shall be pleased to meet the +old friend is quite another matter: I think we should be better pleased +to meet Miss Trotwood, and find, as David Copperfield did, a new friend, +a new world. But we recognise Major Pendennis even when we avoid him. +Henceforth Thackeray can count on our seeing him from his wig to his +well-blacked boots whenever he chooses to say "Major Pendennis paid a +call." Dickens, on the other hand, had to keep up an incessant +excitement about his characters; and no man on earth but he could have +kept it up. + +It may be said, in approximate summary, that Thackeray is the novelist +of memory--of our memories as well as his own. Dickens seems to expect +all his characters, like amusing strangers arriving at lunch: as if they +gave him not only pleasure, but surprise. But Thackeray is everybody's +past--is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of +dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished +conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed for ever +in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques +now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at +once the hundred ghosts of oneself. + +For this purpose Thackeray was equipped with a singularly easy and +sympathetic style, carved in slow soft curves where Dickens hacked out +his images with a hatchet. There was a sort of avuncular indulgence +about his attitude; what he called his "preaching" was at worst a sort +of grumbling, ending with the sentiment that boys will be boys and that +there's nothing new under the sun. He was not really either a cynic or a +_censor morum_; but (in another sense than Chaucer's) a gentle pardoner: +having seen the weaknesses he is sometimes almost weak about them. He +really comes nearer to exculpating Pendennis or Ethel Newcome than any +other author, who saw what he saw, would have been. The rare wrath of +such men is all the more effective; and there are passages in _Vanity +Fair_ and still more in _The Book of Snobs_, where he does make the +dance of wealth and fashion look stiff and monstrous, like a Babylonian +masquerade. But he never quite did it in such a way as to turn the +course of the Victorian Age. + +It may seem strange to say that Thackeray did not know enough of the +world; yet this was the truth about him in large matters of the +philosophy of life, and especially of his own time. He did not know the +way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian +epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news. In +one of his delightful asides he imagines two little clerks commenting +erroneously on the appearance of Lady Kew or Sir Brian Newcome in the +Park, and says: "How should Jones and Brown, who are not, _vous +comprenez, du monde_, understand these mysteries?" But I think Thackeray +knew quite as little about Jones and Brown as they knew about Newcome +and Kew; his world was _le monde_. Hence he seemed to take it for +granted that the Victorian compromise would last; while Dickens (who +knew his Jones and Brown) had already guessed that it would not. +Thackeray did not realise that the Victorian platform was a moving +platform. To take but one instance, he was a Radical like Dickens; all +really representative Victorians, except perhaps Tennyson, were +Radicals. But he seems to have thought of all reform as simple and +straightforward and all of a piece; as if Catholic Emancipation, the New +Poor Law, Free Trade and the Factory Acts and Popular Education were all +parts of one almost self-evident evolution of enlightenment. Dickens, +being in touch with the democracy, had already discovered that the +country had come to a dark place of divided ways and divided counsels. +In _Hard Times_ he realised Democracy at war with Radicalism; and +became, with so incompatible an ally as Ruskin, not indeed a Socialist, +but certainly an anti-Individualist. In _Our Mutual Friend_ he felt the +strength of the new rich, and knew they had begun to transform the +aristocracy, instead of the aristocracy transforming them. He knew that +Veneering had carried off Twemlow in triumph. He very nearly knew what +we all know to-day: that, so far from it being possible to plod along +the progressive road with more votes and more Free Trade, England must +either sharply become very much more democratic or as rapidly become +very much less so. + +There gathers round these two great novelists a considerable group of +good novelists, who more or less mirror their mid-Victorian mood. Wilkie +Collins may be said to be in this way a lesser Dickens and Anthony +Trollope a lesser Thackeray. Wilkie Collins is chiefly typical of his +time in this respect: that while his moral and religious conceptions +were as mechanical as his carefully constructed fictitious conspiracies, +he nevertheless informed the latter with a sort of involuntary mysticism +which dealt wholly with the darker side of the soul. For this was one +of the most peculiar of the problems of the Victorian mind. The idea of +the supernatural was perhaps at as low an ebb as it had ever +been--certainly much lower than it is now. But in spite of this, and in +spite of a certain ethical cheeriness that was almost _de rigueur_--the +strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the +Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They +might have ghost stories, but not saints' stories. They could trifle +with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the +pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that +the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for +example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ritual and +popular legend that has clustered round Christmas through all the +Christian ages, it is a truly extraordinary thing to reflect that +Dickens (wishing to have in _The Christmas Carol_ a little happy +supernaturalism by way of a change) actually had to make up a mythology +for himself. Here was one of the rare cases where Dickens, in a real and +human sense, did suffer from the lack of culture. For the rest, Wilkie +Collins is these two elements: the mechanical and the mystical; both +very good of their kind. He is one of the few novelists in whose case it +is proper and literal to speak of his "plots." He was a plotter; he went +about to slay Godfrey Ablewhite as coldly and craftily as the Indians +did. But he also had a sound though sinister note of true magic; as in +the repetition of the two white dresses in _The Woman in White_; or of +the dreams with their double explanations in _Armadale_. His ghosts do +walk. They are alive; and walk as softly as Count Fosco, but as solidly. +Finally, _The Moonstone_ is probably the best detective tale in the +world. + +Anthony Trollope, a clear and very capable realist, represents rather +another side of the Victorian spirit of comfort; its leisureliness, its +love of detail, especially of domestic detail; its love of following +characters and kindred from book to book and from generation to +generation. Dickens very seldom tried this latter experiment, and then +(as in _Master Humphrey's Clock_) unsuccessfully; those magnesium blazes +of his were too brilliant and glaring to be indefinitely prolonged. But +Thackeray was full of it; and we often feel that the characters in _The +Newcomes_ or _Philip_ might legitimately complain that their talk and +tale are being perpetually interrupted and pestered by people out of +other books. Within his narrower limits, Trollope was a more strict and +masterly realist than Thackeray, and even those who would call his +personages "types" would admit that they are as vivid as characters. It +was a bustling but a quiet world that he described: politics before the +coming of the Irish and the Socialists; the Church in the lull between +the Oxford Movement and the modern High Anglican energy. And it is +notable in the Victorian spirit once more that though his clergymen are +all of them real men and many of them good men, it never really occurs +to us to think of them as the priests of a religion. + +Charles Reade may be said to go along with these; and Disraeli and even +Kingsley; not because these three very different persons had anything +particular in common, but because they all fell short of the first rank +in about the same degree. Charles Reade had a kind of cold coarseness +about him, not morally but artistically, which keeps him out of the best +literature as such: but he is of importance to the Victorian development +in another way; because he has the harsher and more tragic note that has +come later in the study of our social problems. He is the first of the +angry realists. Kingsley's best books may be called boys' books. There +is a real though a juvenile poetry in _Westward Ho!_ and though that +narrative, historically considered, is very much of a lie, it is a good, +thundering honest lie. There are also genuinely eloquent things in +_Hypatia_, and a certain electric atmosphere of sectarian excitement +that Kingsley kept himself in, and did know how to convey. He said he +wrote the book in his heart's blood. This is an exaggeration, but there +is a truth in it; and one does feel that he may have relieved his +feelings by writing it in red ink. As for Disraeli, his novels are able +and interesting considered as everything except novels, and are an +important contribution precisely because they are written by an alien +who did not take our politics so seriously as Trollope did. They are +important again as showing those later Victorian changes which men like +Thackeray missed. Disraeli did do something towards revealing the +dishonesty of our politics--even if he had done a good deal towards +bringing it about. + +Between this group and the next there hovers a figure very hard to +place; not higher in letters than these, yet not easy to class with +them; I mean Bulwer Lytton. He was no greater than they were; yet +somehow he seems to take up more space. He did not, in the ultimate +reckoning, do anything in particular: but he was a figure; rather as +Oscar Wilde was later a figure. You could not have the Victorian Age +without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his +dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere +polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round +interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic +swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real +touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always +turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in +a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost Oriental ostentation was used +by the young Thackeray as something on which to sharpen his new razor of +Victorian common sense. His pose as a dilettante satirist inflamed the +execrable temper of Tennyson, and led to those lively comparisons to a +bandbox and a lion in curlpapers. He interposed the glove of warning and +the tear of sensibility between us and the proper ending of _Great +Expectations_. Of his own books, by far the best are the really charming +comedies about _The Caxtons_ and _Kenelm Chillingly_; none of his other +works have a high literary importance now, with the possible exception +of _A Strange Story_; but his _Coming Race_ is historically interesting +as foreshadowing those novels of the future which were afterwards such a +weapon of the Socialists. Lastly, there was an element indefinable about +Lytton, which often is in adventurers; which amounts to a suspicion that +there was something in him after all. It rang out of him when he said to +the hesitating Crimean Parliament: "Destroy your Government and save +your army." + +With the next phase of Victorian fiction we enter a new world; the +later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways +weaker world in which we live to-day. The subtle and sad change that +was passing like twilight across the English brain at this time is very +well expressed in the fact that men have come to mention the great name +of Meredith in the same breath as Mr. Thomas Hardy. Both writers, +doubtless, disagreed with the orthodox religion of the ordinary English +village. Most of us have disagreed with that religion until we made the +simple discovery that it does not exist. But in any age where ideas +could be even feebly disentangled from each other, it would have been +evident at once that Meredith and Hardy were, intellectually speaking, +mortal enemies. They were much more opposed to each other than Newman +was to Kingsley; or than Abelard was to St. Bernard. But then they +collided in a sceptical age, which is like colliding in a London fog. +There can never be any clear controversy in a sceptical age. + +Nevertheless both Hardy and Meredith did mean something; and they did +mean diametrically opposite things. Meredith was perhaps the only man +in the modern world who has almost had the high honour of rising out of +the low estate of a Pantheist into the high estate of a Pagan. A Pagan +is a person who can do what hardly any person for the last two thousand +years could do: a person who can take Nature naturally. It is due to +Meredith to say that no one outside a few of the great Greeks has ever +taken Nature so naturally as he did. And it is also due to him to say +that no one outside Colney Hatch ever took Nature so unnaturally as it +was taken in what Mr. Hardy has had the blasphemy to call Wessex Tales. +This division between the two points of view is vital; because the turn +of the nineteenth century was a very sharp one; by it we have reached +the rapids in which we find ourselves to-day. + +Meredith really is a Pantheist. You can express it by saying that God is +the great All: you can express it much more intelligently by saying that +Pan is the great god. But there is some sense in it, and the sense is +this: that some people believe that this world is sufficiently good at +bottom for us to trust ourselves to it without very much knowing why. It +is the whole point in most of Meredith's tales that there is something +behind us that often saves us when we understand neither it nor +ourselves. He sometimes talked mere intellectualism about women: but +that is because the most brilliant brains can get tired. Meredith's +brain was quite tired when it wrote some of its most quoted and least +interesting epigrams: like that about passing Seraglio Point, but not +doubling Cape Turk. Those who can see Meredith's mind in that are with +those who can see Dickens' mind in Little Nell. Both were chivalrous +pronouncements on behalf of oppressed females: neither has any earthly +meaning as ideas. + +But what Meredith did do for women was not to emancipate them (which +means nothing) but to express them, which means a great deal. And he +often expressed them right, even when he expressed himself wrong. Take, +for instance, that phrase so often quoted: "Woman will be the last thing +civilised by man." Intellectually it is something worse than false; it +is the opposite of what he was always attempting to say. So far from +admitting any equality in the sexes, it logically admits that a man may +use against a woman any chains or whips he has been in the habit of +using against a tiger or a bear. He stood as the special champion of +female dignity: but I cannot remember any author, Eastern or Western, +who has so calmly assumed that man is the master and woman merely the +material, as Meredith really does in this phrase. Any one who knows a +free woman (she is generally a married woman) will immediately be +inclined to ask two simple and catastrophic questions, first: "Why +should woman be civilised?" and, second: "Why, if she is to be +civilised, should she be civilised by man?" In the mere intellectualism +of the matter, Meredith seems to be talking the most brutal sex +mastery: he, at any rate, has not doubled Cape Turk, nor even passed +Seraglio Point. Now why is it that we all really feel that this +Meredithian passage is not so insolently masculine as in mere logic it +would seem? I think it is for this simple reason: that there is +something about Meredith making us feel that it is not woman he +disbelieves in, but civilisation. It is a dark undemonstrated feeling +that Meredith would really be rather sorry if woman were civilised by +man--or by anything else. When we have got that, we have got the real +Pagan--the man that does believe in Pan. + +It is proper to put this philosophic matter first, before the æsthetic +appreciation of Meredith, because with Meredith a sort of passing bell +has rung and the Victorian orthodoxy is certainly no longer safe. +Dickens and Carlyle, as we have said, rebelled against the orthodox +compromise: but Meredith has escaped from it. Cosmopolitanism, +Socialism, Feminism are already in the air; and Queen Victoria has +begun to look like Mrs. Grundy. But to escape from a city is one thing: +to choose a road is another. The free-thinker who found himself outside +the Victorian city, found himself also in the fork of two very different +naturalistic paths. One of them went upwards through a tangled but +living forest to lonely but healthy hills: the other went down to a +swamp. Hardy went down to botanise in the swamp, while Meredith climbed +towards the sun. Meredith became, at his best, a sort of daintily +dressed Walt Whitman: Hardy became a sort of village atheist brooding +and blaspheming over the village idiot. It is largely because the +free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they +want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their +small but sincere movement has failed. + +For the duel is deadly; and any agnostic who wishes to be anything more +than a Nihilist must sympathise with one version of nature or the +other. The God of Meredith is impersonal; but he is often more healthy +and kindly than any of the persons. That of Thomas Hardy is almost made +personal by the intense feeling that he is poisonous. Nature is always +coming in to save Meredith's women; Nature is always coming in to betray +and ruin Hardy's. It has been said that if God had not existed it would +have been necessary to invent Him. But it is not often, as in Mr. +Hardy's case, that it is necessary to invent Him in order to prove how +unnecessary (and undesirable) He is. But Mr. Hardy is anthropomorphic +out of sheer atheism. He personifies the universe in order to give it a +piece of his mind. But the fight is unequal for the old philosophical +reason: that the universe had already given Mr. Hardy a piece of _its_ +mind to fight with. One curious result of this divergence in the two +types of sceptic is this: that when these two brilliant novelists break +down or blow up or otherwise lose for a moment their artistic +self-command, they are both equally wild, but wild in opposite +directions. Meredith shows an extravagance in comedy which, if it were +not so complicated, every one would call broad farce. But Mr. Hardy has +the honour of inventing a new sort of game, which may be called the +extravagance of depression. The placing of the weak lover and his new +love in such a place that they actually see the black flag announcing +that Tess has been hanged is utterly inexcusable in art and probability; +it is a cruel practical joke. But it is a practical joke at which even +its author cannot brighten up enough to laugh. + +But it is when we consider the great artistic power of these two +writers, with all their eccentricities, that we see even more clearly +that free-thought was, as it were, a fight between finger-posts. For it +is the remarkable fact that it was the man who had the healthy and manly +outlook who had the crabbed and perverse style; it was the man who had +the crabbed and perverse outlook who had the healthy and manly style. +The reader may well have complained of paradox when I observed above +that Meredith, unlike most neo-Pagans, did in his way take Nature +naturally. It may be suggested, in tones of some remonstrance, that +things like "though pierced by the cruel acerb," or "thy fleetingness is +bigger in the ghost," or "her gabbling grey she eyes askant," or "sheer +film of the surface awag" are not taking Nature naturally. And this is +true of Meredith's style, but it is not true of his spirit; nor even, +apparently, of his serious opinions. In one of the poems I have quoted +he actually says of those who live nearest to that Nature he was always +praising-- + + "Have they but held her laws and nature dear, + They mouth no sentence of inverted wit"; + +which certainly was what Meredith himself was doing most of the time. +But a similar paradox of the combination of plain tastes with twisted +phrases can also be seen in Browning. Something of the same can be seen +in many of the cavalier poets. I do not understand it: it may be that +the fertility of a cheerful mind crowds everything, so that the tree is +entangled in its own branches; or it may be that the cheerful mind cares +less whether it is understood or not; as a man is less articulate when +he is humming than when he is calling for help. + +Certainly Meredith suffers from applying a complex method to men and +things he does not mean to be complex; nay, honestly admires for being +simple. The conversations between Diana and Redworth fail of their full +contrast because Meredith can afford the twopence for Diana coloured, +but cannot afford the penny for Redworth plain. Meredith's ideals were +neither sceptical nor finicky: but they can be called insufficient. He +had, perhaps, over and above his honest Pantheism two convictions +profound enough to be called prejudices. He was probably of Welsh +blood, certainly of Celtic sympathies, and he set himself more swiftly +though more subtly than Ruskin or Swinburne to undermining the enormous +complacency of John Bull. He also had a sincere hope in the strength of +womanhood, and may be said, almost without hyperbole, to have begotten +gigantic daughters. He may yet suffer for his chivalric interference as +many champions do. I have little doubt that when St. George had killed +the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. But certainly neither +of these two vital enthusiasms touched the Victorian trouble. The +disaster of the modern English is not that they are not Celtic, but that +they are not English. The tragedy of the modern woman is not that she is +not allowed to follow man, but that she follows him far too slavishly. +This conscious and theorising Meredith did not get very near his problem +and is certainly miles away from ours. But the other Meredith was a +creator; which means a god. That is true of him which is true of so +different a man as Dickens, that all one can say of him is that he is +full of good things. A reader opening one of his books feels like a +schoolboy opening a hamper which he knows to have somehow cost a hundred +pounds. He may be more bewildered by it than by an ordinary hamper; but +he gets the impression of a real richness of thought; and that is what +one really gets from such riots of felicity as _Evan Harrington_ or +_Harry Richmond_. His philosophy may be barren, but he was not. And the +chief feeling among those that enjoy him is a mere wish that more people +could enjoy him too. + +I end here upon Hardy and Meredith; because this parting of the ways to +open optimism and open pessimism really was the end of the Victorian +peace. There are many other men, very nearly as great, on whom I might +delight to linger: on Shorthouse, for instance, who in one way goes with +Mrs. Browning or Coventry Patmore. I mean that he has a wide culture, +which is called by some a narrow religion. When we think what even the +best novels about cavaliers have been (written by men like Scott or +Stevenson) it is a wonderful thing that the author of _John Inglesant_ +could write a cavalier romance in which he forgot Cromwell but +remembered Hobbes. But Shorthouse is outside the period in fiction in +the same sort of way in which Francis Thompson is outside it in poetry. +He did not accept the Victorian basis. He knew too much. + +There is one more matter that may best be considered here, though +briefly: it illustrates the extreme difficulty of dealing with the +Victorian English in a book like this, because of their eccentricity; +not of opinions, but of character and artistic form. There are several +great Victorians who will not fit into any of the obvious categories I +employ; because they will not fit into anything, hardly into the world +itself. Where Germany or Italy would relieve the monotony of mankind by +paying serious respect to an artist, or a scholar, or a patriotic +warrior, or a priest--it was always the instinct of the English to do it +by pointing out a Character. Dr. Johnson has faded as a poet or a +critic, but he survives as a Character. Cobbett is neglected +(unfortunately) as a publicist and pamphleteer, but he is remembered as +a Character. Now these people continued to crop up through the Victorian +time; and each stands so much by himself that I shall end these pages +with a profound suspicion that I have forgotten to mention a Character +of gigantic dimensions. Perhaps the best example of such eccentrics is +George Borrow; who sympathised with unsuccessful nomads like the gipsies +while every one else sympathised with successful nomads like the Jews; +who had a genius like the west wind for the awakening of wild and casual +friendships and the drag and attraction of the roads. But whether George +Borrow ought to go into the section devoted to philosophers, or the +section devoted to novelists, or the section devoted to liars, nobody +else has ever known, even if he did. + +But the strongest case of this Victorian power of being abruptly +original in a corner can be found in two things: the literature meant +merely for children and the literature meant merely for fun. It is true +that these two very Victorian things often melted into each other (as +was the way of Victorian things), but not sufficiently to make it safe +to mass them together without distinction. Thus there was George +Macdonald, a Scot of genius as genuine as Carlyle's; he could write +fairy-tales that made all experience a fairy-tale. He could give the +real sense that every one had the end of an elfin thread that must at +last lead them into Paradise. It was a sort of optimist Calvinism. But +such really significant fairy-tales were accidents of genius. Of the +Victorian Age as a whole it is true to say that it did discover a new +thing; a thing called Nonsense. It may be doubted whether this thing was +really invented to please children. Rather it was invented by old +people trying to prove their first childhood, and sometimes succeeding +only in proving their second. But whatever else the thing was, it was +English and it was individual. Lewis Carroll gave mathematics a holiday: +he carried logic into the wild lands of illogicality. Edward Lear, a +richer, more romantic and therefore more truly Victorian buffoon, +improved the experiment. But the more we study it, the more we shall, I +think, conclude that it reposed on something more real and profound in +the Victorians than even their just and exquisite appreciation of +children. It came from the deep Victorian sense of humour. + +It may appear, because I have used from time to time the only possible +phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as +a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a +final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon--and a successful +one. He was a humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That +which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the +English--the duty of not taking him seriously. The strong and shrewd +Victorian humour appears in every slash of the pencil of Charles Keene; +in every undergraduate inspiration of Calverley or "Q." or J. K. S. They +had largely forgotten both art and arms: but the gods had left them +laughter. + +But the final proof that the Victorians were alive by this laughter, can +be found in the fact they could manage and master for a moment even the +cosmopolitan modern theatre. They could contrive to put "The Bab +Ballads" on the stage. To turn a private name into a public epithet is a +thing given to few: but the word "Gilbertian" will probably last longer +than the name Gilbert. + +It meant a real Victorian talent; that of exploding unexpectedly and +almost, as it seemed, unintentionally. Gilbert made good jokes by the +thousand; but he never (in his best days) made the joke that could +possibly have been expected of him. This is the last essential of the +Victorian. Laugh at him as a limited man, a moralist, conventionalist, +an opportunist, a formalist. But remember also that he was really a +humorist; and may still be laughing at you. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS + + +What was really unsatisfactory in Victorian literature is something much +easier to feel than to state. It was not so much a superiority in the +men of other ages to the Victorian men. It was a superiority of +Victorian men to themselves. The individual was unequal. Perhaps that is +why the society became unequal: I cannot say. They were lame giants; the +strongest of them walked on one leg a little shorter than the other. A +great man in any age must be a common man, and also an uncommon man. +Those that are only uncommon men are perverts and sowers of pestilence. +But somehow the great Victorian man was more and less than this. He was +at once a giant and a dwarf. When he has been sweeping the sky in +circles infinitely great, he suddenly shrivels into something +indescribably small. There is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from +a high creative mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when +George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There are also +moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without even the excuse of +sex. But in all these cases the alteration comes as a thing quite abrupt +and unreasonable. We do not feel this acute angle anywhere in Homer or +in Virgil or in Chaucer or in Shakespeare or in Dryden; such things as +they knew they knew. It is no disgrace to Homer that he had not +discovered Britain; or to Virgil that he had not discovered America; or +to Chaucer that he had not discovered the solar system; or to Dryden +that he had not discovered the steam-engine. But we do most frequently +feel, with the Victorians, that the very vastness of the number of +things they know illustrates the abrupt abyss of the things they do not +know. We feel, in a sort of way, that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Carlyle when he asks the Irish why they do not bestir themselves and +re-forest their country: saying not a word about the soaking up of every +sort of profit by the landlords which made that and every other Irish +improvement impossible. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Ruskin when he says, with a solemn visage, that building in iron is ugly +and unreal, but that the weightiest objection is that there is no +mention of it in the Bible; we feel as if he had just said he could find +no hair-brushes in Habakkuk. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man +like Thackeray when he proposes that people should be forcibly prevented +from being nuns, merely because he has no fixed intention of becoming a +nun himself. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like Tennyson, +when he talks of the French revolutions, the huge crusades that had +recreated the whole of his civilisation, as being "no graver than a +schoolboy's barring out." We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Browning to make spluttering and spiteful puns about the names Newman, +Wiseman, and Manning. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Newman when he confesses that for some time he felt as if he couldn't +come in to the Catholic Church, because of that dreadful Mr. Daniel +O'Connell, who had the vulgarity to fight for his own country. We feel +that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like Dickens, when he makes a blind +brute and savage out of a man like St. Dunstan; it sounds as if it were +not Dickens talking but Dombey. We feel it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Swinburne, when he has a Jingo fit and calls the Boer children in the +concentration camps "Whelps of treacherous dams whom none save we have +spared to starve and slay": we feel that Swinburne, for the first time, +really has become an immoral and indecent writer. All this is a certain +odd provincialism peculiar to the English in that great century: they +were in a kind of pocket; they appealed to too narrow a public opinion; +I am certain that no French or German men of the same genius made such +remarks. Renan was the enemy of the Catholic Church; but who can imagine +Renan writing of it as Kingsley or Dickens did? Taine was the enemy of +the French Revolution; but who can imagine Taine talking about it as +Tennyson or Newman talked? Even Matthew Arnold, though he saw this peril +and prided himself on escaping it, did not altogether escape it. There +must be (to use an Irishism) something shallow in the depths of any man +who talks about the _Zeitgeist_ as if it were a living thing. + +But this defect is very specially the key to the case of the two great +Victorian poets, Tennyson and Browning; the two spirited or beautiful +tunes, so to speak, to which the other events marched or danced. It was +especially so of Tennyson, for a reason which raises some of the most +real problems about his poetry. Tennyson, of course, owed a great deal +to Virgil. There is no question of plagiarism here; a debt to Virgil is +like a debt to Nature. But Tennyson was a provincial Virgil. In such +passages as that about the schoolboy's barring out he might be called a +suburban Virgil. I mean that he tried to have the universal balance of +all the ideas at which the great Roman had aimed: but he hadn't got hold +of all the ideas to balance. Hence his work was not a balance of truths, +like the universe. It was a balance of whims; like the British +Constitution. It is intensely typical of Tennyson's philosophical temper +that he was almost the only Poet Laureate who was not ludicrous. It is +not absurd to think of Tennyson as tuning his harp in praise of Queen +Victoria: that is, it is not absurd in the same sense as Chaucer's harp +hallowed by dedication to Richard II or Wordsworth's harp hallowed by +dedication to George IV is absurd. Richard's court could not properly +appreciate either Chaucer's daisies or his "devotion." George IV would +not have gone pottering about Helvellyn in search of purity and the +simple annals of the poor. But Tennyson did sincerely believe in the +Victorian compromise; and sincerity is never undignified. He really did +hold a great many of the same views as Queen Victoria, though he was +gifted with a more fortunate literary style. If Dickens is Cobbett's +democracy stirring in its grave, Tennyson is the exquisitely ornamental +extinguisher on the flame of the first revolutionary poets. England has +settled down; England has become Victorian. The compromise was +interesting, it was national and for a long time it was successful: +there is still a great deal to be said for it. But it was as freakish +and unphilosophic, as arbitrary and untranslatable, as a beggar's +patched coat or a child's secret language. Now it is here that Browning +had a certain odd advantage over Tennyson; which has, perhaps, somewhat +exaggerated his intellectual superiority to him. Browning's eccentric +style was more suitable to the poetry of a nation of eccentrics; of +people for the time being removed far from the centre of intellectual +interests. The hearty and pleasant task of expressing one's intense +dislike of something one doesn't understand is much more poetically +achieved by saying, in a general way "Grrr--you swine!" than it is by +laboured lines such as "the red fool-fury of the Seine." We all feel +that there is more of the man in Browning here; more of Dr. Johnson or +Cobbett. Browning is the Englishman taking himself wilfully, following +his nose like a bull-dog, going by his own likes and dislikes. We cannot +help feeling that Tennyson is the Englishman taking himself +seriously--an awful sight. One's memory flutters unhappily over a +certain letter about the Papal Guards written by Sir Willoughby +Patterne. It is here chiefly that Tennyson suffers by that very +Virgilian loveliness and dignity of diction which he put to the service +of such a small and anomalous national scheme. Virgil had the best news +to tell as well as the best words to tell it in. His world might be +sad; but it was the largest world one could live in before the coming of +Christianity. If he told the Romans to spare the vanquished and to war +down the mighty, at least he was more or less well informed about who +_were_ mighty and who _were_ vanquished. But when Tennyson wrote verses +like-- + + "Of freedom in her regal seat, + Of England; not the schoolboy heat, + The blind hysterics of the Celt" + +he quite literally did not know one word of what he was talking about; +he did not know what Celts are, or what hysterics are, or what freedom +was, or what regal was or even of what England was--in the living Europe +of that time. + +His religious range was very much wider and wiser than his political; +but here also he suffered from treating as true universality a thing +that was only a sort of lukewarm local patriotism. Here also he +suffered by the very splendour and perfection of his poetical powers. He +was quite the opposite of the man who cannot express himself; the +inarticulate singer who dies with all his music in him. He had a great +deal to say; but he had much more power of expression than was wanted +for anything he had to express. He could not think up to the height of +his own towering style. + +For whatever else Tennyson was, he was a great poet; no mind that feels +itself free, that is, above the ebb and flow of fashion, can feel +anything but contempt for the later effort to discredit him in that +respect. It is true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian +poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in +his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more +or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the +mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"--"Flits by +the sea-blue bird of March"--"Leafless ribs and iron horns"--"When the +long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"--in all these cases one word is the +keystone of an arch which would fall into ruin without it. But there are +other strong phrases that recall not Stevenson but rather their common +master, Virgil--"Tears from the depths of some divine despair"--"There +is fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate"--"Was a +great water; and the moon was full"--"God made Himself an awful rose of +dawn." These do not depend on a word but on an idea: they might even be +translated. It is also true, I think, that he was first and last a lyric +poet. He was always best when he expressed himself shortly. In long +poems he had an unfortunate habit of eventually saying very nearly the +opposite of what he meant to say. I will take only two instances of what +I mean. In the _Idylls of the King_, and in _In Memoriam_ (his two +sustained and ambitious efforts), particular phrases are always flashing +out the whole fire of the truth; the truth that Tennyson meant. But +owing to his English indolence, his English aristocratic +irresponsibility, his English vagueness in thought, he always managed to +make the main poem mean exactly what he did not mean. Thus, these two +lines which simply say that + + "Lancelot was the first in tournament, + But Arthur mightiest in the battle-field" + +do really express what he meant to express about Arthur being after all +"the highest, yet most human too; not Lancelot, nor another." But as his +hero is actually developed, we have exactly the opposite impression; +that poor old Lancelot, with all his faults, was much more of a man than +Arthur. He was a Victorian in the bad as well as the good sense; he +could not keep priggishness out of long poems. Or again, take the case +of _In Memoriam_. I will quote one verse (probably incorrectly) which +has always seemed to me splendid, and which does express what the whole +poem should express--but hardly does. + + "That we may lift from out the dust, + A voice as unto him that hears + A cry above the conquered years + Of one that ever works, and trust." + +The poem should have been a cry above the conquered years. It might well +have been that if the poet could have said sharply at the end of it, as +a pure piece of dogma, "I've forgotten every feature of the man's face: +I know God holds him alive." But under the influence of the mere +leisurely length of the thing, the reader _does_ rather receive the +impression that the wound has been healed only by time; and that the +victor hours _can_ boast that this is the man that loved and lost, but +all he was is overworn. This is not the truth; and Tennyson did not +intend it for the truth. It is simply the result of the lack of +something militant, dogmatic and structural in him: whereby he could not +be trusted with the trail of a very long literary process without +entangling himself like a kitten playing cat's-cradle. + +Browning, as above suggested, got on much better with eccentric and +secluded England because he treated it as eccentric and secluded; a +place where one could do what one liked. To a considerable extent he did +do what he liked; arousing not a few complaints; and many doubts and +conjectures as to why on earth he liked it. Many comparatively +sympathetic persons pondered upon what pleasure it could give any man to +write _Sordello_ or rhyme "end-knot" to "offend not." Nevertheless he +was no anarchist and no mystagogue; and even where he was defective, his +defect has commonly been stated wrongly. The two chief charges against +him were a contempt for form unworthy of an artist, and a poor pride in +obscurity. The obscurity is true, though not, I think, the pride in it; +but the truth about this charge rather rises out of the truth about the +other. The other charge is not true. Browning cared very much for form; +he cared very much for style. You may not happen to like his style; but +he did. To say that he had not enough mastery over form to express +himself perfectly like Tennyson or Swinburne is like criticising the +griffin of a mediæval gargoyle without even knowing that it is a +griffin; treating it as an infantile and unsuccessful attempt at a +classical angel. A poet indifferent to form ought to mean a poet who did +not care what form he used as long as he expressed his thoughts. He +might be a rather entertaining sort of poet; telling a smoking-room +story in blank verse or writing a hunting-song in the Spenserian stanza; +giving a realistic analysis of infanticide in a series of triolets; or +proving the truth of Immortality in a long string of limericks. Browning +certainly had no such indifference. Almost every poem of Browning, +especially the shortest and most successful ones, was moulded or graven +in some special style, generally grotesque, but invariably deliberate. +In most cases whenever he wrote a new song he wrote a new kind of song. +The new lyric is not only of a different metre, but of a different +shape. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as +that horrible one beginning "John, Master of the Temple of God," with +its weird choruses and creepy prose directions. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _Pisgah-sights_. No +one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _Time's +Revenges_. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same +style as _Meeting at Night_ and _Parting at Morning_. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _The Flight of the +Duchess_, or in the same style as _The Grammarian's Funeral_, or in the +same style as _A Star_, or in the same style as that astounding lyric +which begins abruptly "Some people hang pictures up." These metres and +manners were not accidental; they really do suit the sort of spiritual +experiment Browning was making in each case. Browning, then, was not +chaotic; he was deliberately grotesque. But there certainly was, over +and above this grotesqueness, a perversity and irrationality about the +man which led him to play the fool in the middle of his own poems; to +leave off carving gargoyles and simply begin throwing stones. His +curious complicated puns are an example of this: Hood had used the pun +to make a sentence or a sentiment especially pointed and clear. In +Browning the word with two meanings seems to mean rather less, if +anything, than the word with one. It also applies to his trick of +setting himself to cope with impossible rhymes. It may be fun, though it +is not poetry, to try rhyming to ranunculus; but even the fun +presupposes that you _do_ rhyme to it; and I will affirm, and hold under +persecution, that "Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle-us" does not rhyme to +it. + +The obscurity, to which he must in a large degree plead guilty, was, +curiously enough, the result rather of the gay artist in him than the +deep thinker. It is patience in the Browning students; in Browning it +was only impatience. He wanted to say something comic and energetic and +he wanted to say it quick. And, between his artistic skill in the +fantastic and his temperamental turn for the abrupt, the idea sometimes +flashed past unseen. But it is quite an error to suppose that these are +the dark mines containing his treasure. The two or three great and true +things he really had to say he generally managed to say quite simply. +Thus he really did want to say that God had indeed made man and woman +one flesh; that the sex relation was religious in this real sense that +even in our sin and despair we take it for granted and expect a sort of +virtue in it. The feelings of the bad husband about the good wife, for +instance, are about as subtle and entangled as any matter on this earth; +and Browning really had something to say about them. But he said it in +some of the plainest and most unmistakable words in all literature; as +lucid as a flash of lightning. "Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" +Or again, he did really want to say that death and such moral terrors +were best taken in a military spirit; he could not have said it more +simply than: "I was ever a fighter; one fight more, the best and the +last." He did really wish to say that human life was unworkable unless +immortality were implied in it every other moment; he could not have +said it more simply: "leave now to dogs and apes; Man has for ever." The +obscurities were not merely superficial, but often covered quite +superficial ideas. He was as likely as not to be most unintelligible of +all in writing a compliment in a lady's album. I remember in my boyhood +(when Browning kept us awake like coffee) a friend reading out the poem +about the portrait to which I have already referred, reading it in that +rapid dramatic way in which this poet must be read. And I was profoundly +puzzled at the passage where it seemed to say that the cousin +disparaged the picture, "while John scorns ale." I could not think what +this sudden teetotalism on the part of John had to do with the affair, +but I forgot to ask at the time and it was only years afterwards that, +looking at the book, I found it was "John's corns ail," a very +Browningesque way of saying he winced. Most of Browning's obscurity is +of that sort--the mistakes are almost as quaint as misprints--and the +Browning student, in that sense, is more a proof reader than a disciple. +For the rest his real religion was of the most manly, even the most +boyish sort. He is called an optimist; but the word suggests a +calculated contentment which was not in the least one of his vices. What +he really was was a romantic. He offered the cosmos as an adventure +rather than a scheme. He did not explain evil, far less explain it away; +he enjoyed defying it. He was a troubadour even in theology and +metaphysics: like the _Jongleurs de Dieu_ of St. Francis. He may be said +to have serenaded heaven with a guitar, and even, so to speak, tried to +climb there with a rope ladder. Thus his most vivid things are the +red-hot little love lyrics, or rather, little love dramas. He did one +really original and admirable thing: he managed the real details of +modern love affairs in verse, and love is the most realistic thing in +the world. He substituted the street with the green blind for the faded +garden of Watteau, and the "blue spirt of a lighted match" for the +monotony of the evening star. + +Before leaving him it should be added that he was fitted to deepen the +Victorian mind, but not to broaden it. With all his Italian sympathies +and Italian residence, he was not the man to get Victorian England out +of its provincial rut: on many things Kingsley himself was not so +narrow. His celebrated wife was wider and wiser than he in this sense; +for she was, however one-sidedly, involved in the emotions of central +European politics. She defended Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel; and +intelligently, as one conscious of the case against them both. As to +why it now seems simple to defend the first Italian King, but absurd to +defend the last French Emperor--well, the reason is sad and simple. It +is concerned with certain curious things called success and failure, and +I ought to have considered it under the heading of _The Book of Snobs_. +But Elizabeth Barrett, at least, was no snob: her political poems have +rather an impatient air, as if they were written, and even published, +rather prematurely--just before the fall of her idol. These old +political poems of hers are too little read to-day; they are amongst the +most sincere documents on the history of the times, and many modern +blunders could be corrected by the reading of them. And Elizabeth +Barrett had a strength really rare among women poets; the strength of +the phrase. She excelled in her sex, in epigram, almost as much as +Voltaire in his. Pointed phrases like: "Martyrs by the pang without the +palm"--or "Incense to sweeten a crime and myrrh to embitter a curse," +these expressions, which are witty after the old fashion of the conceit, +came quite freshly and spontaneously to her quite modern mind. But the +first fact is this, that these epigrams of hers were never so true as +when they turned on one of the two or three pivots on which contemporary +Europe was really turning. She is by far the most European of all the +English poets of that age; all of them, even her own much greater +husband, look local beside her. Tennyson and the rest are nowhere. Take +any positive political fact, such as the final fall of Napoleon. +Tennyson wrote these profoundly foolish lines-- + + "He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak + Madman!" + +as if the defeat of an English regiment were a violation of the laws of +Nature. Mrs. Browning knew no more facts about Napoleon, perhaps, than +Tennyson did; but she knew the truth. Her epigram on Napoleon's fall is +in one line + + "And kings crept out again to feel the sun." + +Talleyrand would have clapped his horrible old hands at that. Her +instinct about the statesman and the soldier was very like Jane Austen's +instinct for the gentleman and the man. It is not unnoticeable that as +Miss Austen spent most of her life in a village, Miss Barrett spent most +of her life on a sofa. The godlike power of guessing seems (for some +reason I do not understand) to grow under such conditions. Unfortunately +Mrs. Browning was like all the other Victorians in going a little lame, +as I have roughly called it, having one leg shorter than the other. But +her case was, in one sense, extreme. She exaggerated both ways. She was +too strong and too weak, or (as a false sex philosophy would express it) +too masculine and too feminine. I mean that she hit the centre of +weakness with almost the same emphatic precision with which she hit the +centre of strength. She could write finally of the factory wheels +"grinding life down from its mark," a strong and strictly true +observation. Unfortunately she could also write of Euripides "with his +droppings of warm tears." She could write in _A Drama of Exile_, a +really fine exposition, touching the later relation of Adam and the +animals: unfortunately the tears were again turned on at the wrong +moment at the main; and the stage direction commands a silence, only +broken by the dropping of angel's tears. How much noise is made by +angel's tears? Is it a sound of emptied buckets, or of garden hose, or +of mountain cataracts? That is the sort of question which Elizabeth +Barrett's extreme love of the extreme was always tempting people to ask. +Yet the question, as asked, does her a heavy historical injustice; we +remember all the lines in her work which were weak enough to be called +"womanly," we forget the multitude of strong lines that are strong +enough to be called "manly"; lines that Kingsley or Henley would have +jumped for joy to print in proof of their manliness. She had one of the +peculiar talents of true rhetoric, that of a powerful concentration. As +to the critic who thinks her poetry owed anything to the great poet who +was her husband, he can go and live in the same hotel with the man who +can believe that George Eliot owed anything to the extravagant +imagination of Mr. George Henry Lewes. So far from Browning inspiring or +interfering, he did not in one sense interfere enough. Her real +inferiority to him in literature is that he was consciously while she +was unconsciously absurd. + +It is natural, in the matter of Victorian moral change, to take +Swinburne as the next name here. He is the only poet who was also, in +the European sense, on the spot; even if, in the sense of the Gilbertian +song, the spot was barred. He also knew that something rather crucial +was happening to Christendom; he thought it was getting unchristened. It +is even a little amusing, indeed, that these two Pro-Italian poets +almost conducted a political correspondence in rhyme. Mrs. Browning +sternly reproached those who had ever doubted the good faith of the King +of Sardinia, whom she acclaimed as being truly a king. Swinburne, +lyrically alluding to her as "Sea-eagle of English feather," broadly +hinted that the chief blunder of that wild fowl had been her support of +an autocratic adventurer: "calling a crowned man royal, that was no more +than a king." But it is not fair, even in this important connection, to +judge Swinburne by _Songs Before Sunrise_. They were songs before a +sunrise that has never turned up. Their dogmatic assertions have for a +long time past stared starkly at us as nonsense. As, for instance, the +phrase "Glory to Man in the Highest, for man is the master of things"; +after which there is evidently nothing to be said, except that it is +not true. But even where Swinburne had his greater grip, as in that +grave and partly just poem _Before a Crucifix_, Swinburne, the most +Latin, the most learned, the most largely travelled of the Victorians, +still knows far less of the facts than even Mrs. Browning. The whole of +the poem, _Before a Crucifix_, breaks down by one mere mistake. It +imagines that the French or Italian peasants who fell on their knees +before the Crucifix did so because they were slaves. They fell on their +knees because they were free men, probably owning their own farms. +Swinburne could have found round about Putney plenty of slaves who had +no crucifixes: but only crucifixions. + +When we come to ethics and philosophy, doubtless we find Swinburne in +full revolt, not only against the temperate idealism of Tennyson, but +against the genuine piety and moral enthusiasm of people like Mrs. +Browning. But here again Swinburne is very English, nay, he is very +Victorian, for his revolt is illogical. For the purposes of intelligent +insurrection against priests and kings, Swinburne ought to have +described the natural life of man, free and beautiful, and proved from +this both the noxiousness and the needlessness of such chains. +Unfortunately Swinburne rebelled against Nature first and then tried to +rebel against religion for doing exactly the same thing that he had +done. His songs of joy are not really immoral; but his songs of sorrow +are. But when he merely hurls at the priest the assertion that flesh is +grass and life is sorrow, he really lays himself open to the restrained +answer, "So I have ventured, on various occasions, to remark." When he +went forth, as it were, as the champion of pagan change and pleasure, he +heard uplifted the grand choruses of his own _Atalanta_, in his rear, +refusing hope. + +The splendid diction that blazes through the whole of that drama, that +still dances exquisitely in the more lyrical _Poems and Ballads_, makes +some marvellous appearances in _Songs Before Sunrise_, and then mainly +falters and fades away, is, of course, the chief thing about Swinburne. +The style is the man; and some will add that it does not, thus +unsupported, amount to much of a man. But the style itself suffers some +injustice from those who would speak thus. The views expressed are often +quite foolish and often quite insincere; but the style itself is a +manlier and more natural thing than is commonly made out. It is not in +the least languorous or luxurious or merely musical and sensuous, as one +would gather from both the eulogies and the satires, from the conscious +and the unconscious imitations. On the contrary, it is a sort of +fighting and profane parody of the Old Testament; and its lines are made +of short English words like the short Roman swords. The first line of +one of his finest poems, for instance, runs, "I have lived long enough +to have seen one thing, that love hath an end." In that sentence only +one small "e" gets outside the monosyllable. Through all his +interminable tragedies, he was fondest of lines like-- + + "If ever I leave off to honour you + God give me shame; I were the worst churl born." + +The dramas were far from being short and dramatic; but the words really +were. Nor was his verse merely smooth; except his very bad verse, like +"the lilies and languors of virtue, to the raptures and roses of vice," +which both, in cheapness of form and foolishness of sentiment, may be +called the worst couplet in the world's literature. In his real poetry +(even in the same poem) his rhythm and rhyme are as original and +ambitious as Browning; and the only difference between him and Browning +is, not that he is smooth and without ridges, but that he always crests +the ridge triumphantly and Browning often does not-- + + "On thy bosom though many a kiss be, + There are none such as knew it of old. + Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, + Male ringlets or feminine gold, + That thy lips met with under the statue + Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves + From the eyes of the garden-god at you + Across the fig-leaves." + +Look at the rhymes in that verse, and you will see they are as stiff a +task as Browning's: only they are successful. That is the real strength +of Swinburne--a style. It was a style that nobody could really imitate; +and least of all Swinburne himself, though he made the attempt all +through his later years. He was, if ever there was one, an inspired +poet. I do not think it the highest sort of poet. And you never discover +who is an inspired poet until the inspiration goes. + +With Swinburne we step into the circle of that later Victorian influence +which was very vaguely called Æsthetic. Like all human things, but +especially Victorian things, it was not only complex but confused. +Things in it that were at one on the emotional side were flatly at war +on the intellectual. In the section of the painters, it was the allies +or pupils of Ruskin, pious, almost painfully exact, and copying mediæval +details rather for their truth than their beauty. In the section of the +poets it was pretty loose, Swinburne being the leader of the revels. But +there was one great man who was in both sections, a painter and a poet, +who may be said to bestride the chasm like a giant. It is in an odd and +literal sense true that the name of Rossetti is important here, for the +name implies the nationality. I have loosely called Carlyle and the +Brontës the romance from the North; the nearest to a general definition +of the Æsthetic movement is to call it the romance from the South. It is +that warm wind that had never blown so strong since Chaucer, standing in +his cold English April, had smelt the spring in Provence. The Englishman +has always found it easier to get inspiration from the Italians than +from the French; they call to each other across that unconquered castle +of reason. Browning's _Englishman in Italy_, Browning's _Italian in +England_, were both happier than either would have been in France. +Rossetti was the Italian in England, as Browning was the Englishman in +Italy; and the first broad fact about the artistic revolution Rossetti +wrought is written when we have written his name. But if the South lets +in warmth or heat, it also lets in hardness. The more the orange tree is +luxuriant in growth, the less it is loose in outline. And it is exactly +where the sea is slightly warmer than marble that it looks slightly +harder. This, I think, is the one universal power behind the Æsthetic +and Pre-Raphaelite movements, which all agreed in two things at least: +strictness in the line and strength, nay violence, in the colour. + +Rossetti was a remarkable man in more ways than one; he did not succeed +in any art; if he had he would probably never have been heard of. It was +his happy knack of half failing in both the arts that has made him a +success. If he had been as good a poet as Tennyson, he would have been a +poet who painted pictures. If he had been as good a painter as +Burne-Jones, he would have been a painter who wrote poems. It is odd to +note on the very threshold of the extreme art movement that this great +artist largely succeeded by not defining his art. His poems were too +pictorial. His pictures were too poetical. That is why they really +conquered the cold satisfaction of the Victorians, because they did mean +something, even if it was a small artistic thing. + +Rossetti was one with Ruskin, on the one hand, and Swinburne on the +other, in reviving the decorative instinct of the Middle Ages. While +Ruskin, in letters only, praised that decoration Rossetti and his +friends repeated it. They almost made patterns of their poems. That +frequent return of the refrain which was foolishly discussed by +Professor Nordau was, in Rossetti's case, of such sadness as sometimes +to amount to sameness. The criticism on him, from a mediæval point of +view, is not that he insisted on a chorus, but that he could not insist +on a jolly chorus. Many of his poems were truly mediæval, but they would +have been even more mediæval if he could ever have written such a +refrain as "Tally Ho!" or even "Tooral-ooral" instead of "Tall Troy's on +fire." With Rossetti goes, of course, his sister, a real poet, though +she also illustrated that Pre-Raphaelite's conflict of views that +covered their coincidence of taste. Both used the angular outlines, the +burning transparencies, the fixed but still unfathomable symbols of the +great mediæval civilisation; but Rossetti used the religious imagery (on +the whole) irreligiously, Christina Rossetti used it religiously but (on +the whole) so to make it seem a narrower religion. + +One poet, or, to speak more strictly, one poem, belongs to the same +general atmosphere and impulse as Swinburne; the free but languid +atmosphere of later Victorian art. But this time the wind blew from +hotter and heavier gardens than the gardens of Italy. Edward +Fitzgerald, a cultured eccentric, a friend of Tennyson, produced what +professed to be a translation of the Persian poet Omar, who wrote +quatrains about wine and roses and things in general. Whether the +Persian original, in its own Persian way, was greater or less than this +version I must not discuss here, and could not discuss anywhere. But it +is quite clear that Fitzgerald's work is much too good to be a good +translation. It is as personal and creative a thing as ever was written; +and the best expression of a bad mood, a mood that may, for all I know, +be permanent in Persia, but was certainly at this time particularly +fashionable in England. In the technical sense of literature it is one +of the most remarkable achievements of that age; as poetical as +Swinburne and far more perfect. In this verbal sense its most arresting +quality is a combination of something haunting and harmonious that flows +by like a river or a song, with something else that is compact and +pregnant like a pithy saying picked out in rock by the chisel of some +pagan philosopher. It is at once a tune that escapes and an inscription +that remains. Thus, alone among the reckless and romantic verses that +first rose in Coleridge or Keats, it preserves something also of the wit +and civilisation of the eighteenth century. Lines like "a Muezzin from +the tower of darkness cries," or "Their mouths are stopped with dust" +are successful in the same sense as "Pinnacled dim in the intense inane" +or "Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways." But-- + + "Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before + I swore; but was I sober when I swore?" + +is equally successful in the same sense as-- + + "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer + And without sneering teach the rest to sneer." + +It thus earned a right to be considered the complete expression of that +scepticism and sensual sadness into which later Victorian literature was +more and more falling away: a sort of bible of unbelief. For a cold fit +had followed the hot fit of Swinburne, which was of a feverish sort: he +had set out to break down without having, or even thinking he had, the +rudiments of rebuilding in him; and he effected nothing national even in +the way of destruction. The Tennysonians still walked past him as primly +as a young ladies' school--the Browningites still inked their eyebrows +and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning +himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy +from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century +sceptics did not really shake the respectable world and alter it, as the +eighteenth-century sceptics had done; but that was because the +eighteenth-century sceptics were something more than sceptics, and +believed in Greek tragedies, in Roman laws, in the Republic. The +Swinburnian sceptics had nothing to fight for but a frame of mind; and +when ordinary English people listened to it, they came to the conclusion +that it was a frame of mind they would rather hear about than +experience. But these later poets did, so to speak, spread their soul in +all the empty spaces; weaker brethren, disappointed artists, unattached +individuals, very young people, were sapped or swept away by these +songs; which, so far as any particular sense in them goes, were almost +songs without words. It is because there is something which is after all +indescribably manly, intellectual, firm about Fitzgerald's way of +phrasing the pessimism that he towers above the slope that was tumbling +down to the decadents. But it is still pessimism, a thing unfit for a +white man; a thing like opium, that may often be a poison and sometimes +a medicine, but never a food for us, who are driven by an inner command +not only to think but to live, not only to live but to grow, and not +only to grow but to build. + +And, indeed, we see the insufficiency of such sad extremes even in the +next name among the major poets; we see the Swinburnian parody of +mediævalism, the inverted Catholicism of the decadents, struggling to +get back somehow on its feet. The æsthetic school had, not quite +unjustly, the name of mere dilettanti. But it is fair to say that in the +next of them, a workman and a tradesman, we already feel something of +that return to real issues leading up to the real revolts that broke up +Victorianism at last. In the mere art of words, indeed, William Morris +carried much further than Swinburne or Rossetti the mere imitation of +stiff mediæval ornament. The other mediævalists had their modern +moments; which were (if they had only known it) much more mediæval than +their mediæval moments. Swinburne could write-- + + "We shall see Buonaparte the bastard + Kick heels with his throat in a rope." + +One has an uneasy feeling that William Morris would have written +something like-- + + "And the kin of the ill king Bonaparte + Hath a high gallows for all his part." + +Rossetti could, for once in a way, write poetry about a real woman and +call her "Jenny." One has a disturbed suspicion that Morris would have +called her "Jehanne." + +But all that seems at first more archaic and decorative about Morris +really arose from the fact that he was more virile and real than either +Swinburne or Rossetti. It arose from the fact that he really was, what +he so often called himself, a craftsman. He had enough masculine +strength to be tidy: that is, after the masculine manner, tidy about his +own trade. If his poems were too like wallpapers, it was because he +really could make wallpapers. He knew that lines of poetry ought to be +in a row, as palings ought to be in a row; and he knew that neither +palings nor poetry looks any the worse for being simple or even severe. +In a sense Morris was all the more creative because he felt the hard +limits of creation as he would have felt them if he were not working in +words but in wood; and if he was unduly dominated by the mere +conventions of the mediævals, it was largely because they were (whatever +else they were) the very finest fraternity of free workmen the world is +ever likely to see. + +The very things that were urged against Morris are in this sense part of +his ethical importance; part of the more promising and wholesome turn he +was half unconsciously giving to the movement of modern art. His hazier +fellow-Socialists blamed him because he made money; but this was at +least in some degree because he made other things to make money: it was +part of the real and refreshing fact that at last an æsthete had +appeared who could make something. If he was a capitalist, at least he +was what later capitalists cannot or will not be--something higher than +a capitalist, a tradesman. As compared with aristocrats like Swinburne +or aliens like Rossetti, he was vitally English and vitally Victorian. +He inherits some of that paradoxical glory which Napoleon gave +reluctantly to a nation of shopkeepers. He was the last of that nation; +he did not go out golfing: like that founder of the artistic shopman, +Samuel Richardson, "he kept his shop, and his shop kept him." The +importance of his Socialism can easily be exaggerated. Among other +lesser points, he was not a Socialist; he was a sort of Dickensian +anarchist. His instinct for titles was always exquisite. It is part of +his instinct of decoration: for on a page the title always looks +important and the printed mass of matter a mere dado under it. And no +one had ever nobler titles than _The Roots of the Mountains_ or _The +Wood at the End of the World_. The reader feels he hardly need read the +fairy-tale because the title is so suggestive. But, when all is said, he +never chose a better title than that of his social Utopia, _News from +Nowhere_. He wrote it while the last Victorians were already embarked on +their bold task of fixing the future--of narrating to-day what has +happened to-morrow. They named their books by cold titles suggesting +straight corridors of marble--titles like _Looking Backward_. But Morris +was an artist as well as an anarchist. _News from Nowhere_ is an +irresponsible title; and it is an irresponsible book. It does not +describe the problem solved; it does not describe wealth either wielded +by the State or divided equally among the citizens. It simply describes +an undiscovered country where every one feels good-natured all day. That +he could even dream so is his true dignity as a poet. He was the first +of the Æsthetes to smell mediævalism as a smell of the morning; and not +as a mere scent of decay. + +With him the poetry that had been peculiarly Victorian practically +ends; and, on the whole, it is a happy ending. There are many other +minor names of major importance; but for one reason or other they do not +derive from the schools that had dominated this epoch as such. Thus +Thompson, the author of _The City of Dreadful Night_, was a fine poet; +but his pessimism combined with a close pugnacity does not follow any of +the large but loose lines of the Swinburnian age. But he was a great +person--he knew how to be democratic in the dark. Thus Coventry Patmore +was a much greater person. He was bursting with ideas, like +Browning--and truer ideas as a rule. He was as eccentric and florid and +Elizabethan as Browning; and often in moods and metres that even +Browning was never wild enough to think of. No one will ever forget the +first time he read Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God +made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the +sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers asked for the +rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but +discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the +Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. +The Victorian English simply thought him an indecent sentimentalist, as +they did all the hot and humble religious diarists of Italy or Spain. +Something of the same fate followed the most powerful of that last +Victorian group who were called "Minor Poets." They numbered many other +fine artists: notably Mr. William Watson, who is truly Victorian in that +he made a manly attempt to tread down the decadents and return to the +right reason of Wordsworth-- + + "I have not paid the world + The evil and the insolent courtesy + Of offering it my baseness as a gift." + +But none of them were able even to understand Francis Thompson; his +sky-scraping humility, his mountains of mystical detail, his occasional +and unashamed weakness, his sudden and sacred blasphemies. Perhaps the +shortest definition of the Victorian Age is that he stood outside it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE + + +If it be curiously and carefully considered it will, I think, appear +more and more true that the struggle between the old spiritual theory +and the new material theory in England ended simply in a deadlock; and a +deadlock that has endured. It is still impossible to say absolutely that +England is a Christian country or a heathen country; almost exactly as +it was impossible when Herbert Spencer began to write. Separate elements +of both sorts are alive, and even increasingly alive. But neither the +believer nor the unbeliever has the impudence to call himself the +Englishman. Certainly the great Victorian rationalism has succeeded in +doing a damage to religion. It has done what is perhaps the worst of all +damages to religion. It has driven it entirely into the power of the +religious people. Men like Newman, men like Coventry Patmore, men who +would have been mystics in any case, were driven back upon being much +more extravagantly religious than they would have been in a religious +country. Men like Huxley, men like Kingsley, men like most Victorian +men, were equally driven back on being irreligious; that is, on doubting +things which men's normal imagination does not necessarily doubt. But +certainly the most final and forcible fact is that this war ended like +the battle of Sheriffmuir, as the poet says; they both did fight, and +both did beat, and both did run away. They have left to their +descendants a treaty that has become a dull torture. Men may believe in +immortality, and none of the men know why. Men may not believe in +miracles, and none of the men know why. The Christian Church had been +just strong enough to check the conquest of her chief citadels. The +rationalist movement had been just strong enough to conquer some of her +outposts, as it seemed, for ever. Neither was strong enough to expel the +other; and Victorian England was in a state which some call liberty and +some call lockjaw. + +But the situation can be stated another way. There came a time, roughly +somewhere about 1880, when the two great positive enthusiasms of Western +Europe had for the time exhausted each other--Christianity and the +French Revolution. About that time there used to be a sad and not +unsympathetic jest going about to the effect that Queen Victoria might +very well live longer than the Prince of Wales. Somewhat in the same +way, though the republican impulse was hardly a hundred years old and +the religious impulse nearly two thousand, yet as far as England was +concerned, the old wave and the new seemed to be spent at the same time. +On the one hand Darwin, especially through the strong journalistic +genius of Huxley, had won a very wide spread though an exceedingly +vague victory. I do not mean that Darwin's own doctrine was vague; his +was merely one particular hypothesis about how animal variety might have +arisen; and that particular hypothesis, though it will always be +interesting, is now very much the reverse of secure. But it is only in +the strictly scientific world and among strictly scientific men that +Darwin's detailed suggestion has largely broken down. The general public +impression that he had entirely proved his case (whatever it was) was +early arrived at, and still remains. It was and is hazily associated +with the negation of religion. But (and this is the important point) it +was also associated with the negation of democracy. The same +Mid-Victorian muddle-headedness that made people think that "evolution" +meant that we need not admit the supremacy of God, also made them think +that "survival" meant that we must admit the supremacy of men. Huxley +had no hand in spreading these fallacies; he was a fair fighter; and he +told his own followers, who spoke thus, most emphatically not to play +the fool. He said most strongly that his or any theory of evolution left +the old philosophical arguments for a creator, right or wrong, exactly +where they were before. He also said most emphatically that any one who +used the argument of Nature against the ideal of justice or an equal +law, was as senseless as a gardener who should fight on the side of the +ill weeds merely because they grew apace. I wish, indeed, that in such a +rude summary as this, I had space to do justice to Huxley as a literary +man and a moralist. He had a live taste and talent for the English +tongue, which he devoted to the task of keeping Victorian rationalism +rational. He did not succeed. As so often happens when a rather +unhealthy doubt is in the atmosphere, the strongest words of their great +captain could not keep the growing crowds of agnostics back from the +most hopeless and inhuman extremes of destructive thought. Nonsense not +yet quite dead about the folly of allowing the unfit to survive began +to be more and more wildly whispered. Such helpless specimens of +"advanced thought" are, of course, quite as inconsistent with Darwinism +as they are with democracy or with any other intelligent proposition +ever offered. But these unintelligent propositions were offered; and the +ultimate result was this rather important one: that the harshness of +Utilitarianism began to turn into downright tyranny. That beautiful +faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air +of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had +redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay--all that seemed slowly and +sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in +the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was +bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation +evaporated; the mean calculation remained. One could still calculate in +clear statistical tables, how many men lived, how many men died. One +must not ask how they lived; for that is politics. One must not ask how +they died; for that is religion. And religion and politics were ruled +out of all the Later Victorian debating clubs; even including the +debating club at Westminster. What third thing they were discussing, +which was neither religion nor politics, I do not know. I have tried the +experiment of reading solidly through a vast number of their records and +reviews and discussions; and still I do not know. The only third thing I +can think of to balance religion and politics is art; and no one well +acquainted with the debates at St. Stephen's will imagine that the art +of extreme eloquence was the cause of the confusion. None will maintain +that our political masters are removed from us by an infinite artistic +superiority in the choice of words. The politicians know nothing of +politics, which is their own affair: they know nothing of religion, +which is certainly not their affair: it may legitimately be said that +they have to do with nothing; they have reached that low and last level +where a man knows as little about his own claim, as he does about his +enemies'. In any case there can be no doubt about the effect of this +particular situation on the problem of ethics and science. The duty of +dragging truth out by the tail or the hind leg or any other corner one +can possibly get hold of, a perfectly sound duty in itself, had somehow +come into collision with the older and larger duty of knowing something +about the organism and ends of a creature; or, in the everyday phrase, +being able to make head or tail of it. This paradox pursued and +tormented the Victorians. They could not or would not see that humanity +repels or welcomes the railway-train, simply according to what people +come by it. They could not see that one welcomes or smashes the +telephone, according to what words one hears in it. They really seem to +have felt that the train could be a substitute for its own passengers; +or the telephone a substitute for its own voice. + +In any case it is clear that a change had begun to pass over scientific +inquiry, of which we have seen the culmination in our own day. There had +begun that easy automatic habit, of science as an oiled and +smooth-running machine, that habit of treating things as obviously +unquestionable, when, indeed, they are obviously questionable. This +began with vaccination in the Early Victorian Age; it extended to the +early licence of vivisection in its later age; it has found a sort of +fitting foolscap, or crown of crime and folly, in the thing called +Eugenics. In all three cases the point was not so much that the pioneers +had not proved their case; it was rather that, by an unexpressed rule of +respectability, they were not required to prove it. This rather abrupt +twist of the rationalistic mind in the direction of arbitrary power, +certainly weakened the Liberal movement from within. And meanwhile it +was being weakened by heavy blows from without. + +There is a week that is the turn of the year; there was a year that was +the turn of the century. About 1870 the force of the French Revolution +faltered and fell: the year that was everywhere the death of Liberal +ideas: the year when Paris fell: the year when Dickens died. While the +new foes of freedom, the sceptics and scientists, were damaging +democracy in ideas, the old foes of freedom, the emperors and the kings, +were damaging her more heavily in arms. For a moment it almost seemed +that the old Tory ring of iron, the Holy Alliance, had recombined +against France. But there was just this difference: that the Holy +Alliance was now not arguably, but almost avowedly, an Unholy Alliance. +It was an alliance between those who still thought they could deny the +dignity of man and those who had recently begun to have a bright hope of +denying even the dignity of God. Eighteenth-century Prussia was +Protestant and probably religious. Nineteenth-century Prussia was almost +utterly atheist. Thus the old spirit of liberty felt itself shut up at +both ends, that which was called progressive and that which was called +reactionary: barricaded by Bismarck with blood and iron and by Darwin by +blood and bones. The enormous depression which infects many excellent +people born about this time, probably has this cause. + +It was a great calamity that the freedom of Wilkes and the faith of Dr. +Johnson fought each other. But it was an even worse calamity that they +practically killed each other. They killed each other almost +simultaneously, like Herminius and Mamilius. Liberalism (in Newman's +sense) really did strike Christianity through headpiece and through +head; that is, it did daze and stun the ignorant and ill-prepared +intellect of the English Christian. And Christianity did smite +Liberalism through breastplate and through breast; that is, it did +succeed, through arms and all sorts of awful accidents, in piercing more +or less to the heart of the Utilitarian--and finding that he had none. +Victorian Protestantism had not head enough for the business; Victorian +Radicalism had not heart enough for the business. Down fell they dead +together, exactly as Macaulay's Lay says, and still stood all who saw +them fall almost until the hour at which I write. + +This coincident collapse of both religious and political idealism +produced a curious cold air of emptiness and real subconscious +agnosticism such as is extremely unusual in the history of mankind. It +is what Mr. Wells, with his usual verbal delicacy and accuracy, spoke of +as that ironical silence that follows a great controversy. It is what +people less intelligent than Mr. Wells meant by calling themselves _fin +de siècle_; though, of course, rationally speaking, there is no more +reason for being sad towards the end of a hundred years than towards the +end of five hundred fortnights. There was no arithmetical autumn, but +there was a spiritual one. And it came from the fact suggested in the +paragraphs above; the sense that man's two great inspirations had +failed him together. The Christian religion was much more dead in the +eighteenth century than it was in the nineteenth century. But the +republican enthusiasm was also much more alive. If their scepticism was +cold, and their faith even colder, their practical politics were wildly +idealistic; and if they doubted the kingdom of heaven, they were +gloriously credulous about the chances of it coming on earth. In the +same way the old pagan republican feeling was much more dead in the +feudal darkness of the eleventh or twelfth centuries, than it was even a +century later; but if creative politics were at their lowest, creative +theology was almost at its highest point of energy. + +The modern world, in fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen +between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the +cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediæval stool +that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the +two values as intensely valuable. It could not believe in the bonds that +bound men; but, then, neither could it believe in the men they bound. It +was always restrained in its hatred of slavery by a half remembrance of +its yet greater hatred of liberty. They were almost alone, I think, in +thus carrying to its extreme the negative attitude already noted in Miss +Arabella Allen. Anselm would have despised a civic crown, but he would +not have despised a relic. Voltaire would have despised a relic; but he +would not have despised a vote. We hardly find them both despised till +we come to the age of Oscar Wilde. + +These years that followed on that double disillusionment were like one +long afternoon in a rich house on a rainy day. It was not merely that +everybody believed that nothing would happen; it was also that everybody +believed that anything happening was even duller than nothing happening. +It was in this stale atmosphere that a few flickers of the old +Swinburnian flame survived; and were called Art. The great men of the +older artistic movement did not live in this time; rather they lived +through it. But this time did produce an interregnum of art that had a +truth of its own; though that truth was near to being only a consistent +lie. + +The movement of those called Æsthetes (as satirised in _Patience_) and +the movement of those afterwards called Decadents (satirised in Mr. +Street's delightful _Autobiography of a Boy_) had the same captain; or +at any rate the same bandmaster. Oscar Wilde walked in front of the +first procession wearing a sunflower, and in front of the second +procession wearing a green carnation. With the æsthetic movement and its +more serious elements, I deal elsewhere; but the second appearance of +Wilde is also connected with real intellectual influences, largely +negative, indeed, but subtle and influential. The mark in most of the +arts of this time was a certain quality which those who like it would +call "uniqueness of aspect," and those who do not like it "not quite +coming off." I mean the thing meant something from one standpoint; but +its mark was that the _smallest_ change of standpoint made it unmeaning +and unthinkable--a foolish joke. A beggar painted by Rembrandt is as +solid as a statue, however roughly he is sketched in; the soul can walk +all round him like a public monument. We see he would have other +aspects; and that they would all be the aspects of a beggar. Even if one +did not admit the extraordinary qualities in the painting, one would +have to admit the ordinary qualities in the sitter. If it is not a +masterpiece it is a man. But a nocturne by Whistler of mist on the +Thames is either a masterpiece or it is nothing; it is either a nocturne +or a nightmare of childish nonsense. Made in a certain mood, viewed +through a certain temperament, conceived under certain conventions, it +may be, it often is, an unreplaceable poem, a vision that may never be +seen again. But the moment it ceases to be a splendid picture it ceases +to be a picture at all. Or, again, if _Hamlet_ is not a great tragedy it +is an uncommonly good tale. The people and the posture of affairs would +still be there even if one thought that Shakespeare's moral attitude was +wrong. Just as one could imagine all the other sides of Rembrandt's +beggar, so, with the mind's eye (Horatio), one can see all four sides of +the castle of Elsinore. One might tell the tale from the point of view +of Laërtes or Claudius or Polonius or the gravedigger; and it would +still be a good tale and the same tale. But if we take a play like +_Pelléas and Mélisande_, we shall find that unless we grasp the +particular fairy thread of thought the poet rather hazily flings to us, +we cannot grasp anything whatever. Except from one extreme poetic point +of view, the thing is not a play; it is not a bad play, it is a mass of +clotted nonsense. One whole act describes the lovers going to look for a +ring in a distant cave when they both know they have dropped it down a +well. Seen from some secret window on some special side of the soul's +turret, this might convey a sense of faerie futility in our human life. +But it is quite obvious that unless it called forth that one kind of +sympathy, it would call forth nothing but laughter and rotten eggs. In +the same play the husband chases his wife with a drawn sword, the wife +remarking at intervals "I am not gay." Now there may really be an idea +in this; the idea of human misfortune coming most cruelly upon the +optimism of innocence; that the lonely human heart says, like a child at +a party, "I am not enjoying myself as I thought I should." But it is +plain that unless one thinks of this idea (and of this idea only) the +expression is not in the least unsuccessful pathos; it is very broad and +highly successful farce. Maeterlinck and the decadents, in short, may +fairly boast of being subtle; but they must not mind if they are called +narrow. + +This is the spirit of Wilde's work and of most of the literary work done +in that time and fashion. It is, as Mr. Arthur Symons said, an attitude; +but it is an attitude in the flat, not in the round; not a statue, but +the cardboard king in a toy-theatre, which can only be looked at from +the front. In Wilde's own poetry we have particularly a perpetually +toppling possibility of the absurd; a sense of just falling too short or +just going too far. "Plant lilies at my head" has something wrong about +it; something silly that is not there in-- + + "And put a grey stone at my head" + +in the old ballad. But even where Wilde was right, he had a way of being +right with this excessive strain on the reader's sympathy (and gravity) +which was the mark of all these men with a "point of view." There is a +very sound sonnet of his in which he begins by lamenting mere anarchy, +as hostile to the art and civilisation that were his only gods; but ends +by saying-- + + "And yet + These Christs that die upon the barricades + God knows that I am with them--in some ways." + +Now that is really very true; that is the way a man of wide reading and +worldly experience, but not ungenerous impulses, does feel about the +mere fanatic, who is at once a nuisance to humanity and an honour to +human nature. Yet who can read that last line without feeling that Wilde +is poised on the edge of a precipice of bathos; that the phrase comes +very near to being quite startlingly silly. It is as in the case of +Maeterlinck, let the reader move his standpoint one inch nearer the +popular standpoint, and there is nothing for the thing but harsh, +hostile, unconquerable mirth. Somehow the image of Wilde lolling like an +elegant leviathan on a sofa, and saying between the whiffs of a scented +cigarette that martyrdom is martyrdom in some respects, has seized on +and mastered all more delicate considerations in the mind. It is unwise +in a poet to goad the sleeping lion of laughter. + +In less dexterous hands the decadent idea, what there was of it, went +entirely to pieces, which nobody has troubled to pick up. Oddly enough +(unless this be always the Nemesis of excess) it began to be +insupportable in the very ways in which it claimed specially to be +subtle and tactful; in the feeling for different art-forms, in the +welding of subject and style, in the appropriateness of the epithet and +the unity of the mood. Wilde himself wrote some things that were not +immorality, but merely bad taste; not the bad taste of the conservative +suburbs, which merely means anything violent or shocking, but real bad +taste; as in a stern subject treated in a florid style; an over-dressed +woman at a supper of old friends; or a bad joke that nobody had time to +laugh at. This mixture of sensibility and coarseness in the man was very +curious; and I for one cannot endure (for example) his sensual way of +speaking of dead substances, satin or marble or velvet, as if he were +stroking a lot of dogs and cats. But there was a sort of power--or at +least weight--in his coarseness. His lapses were those proper to the one +good thing he really was, an Irish swashbuckler--a fighter. Some of the +Roman Emperors might have had the same luxuriousness and yet the same +courage. But the later decadents were far worse, especially the decadent +critics, the decadent illustrators--there were even decadent publishers. +And they utterly lost the light and reason of their existence: they were +masters of the clumsy and the incongruous. I will take only one example. +Aubrey Beardsley may be admired as an artist or no; he does not enter +into the scope of this book. But it is true that there is a certain +brief mood, a certain narrow aspect of life, which he renders to the +imagination rightly. It is mostly felt under white, deathly lights in +Piccadilly, with the black hollow of heaven behind shiny hats or painted +faces: a horrible impression that all mankind are masks. This being the +thing Beardsley could express (and the only thing he could express), it +is the solemn and awful fact that he was set down to illustrate Malory's +_Morte d'Arthur_. There is no need to say more; taste, in the artist's +sense, must have been utterly dead. They might as well have employed +Burne-Jones to illustrate _Martin Chuzzlewit_. It would not have been +more ludicrous than putting this portrayer of evil puppets, with their +thin lines like wire and their small faces like perverted children's, to +trace against the grand barbaric forests the sin and the sorrow of +Lancelot. + +To return to the chief of the decadents, I will not speak of the end of +the individual story: there was horror and there was expiation. And, as +my conscience goes at least, no man should say one word that could +weaken the horror--or the pardon. But there is one literary consequence +of the thing which must be mentioned, because it bears us on to that +much breezier movement which first began to break in upon all this +ghastly idleness--I mean the Socialist Movement. I do not mean "_De +Profundis_"; I do not think he had got to the real depths when he wrote +that book. I mean the one real thing he ever wrote: _The Ballad of +Reading Gaol_; in which we hear a cry for common justice and brotherhood +very much deeper, more democratic and more true to the real trend of the +populace to-day, than anything the Socialists ever uttered even in the +boldest pages of Bernard Shaw. + +Before we pass on to the two expansive movements in which the Victorian +Age really ended, the accident of a distinguished artist is available +for estimating this somewhat cool and sad afternoon of the epoch at its +purest; not in lounging pessimism or luxurious aberrations, but in +earnest skill and a high devotion to letters. This change that had come, +like the change from a golden sunset to a grey twilight, can be very +adequately measured if we compare the insight and intricacy of Meredith +with the insight and intricacy of Mr. Henry James. The characters of +both are delicate and indisputable; but we must all have had a feeling +that the characters in Meredith are gods, but that the characters in +Henry James are ghosts. I do not mean that they are unreal: I believe in +ghosts. So does Mr. Henry James; he has written some of his very finest +literature about the little habits of these creatures. He is in the deep +sense of a dishonoured word, a Spiritualist if ever there was one. But +Meredith was a materialist as well. The difference is that a ghost is a +disembodied spirit; while a god (to be worth worrying about) must be an +embodied spirit. The presence of soul and substance together involves +one of the two or three things which most of the Victorians did not +understand--the thing called a sacrament. It is because he had a natural +affinity for this mystical materialism that Meredith, in spite of his +affectations, is a poet: and, in spite of his Victorian Agnosticism (or +ignorance) is a pious Pagan and not a mere Pantheist. Mr. Henry James is +at the other extreme. His thrill is not so much in symbol or mysterious +emblem as in the absence of interventions and protections between mind +and mind. It is not mystery: it is rather a sort of terror at knowing +too much. He lives in glass houses; he is akin to Maeterlinck in a +feeling of the nakedness of souls. None of the Meredithian things, wind +or wine or sex or stark nonsense, ever gets between Mr. James and his +prey. But the thing is a deficiency as well as a talent: we cannot but +admire the figures that walk about in his afternoon drawing-rooms; but +we have a certain sense that they are figures that have no faces. + +For the rest, he is most widely known, or perhaps only most widely +chaffed, because of a literary style that lends itself to parody and is +a glorious feast for Mr. Max Beerbohm. It may be called The Hampered, or +Obstacle Race Style, in which one continually trips over commas and +relative clauses; and where the sense has to be perpetually qualified +lest it should mean too much. But such satire, however friendly, is in +some sense unfair to him; because it leaves out his sense of general +artistic design, which is not only high, but bold. This appears, I +think, most strongly in his short stories; in his long novels the reader +(or at least one reader) does get rather tired of everybody treating +everybody else in a manner which in real life would be an impossible +intellectual strain. But in his short studies there is the unanswerable +thing called real originality; especially in the very shape and point of +the tale. It may sound odd to compare him to Mr. Rudyard Kipling: but he +is like Kipling and also like Wells in this practical sense: that no one +ever wrote a story at all like the _Mark of the Beast_; no one ever +wrote a story at all like _A Kink in Space_: and in the same sense no +one ever wrote a story like _The Great Good Place_. It is alone in order +and species; and it is masterly. He struck his deepest note in that +terrible story, _The Turn of the Screw_; and though there is in the +heart of that horror a truth of repentance and religion, it is again +notable of the Victorian writers that the only supernatural note they +can strike assuredly is the tragic and almost the diabolic. Only Mr. Max +Beerbohm has been able to imagine Mr. Henry James writing about +Christmas. + +Now upon this interregnum, this cold and brilliant waiting-room which +was Henry James at its highest and Wilde at its worst, there broke in +two positive movements, largely honest though essentially unhistoric and +profane, which were destined to crack up the old Victorian solidity past +repair. The first was Bernard Shaw and the Socialists: the second was +Rudyard Kipling and the Imperialists. I take the Socialists first not +because they necessarily came so in order of time, but because they were +less the note upon which the epoch actually ended. + +William Morris, of whom we have already spoken, may be said to +introduce the Socialists, but rather in a social sense than a +philosophical. He was their friend, and in a sort of political way, +their father; but he was not their founder, for he would not have +believed a word of what they ultimately came to say. Nor is this the +conventional notion of the old man not keeping pace with the audacity of +the young. Morris would have been disgusted not with the wildness, but +the tameness of our tidy Fabians. He was not a Socialist, but he was a +Revolutionist; he didn't know much more about what he was; but he knew +that. In this way, being a full-blooded fellow, he rather repeats the +genial sulkiness of Dickens. And if we take this fact about him first, +we shall find it a key to the whole movement of this time. For the one +dominating truth which overshadows everything else at this point is a +political and economic one. The Industrial System, run by a small class +of Capitalists on a theory of competitive contract, had been quite +honestly established by the early Victorians and was one of the primary +beliefs of Victorianism. The Industrial System, so run, had become +another name for hell. By Morris's time and ever since, England has been +divided into three classes: Knaves, Fools, and Revolutionists. + +History is full of forgotten controversies; and those who speak of +Socialism now have nearly all forgotten that for some time it was an +almost equal fight between Socialism and Anarchism for the leadership of +the exodus from Capitalism. It is here that Herbert Spencer comes in +logically, though not chronologically; also that much more interesting +man, Auberon Herbert. Spencer has no special place as a man of letters; +and a vastly exaggerated place as a philosopher. His real importance was +that he was very nearly an Anarchist. The indefinable greatness there is +about him after all, in spite of the silliest and smuggest limitations, +is in a certain consistency and completeness from his own point of +view. There is something mediæval, and therefore manful, about writing a +book about everything in the world. Now this simplicity expressed itself +in politics in carrying the Victorian worship of liberty to the most +ridiculous lengths; almost to the length of voluntary taxes and +voluntary insurance against murder. He tried, in short, to solve the +problem of the State by eliminating the State from it. He was resisted +in this by the powerful good sense of Huxley; but his books became +sacred books for a rising generation of rather bewildered rebels, who +thought we might perhaps get out of the mess if everybody did as he +liked. + +Thus the Anarchists and Socialists fought a battle over the death-bed of +Victorian Industrialism; in which the Socialists (that is, those who +stood for increasing instead of diminishing the power of Government) won +a complete victory and have almost exterminated their enemy. The +Anarchist one meets here and there nowadays is a sad sight; he is +disappointed with the future, as well as with the past. + +This victory of the Socialists was largely a literary victory; because +it was effected and popularised not only by a wit, but by a sincere wit; +and one who had the same sort of militant lucidity that Huxley had shown +in the last generation and Voltaire in the last century. A young Irish +journalist, impatient of the impoverished Protestantism and Liberalism +to which he had been bred, came out as the champion of Socialism not as +a matter of sentiment, but as a matter of common sense. The primary +position of Bernard Shaw towards the Victorian Age may be roughly +summarised thus: the typical Victorian said coolly: "Our system may not +be a perfect system, but it works." Bernard Shaw replied, even more +coolly: "It may be a perfect system, for all I know or care. But it does +not work." He and a society called the Fabians, which once exercised +considerable influence, followed this shrewd and sound strategic hint +to avoid mere emotional attack on the cruelty of Capitalism; and to +concentrate on its clumsiness, its ludicrous incapacity to do its own +work. This campaign succeeded, in the sense that while (in the educated +world) it was the Socialist who looked the fool at the beginning of that +campaign, it is the Anti-Socialist who looks the fool at the end of it. +But while it won the educated classes it lost the populace for ever. It +dried up those springs of blood and tears out of which all revolt must +come if it is to be anything but bureaucratic readjustment. We began +this book with the fires of the French Revolution still burning, but +burning low. Bernard Shaw was honestly in revolt in his own way: but it +was Bernard Shaw who trod out the last ember of the Great Revolution. +Bernard Shaw proceeded to apply to many other things the same sort of +hilarious realism which he thus successfully applied to the industrial +problem. He also enjoyed giving people a piece of his mind; but a piece +of his mind was a more appetising and less raw-looking object than a +piece of Hardy's. There were many modes of revolt growing all around +him; Shaw supported them--and supplanted them. Many were pitting the +realism of war against the romance of war: they succeeded in making the +fight dreary and repulsive, but the book dreary and repulsive too. Shaw, +in _Arms and the Man_, did manage to make war funny as well as +frightful. Many were questioning the right of revenge or punishment; but +they wrote their books in such a way that the reader was ready to +release all mankind if he might revenge himself on the author. Shaw, in +_Captain Brassbound's Conversion_, really showed at its best the merry +mercy of the pagan; that beautiful human nature that can neither rise to +penance nor sink to revenge. Many had proved that even the most +independent incomes drank blood out of the veins of the oppressed: but +they wrote it in such a style that their readers knew more about +depression than oppression. In _Widowers' Houses_ Shaw very nearly (but +not quite) succeeded in making a farce out of statistics. And the +ultimate utility of his brilliant interruption can best be expressed in +the very title of that play. When ages of essential European ethics have +said "widows' houses," it suddenly occurs to him to say "but what about +widowers' houses?" There is a sort of insane equity about it which was +what Bernard Shaw had the power to give, and gave. + +Out of the same social ferment arose a man of equally unquestionable +genius, Mr. H. G. Wells. His first importance was that he wrote great +adventure stories in the new world the men of science had discovered. He +walked on a round slippery world as boldly as Ulysses or Tom Jones had +worked on a flat one. Cyrano de Bergerac or Baron Munchausen, or other +typical men of science, had treated the moon as a mere flat silver +mirror in which Man saw his own image--the Man in the Moon. Wells +treated the moon as a globe, like our own; bringing forth monsters as +moonish as we are earthy. The exquisitely penetrating political and +social satire he afterwards wrote belongs to an age later than the +Victorian. But because, even from the beginning, his whole trend was +Socialist, it is right to place him here. + +While the old Victorian ideas were being disturbed by an increasing +torture at home, they were also intoxicated by a new romance from +abroad. It did not come from Italy with Rossetti and Browning, or from +Persia with Fitzgerald: but it came from countries as remote, countries +which were (as the simple phrase of that period ran) "painted red" on +the map. It was an attempt to reform England through the newer nations; +by the criticism of the forgotten colonies, rather than of the forgotten +classes. Both Socialism and Imperialism were utterly alien to the +Victorian idea. From the point of view of a Victorian aristocrat like +Palmerston, Socialism would be the cheek of gutter snipes; Imperialism +would be the intrusion of cads. But cads are not alone concerned. + +Broadly, the phase in which the Victorian epoch closed was what can only +be called the Imperialist phase. Between that and us stands a very +individual artist who must nevertheless be connected with that phase. As +I said at the beginning, Macaulay (or, rather, the mind Macaulay shared +with most of his powerful middle class) remains as a sort of pavement or +flat foundation under all the Victorians. They discussed the dogmas +rather than denied them. Now one of the dogmas of Macaulay was the dogma +of progress. A fair statement of the truth in it is not really so hard. +Investigation of anything naturally takes some little time. It takes +some time to sort letters so as to find a letter: it takes some time to +test a gas-bracket so as to find the leak; it takes some time to sift +evidence so as to find the truth. Now the curse that fell on the later +Victorians was this: that they began to value the time more than the +truth. One felt so secretarial when sorting letters that one never found +the letter; one felt so scientific in explaining gas that one never +found the leak; and one felt so judicial, so impartial, in weighing +evidence that one had to be bribed to come to any conclusion at all. +This was the last note of the Victorians: procrastination was called +progress. + +Now if we look for the worst fruits of this fallacy we shall find them +in historical criticism. There is a curious habit of treating any one +who comes before a strong movement as the "forerunner" of that movement. +That is, he is treated as a sort of slave running in advance of a great +army. Obviously, the analogy really arises from St. John the Baptist, +for whom the phrase "forerunner" was rather peculiarly invented. Equally +obviously, such a phrase only applies to an alleged or real divine +event: otherwise the forerunner would be a founder. Unless Jesus had +been the Baptist's God, He would simply have been his disciple. + +Nevertheless the fallacy of the "forerunner" has been largely used in +literature. Thus men will call a universal satirist like Langland a +"morning star of the Reformation," or some such rubbish; whereas the +Reformation was not larger, but much smaller than Langland. It was +simply the victory of one class of his foes, the greedy merchants, over +another class of his foes, the lazy abbots. In real history this +constantly occurs; that some small movement happens to favour one of the +million things suggested by some great man; whereupon the great man is +turned into the running slave of the small movement. Thus certain +sectarian movements borrowed the sensationalism without the +sacramentalism of Wesley. Thus certain groups of decadents found it +easier to imitate De Quincey's opium than his eloquence. Unless we grasp +this plain common sense (that you or I are not responsible for what some +ridiculous sect a hundred years hence may choose to do with what we say) +the peculiar position of Stevenson in later Victorian letters cannot +begin to be understood. For he was a very universal man; and talked some +sense not only on every subject, but, so far as it is logically +possible, in every sense. But the glaring deficiencies of the Victorian +compromise had by that time begun to gape so wide that he was forced, by +mere freedom of philosophy and fancy, to urge the neglected things. And +yet this very urgency certainly brought on an opposite fever, which he +would not have liked if he had lived to understand it. He liked Kipling, +though with many healthy hesitations; but he would not have liked the +triumph of Kipling: which was the success of the politician and the +failure of the poet. Yet when we look back up the false perspective of +time, Stevenson does seem in a sense to have prepared that imperial and +downward path. + +I shall not talk here, any more than anywhere else in this book, about +the "sedulous ape" business. No man ever wrote as well as Stevenson who +cared only about writing. Yet there is a sense, though a misleading one, +in which his original inspirations were artistic rather than purely +philosophical. To put the point in that curt covenanting way which he +himself could sometimes command, he thought it immoral to neglect +romance. The whole of his real position was expressed in that phrase of +one of his letters "our civilisation is a dingy ungentlemanly business: +it drops so much out of a man." On the whole he concluded that what had +been dropped out of the man was the boy. He pursued pirates as Defoe +would have fled from them; and summed up his simplest emotions in that +touching _cri de cÅ“ur_ "shall we never shed blood?" He did for the +penny dreadful what Coleridge had done for the penny ballad. He proved +that, because it was really human, it could really rise as near to +heaven as human nature could take it. If Thackeray is our youth, +Stevenson is our boyhood: and though this is not the most artistic +thing in him, it is the most important thing in the history of Victorian +art. All the other fine things he did were, for curious reasons, remote +from the current of his age. For instance, he had the good as well as +the bad of coming from a Scotch Calvinist's house. No man in that age +had so healthy an instinct for the actuality of positive evil. In _The +Master of Ballantrae_ he did prove with a pen of steel, that the Devil +is a gentleman--but is none the less the Devil. It is also +characteristic of him (and of the revolt from Victorian respectability +in general) that his most blood-and-thunder sensational tale is also +that which contains his most intimate and bitter truth. _Dr. Jekyll and +Mr. Hyde_ is a double triumph; it has the outside excitement that +belongs to Conan Doyle with the inside excitement that belongs to Henry +James. Alas, it is equally characteristic of the Victorian time that +while nearly every Englishman has enjoyed the anecdote, hardly one +Englishman has seen the joke--I mean the point. You will find twenty +allusions to Jekyll and Hyde in a day's newspaper reading. You will also +find that all such allusions suppose the two personalities to be equal, +neither caring for the other. Or more roughly, they think the book means +that man can be cloven into two creatures, good and evil. The whole stab +of the story is that man _can't_: because while evil does not care for +good, good must care for evil. Or, in other words, man cannot escape +from God, because good is the God in man; and insists on omniscience. +This point, which is good psychology and also good theology and also +good art, has missed its main intention merely because it was also good +story-telling. + +If the rather vague Victorian public did not appreciate the deep and +even tragic ethics with which Stevenson was concerned, still less were +they of a sort to appreciate the French finish and fastidiousness of his +style; in which he seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his +pen, like a man playing spillikins. But that style also had a quality +that could be felt; it had a military edge to it, an _acies_; and there +was a kind of swordsmanship about it. Thus all the circumstances led, +not so much to the narrowing of Stevenson to the romance of the fighting +spirit; but the narrowing of his influence to that romance. He had a +great many other things to say; but this was what we were willing to +hear: a reaction against the gross contempt for soldiering which had +really given a certain Chinese deadness to the Victorians. Yet another +circumstance thrust him down the same path; and in a manner not wholly +fortunate. The fact that he was a sick man immeasurably increases the +credit to his manhood in preaching a sane levity and pugnacious +optimism. But it also forbade him full familiarity with the actualities +of sport, war, or comradeship: and here and there his note is false in +these matters, and reminds one (though very remotely) of the mere +provincial bully that Henley sometimes sank to be. + +For Stevenson had at his elbow a friend, an invalid like himself, a man +of courage and stoicism like himself; but a man in whom everything that +Stevenson made delicate and rational became unbalanced and blind. The +difference is, moreover, that Stevenson was quite right in claiming that +he could treat his limitation as an accident; that his medicines "did +not colour his life." His life was really coloured out of a shilling +paint-box, like his toy-theatre: such high spirits as he had are the key +to him: his sufferings are not the key to him. But Henley's sufferings +are the key to Henley; much must be excused him, and there is much to be +excused. The result was that while there was always a certain dainty +equity about Stevenson's judgments, even when he was wrong, Henley +seemed to think that on the right side the wronger you were the better. +There was much that was feminine in him; and he is most understandable +when surprised in those little solitary poems which speak of emotions +mellowed, of sunset and a quiet end. Henley hurled himself into the new +fashion of praising Colonial adventure at the expense both of the +Christian and the republican traditions; but the sentiment did not +spread widely until the note was struck outside England in one of the +conquered countries; and a writer of Anglo-Indian short stories showed +the stamp of the thing called genius; that indefinable, dangerous and +often temporary thing. + +For it is really impossible to criticise Rudyard Kipling as part of +Victorian literature, because he is the end of such literature. He has +many other powerful elements; an Indian element, which makes him +exquisitely sympathetic with the Indian; a vague Jingo influence which +makes him sympathetic with the man that crushes the Indian; a vague +journalistic sympathy with the men that misrepresent everything that has +happened to the Indian; but of the Victorian virtues, nothing. + +All that was right or wrong in Kipling was expressed in the final +convulsion that he almost in person managed to achieve. The nearest that +any honest man can come to the thing called "impartiality" is to confess +that he is partial. I therefore confess that I think this last turn of +the Victorian Age was an unfortunate turn; much on the other side can be +said, and I hope will be said. But about the facts there can be no +question. The Imperialism of Kipling was equally remote from the +Victorian caution and the Victorian idealism: and our subject does quite +seriously end here. The world was full of the trampling of totally new +forces, gold was sighted from far in a sort of cynical romanticism: the +guns opened across Africa; and the great queen died. + + * * * * * + +Of what will now be the future of so separate and almost secretive an +adventure of the English, the present writer will not permit himself, +even for an instant, to prophesy. The Victorian Age made one or two +mistakes, but they were mistakes that were really useful; that is, +mistakes that were really mistaken. They thought that commerce outside a +country must extend peace: it has certainly often extended war. They +thought that commerce inside a country must certainly promote +prosperity; it has largely promoted poverty. But for them these were +experiments; for us they ought to be lessons. If _we_ continue the +capitalist use of the populace--if _we_ continue the capitalist use of +external arms, it will lie heavy on the living. The dishonour will not +be on the dead. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + +After having surveyed the immense field presented in such a volume as +Mr. George Mair's _Modern English Literature_ in this series, or, more +fully, in the _Cambridge History of Modern Literature_, the later volume +of Chambers' _English Literature_, Mr. Gosse's _History of Modern +English Literature_, or Henry Morley's _English Literature in the Reign +of Victoria_, the wise reader will choose some portion for closer study, +and will go straight to the originals before he has any further traffic +with critics or commentators, however able. + +He will then need the aid of fuller biographies. Some Victorian _Lives_ +are already classic, or nearly so, among them Sir G. Trevelyan's +_Macaulay_, Forster's _Dickens_, Mrs. Gaskell's _Charlotte Brontë_, +Froude's _Carlyle_, and Sir E. T. Cook's _Ruskin_. With these may be +ranged the great _Dictionary of National Biography_. The "English Men of +Letters" Series includes H. D. Traill's _Coleridge_, Ainger's _Lamb_, +Trollope's _Thackeray_, Leslie Stephen's _George Eliot_, Herbert Paul's +_Matthew Arnold_, Sir A. Lyall's _Tennyson_, G. K. Chesterton's _Robert +Browning_, and A. C. Benson's _Fitzgerald_. At least two autobiographies +must be named, those of Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and, as +antidote to Newman's _Apologia_, the gay self-revelations of Borrow, and +Jefferies' _Story of My Heart_. Other considerable volumes are W. J. +Cross's _George Eliot_, Lionel Johnson's _Art of Thomas Hardy_, Mr. W. M. +Rossetti's _Dante G. Rossetti_, Colvin's _R. L. Stevenson_, J. W. +Mackail's _William Morris_, Holman Hunt's _Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood_, +Sir Leslie Stephen's _The Utilitarians_, Buxton Forman's _Our Living +Poets_, Edward Thomas's _Swinburne_, Monypenny's _Disraeli_, Dawson's +_Victorian Novelists_, and Stedman's _Victorian Poets_. The "Everyman" +_Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature_ is useful for +dates. + +The latter half of the second volume of Mr. F. A. Mumby's _Letters of +Literary Men_ is devoted to the Victorian Age. There are fuller +collections of the _Letters_ of Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Dickens, the +Brownings, Fitzgerald, Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, and more +recently the _Letters of George Meredith_, edited by his son. + +Among the important critical writers of the period, Matthew Arnold +(_Essays in Criticism_, _Study of Celtic Literature_, etc.) stands +easily first. Others are John, now Lord, Morley (_Studies in +Literature_, etc.), Augustine Birrell (_Obiter Dicta_, _Essays_), W. E. +Henley (_Views and Reviews_), J. Addington Symonds (_Essays_), J. +Churton Collins, Richard Garnett, Stopford A. Brooke, George E. B. +Saintsbury (_History of Criticism_), R. H. Hutton (_Contemporary +Thought_), J. M. Robertson (_Modern Humanists_, _Buckle_, etc.), Frederic +Harrison (_The Choice of Books_, etc.), Andrew Lang, Walter Bagehot, +Edmund Gosse, Prof. Dowden, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir A. T. Quiller +Couch. + + + + +INDEX + + +Æsthetes, the, and Decadents, 218-27 +Arnold, Matthew, 73-79, 87 +Austen, Jane, 92, 105, 109 + +Bentham, 36 +Blake, 20 +Borrow, 151 +Brontë, Charlotte, 92, 105, 110-14 +----, Emily, 113 +Browning, Elizabeth B., 176-82 +----, R., 40-41, 159, 162-63 +Byron, 22 + +Carlyle, 40, 49-62, 158 +Carroll, Lewis, 153 +Cobbett, 16-17, 88, 151 +Coleridge, 20 +Collins, Wilkie, 130, 132 + +Darwin, 38, 206-7, 209 +De Quincey, 23-25, 65 +Dickens, 40, 79-89, 100, 106, 119-23, 129, 131 +Disraeli, 42, 135 + +Eliot, George, 92, 103-9, 157 + +Faber, 46 +Fitzgerald, 192-95 +French Revolution, Influence of, 18-21 +Froude, 60, 62 + +Gaskell, Mrs., 94 +Gilbert, 154 + +Hardy, Thomas, 138-39, 143-45 +Hazlitt, 23 +Henley, W. E., 247-48 +Hood, Thomas, 25-27 +Hughes, Tom, 73 +Humour, Victorian, 152-55 +Hunt, Leigh, 23 +Huxley, 39-40, 205 + +Imperialism, 60, 239 + +James, Henry, 228-31 + +Keats, 20 +Keble, 45 +Kingsley, 40, 59, 64, 72, 134-35 +Kipling, R., 60, 249-50 + +Lamb, 23 +Landor, 23 +Lear, Edward, 153 +Literary temperament, the English, 13-16 +Lytton, Bulwer, 135-37 + +Macaulay, 28-36, 55 +Macdonald, George, 152 +Maurice, F. D., 40, 73 +Melbourne, Lord, 42 +Meredith, George, 138-49, 228 +Mill, J. S., 36-37, 55 +Morris, Wm., 196-200, 232 + +Newman, 38, 40, 45-48, 78, 159 +Novel, The Modern, 90-99 + +Oliphant, Mrs., 116-17 +"Ouida," 117 +Oxford Movement, 42-45 + +Pater, Walter, 69-71 +Patmore, 48, 201-2 +Pre-Raphaelite School, 68, 72 + +Reade, Charles, 134 +Rossetti, D. G. and C., 71, 188-91 +Ruskin, 40, 62-8, 70, 158 + +Science, Victorian, 208-12 +Shaw, G. B., 60, 235-38 +Shelley, 22-23 +Shorthouse, 149-50 +Socialism, 60, 67, 122, 198, 227, 231-39 +Spencer, Herbert, 75, 233-34 +Stevenson, R. L., 243-49 +Swinburne, 69, 159, 181-88 + +Tennyson, 40, 64, 160-69 +Thackeray, 100, 110, 123-30, 158 +Thompson, Francis, 48, 201, 202 +Trollope, Anthony, 130, 132-33 + +Watson, Wm., 202 +Wells, H. G., 238-39 +Wilde, Oscar, 218-23 +Women, Victorian, 91, 99, 104, 115-16, 140 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Victorian Age in Literature, by +G. K. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/18639-0.zip b/18639-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6692947 --- /dev/null +++ b/18639-0.zip diff --git a/18639-8.txt b/18639-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb861c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/18639-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4314 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Victorian Age in Literature, by G. K. Chesterton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Victorian Age in Literature + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: June 20, 2006 [EBook #18639] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Karina Aleksandrova, Juliet Sutherland and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + +OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + +No. 61 + +_Editors:_ + +THE RT. HON. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. + +PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A. + +PROF. SIR J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. + +PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + +_A complete classified list of the volumes of The Home University +Library already published to be found at the back of this book._ + + + + +THE VICTORIAN AGE +IN LITERATURE + +BY + +G. K. CHESTERTON + +NEW YORK +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + +LONDON +THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LTD. + +COPYRIGHT, 1913, + +BY + +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + INTRODUCTION 7 + + I THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES 12 + + II THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS 90 + + III THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS 156 + + IV THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE 204 + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 253 + + INDEX 255 + + +The Editors wish to explain that this book is not put forward as an +authoritative history of Victorian literature. It is a free and personal +statement of views and impressions about the significance of Victorian +literature made by Mr. Chesterton at the Editors' express invitation. + + + + +THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +A section of a long and splendid literature can be most conveniently +treated in one of two ways. It can be divided as one cuts a currant cake +or a Gruyère cheese, taking the currants (or the holes) as they come. Or +it can be divided as one cuts wood--along the grain: if one thinks that +there is a grain. But the two are never the same: the names never come +in the same order in actual time as they come in any serious study of a +spirit or a tendency. The critic who wishes to move onward with the life +of an epoch, must be always running backwards and forwards among its +mere dates; just as a branch bends back and forth continually; yet the +grain in the branch runs true like an unbroken river. + +Mere chronological order, indeed, is almost as arbitrary as alphabetical +order. To deal with Darwin, Dickens, Browning, in the sequence of the +birthday book would be to forge about as real a chain as the "Tacitus, +Tolstoy, Tupper" of a biographical dictionary. It might lend itself +more, perhaps, to accuracy: and it might satisfy that school of critics +who hold that every artist should be treated as a solitary craftsman, +indifferent to the commonwealth and unconcerned about moral things. To +write on that principle in the present case, however, would involve all +those delicate difficulties, known to politicians, which beset the +public defence of a doctrine which one heartily disbelieves. It is quite +needless here to go into the old "art for art's sake"--business, or +explain at length why individual artists cannot be reviewed without +reference to their traditions and creeds. It is enough to say that with +other creeds they would have been, for literary purposes, other +individuals. Their views do not, of course, make the brains in their +heads any more than the ink in their pens. But it is equally evident +that mere brain-power, without attributes or aims, a wheel revolving in +the void, would be a subject about as entertaining as ink. The moment we +differentiate the minds, we must differentiate by doctrines and moral +sentiments. A mere sympathy for democratic merry-making and mourning +will not make a man a writer like Dickens. But without that sympathy +Dickens would not be a writer like Dickens; and probably not a writer at +all. A mere conviction that Catholic thought is the clearest as well as +the best disciplined, will not make a man a writer like Newman. But +without that conviction Newman would not be a writer like Newman; and +probably not a writer at all. It is useless for the æsthete (or any +other anarchist) to urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart +from his attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his +individuality: men are never individual when alone. + +It only remains for me, therefore, to take the more delicate and +entangled task; and deal with the great Victorians, not only by dates +and names, but rather by schools and streams of thought. It is a task +for which I feel myself wholly incompetent; but as that applies to every +other literary enterprise I ever went in for, the sensation is not +wholly novel: indeed, it is rather reassuring than otherwise to realise +that I am now doing something that nobody could do properly. The chief +peril of the process, however, will be an inevitable tendency to make +the spiritual landscape too large for the figures. I must ask for +indulgence if such criticism traces too far back into politics or ethics +the roots of which great books were the blossoms; makes Utilitarianism +more important than _Liberty_ or talks more of the Oxford Movement than +of _The Christian Year_. I can only answer in the very temper of the +age of which I write: for I also was born a Victorian; and sympathise +not a little with the serious Victorian spirit. I can only answer, I +shall not make religion more important than it was to Keble, or politics +more sacred than they were to Mill. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES + + +The previous literary life of this country had left vigorous many old +forces in the Victorian time, as in our time. Roman Britain and Mediæval +England are still not only alive but lively; for real development is not +leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from +a root. Even when we improve we never progress. For progress, the +metaphor from the road, implies a man leaving his home behind him: but +improvement means a man exalting the towers or extending the gardens of +his home. The ancient English literature was like all the several +literatures of Christendom, alike in its likeness, alike in its very +unlikeness. Like all European cultures, it was European; like all +European cultures, it was something more than European. A most marked +and unmanageable national temperament is plain in Chaucer and the +ballads of Robin Hood; in spite of deep and sometimes disastrous changes +of national policy, that note is still unmistakable in Shakespeare, in +Johnson and his friends, in Cobbett, in Dickens. It is vain to dream of +defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a +smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to +explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, +"Well, you know holly--mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this +logical method in the comparison of plants or nations. But if he had +said to the Teuton, "Well, you know Germany--England's the +opposite"--the definition, though fallacious, would not have been wholly +false. England, like all Christian countries, absorbed valuable elements +from the forests and the rude romanticism of the North; but, like all +Christian countries, it drank its longest literary draughts from the +classic fountains of the ancients: nor was this (as is so often loosely +thought) a matter of the mere "Renaissance." The English tongue and +talent of speech did not merely flower suddenly into the gargantuan +polysyllables of the great Elizabethans; it had always been full of the +popular Latin of the Middle Ages. But whatever balance of blood and +racial idiom one allows, it is really true that the only suggestion that +gets near the Englishman is to hint how far he is from the German. The +Germans, like the Welsh, can sing perfectly serious songs perfectly +seriously in chorus: can with clear eyes and clear voices join together +in words of innocent and beautiful personal passion, for a false maiden +or a dead child. The nearest one can get to defining the poetic temper +of Englishmen is to say that they couldn't do this even for beer. They +can sing in chorus, and louder than other Christians: but they must have +in their songs something, I know not what, that is at once shamefaced +and rowdy. If the matter be emotional, it must somehow be also broad, +common and comic, as "Wapping Old Stairs" and "Sally in Our Alley." If +it be patriotic, it must somehow be openly bombastic and, as it were, +indefensible, like "Rule Britannia" or like that superb song (I never +knew its name, if it has one) that records the number of leagues from +Ushant to the Scilly Isles. Also there is a tender love-lyric called "O +Tarry Trousers" which is even more English than the heart of _The +Midsummer Night's Dream_. But our greatest bards and sages have often +shown a tendency to rant it and roar it like true British sailors; to +employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half +humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants +of Victor Hugo. A piece of Hugo's eloquence is either a serious triumph +or a serious collapse: one feels the poet is offended at a smile. But +Shakespeare seems rather proud of talking nonsense: I never can read +that rousing and mounting description of the storm, where it comes to-- + + "Who take the ruffian billows by the top, + Curling their monstrous heads, and _hanging_ them + With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds." + +without seeing an immense balloon rising from the ground, with +Shakespeare grinning over the edge of the car, and saying, "You can't +stop me: I am above reason now." That is the nearest we can get to the +general national spirit, which we have now to follow through one brief +and curious but very national episode. + +Three years before the young queen was crowned, William Cobbett was +buried at Farnham. It may seem strange to begin with this great +neglected name, rather than the old age of Wordsworth or the young death +of Shelley. But to any one who feels literature as human, the empty +chair of Cobbett is more solemn and significant than the throne. With +him died the sort of democracy that was a return to Nature, and which +only poets and mobs can understand. After him Radicalism is urban--and +Toryism suburban. Going through green Warwickshire, Cobbett might have +thought of the crops and Shelley of the clouds. But Shelley would have +called Birmingham what Cobbett called it--a hell-hole. Cobbett was one +with after Liberals in the ideal of Man under an equal law, a citizen of +no mean city. He differed from after Liberals in strongly affirming that +Liverpool and Leeds are mean cities. + +It is no idle Hibernianism to say that towards the end of the eighteenth +century the most important event in English history happened in France. +It would seem still more perverse, yet it would be still more precise, +to say that the most important event in English history was the event +that never happened at all--the English Revolution on the lines of the +French Revolution. Its failure was not due to any lack of fervour or +even ferocity in those who would have brought it about: from the time +when the first shout went up for Wilkes to the time when the last +Luddite fires were quenched in a cold rain of rationalism, the spirit of +Cobbett, of rural republicanism, of English and patriotic democracy, +burned like a beacon. The revolution failed because it was foiled by +another revolution; an aristocratic revolution, a victory of the rich +over the poor. It was about this time that the common lands were finally +enclosed; that the more cruel game laws were first established; that +England became finally a land of landlords instead of common +land-owners. I will not call it a Tory reaction; for much of the worst +of it (especially of the land-grabbing) was done by Whigs; but we may +certainly call it Anti-Jacobin. Now this fact, though political, is not +only relevant but essential to everything that concerned literature. The +upshot was that though England was full of the revolutionary ideas, +nevertheless there was no revolution. And the effect of this in turn was +that from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the +nineteenth the spirit of revolt in England took a wholly literary form. +In France it was what people did that was wild and elemental; in England +it was what people wrote. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the +English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were +rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms. + +It has been well and wittily said (as illustrating the mildness of +English and the violence of French developments) that the same Gospel of +Rousseau which in France produced the Terror, in England produced +_Sandford and Merton_. But people forget that in literature the English +were by no means restrained by Mr. Barlow; and that if we turn from +politics to art, we shall find the two parts peculiarly reversed. It +would be equally true to say that the same eighteenth-century +emancipation which in France produced the pictures of David, in England +produced the pictures of Blake. There never were, I think, men who gave +to the imagination so much of the sense of having broken out into the +very borderlands of being, as did the great English poets of the +romantic or revolutionary period; than Coleridge in the secret sunlight +of the Antarctic, where the waters were like witches' oils; than Keats +looking out of those extreme mysterious casements upon that ultimate +sea. The heroes and criminals of the great French crisis would have been +quite as incapable of such imaginative independence as Keats and +Coleridge would have been incapable of winning the battle of Wattignies. +In Paris the tree of liberty was a garden tree, clipped very correctly; +and Robespierre used the razor more regularly than the guillotine. +Danton, who knew and admired English literature, would have cursed +freely over _Kubla Khan_; and if the Committee of Public Safety had not +already executed Shelley as an aristocrat, they would certainly have +locked him up for a madman. Even Hébert (the one really vile +Revolutionist), had he been reproached by English poets with worshipping +the Goddess of Reason, might legitimately have retorted that it was +rather the Goddess of Unreason that they set up to be worshipped. +Verbally considered, Carlyle's _French Revolution_ was more +revolutionary than the real French Revolution: and if Carrier, in an +exaggerative phrase, empurpled the Loire with carnage, Turner almost +literally set the Thames on fire. + +This trend of the English Romantics to carry out the revolutionary idea +not savagely in works, but very wildly indeed in words, had several +results; the most important of which was this. It started English +literature after the Revolution with a sort of bent towards independence +and eccentricity, which in the brighter wits became individuality, and +in the duller ones, Individualism. English Romantics, English Liberals, +were not public men making a republic, but poets, each seeing a vision. +The lonelier version of liberty was a sort of aristocratic anarchism in +Byron and Shelley; but though in Victorian times it faded into much +milder prejudices and much more _bourgeois_ crotchets, England retained +from that twist a certain odd separation and privacy. England became +much more of an island than she had ever been before. There fell from +her about this time, not only the understanding of France or Germany, +but to her own long and yet lingering disaster, the understanding of +Ireland. She had not joined in the attempt to create European democracy; +nor did she, save in the first glow of Waterloo, join in the +counter-attempt to destroy it. The life in her literature was still, to +a large extent, the romantic liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane +truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and +to natural rights. But that which in Rousseau was a creed, became in +Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and +their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of +those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his +decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley and Godwin; +Lamb with his bibliomania and creed of pure caprice, the most unique of +all geniuses; Leigh Hunt with his Bohemian impecuniosity; Landor with +his tempestuous temper, throwing plates on the floor; Hazlitt with his +bitterness and his low love affair; even that healthier and happier +Bohemian, Peacock. With these, in one sense at least, goes De Quincey. +He was, unlike most of these embers of the revolutionary age in letters, +a Tory; and was attached to the political army which is best represented +in letters by the virile laughter and leisure of Wilson's _Noctes +Ambrosianæ_. But he had nothing in common with that environment. It +remained for some time as a Tory tradition, which balanced the cold and +brilliant aristocracy of the Whigs. It lived on the legend of Trafalgar; +the sense that insularity was independence; the sense that anomalies are +as jolly as family jokes; the general sense that old salts are the salt +of the earth. It still lives in some old songs about Nelson or Waterloo, +which are vastly more pompous and vastly more sincere than the cockney +cocksureness of later Jingo lyrics. But it is hard to connect De Quincey +with it; or, indeed, with anything else. De Quincey would certainly have +been a happier man, and almost certainly a better man, if he had got +drunk on toddy with Wilson, instead of getting calm and clear (as he +himself describes) on opium, and with no company but a book of German +metaphysics. But he would hardly have revealed those wonderful vistas +and perspectives of prose, which permit one to call him the first and +most powerful of the decadents: those sentences that lengthen out like +nightmare corridors, or rise higher and higher like impossible eastern +pagodas. He was a morbid fellow, and far less moral than Burns; for when +Burns confessed excess he did not defend it. But he has cast a gigantic +shadow on our literature, and was as certainly a genius as Poe. Also he +had humour, which Poe had not. And if any one still smarting from the +pinpricks of Wilde or Whistler, wants to convict them of plagiarism in +their "art for art" epigrams--he will find most of what they said said +better in _Murder as One of the Fine Arts_. + +One great man remains of this elder group, who did their last work only +under Victoria; he knew most of the members of it, yet he did not belong +to it in any corporate sense. He was a poor man and an invalid, with +Scotch blood and a strong, though perhaps only inherited, quarrel with +the old Calvinism; by name Thomas Hood. Poverty and illness forced him +to the toils of an incessant jester; and the revolt against gloomy +religion made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the direction of +a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that +includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really +employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), +but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is +said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three +meanings, for there was also the abstract truth that would have been +there with no pun at all. The pun of Hood is underrated, like the "wit" +of Voltaire, by those who forget that the words of Voltaire were not +pins, but swords. In Hood at his best the verbal neatness only gives to +the satire or the scorn a ring of finality such as is given by rhyme. +For rhyme does go with reason, since the aim of both is to bring things +to an end. The tragic necessity of puns tautened and hardened Hood's +genius; so that there is always a sort of shadow of that sharpness +across all his serious poems, falling like the shadow of a sword. +"Sewing at once with a double thread a shroud as well as a shirt"--"We +thought her dying when she slept, and sleeping when she died"--"Oh God, +that bread should be so dear and flesh and blood so cheap"--none can +fail to note in these a certain fighting discipline of phrase, a +compactness and point which was well trained in lines like "A +cannon-ball took off his legs, so he laid down his arms." In France he +would have been a great epigrammatist, like Hugo. In England he is a +punster. + +There was nothing at least in this group I have loosely called the +Eccentrics that disturbs the general sense that all their generation was +part of the sunset of the great revolutionary poets. This fading glamour +affected England in a sentimental and, to some extent, a snobbish +direction; making men feel that great lords with long curls and whiskers +were naturally the wits that led the world. But it affected England also +negatively and by reaction; for it associated such men as Byron with +superiority, but not with success. The English middle classes were led +to distrust poetry almost as much as they admired it. They could not +believe that either vision at the one end or violence at the other could +ever be practical. They were deaf to that great warning of Hugo: "You +say the poet is in the clouds; but so is the thunderbolt." Ideals +exhausted themselves in the void; Victorian England, very unwisely, +would have no more to do with idealists in politics. And this, chiefly, +because there had been about these great poets a young and splendid +sterility; since the pantheist Shelley was in fact washed under by the +wave of the world, or Byron sank in death as he drew the sword for +Hellas. + +The chief turn of nineteenth-century England was taken about the time +when a footman at Holland House opened a door and announced "Mr. +Macaulay." Macaulay's literary popularity was representative and it was +deserved; but his presence among the great Whig families marks an +epoch. He was the son of one of the first "friends of the negro," whose +honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre +smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his +colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly +gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of the +Puritan tenets but retention of the Puritan tone which marked his class +and generation), lifted him into a sphere which was utterly opposite to +that from which he came. This Whig world was exclusive; but it was not +narrow. It was very difficult for an outsider to get into it; but if he +did get into it he was in a much freer atmosphere than any other in +England. Of those aristocrats, the Old Guard of the eighteenth century, +many denied God, many defended Bonaparte, and nearly all sneered at the +Royal Family. Nor did wealth or birth make any barriers for those once +within this singular Whig world. The platform was high, but it was +level. Moreover the upstart nowadays pushes himself by wealth: but the +Whigs could choose their upstarts. In that world Macaulay found Rogers, +with his phosphorescent and corpse-like brilliancy; there he found +Sydney Smith, bursting with crackers of common sense, an admirable old +heathen; there he found Tom Moore, the romantic of the Regency, a +shortened shadow of Lord Byron. That he reached this platform and +remained on it is, I say, typical of a turning-point in the century. For +the fundamental fact of early Victorian history was this: the decision +of the middle classes to employ their new wealth in backing up a sort of +aristocratical compromise, and not (like the middle class in the French +Revolution) insisting on a clean sweep and a clear democratic programme. +It went along with the decision of the aristocracy to recruit itself +more freely from the middle class. It was then also that Victorian +"prudery" began: the great lords yielded on this as on Free Trade. +These two decisions have made the doubtful England of to-day; and +Macaulay is typical of them; he is the _bourgeois_ in Belgravia. The +alliance is marked by his great speeches for Lord Grey's Reform Bill: it +is marked even more significantly in his speech against the Chartists. +Cobbett was dead. + +Macaulay makes the foundation of the Victorian age in all its very +English and unique elements: its praise of Puritan politics and +abandonment of Puritan theology; its belief in a cautious but perpetual +patching up of the Constitution; its admiration for industrial wealth. +But above all he typifies the two things that really make the Victorian +Age itself, the cheapness and narrowness of its conscious formulæ; the +richness and humanity of its unconscious tradition. There were two +Macaulays, a rational Macaulay who was generally wrong, and a romantic +Macaulay who was almost invariably right. All that was small in him +derives from the dull parliamentarism of men like Sir James Mackintosh; +but all that was great in him has much more kinship with the festive +antiquarianism of Sir Walter Scott. + +As a philosopher he had only two thoughts; and neither of them is true. +The first was that politics, as an experimental science, must go on +improving, along with clocks, pistols or penknives, by the mere +accumulation of experiment and variety. He was, indeed, far too +strong-minded a man to accept the hazy modern notion that the soul in +its highest sense can change: he seems to have held that religion can +never get any better and that poetry rather tends to get worse. But he +did not see the flaw in his political theory; which is that unless the +soul improves with time there is no guarantee that the accumulations of +experience will be adequately used. Figures do not add themselves up; +birds do not label or stuff themselves; comets do not calculate their +own courses; these things are done by the soul of man. And if the soul +of man is subject to other laws, is liable to sin, to sleep, to +anarchism or to suicide, then all sciences including politics may fall +as sterile and lie as fallow as before man's reason was made. Macaulay +seemed sometimes to talk as if clocks produced clocks, or guns had +families of little pistols, or a penknife littered like a pig. The other +view he held was the more or less utilitarian theory of toleration; that +we should get the best butcher whether he was a Baptist or a +Muggletonian, and the best soldier whether he was a Wesleyan or an +Irvingite. The compromise worked well enough in an England Protestant in +bulk; but Macaulay ought to have seen that it has its limitations. A +good butcher might be a Baptist; he is not very likely to be a Buddhist. +A good soldier might be a Wesleyan; he would hardly be a Quaker. For the +rest, Macaulay was concerned to interpret the seventeenth century in +terms of the triumph of the Whigs as champions of public rights; and he +upheld this one-sidedly but not malignantly in a style of rounded and +ringing sentences, which at its best is like steel and at its worst like +tin. + +This was the small conscious Macaulay; the great unconscious Macaulay +was very different. His noble enduring quality in our literature is +this: that he truly had an abstract passion for history; a warm, poetic +and sincere enthusiasm for great things as such; an ardour and appetite +for great books, great battles, great cities, great men. He felt and +used names like trumpets. The reader's greatest joy is in the writer's +own joy, when he can let his last phrase fall like a hammer on some +resounding name like Hildebrand or Charlemagne, on the eagles of Rome or +the pillars of Hercules. As with Walter Scott, some of the best things +in his prose and poetry are the surnames that he did not make. And it is +remarkable to notice that this romance of history, so far from making +him more partial or untrustworthy, was the only thing that made him +moderately just. His reason was entirely one-sided and fanatical. It +was his imagination that was well-balanced and broad. He was +monotonously certain that only Whigs were right; but it was necessary +that Tories should at least be great, that his heroes might have foemen +worthy of their steel. If there was one thing in the world he hated it +was a High Church Royalist parson; yet when Jeremy Collier the Jacobite +priest raises a real banner, all Macaulay's blood warms with the mere +prospect of a fight. "It is inspiriting to see how gallantly the +solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies formidable separately, and, +it might have been thought, irresistible when combined; distributes his +swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh, +treads the wretched D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet; and +strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden." +That is exactly where Macaulay is great; because he is almost Homeric. +The whole triumph turns upon mere names; but men are commanded by +names. So his poem on the Armada is really a good geography book gone +mad; one sees the map of England come alive and march and mix under the +eye. + +The chief tragedy in the trend of later literature may be expressed by +saying that the smaller Macaulay conquered the larger. Later men had +less and less of that hot love of history he had inherited from Scott. +They had more and more of that cold science of self-interests which he +had learnt from Bentham. + +The name of this great man, though it belongs to a period before the +Victorian, is, like the name of Cobbett, very important to it. In +substance Macaulay accepted the conclusions of Bentham; though he +offered brilliant objections to all his arguments. In any case the soul +of Bentham (if he had one) went marching on, like John Brown; and in the +central Victorian movement it was certainly he who won. John Stuart Mill +was the final flower of that growth. He was himself fresh and delicate +and pure; but that is the business of a flower. Though he had to preach +a hard rationalism in religion, a hard competition in economics, a hard +egoism in ethics, his own soul had all that silvery sensitiveness that +can be seen in his fine portrait by Watts. He boasted none of that +brutal optimism with which his friends and followers of the Manchester +School expounded their cheery negations. There was about Mill even a +sort of embarrassment; he exhibited all the wheels of his iron universe +rather reluctantly, like a gentleman in trade showing ladies over his +factory. There shone in him a beautiful reverence for women, which is +all the more touching because, in his department, as it were, he could +only offer them so dry a gift as the Victorian Parliamentary Franchise. + +Now in trying to describe how the Victorian writers stood to each other, +we must recur to the very real difficulty noted at the beginning: the +difficulty of keeping the moral order parallel with the chronological +order. For the mind moves by instincts, associations, premonitions and +not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will +occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. +Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: +notions will be first defined long after they are dead. It is no good +getting the almanac to look up moonshine; and most literature in this +sense is moonshine. Thus Wordsworth shrank back into Toryism, as it +were, from a Shelleyan extreme of pantheism as yet disembodied. Thus +Newman took down the iron sword of dogma to parry a blow not yet +delivered, that was coming from the club of Darwin. For this reason no +one can understand tradition, or even history, who has not some +tenderness for anachronism. + +Now for the great part of the Victorian era the utilitarian tradition +which reached its highest in Mill held the centre of the field; it was +the philosophy in office, so to speak. It sustained its march of +codification and inquiry until it had made possible the great victories +of Darwin and Huxley and Wallace. If we take Macaulay at the beginning +of the epoch and Huxley at the end of it, we shall find that they had +much in common. They were both square-jawed, simple men, greedy of +controversy but scornful of sophistry, dead to mysticism but very much +alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence +of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was +much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that +when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror +of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, +rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric +as Ruskin himself could have managed. The difference that the period had +developed can best be seen if we consider this: that while neither was +of a spiritual sort, Macaulay took it for granted that common sense +required some kind of theology, while Huxley took it for granted that +common sense meant having none. Macaulay, it is said, never talked about +his religion: but Huxley was always talking about the religion he hadn't +got. + +But though this simple Victorian rationalism held the centre, and in a +certain sense _was_ the Victorian era, it was assailed on many sides, +and had been assailed even before the beginning of that era. The rest of +the intellectual history of the time is a series of reactions against +it, which come wave after wave. They have succeeded in shaking it, but +not in dislodging it from the modern mind. The first of these was the +Oxford Movement; a bow that broke when it had let loose the flashing +arrow that was Newman. The second reaction was one man; without teachers +or pupils--Dickens. The third reaction was a group that tried to create +a sort of new romantic Protestantism, to pit against both Reason and +Rome--Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, Maurice--perhaps Tennyson. Browning +also was at once romantic and Puritan; but he belonged to no group, and +worked against materialism in a manner entirely his own. Though as a boy +he bought eagerly Shelley's revolutionary poems, he did not think of +becoming a revolutionary poet. He concentrated on the special souls of +men; seeking God in a series of private interviews. Hence Browning, +great as he is, is rather one of the Victorian novelists than wholly of +the Victorian poets. From Ruskin, again, descend those who may be called +the Pre-Raphaelites of prose and poetry. + +It is really with this rationalism triumphant, and with the romance of +these various attacks on it, that the study of Victorian literature +begins and proceeds. Bentham was already the prophet of a powerful sect; +Macaulay was already the historian of an historic party, before the true +Victorian epoch began. The middle classes were emerging in a state of +damaged Puritanism. The upper classes were utterly pagan. Their clear +and courageous testimony remains in those immortal words of Lord +Melbourne, who had led the young queen to the throne and long stood +there as her protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian +religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into +private life----" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne +became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is +well mirrored in his novels--for he was a man who felt at home in +mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the +accidents that must always eat the edges of any systematic +circumference, it may still be said that the Utilitarians held the fort. + +Of the Oxford Movement what remains most strongly in the Victorian Epoch +centres round the challenge of Newman, its one great literary man. But +the movement as a whole had been of great significance in the very +genesis and make up of the society: yet that significance is not quite +easy immediately to define. It was certainly not æsthetic ritualism; +scarcely one of the Oxford High Churchmen was what we should call a +Ritualist. It was certainly not a conscious reaching out towards Rome: +except on a Roman Catholic theory which might explain all our unrests by +that dim desire. It knew little of Europe, it knew nothing of Ireland, +to which any merely Roman Catholic revulsion would obviously have +turned. In the first instance, I think, the more it is studied, the more +it would appear that it was a movement of mere religion as such. It was +not so much a taste for Catholic dogma, but simply a hunger for dogma. +For dogma means the serious satisfaction of the mind. Dogma does not +mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought. It was a revolt +against the Victorian spirit in one particular aspect of it; which may +roughly be called (in a cosy and domestic Victorian metaphor) having +your cake and eating it too. It saw that the solid and serious +Victorians were fundamentally frivolous--because they were +fundamentally inconsistent. + +A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent +talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So +long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a +shape. Mahomet created, when he forbade wine but allowed five wives: he +created a very big thing, which we have still to deal with. The first +French Republic created, when it affirmed property and abolished +peerages; France still stands like a square, four-sided building which +Europe has besieged in vain. The men of the Oxford Movement would have +been horrified at being compared either with Moslems or Jacobins. But +their sub-conscious thirst was for something that Moslems and Jacobins +had and ordinary Anglicans had not: the exalted excitement of +consistency. If you were a Moslem you were not a Bacchanal. If you were +a Republican you were not a peer. And so the Oxford men, even in their +first and dimmest stages, felt that if you were a Churchman you were not +a Dissenter. The Oxford Movement was, out of the very roots of its +being, a rational movement; almost a rationalist movement. In that it +differed sharply from the other reactions that shook the Utilitarian +compromise; the blinding mysticism of Carlyle, the mere manly +emotionalism of Dickens. It was an appeal to reason: reason said that if +a Christian had a feast day he must have a fast day too. Otherwise, all +days ought to be alike; and this was that very Utilitarianism against +which their Oxford Movement was the first and most rational assault. + +This idea, even by reason of its reason, narrowed into a sort of sharp +spear, of which the spear blade was Newman. It did forget many of the +other forces that were fighting on its side. But the movement could +boast, first and last, many men who had this eager dogmatic quality: +Keble, who spoilt a poem in order to recognise a doctrine; Faber, who +told the rich, almost with taunts, that God sent the poor as eagles to +strip them; Froude, who with Newman announced his return in the arrogant +motto of Achilles. But the greater part of all this happened before what +is properly our period; and in that period Newman, and perhaps Newman +alone, is the expression and summary of the whole school. It was +certainly in the Victorian Age, and after his passage to Rome, that +Newman claimed his complete right to be in any book on modern English +literature. This is no place for estimating his theology: but one point +about it does clearly emerge. Whatever else is right, the theory that +Newman went over to Rome to find peace and an end of argument, is quite +unquestionably wrong. He had far more quarrels after he had gone over to +Rome. But, though he had far more quarrels, he had far fewer +compromises: and he was of that temper which is tortured more by +compromise than by quarrel. He was a man at once of abnormal energy and +abnormal sensibility: nobody without that combination could have written +the _Apologia_. If he sometimes seemed to skin his enemies alive, it was +because he himself lacked a skin. In this sense his _Apologia_ is a +triumph far beyond the ephemeral charge on which it was founded; in this +sense he does indeed (to use his own expression) vanquish not his +accuser but his judges. Many men would shrink from recording all their +cold fits and hesitations and prolonged inconsistencies: I am sure it +was the breath of life to Newman to confess them, now that he had done +with them for ever. His _Lectures on the Present Position of English +Catholics_, practically preached against a raging mob, rise not only +higher but happier, as his instant unpopularity increases. There is +something grander than humour, there is fun, in the very first lecture +about the British Constitution as explained to a meeting of Russians. +But always his triumphs are the triumphs of a highly sensitive man: a +man must feel insults before he can so insultingly and splendidly +avenge them. He is a naked man, who carries a naked sword. The quality +of his literary style is so successful that it succeeds in escaping +definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate +patience, which waits until he has fixed all corners of an iron trap. +But the quality of his moral comment on the age remains what I have +said: a protest of the rationality of religion as against the increasing +irrationality of mere Victorian comfort and compromise. So far as the +present purpose is concerned, his protest died with him: he left few +imitators and (it may easily be conceived) no successful imitators. The +suggestion of him lingers on in the exquisite Elizabethan perversity of +Coventry Patmore; and has later flamed out from the shy volcano of +Francis Thompson. Otherwise (as we shall see in the parallel case of +Ruskin's Socialism) he has no followers in his own age: but very many in +ours. + +The next group of reactionaries or romantics or whatever we elect to +call them, gathers roughly around one great name. Scotland, from which +had come so many of those harsh economists who made the first Radical +philosophies of the Victorian Age, was destined also to fling forth (I +had almost said to spit forth) their fiercest and most extraordinary +enemy. The two primary things in Thomas Carlyle were his early Scotch +education and his later German culture. The first was in almost all +respects his strength; the latter in some respects his weakness. As an +ordinary lowland peasant, he inherited the really valuable historic +property of the Scots, their independence, their fighting spirit, and +their instinctive philosophic consideration of men merely as men. But he +was not an ordinary peasant. If he had laboured obscurely in his village +till death, he would have been yet locally a marked man; a man with a +wild eye, a man with an air of silent anger; perhaps a man at whom +stones were sometimes thrown. A strain of disease and suffering ran +athwart both his body and his soul. In spite of his praise of silence, +it was only through his gift of utterance that he escaped madness. But +while his fellow-peasants would have seen this in him and perhaps mocked +it, they would also have seen something which they always expect in such +men, and they would have got it: vision, a power in the mind akin to +second sight. Like many ungainly or otherwise unattractive Scotchmen, he +was a seer. By which I do not mean to refer so much to his +transcendental rhapsodies about the World-soul or the Nature-garment or +the Mysteries and Eternities generally, these seem to me to belong more +to his German side and to be less sincere and vital. I mean a real power +of seeing things suddenly, not apparently reached by any process; a +grand power of guessing. He _saw_ the crowd of the new States General, +Danton with his "rude flattened face," Robespierre peering mistily +through his spectacles. He _saw_ the English charge at Dunbar. He +_guessed_ that Mirabeau, however dissipated and diseased, had something +sturdy inside him. He _guessed_ that Lafayette, however brave and +victorious, had nothing inside him. He supported the lawlessness of +Cromwell, because across two centuries he almost physically _felt_ the +feebleness and hopelessness of the moderate Parliamentarians. He said a +word of sympathy for the universally vituperated Jacobins of the +Mountain, because through thick veils of national prejudice and +misrepresentation, he felt the impossibility of the Gironde. He was +wrong in denying to Scott the power of being inside his characters: but +he really had a good deal of that power himself. It was one of his +innumerable and rather provincial crotchets to encourage prose as +against poetry. But, as a matter of fact, he himself was much greater +considered as a kind of poet than considered as anything else; and the +central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child. + +He first emerged, as it were, as a student and disciple of Goethe. The +connection was not wholly fortunate. With much of what Goethe really +stood for he was not really in sympathy; but in his own obstinate way, +he tried to knock his idol into shape instead of choosing another. He +pushed further and further the extravagances of a vivid but very +unbalanced and barbaric style, in the praise of a poet who really +represented the calmest classicism and the attempt to restore a Hellenic +equilibrium in the mind. It is like watching a shaggy Scandinavian +decorating a Greek statue washed up by chance on his shores. And while +the strength of Goethe was a strength of completion and serenity, which +Carlyle not only never found but never even sought, the weaknesses of +Goethe were of a sort that did not draw the best out of Carlyle. The one +civilised element that the German classicists forgot to put into their +beautiful balance was a sense of humour. And great poet as Goethe was, +there is to the last something faintly fatuous about his half +sceptical, half sentimental self-importance; a Lord Chamberlain of +teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. +Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got +into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic +idealism, absurdly unaware of the complexity of things; as when he +perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that +people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote +Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. +Yet, though his general honesty is unquestionable, he was by no means +one of those who will give up a fancy under the shock of a fact. If by +sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to +admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy +cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most +sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great--these passages +are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a +generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, +not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic +historian. It bears most resemblance to the incurable prejudices of a +woman. + +For the rest there hovered behind all this transcendental haze a certain +presence of old northern paganism; he really had some sympathy with the +vast vague gods of that moody but not unmanly Nature-worship which seems +to have filled the darkness of the North before the coming of the Roman +Eagle or the Christian Cross. This he combined, allowing for certain +sceptical omissions, with the grisly Old Testament God he had heard +about in the black Sabbaths of his childhood; and so promulgated +(against both Rationalists and Catholics) a sort of heathen Puritanism: +Protestantism purged of its evidences of Christianity. + +His great and real work was the attack on Utilitarianism: which did real +good, though there was much that was muddled and dangerous in the +historical philosophy which he preached as an alternative. It is his +real glory that he was the first to see clearly and say plainly the +great truth of our time; that the wealth of the state is not the +prosperity of the people. Macaulay and the Mills and all the regular run +of the Early Victorians, took it for granted that if Manchester was +getting richer, we had got hold of the key to comfort and progress. +Carlyle pointed out (with stronger sagacity and humour than he showed on +any other question) that it was just as true to say that Manchester was +getting poorer as that it was getting richer: or, in other words, that +Manchester was not getting richer at all, but only some of the less +pleasing people in Manchester. In this matter he is to be noted in +connection with national developments much later; for he thus became the +first prophet of the Socialists. _Sartor Resartus_ is an admirable +fantasia; _The French Revolution_ is, with all its faults, a really +fine piece of history; the lectures on Heroes contain some masterly +sketches of personalities. But I think it is in _Past and Present_, and +the essay on _Chartism_, that Carlyle achieves the work he was chosen by +gods and men to achieve; which possibly might not have been achieved by +a happier or more healthy-minded man. He never rose to more deadly irony +than in such _macabre_ descriptions as that of the poor woman proving +her sisterhood with the rich by giving them all typhoid fever; or that +perfect piece of _badinage_ about "Overproduction of Shirts"; in which +he imagines the aristocrats claiming to be quite clear of this offence. +"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse _us_ of overproduction? We +take the Heavens and the Earth to witness that we have produced nothing +at all.... He that accuses us of producing, let him show himself. Let +him say what and when." And he never wrote so sternly and justly as when +he compared the "divine sorrow" of Dante with the "undivine sorrow" of +Utilitarianism, which had already come down to talking about the +breeding of the poor and to hinting at infanticide. This is a +representative quarrel; for if the Utilitarian spirit reached its +highest point in Mill, it certainly reached its lowest point in Malthus. + +One last element in the influence of Carlyle ought to be mentioned; +because it very strongly dominated his disciples--especially Kingsley, +and to some extent Tennyson and Ruskin. Because he frowned at the +cockney cheerfulness of the cheaper economists, they and others +represented him as a pessimist, and reduced all his azure infinities to +a fit of the blues. But Carlyle's philosophy, more carefully considered, +will be found to be dangerously optimist rather than pessimist. As a +thinker Carlyle is not sad, but recklessly and rather unscrupulously +satisfied. For he seems to have held the theory that good could not be +definitely defeated in this world; and that everything in the long run +finds its right level. It began with what we may call the "Bible of +History" idea: that all affairs and politics were a clouded but unbroken +revelation of the divine. Thus any enormous and unaltered human +settlement--as the Norman Conquest or the secession of America--we must +suppose to be the will of God. It lent itself to picturesque treatment; +and Carlyle and the Carlyleans were above all things picturesque. It +gave them at first a rhetorical advantage over the Catholic and other +older schools. They could boast that their Creator was still creating; +that he was in Man and Nature, and was not hedged round in a Paradise or +imprisoned in a pyx. They could say their God had not grown too old for +war: that He was present at Gettysburg and Gravelotte as much as at +Gibeon and Gilboa. I do not mean that they literally said these +particular things: they are what I should have said had I been bribed to +defend their position. But they said things to the same effect: that +what manages finally to happen, happens for a higher purpose. Carlyle +said the French Revolution was a thing settled in the eternal councils +to be; and therefore (and not because it was right) attacking it was +"fighting against God." And Kingsley even carried the principle so far +as to tell a lady she should remain in the Church of England mainly +because God had put her there. But in spite of its superficial +spirituality and encouragement, it is not hard to see how such a +doctrine could be abused. It practically comes to saying that God is on +the side of the big battalions--or at least, of the victorious ones. +Thus a creed which set out to create conquerors would only corrupt +soldiers; corrupt them with a craven and unsoldierly worship of success: +and that which began as the philosophy of courage ends as the philosophy +of cowardice. If, indeed, Carlyle were right in saying that right is +only "rightly articulated" might, men would never articulate or move in +any way. For no act can have might before it is done: if there is no +right, it cannot rationally be done at all. This element, like the +Anti-Utilitarian element, is to be kept in mind in connection with after +developments: for in this Carlyle is the first cry of Imperialism, as +(in the other case) of Socialism: and the two babes unborn who stir at +the trumpet are Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Kipling also +carries on from Carlyle the concentration on the purely Hebraic parts of +the Bible. The fallacy of this whole philosophy is that if God is indeed +present at a modern battle, He may be present not as on Gilboa but +Golgotha. + +Carlyle's direct historical worship of strength and the rest of it was +fortunately not very fruitful; and perhaps lingered only in Froude the +historian. Even he is more an interruption than a continuity. Froude +develops rather the harsher and more impatient moral counsels of his +master than like Ruskin the more romantic and sympathetic. He carries on +the tradition of Hero Worship: but carries far beyond Carlyle the +practice of worshipping people who cannot rationally be called heroes. +In this matter that eccentric eye of the seer certainly helped Carlyle: +in Cromwell and Frederick the Great there was at least something +self-begotten, original or mystical; if they were not heroes they were +at least demigods or perhaps demons. But Froude set himself to the +praise of the Tudors, a much lower class of people; ill-conditioned +prosperous people who merely waxed fat and kicked. Such strength as +Henry VIII had was the strength of a badly trained horse that bolts, not +of any clear or courageous rider who controls him. There is a sort of +strong man mentioned in Scripture who, because he masters himself, is +more than he that takes a city. There is another kind of strong man +(known to the medical profession) who cannot master himself; and whom it +may take half a city to take alive. But for all that he is a low +lunatic, and not a hero; and of that sort were too many of the heroes +whom Froude attempted to praise. A kind of instinct kept Carlyle from +over-praising Henry VIII; or that highly cultivated and complicated +liar, Queen Elizabeth. Here, the only importance of this is that one of +Carlyle's followers carried further that "strength" which was the real +weakness of Carlyle. I have heard that Froude's life of Carlyle was +unsympathetic; but if it was so it was a sort of parricide. For the +rest, like Macaulay, he was a picturesque and partisan historian: but, +like Macaulay (and unlike the craven scientific historians of to-day) he +was not ashamed of being partisan or of being picturesque. Such studies +as he wrote on the Elizabethan seamen and adventurers, represent very +triumphantly the sort of romance of England that all this school was +attempting to establish; and link him up with Kingsley and the rest. + +Ruskin may be very roughly regarded as the young lieutenant of Carlyle +in his war on Utilitarian Radicalism: but as an individual he presents +many and curious divergences. In the matter of style, he enriched +English without disordering it. And in the matter of religion (which +was the key of this age as of every other) he did not, like Carlyle, set +up the romance of the great Puritans as a rival to the romance of the +Catholic Church. Rather he set up and worshipped all the arts and +trophies of the Catholic Church as a rival to the Church itself. None +need dispute that he held a perfectly tenable position if he chose to +associate early Florentine art with a Christianity still comparatively +pure, and such sensualities as the Renaissance bred with the corruption +of a Papacy. But this does not alter, as a merely artistic fact, the +strange air of ill-ease and irritation with which Ruskin seems to tear +down the gargoyles of Amiens or the marbles of Venice, as things of +which Europe is not worthy; and take them away with him to a really +careful museum, situated dangerously near Clapham. Many of the great men +of that generation, indeed, had a sort of divided mind; an ethical +headache which was literally a "splitting headache"; for there was a +schism in the sympathies. When these men looked at some historic +object, like the Catholic Church or the French Revolution, they did not +know whether they loved or hated it most. Carlyle's two eyes were out of +focus, as one may say, when he looked at democracy: he had one eye on +Valmy and the other on Sedan. In the same way, Ruskin had a strong right +hand that wrote of the great mediæval minsters in tall harmonies and +traceries as splendid as their own; and also, so to speak, a weak and +feverish left hand that was always fidgeting and trying to take the pen +away--and write an evangelical tract about the immorality of foreigners. +Many of their contemporaries were the same. The sea of Tennyson's mind +was troubled under its serene surface. The incessant excitement of +Kingsley, though romantic and attractive in many ways, was a great deal +more like Nervous Christianity than Muscular Christianity. It would be +quite unfair to say of Ruskin that there was any major inconsistency +between his mediæval tastes and his very unmediæval temper: and minor +inconsistencies do not matter in anybody. But it is not quite unfair to +say of him that he seemed to want all parts of the Cathedral except the +altar. + +As an artist in prose he is one of the most miraculous products of the +extremely poetical genius of England. The length of a Ruskin sentence is +like that length in the long arrow that was boasted of by the drawers of +the long bow. He draws, not a cloth-yard shaft but a long lance to his +ear: he shoots a spear. But the whole goes light as a bird and straight +as a bullet. There is no Victorian writer before him to whom he even +suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De +Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a +rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I +have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the +turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence +branches into brackets and relative clauses as a straight strong tree +branches into boughs and bifurcations, rather shaking off its burden +than merely adding to it. It is interesting to remember that Ruskin +wrote some of the best of these sentences in the attempt to show that he +did understand the growth of trees, and that nobody else did--except +Turner, of course. It is also (to those acquainted with his perverse and +wild rhetorical prejudices) even more amusing to remember that if a +Ruskin sentence (occupying one or two pages of small print) does not +remind us of the growth of a tree, the only other thing it does remind +of is the triumphant passage of a railway train. + +Ruskin left behind him in his turn two quite separate streams of +inspiration. The first and more practical was concerned, like Carlyle's +_Chartism_, with a challenge to the social conclusions of the orthodox +economists. He was not so great a man as Carlyle, but he was a much more +clear-headed man; and the point and stab of his challenge still really +stands and sticks, like a dagger in a dead man. He answered the theory +that we must always get the cheapest labour we can, by pointing out that +we never do get the cheapest labour we can, in any matter about which we +really care twopence. We do not get the cheapest doctor. We either get a +doctor who charges nothing or a doctor who charges a recognised and +respectable fee. We do not trust the cheapest bishop. We do not allow +admirals to compete. We do not tell generals to undercut each other on +the eve of a war. We either employ none of them or we employ all of them +at an official rate of pay. All this was set out in the strongest and +least sentimental of his books, _Unto this Last_; but many suggestions +of it are scattered through _Sesame and Lilies_, _The Political Economy +of Art_, and even _Modern Painters_. On this side of his soul Ruskin +became the second founder of Socialism. The argument was not by any +means a complete or unconquerable weapon, but I think it knocked out +what little remained of the brains of the early Victorian rationalists. +It is entirely nonsensical to speak of Ruskin as a lounging æsthete, who +strolled into economics, and talked sentimentalism. In plain fact, +Ruskin was seldom so sensible and logical (right or wrong) as when he +was talking about economics. He constantly talked the most glorious +nonsense about landscape and natural history, which it was his business +to understand. Within his own limits, he talked the most cold common +sense about political economy, which was no business of his at all. + +On the other side of his literary soul, his mere unwrapping of the +wealth and wonder of European art, he set going another influence, +earlier and vaguer than his influence on Socialism. He represented what +was at first the Pre-Raphaelite School in painting, but afterwards a +much larger and looser Pre-Raphaelite School in poetry and prose. The +word "looser" will not be found unfair if we remember how Swinburne and +all the wildest friends of the Rossettis carried this movement forward. +They used the mediæval imagery to blaspheme the mediæval religion. +Ruskin's dark and doubtful decision to accept Catholic art but not +Catholic ethics had borne rapid or even flagrant fruit by the time that +Swinburne, writing about a harlot, composed a learned and sympathetic +and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. + +With the poets I deal in another part of this book; but the influence of +Ruskin's great prose touching art criticism can best be expressed in the +name of the next great prose writer on such subjects. That name is +Walter Pater: and the name is the full measure of the extent to which +Ruskin's vague but vast influence had escaped from his hands. Pater +eventually joined the Church of Rome (which would not have pleased +Ruskin at all), but it is surely fair to say of the mass of his work +that its moral tone is neither Puritan nor Catholic, but strictly and +splendidly Pagan. In Pater we have Ruskin without the prejudices, that +is, without the funny parts. I may be wrong, but I cannot recall at this +moment a single passage in which Pater's style takes a holiday or in +which his wisdom plays the fool. Newman and Ruskin were as careful and +graceful stylists as he. Newman and Ruskin were as serious, elaborate, +and even academic thinkers as he. But Ruskin let himself go about +railways. Newman let himself go about Kingsley. Pater cannot let himself +go for the excellent reason that he wants to stay: to stay at the point +where all the keenest emotions meet, as he explains in the splendid +peroration of _The Renaissance_. The only objection to being where all +the keenest emotions meet is that you feel none of them. + +In this sense Pater may well stand for a substantial summary of the +æsthetes, apart from the purely poetical merits of men like Rossetti and +Swinburne. Like Swinburne and others he first attempted to use mediæval +tradition without trusting it. These people wanted to see Paganism +_through_ Christianity: because it involved the incidental amusement of +seeing through Christianity itself. They not only tried to be in all +ages at once (which is a very reasonable ambition, though not often +realised), but they wanted to be on all sides at once: which is +nonsense. Swinburne tries to question the philosophy of Christianity in +the metres of a Christmas carol: and Dante Rossetti tries to write as if +he were Christina Rossetti. Certainly the almost successful summit of +all this attempt is Pater's superb passage on the Mona Lisa; in which he +seeks to make her at once a mystery of good and a mystery of evil. The +philosophy is false; even evidently false, for it bears no fruit to-day. +There never was a woman, not Eve herself in the instant of temptation, +who could smile the same smile as the mother of Helen and the mother of +Mary. But it is the high-water mark of that vast attempt at an +impartiality reached through art: and no other mere artist ever rose so +high again. + +Apart from this Ruskinian offshoot through Pre-Raphaelitism into what +was called Æstheticism, the remains of the inspiration of Carlyle fill a +very large part in the Victorian life, but not strictly so large a part +in the Victorian literature. Charles Kingsley was a great publicist; a +popular preacher; a popular novelist; and (in two cases at least) a very +good novelist. His _Water Babies_ is really a breezy and roaring freak; +like a holiday at the seaside--a holiday where one talks natural history +without taking it seriously. Some of the songs in this and other of his +works are very real songs: notably, "When all the World is Young, Lad," +which comes very near to being the only true defence of marriage in the +controversies of the nineteenth century. But when all this is allowed, +no one will seriously rank Kingsley, in the really literary sense, on +the level of Carlyle or Ruskin, Tennyson or Browning, Dickens or +Thackeray: and if such a place cannot be given to him, it can be given +even less to his lusty and pleasant friend, Tom Hughes, whose +personality floats towards the frankness of the _Boy's Own Paper_; or to +his deep, suggestive metaphysical friend Maurice, who floats rather +towards _The Hibbert Journal_. The moral and social influence of these +things is not to be forgotten: but they leave the domain of letters. The +voice of Carlyle is not heard again in letters till the coming of +Kipling and Henley. + +One other name of great importance should appear here, because it cannot +appear very appropriately anywhere else: the man hardly belonged to the +same school as Ruskin and Carlyle, but fought many of their battles, and +was even more concentrated on their main task--the task of convicting +liberal _bourgeois_ England of priggishness and provinciality. I mean, +of course, Matthew Arnold. Against Mill's "liberty" and Carlyle's +"strength" and Ruskin's "nature," he set up a new presence and entity +which he called "culture," the disinterested play of the mind through +the sifting of the best books and authorities. Though a little dandified +in phrase, he was undoubtedly serious and public-spirited in intention. +He sometimes talked of culture almost as if it were a man, or at least a +church (for a church has a sort of personality): some may suspect that +culture was a man, whose name was Matthew Arnold. But Arnold was not +only right but highly valuable. If we have said that Carlyle was a man +that saw things, we may add that Arnold was chiefly valuable as a man +who knew things. Well as he was endowed intellectually, his power came +more from information than intellect. He simply happened to know certain +things, that Carlyle didn't know, that Kingsley didn't know, that Huxley +and Herbert Spencer didn't know: that England didn't know. He knew that +England was a part of Europe: and not so important a part as it had been +the morning after Waterloo. He knew that England was then (as it is now) +an oligarchical State, and that many great nations are not. He knew +that a real democracy need not live and does not live in that perpetual +panic about using the powers of the State, which possessed men like +Spencer and Cobden. He knew a rational minimum of culture and common +courtesy could exist and did exist throughout large democracies. He knew +the Catholic Church had been in history "the Church of the multitude": +he knew it was not a sect. He knew that great landlords are no more a +part of the economic law than nigger-drivers: he knew that small owners +could and did prosper. He was not so much the philosopher as the man of +the world: he reminded us that Europe was a society while Ruskin was +treating it as a picture gallery. He was a sort of Heaven-sent courier. +His frontal attack on the vulgar and sullen optimism of Victorian +utility may be summoned up in the admirable sentence, in which he asked +the English what was the use of a train taking them quickly from +Islington to Camberwell, if it only took them "from a dismal and +illiberal life in Islington to a dismal and illiberal life in +Camberwell?" + +His attitude to that great religious enigma round which all these great +men were grouped as in a ring, was individual and decidedly curious. He +seems to have believed that a "Historic Church," that is, some +established organisation with ceremonies and sacred books, etc., could +be perpetually preserved as a sort of vessel to contain the spiritual +ideas of the age, whatever those ideas might happen to be. He clearly +seems to have contemplated a melting away of the doctrines of the Church +and even of the meaning of the words: but he thought a certain need in +man would always be best satisfied by public worship and especially by +the great religious literatures of the past. He would embalm the body +that it might often be revisited by the soul--or souls. Something of the +sort has been suggested by Dr. Coit and others of the ethical societies +in our own time. But while Arnold would loosen the theological bonds of +the Church, he would not loosen the official bonds of the State. You +must not disestablish the Church: you must not even leave the Church: +you must stop inside it and think what you choose. Enemies might say +that he was simply trying to establish and endow Agnosticism. It is +fairer and truer to say that unconsciously he was trying to restore +Paganism: for this State Ritualism without theology, and without much +belief, actually was the practice of the ancient world. Arnold may have +thought that he was building an altar to the Unknown God; but he was +really building it to Divus Cæsar. + +As a critic he was chiefly concerned to preserve criticism itself; to +set a measure to praise and blame and support the classics against the +fashions. It is here that it is specially true of him, if of no writer +else, that the style was the man. The most vital thing he invented was a +new style: founded on the patient unravelling of the tangled Victorian +ideas, as if they were matted hair under a comb. He did not mind how +elaborately long he made a sentence, so long as he made it clear. He +would constantly repeat whole phrases word for word in the same +sentence, rather than risk ambiguity by abbreviation. His genius showed +itself in turning this method of a laborious lucidity into a peculiarly +exasperating form of satire and controversy. Newman's strength was in a +sort of stifled passion, a dangerous patience of polite logic and then: +"Cowards! if I advanced a step you would run away: it is not you I fear. +_Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis._" If Newman seemed suddenly to fly +into a temper, Carlyle seemed never to fly out of one. But Arnold kept a +smile of heart-broken forbearance, as of the teacher in an idiot school, +that was enormously insulting. One trick he often tried with success. If +his opponent had said something foolish, like "the destiny of England is +in the great heart of England," Arnold would repeat the phrase again and +again until it looked more foolish than it really was. Thus he recurs +again and again to "the British College of Health in the New Road" till +the reader wants to rush out and burn the place down. Arnold's great +error was that he sometimes thus wearied us of his own phrases, as well +as of his enemies'. + +These names are roughly representative of the long series of protests +against the cold commercial rationalism which held Parliament and the +schools through the earlier Victorian time, in so far as those protests +were made in the name of neglected intellect, insulted art, forgotten +heroism and desecrated religion. But already the Utilitarian citadel had +been more heavily bombarded on the other side by one lonely and +unlettered man of genius. + +The rise of Dickens is like the rising of a vast mob. This is not only +because his tales are indeed as crowded and populous as towns: for truly +it was not so much that Dickens appeared as that a hundred Dickens +characters appeared. It is also because he was the sort of man who has +the impersonal impetus of a mob: what Poe meant when he truly said that +popular rumour, if really spontaneous, was like the intuition of the +individual man of genius. Those who speak scornfully of the ignorance of +the mob do not err as to the fact itself; their error is in not seeing +that just as a crowd is comparatively ignorant, so a crowd is +comparatively innocent. It will have the old and human faults; but it is +not likely to specialise in the special faults of that particular +society: because the effort of the strong and successful in all ages is +to keep the poor out of society. If the higher castes have developed +some special moral beauty or grace, as they occasionally do (for +instance, mediæval chivalry), it is likely enough, of course, that the +mass of men will miss it. But if they have developed some perversion or +over-emphasis, as they much more often do (for instance, the Renaissance +poisoning), then it will be the tendency of the mass of men to miss that +too. The point might be put in many ways; you may say if you will that +the poor are always at the tail of the procession, and that whether they +are morally worse or better depends on whether humanity as a whole is +proceeding towards heaven or hell. When humanity is going to hell, the +poor are always nearest to heaven. + +Dickens was a mob--and a mob in revolt; he fought by the light of +nature; he had not a theory, but a thirst. If any one chooses to offer +the cheap sarcasm that his thirst was largely a thirst for milk-punch, I +am content to reply with complete gravity and entire contempt that in a +sense this is perfectly true. His thirst was for things as humble, as +human, as laughable as that daily bread for which we cry to God. He had +no particular plan of reform; or, when he had, it was startlingly petty +and parochial compared with the deep, confused clamour of comradeship +and insurrection that fills all his narrative. It would not be gravely +unjust to him to compare him to his own heroine, Arabella Allen, who +"didn't know what she did like," but who (when confronted with Mr. Bob +Sawyer) "did know what she didn't like." Dickens did know what he didn't +like. He didn't like the Unrivalled Happiness which Mr. Roebuck praised; +the economic laws that were working so faultlessly in Fever Alley; the +wealth that was accumulating so rapidly in Bleeding Heart Yard. But, +above all, he didn't like the _mean_ side of the Manchester philosophy: +the preaching of an impossible thrift and an intolerable temperance. He +hated the implication that because a man was a miser in Latin he must +also be a miser in English. And this meanness of the Utilitarians had +gone very far--infecting many finer minds who had fought the +Utilitarians. In the _Edinburgh Review_, a thing like Malthus could be +championed by a man like Macaulay. + +The twin root facts of the revolution called Dickens are these: first, +that he attacked the cold Victorian compromise; second, that he +attacked it without knowing he was doing it--certainly without knowing +that other people were doing it. He was attacking something which we +will call Mr. Gradgrind. He was utterly unaware (in any essential sense) +that any one else had attacked Mr. Gradgrind. All the other attacks had +come from positions of learning or cultured eccentricity of which he was +entirely ignorant, and to which, therefore (like a spirited fellow), he +felt a furious hostility. Thus, for instance, he hated that Little +Bethel to which Kit's mother went: he hated it simply as Kit hated it. +Newman could have told him it was hateful, because it had no root in +religious history; it was not even a sapling sprung of the seed of some +great human and heathen tree: it was a monstrous mushroom that grows in +the moonshine and dies in the dawn. Dickens knew no more of religious +history than Kit; he simply smelt the fungus, and it stank. Thus, again, +he hated that insolent luxury of a class counting itself a comfortable +exception to all mankind; he hated it as Kate Nickleby hated Sir +Mulberry Hawke--by instinct. Carlyle could have told him that all the +world was full of that anger against the impudent fatness of the few. +But when Dickens wrote about Kate Nickleby, he knew about as much of the +world--as Kate Nickleby. He did write _The Tale of Two Cities_ long +afterwards; but that was when he _had_ been instructed by Carlyle. His +first revolutionism was as private and internal as feeling sea-sick. +Thus, once more, he wrote against Mr. Gradgrind long before he created +him. In _The Chimes_, conceived in quite his casual and charitable +season, with the _Christmas Carol_ and the _Cricket on the Hearth_, he +hit hard at the economists. Ruskin, in the same fashion, would have told +him that the worst thing about the economists was that they were not +economists: that they missed many essential things even in economics. +But Dickens did not know whether they were economists or not: he only +knew that they wanted hitting. Thus, to take a last case out of many, +Dickens travelled in a French railway train, and noticed that this +eccentric nation provided him with wine that he could drink and +sandwiches he could eat, and manners he could tolerate. And remembering +the ghastly sawdust-eating waiting-rooms of the North English railways, +he wrote that rich chapter in _Mugby Junction_. Matthew Arnold could +have told him that this was but a part of the general thinning down of +European civilisation in these islands at the edge of it; that for two +or three thousand years the Latin society has learnt how to drink wine, +and how not to drink too much of it. Dickens did not in the least +understand the Latin society: but he did understand the wine. If (to +prolong an idle but not entirely false metaphor) we have called Carlyle +a man who saw and Arnold a man who knew, we might truly call Dickens a +man who tasted, that is, a man who really felt. In spite of all the +silly talk about his vulgarity, he really had, in the strict and +serious sense, good taste. All real good taste is gusto--the power of +appreciating the presence--or the absence--of a particular and positive +pleasure. He had no learning; he was not misled by the label on the +bottle--for that is what learning largely meant in his time. He opened +his mouth and shut his eyes and saw what the Age of Reason would give +him. And, having tasted it, he spat it out. + +I am constrained to consider Dickens here among the fighters; though I +ought (on the pure principles of Art) to be considering him in the +chapter which I have allotted to the story-tellers. But we should get +the whole Victorian perspective wrong, in my opinion at least, if we did +not see that Dickens was primarily the most successful of all the +onslaughts on the solid scientific school; because he did not attack +from the standpoint of extraordinary faith, like Newman; or the +standpoint of extraordinary inspiration, like Carlyle; or the standpoint +of extraordinary detachment or serenity, like Arnold; but from the +standpoint of quite ordinary and quite hearty dislike. To give but one +instance more, Matthew Arnold, trying to carry into England constructive +educational schemes which he could see spread like a clear railway map +all over the Continent, was much badgered about what he really thought +was _wrong_ with English middle-class education. Despairing of +explaining to the English middle class the idea of high and central +public instruction, as distinct from coarse and hole-and-corner private +instruction, he invoked the aid of Dickens. He said the English +middle-class school was the sort of school where Mr. Creakle sat, with +his buttered toast and his cane. Now Dickens had probably never seen any +other kind of school--certainly he had never understood the systematic +State Schools in which Arnold had learnt his lesson. But he saw the cane +and the buttered toast, and he _knew_ that it was all wrong. In this +sense, Dickens, the great romanticist, is truly the great realist also. +For he had no abstractions: he had nothing except realities out of which +to make a romance. + +With Dickens, then, re-arises that reality with which I began and which +(curtly, but I think not falsely) I have called Cobbett. In dealing with +fiction as such, I shall have occasion to say wherein Dickens is weaker +and stronger than that England of the eighteenth century: here it is +sufficient to say that he represents the return of Cobbett in this vital +sense; that he is proud of being the ordinary man. No one can understand +the thousand caricatures by Dickens who does not understand that he is +comparing them all with his own common sense. Dickens, in the bulk, +liked the things that Cobbett had liked; what is perhaps more to the +point, he hated the things that Cobbett had hated; the Tudors, the +lawyers, the leisurely oppression of the poor. Cobbett's fine fighting +journalism had been what is nowadays called "personal," that is, it +supposed human beings to be human. But Cobbett was also personal in the +less satisfactory sense; he could only multiply monsters who were +exaggerations of his enemies or exaggerations of himself. Dickens was +personal in a more godlike sense; he could multiply persons. He could +create all the farce and tragedy of his age over again, with creatures +unborn to sin and creatures unborn to suffer. That which had not been +achieved by the fierce facts of Cobbett, the burning dreams of Carlyle, +the white-hot proofs of Newman, was really or very nearly achieved by a +crowd of impossible people. In the centre stood that citadel of atheist +industrialism: and if indeed it has ever been taken, it was taken by the +rush of that unreal army. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS + + +The Victorian novel was a thing entirely Victorian; quite unique and +suited to a sort of cosiness in that country and that age. But the novel +itself, though not merely Victorian, is mainly modern. No clear-headed +person wastes his time over definitions, except where he thinks his own +definition would probably be in dispute. I merely say, therefore, that +when I say "novel," I mean a fictitious narrative (almost invariably, +but not necessarily, in prose) of which the essential is that the story +is not told for the sake of its naked pointedness as an anecdote, or for +the sake of the irrelevant landscapes and visions that can be caught up +in it, but for the sake of some study of the difference between human +beings. There are several things that make this mode of art unique. One +of the most conspicuous is that it is the art in which the conquests of +woman are quite beyond controversy. The proposition that Victorian women +have done well in politics and philosophy is not necessarily an untrue +proposition; but it is a partisan proposition. I never heard that many +women, let alone men, shared the views of Mary Wollstonecraft; I never +heard that millions of believers flocked to the religion tentatively +founded by Miss Frances Power Cobbe. They did, undoubtedly, flock to +Mrs. Eddy; but it will not be unfair to that lady to call her following +a sect, and not altogether unreasonable to say that such insane +exceptions prove the rule. Nor can I at this moment think of a single +modern woman writing on politics or abstract things, whose work is of +undisputed importance; except perhaps Mrs. Sidney Webb, who settles +things by the simple process of ordering about the citizens of a state, +as she might the servants in a kitchen. There has been, at any rate, no +writer on moral or political theory that can be mentioned, without +seeming comic, in the same breath with the great female novelists. But +when we come to the novelists, the women have, on the whole, equality; +and certainly, in some points, superiority. Jane Austen is as strong in +her own way as Scott is in his. But she is, for all practical purposes, +never weak in her own way--and Scott very often is. Charlotte Brontë +dedicated _Jane Eyre_ to the author of _Vanity Fair_. I should hesitate +to say that Charlotte Brontë's is a better book than Thackeray's, but I +think it might well be maintained that it is a better story. All sorts +of inquiring asses (equally ignorant of the old nature of woman and the +new nature of the novel) whispered wisely that George Eliot's novels +were really written by George Lewes. I will cheerfully answer for the +fact that, if they had been written by George Lewes, no one would ever +have read them. Those who have read his book on Robespierre will have +no doubt about my meaning. I am no idolater of George Eliot; but a man +who could concoct such a crushing opiate about the most exciting +occasion in history certainly did not write _The Mill on the Floss_. +This is the first fact about the novel, that it is the introduction of a +new and rather curious kind of art; and it has been found to be +peculiarly feminine, from the first good novel by Fanny Burney to the +last good novel by Miss May Sinclair. The truth is, I think, that the +modern novel is a new thing; not new in its essence (for that is a +philosophy for fools), but new in the sense that it lets loose many of +the things that are old. It is a hearty and exhaustive overhauling of +that part of human existence which has always been the woman's province, +or rather kingdom; the play of personalities in private, the real +difference between Tommy and Joe. It is right that womanhood should +specialise in individuals, and be praised for doing so; just as in the +Middle Ages she specialised in dignity and was praised for doing so. +People put the matter wrong when they say that the novel is a study of +human nature. Human nature is a thing that even men can understand. +Human nature is born of the pain of a woman; human nature plays at +peep-bo when it is two and at cricket when it is twelve; human nature +earns its living and desires the other sex and dies. What the novel +deals with is what women have to deal with; the differentiations, the +twists and turns of this eternal river. The key of this new form of art, +which we call fiction, is sympathy. And sympathy does not mean so much +feeling with all who feel, but rather suffering with all who suffer. And +it was inevitable, under such an inspiration, that more attention should +be given to the awkward corners of life than to its even flow. The very +promising domestic channel dug by the Victorian women, in books like +_Cranford_, by Mrs. Gaskell, would have got to the sea, if they had been +left alone to dig it. They might have made domesticity a fairyland. +Unfortunately another idea, the idea of imitating men's cuffs and +collars and documents, cut across this purely female discovery and +destroyed it. + +It may seem mere praise of the novel to say it is the art of sympathy +and the study of human variations. But indeed, though this is a good +thing, it is not universally good. We have gained in sympathy; but we +have lost in brotherhood. Old quarrels had more equality than modern +exonerations. Two peasants in the Middle Ages quarrelled about their two +fields. But they went to the same church, served in the same semi-feudal +militia, and had the same morality, which ever might happen to be +breaking it at the moment. The very cause of their quarrel was the cause +of their fraternity; they both liked land. But suppose one of them a +teetotaler who desired the abolition of hops on both farms; suppose the +other a vegetarian who desired the abolition of chickens on both farms: +and it is at once apparent that a quarrel of quite a different kind +would begin; and that in that quarrel it would not be a question of +farmer against farmer, but of individual against individual. This +fundamental sense of human fraternity can only exist in the presence of +positive religion. Man is merely man only when he is seen against the +sky. If he is seen against any landscape, he is only a man of that land. +If he is seen against any house, he is only a householder. Only where +death and eternity are intensely present can human beings fully feel +their fellowship. Once the divine darkness against which we stand is +really dismissed from the mind (as it was very nearly dismissed in the +Victorian time) the differences between human beings become +overpoweringly plain; whether they are expressed in the high caricatures +of Dickens or the low lunacies of Zola. + +This can be seen in a sort of picture in the Prologue of the _Canterbury +Tales_; which is already pregnant with the promise of the English novel. +The characters there are at once graphically and delicately +differentiated; the Doctor with his rich cloak, his careful meals, his +coldness to religion; the Franklin, whose white beard was so fresh that +it recalled the daisies, and in whose house it snowed meat and drink; +the Summoner, from whose fearful face, like a red cherub's, the children +fled, and who wore a garland like a hoop; the Miller with his short red +hair and bagpipes and brutal head, with which he could break down a +door; the Lover who was as sleepless as a nightingale; the Knight, the +Cook, the Clerk of Oxford. Pendennis or the Cook, M. Mirabolant, is +nowhere so vividly varied by a few merely verbal strokes. But the great +difference is deeper and more striking. It is simply that Pendennis +would never have gone riding with a cook at all. Chaucer's knight rode +with a cook quite naturally; because the thing they were all seeking +together was as much above knighthood as it was above cookery. Soldiers +and swindlers and bullies and outcasts, they were all going to the +shrine of a distant saint. To what sort of distant saint would Pendennis +and Colonel Newcome and Mr. Moss and Captain Costigan and Ridley the +butler and Bayham and Sir Barnes Newcome and Laura and the Duchess +d'Ivry and Warrington and Captain Blackball and Lady Kew travel, +laughing and telling tales together? + +The growth of the novel, therefore, must not be too easily called an +increase in the interest in humanity. It is an increase in the interest +in the things in which men differ; much fuller and finer work had been +done before about the things in which they agree. And this intense +interest in variety had its bad side as well as its good; it has rather +increased social distinctions in a serious and spiritual sense. Most of +the oblivion of democracy is due to the oblivion of death. But in its +own manner and measure, it was a real advance and experiment of the +European mind, like the public art of the Renaissance or the fairyland +of physical science explored in the nineteenth century. It was a more +unquestionable benefit than these: and in that development women played +a peculiar part, English women especially, and Victorian women most of +all. + +It is perhaps partly, though certainly not entirely, this influence of +the great women writers that explains another very arresting and +important fact about the emergence of genuinely Victorian fiction. It +had been by this time decided, by the powers that had influence (and by +public opinion also, at least in the middle-class sense), that certain +verbal limits must be set to such literature. The novel must be what +some would call pure and others would call prudish; but what is not, +properly considered, either one or the other: it is rather a more or +less business proposal (right or wrong) that every writer shall draw the +line at literal physical description of things socially concealed. It +was originally merely verbal; it had not, primarily, any dream of +purifying the topic or the moral tone. Dickens and Thackeray claimed +very properly the right to deal with shameful passions and suggest their +shameful culminations; Scott sometimes dealt with ideas positively +horrible--as in that grand Glenallan tragedy which is as appalling as +the _OEdipus_ or _The Cenci_. None of these great men would have +tolerated for a moment being talked to (as the muddle-headed amateur +censors talk to artists to-day) about "wholesome" topics and suggestions +"that cannot elevate." They had to describe the great battle of good and +evil and they described both; but they accepted a working Victorian +compromise about what should happen behind the scenes and what on the +stage. Dickens did not claim the license of diction Fielding might have +claimed in repeating the senile ecstasies of Gride (let us say) over his +purchased bride: but Dickens does not leave the reader in the faintest +doubt about what sort of feelings they were; nor is there any reason why +he should. Thackeray would not have described the toilet details of the +secret balls of Lord Steyne: he left that to Lady Cardigan. But no one +who had read Thackeray's version would be surprised at Lady Cardigan's. +But though the great Victorian novelists would not have permitted the +impudence of the suggestion that every part of their problem must be +wholesome and innocent in itself, it is still tenable (I do not say it +is certain) that by yielding to the Philistines on this verbal +compromise, they have in the long run worked for impurity rather than +purity. In one point I do certainly think that Victorian Bowdlerism did +pure harm. This is the simple point that, nine times out of ten, the +coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the +word that excuses it. A common evasion, for instance, substitutes for +the word that brands self-sale as the essential sin, a word which weakly +suggests that it is no more wicked than walking down the street. The +great peril of such soft mystifications is that extreme evils (they +that are abnormal even by the standard of evil) have a very long start. +Where ordinary wrong is made unintelligible, extraordinary wrong can +count on remaining more unintelligible still; especially among those who +live in such an atmosphere of long words. It is a cruel comment on the +purity of the Victorian Age, that the age ended (save for the bursting +of a single scandal) in a thing being everywhere called "Art," "The +Greek Spirit," "The Platonic Ideal" and so on--which any navvy mending +the road outside would have stamped with a word as vile and as vulgar as +it deserved. + +This reticence, right or wrong, may have been connected with the +participation of women with men in the matter of fiction. It is an +important point: the sexes can only be coarse separately. It was +certainly also due, as I have already suggested, to the treaty between +the rich _bourgeoisie_ and the old aristocracy, which both had to make, +for the common and congenial purpose of keeping the English people +down. But it was due much more than this to a general moral atmosphere +in the Victorian Age. It is impossible to express that spirit except by +the electric bell of a name. It was latitudinarian, and yet it was +limited. It could be content with nothing less than the whole cosmos: +yet the cosmos with which it was content was small. It is false to say +it was without humour: yet there was something by instinct unsmiling in +it. It was always saying solidly that things were "enough"; and proving +by that sharpness (as of the shutting of a door) that they were not +enough. It took, I will not say its pleasures, but even its +emancipations, sadly. Definitions seem to escape this way and that in +the attempt to locate it as an idea. But every one will understand me if +I call it George Eliot. + +I begin with this great woman of letters for both the two reasons +already mentioned. She represents the rationalism of the old Victorian +Age at its highest. She and Mill are like two great mountains at the end +of that long, hard chain which is the watershed of the Early Victorian +time. They alone rise high enough to be confused among the clouds--or +perhaps confused among the stars. They certainly were seeking truth, as +Newman and Carlyle were; the slow slope of the later Victorian vulgarity +does not lower their precipice and pinnacle. But I begin with this name +also because it emphasises the idea of modern fiction as a fresh and +largely a female thing. The novel of the nineteenth century was female; +as fully as the novel of the eighteenth century was male. It is quite +certain that no woman could have written _Roderick Random_. It is not +quite so certain that no woman could have written _Esmond_. The strength +and subtlety of woman had certainly sunk deep into English letters when +George Eliot began to write. + +Her originals and even her contemporaries had shown the feminine power +in fiction as well or better than she. Charlotte Brontë, understood +along her own instincts, was as great; Jane Austen was greater. The +latter comes into our present consideration only as that most +exasperating thing, an ideal unachieved. It is like leaving an +unconquered fortress in the rear. No woman later has captured the +complete common sense of Jane Austen. She could keep her head, while all +the after women went about looking for their brains. She could describe +a man coolly; which neither George Eliot nor Charlotte Brontë could do. +She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what +she did not know--like a sound agnostic. But she belongs to a vanished +world before the great progressive age of which I write. + +One of the characteristics of the central Victorian spirit was a +tendency to substitute a certain more or less satisfied seriousness for +the extremes of tragedy and comedy. This is marked by a certain change +in George Eliot; as it is marked by a certain limitation or moderation +in Dickens. Dickens was the People, as it was in the eighteenth century +and still largely is, in spite of all the talk for and against Board +School Education: comic, tragic, realistic, free-spoken, far looser in +words than in deeds. It marks the silent strength and pressure of the +spirit of the Victorian middle class that even to Dickens it never +occurred to revive the verbal coarseness of Smollett or Swift. The other +proof of the same pressure is the change in George Eliot. She was not a +genius in the elemental sense of Dickens; she could never have been +either so strong or so soft. But she did originally represent some of +the same popular realities: and her first books (at least as compared +with her latest) were full of sound fun and bitter pathos. Mr. Max +Beerbohm has remarked (in his glorious essay called _Ichabod_, I think), +that Silas Marner would not have forgotten his miserliness if George +Eliot had written of him in her maturity. I have a great regard for Mr. +Beerbohm's literary judgments; and it may be so. But if literature +means anything more than a cold calculation of the chances, if there is +in it, as I believe, any deeper idea of detaching the spirit of life +from the dull obstacles of life, of permitting human nature really to +reveal itself as human, if (to put it shortly) literature has anything +on earth to do with being _interesting_--then I think we would rather +have a few more Marners than that rich maturity that gave us the +analysed dust-heaps of _Daniel Deronda_. + +In her best novels there is real humour, of a cool sparkling sort; there +is a strong sense of substantial character that has not yet degenerated +into psychology; there is a great deal of wisdom, chiefly about women; +indeed there is almost every element of literature except a certain +indescribable thing called _glamour_; which was the whole stock-in-trade +of the Brontës, which we feel in Dickens when Quilp clambers amid rotten +wood by the desolate river; and even in Thackeray when Esmond with his +melancholy eyes wanders like some swarthy crow about the dismal avenues +of Castlewood. Of this quality (which some have called, but hastily, the +essential of literature) George Eliot had not little but nothing. Her +air is bright and intellectually even exciting; but it is like the air +of a cloudless day on the parade at Brighton. She sees people clearly, +but not through an atmosphere. And she can conjure up storms in the +conscious, but not in the subconscious mind. + +It is true (though the idea should not be exaggerated) that this +deficiency was largely due to her being cut off from all those +conceptions that had made the fiction of a Muse; the deep idea that +there are really demons and angels behind men. Certainly the increasing +atheism of her school spoilt her own particular imaginative talent: she +was far less free when she thought like Ladislaw than when she thought +like Casaubon. It also betrayed her on a matter specially requiring +common sense; I mean sex. There is nothing that is so profoundly false +as rationalist flirtation. Each sex is trying to be both sexes at once; +and the result is a confusion more untruthful than any conventions. This +can easily be seen by comparing her with a greater woman who died before +the beginning of our present problem. Jane Austen was born before those +bonds which (we are told) protected woman from truth, were burst by the +Brontës or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that +Jane Austen knew much more about men than either of them. Jane Austen +may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth +that was protected from her. When Darcy, in finally confessing his +faults, says, "I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice +_though not in theory_," he gets nearer to a complete confession of the +intelligent male than ever was even hinted by the Byronic lapses of the +Brontës' heroes or the elaborate exculpations of George Eliot's. Jane +Austen, of course, covered an infinitely smaller field than any of her +later rivals; but I have always believed in the victory of small +nationalities. + +The Brontës suggest themselves here; because their superficial +qualities, the qualities that can be seized upon in satire, were in this +an exaggeration of what was, in George Eliot, hardly more than an +omission. There was perhaps a time when Mr. Rawjester was more widely +known than Mr. Rochester. And certainly Mr. Rochester (to adopt the +diction of that other eminent country gentleman, Mr. Darcy) was simply +individualistic not only in practice, but in theory. Now any one may be +so in practice: but a man who is simply individualistic in theory must +merely be an ass. Undoubtedly the Brontës exposed themselves to some +misunderstanding by thus perpetually making the masculine creature much +more masculine than he wants to be. Thackeray (a man of strong though +sleepy virility) asked in his exquisite plaintive way: "Why do our lady +novelists make the men bully the women?" It is, I think, unquestionably +true that the Brontës treated the male as an almost anarchic thing +coming in from outside nature; much as people on this planet regard a +comet. Even the really delicate and sustained comedy of Paul Emanuel is +not quite free from this air of studying something alien. The reply may +be made that the women in men's novels are equally fallacious. The reply +is probably just. + +What the Brontës really brought into fiction was exactly what Carlyle +brought into history; the blast of the mysticism of the North. They were +of Irish blood settled on the windy heights of Yorkshire; in that +country where Catholicism lingered latest, but in a superstitious form; +where modern industrialism came earliest and was more superstitious +still. The strong winds and sterile places, the old tyranny of barons +and the new and blacker tyranny of manufacturers, has made and left that +country a land of barbarians. All Charlotte Brontë's earlier work is +full of that sullen and unmanageable world; moss-troopers turned +hurriedly into miners; the last of the old world forced into supporting +the very first crudities of the new. In this way Charlotte Brontë +represents the Victorian settlement in a special way. The Early +Victorian Industrialism is to George Eliot and to Charlotte Brontë, +rather as the Late Victorian Imperialism would have been to Mrs. Humphry +Ward in the centre of the empire and to Miss Olive Schreiner at the edge +of it. The real strength there is in characters like Robert Moore, when +he is dealing with anything except women, is the romance of industry in +its first advance: a romance that has not remained. On such fighting +frontiers people always exaggerate the strong qualities the masculine +sex does possess, and always add a great many strong qualities that it +does not possess. That is, briefly, all the reason in the Brontës on +this special subject: the rest is stark unreason. It can be most clearly +seen in that sister of Charlotte Brontë's who has achieved the real +feat of remaining as a great woman rather than a great writer. There is +really, in a narrow but intense way, a tradition of Emily Brontë: as +there is a tradition of St. Peter or Dr. Johnson. People talk as if they +had known her, apart from her works. She must have been something more +than an original person; perhaps an origin. But so far as her written +works go she enters English letters only as an original person--and +rather a narrow one. Her imagination was sometimes superhuman--always +inhuman. _Wuthering Heights_ might have been written by an eagle. She is +the strongest instance of these strong imaginations that made the other +sex a monster: for Heathcliffe fails as a man as catastrophically as he +succeeds as a demon. I think Emily Brontë was further narrowed by the +broadness of her religious views; but never, of course, so much as +George Eliot. + +In any case, it is Charlotte Brontë who enters Victorian literature. The +shortest way of stating her strong contribution is, I think, this: that +she reached the highest romance through the lowest realism. She did not +set out with Amadis of Gaul in a forest or with Mr. Pickwick in a comic +club. She set out with herself, with her own dingy clothes, and +accidental ugliness, and flat, coarse, provincial household; and +forcibly fused all such muddy materials into a spirited fairy-tale. If +the first chapters on the home and school had not proved how heavy and +hateful _sanity_ can be, there would really be less point in the +insanity of Mr. Rochester's wife--or the not much milder insanity of +Mrs. Rochester's husband. She discovered the secret of hiding the +sensational in the commonplace: and _Jane Eyre_ remains the best of her +books (better even than _Villette_) because while it is a human document +written in blood, it is also one of the best blood-and-thunder detective +stories in the world. + +But while Emily Brontë was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and +while Charlotte Brontë was at best like that warmer and more domestic +thing, a house on fire--they do connect themselves with the calm of +George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the +feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would have felt +rather ill if they had seen the things they foreran. This notion of a +hazy anticipation of after history has been absurdly overdone: as when +men connect Chaucer with the Reformation; which is like connecting Homer +with the Syracusan Expedition. But it is to some extent true that all +these great Victorian women had a sort of unrest in their souls. And the +proof of it is that (after what I will claim to call the healthier time +of Dickens and Thackeray) it began to be admitted by the great Victorian +men. If there had not been something in that irritation, we should +hardly have had to speak in these pages of _Diana of the Crossways_ or +of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. To what this strange and very local sex +war has been due I shall not ask, because I have no answer. That it was +due to votes or even little legal inequalities about marriage, I feel +myself here too close to realities even to discuss. My own guess is that +it has been due to the great neglect of the military spirit by the male +Victorians. The woman felt obscurely that she was still running her +mortal risk, while the man was not still running his. But I know nothing +about it; nor does anybody else. + +In so short a book on so vast, complex and living a subject, it is +impossible to drop even into the second rank of good authors, whose name +is legion; but it is impossible to leave that considerable female force +in fiction which has so largely made the very nature of the modern +novel, without mentioning two names which almost brought that second +rank up to the first rank. They were at utterly opposite poles. The one +succeeded by being a much mellower and more Christian George Eliot; the +other succeeded by being a much more mad and unchristian Emily Brontë. +But Mrs. Oliphant and the author calling herself "Ouida" both forced +themselves well within the frontier of fine literature. _The Beleaguered +City_ is literature in its highest sense; the other works of its author +tend to fall into fiction in its best working sense. Mrs. Oliphant was +infinitely saner in that city of ghosts than the cosmopolitan Ouida ever +was in any of the cities of men. Mrs. Oliphant would never have dared to +discover, either in heaven or hell, such a thing as a hairbrush with its +back encrusted with diamonds. But though Ouida was violent and weak +where Mrs. Oliphant might have been mild and strong, her own triumphs +were her own. She had a real power of expressing the senses through her +style; of conveying the very heat of blue skies or the bursting of +palpable pomegranates. And just as Mrs. Oliphant transfused her more +timid Victorian tales with a true and intense faith in the Christian +mystery--so Ouida, with infinite fury and infinite confusion of +thought, did fill her books with Byron and the remains of the French +Revolution. In the track of such genius there has been quite an +accumulation of true talent as in the children's tales of Mrs. Ewing, +the historical tales of Miss Yonge, the tales of Mrs. Molesworth, and so +on. On a general review I do not think I have been wrong in taking the +female novelists first. I think they gave its special shape, its +temporary twist, to the Victorian novel. + +Nevertheless it is a shock (I almost dare to call it a relief) to come +back to the males. It is the more abrupt because the first name that +must be mentioned derives directly from the mere maleness of the Sterne +and Smollett novel. I have already spoken of Dickens as the most homely +and instinctive, and therefore probably the heaviest, of all the +onslaughts made on the central Victorian satisfaction. There is +therefore the less to say of him here, where we consider him only as a +novelist; but there is still much more to say than can even conceivably +be said. Dickens, as we have stated, inherited the old comic, rambling +novel from Smollett and the rest. Dickens, as we have also stated, +consented to expurgate that novel. But when all origins and all +restraints have been defined and allowed for, the creature that came out +was such as we shall not see again. Smollett was coarse; but Smollett +was also cruel. Dickens was frequently horrible; he was never cruel. The +art of Dickens was the most exquisite of arts: it was the art of +enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a very human writer, had to be a very +human being; he had his faults and sensibilities in a strong degree; and +I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed everybody in his daily +life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and everybody has enjoyed +everybody in those books even till to-day. His books are full of baffled +villains stalking out or cowardly bullies kicked downstairs. But the +villains and the cowards are such delightful people that the reader +always hopes the villain will put his head through a side window and +make a last remark; or that the bully will say one thing more, even from +the bottom of the stairs. The reader really hopes this; and he cannot +get rid of the fancy that the author hopes so too. I cannot at the +moment recall that Dickens ever killed a comic villain, except Quilp, +who was deliberately made even more villainous than comic. There can be +no serious fears for the life of Mr. Wegg in the muckcart; though Mr. +Pecksniff fell to be a borrower of money, and Mr. Mantalini to turning a +mangle, the human race has the comfort of thinking they are still alive: +and one might have the rapture of receiving a begging letter from Mr. +Pecksniff, or even of catching Mr. Mantalini collecting the washing, if +one always lurked about on Monday mornings. This sentiment (the true +artist will be relieved to hear) is entirely unmoral. Mrs. Wilfer +deserved death much more than Mr. Quilp, for she had succeeded in +poisoning family life persistently, while he was (to say the least of +it) intermittent in his domesticity. But who can honestly say he does +not hope Mrs. Wilfer is still talking like Mrs. Wilfer--especially if it +is only in a book? This is the artistic greatness of Dickens, before and +after which there is really nothing to be said. He had the power of +creating people, both possible and impossible, who were simply precious +and priceless people; and anything subtler added to that truth really +only weakens it. + +The mention of Mrs. Wilfer (whom the heart is loth to leave) reminds one +of the only elementary ethical truth that is essential in the study of +Dickens. That is that he had broad or universal sympathies in a sense +totally unknown to the social reformers who wallow in such phrases. +Dickens (unlike the social reformers) really did sympathise with every +sort of victim of every sort of tyrant. He did truly pray for _all_ who +are desolate and oppressed. If you try to tie him to any cause narrower +than that Prayer Book definition, you will find you have shut out half +his best work. If, in your sympathy for Mrs. Quilp, you call Dickens the +champion of downtrodden woman, you will suddenly remember Mr. Wilfer, +and find yourself unable to deny the existence of downtrodden man. If in +your sympathy for Mr. Rouncewell you call Dickens the champion of a +manly middle-class Liberalism against Chesney Wold, you will suddenly +remember Stephen Blackpool--and find yourself unable to deny that Mr. +Rouncewell might be a pretty insupportable cock on his own dung-hill. If +in your sympathy for Stephen Blackpool you call Dickens a Socialist (as +does Mr. Pugh), and think of him as merely heralding the great +Collectivist revolt against Victorian Individualism and Capitalism, +which seemed so clearly to be the crisis at the end of this epoch--you +will suddenly remember the agreeable young Barnacle at the +Circumlocution Office: and you will be unable, for very shame, to +assert that Dickens would have trusted the poor to a State Department. +Dickens did not merely believe in the brotherhood of men in the weak +modern way; he was the brotherhood of men, and knew it was a brotherhood +in sin as well as in aspiration. And he was not only larger than the old +factions he satirised; he was larger than any of our great social +schools that have gone forward since he died. + +The seemingly quaint custom of comparing Dickens and Thackeray existed +in their own time, and no one will dismiss it with entire disdain who +remembers that the Victorian tradition was domestic and genuine, even +when it was hoodwinked and unworldly. There must have been some reason +for making this imaginary duel between two quite separate and quite +amiable acquaintances. And there is, after all, some reason for it. It +is not, as was once cheaply said, that Thackeray went in for truth, and +Dickens for mere caricature. There is a huge accumulation of truth, +down to the smallest detail, in Dickens: he seems sometimes a mere +mountain of facts. Thackeray, in comparison, often seems quite careless +and elusive; almost as if he did not quite know where all his characters +were. There is a truth behind the popular distinction; but it lies much +deeper. Perhaps the best way of stating it is this: that Dickens used +reality, while aiming at an effect of romance; while Thackeray used the +loose language and ordinary approaches of romance, while aiming at an +effect of reality. It was the special and splendid business of Dickens +to introduce us to people who would have been quite incredible if he had +not told us so much truth about them. It was the special and not less +splendid task of Thackeray to introduce us to people whom we knew +already. Paradoxically, but very practically, it followed that his +introductions were the longer of the two. When we hear of Aunt Betsy +Trotwood, we vividly envisage everything about her, from her gardening +gloves to her seaside residence, from her hard, handsome face to her +tame lunatic laughing at the bedroom window. It is all so minutely true +that she must be true also. We only feel inclined to walk round the +English coast until we find that particular garden and that particular +aunt. But when we turn from the aunt of Copperfield to the uncle of +Pendennis, we are more likely to run round the coast trying to find a +watering-place where he isn't than one where he is. The moment one sees +Major Pendennis, one sees a hundred Major Pendennises. It is not a +matter of mere realism. Miss Trotwood's bonnet and gardening tools and +cupboard full of old-fashioned bottles are quite as true in the +materialistic way as the Major's cuffs and corner table and toast and +newspaper. Both writers are realistic: but Dickens writes realism in +order to make the incredible credible. Thackeray writes it in order to +make us recognise an old friend. Whether we shall be pleased to meet the +old friend is quite another matter: I think we should be better pleased +to meet Miss Trotwood, and find, as David Copperfield did, a new friend, +a new world. But we recognise Major Pendennis even when we avoid him. +Henceforth Thackeray can count on our seeing him from his wig to his +well-blacked boots whenever he chooses to say "Major Pendennis paid a +call." Dickens, on the other hand, had to keep up an incessant +excitement about his characters; and no man on earth but he could have +kept it up. + +It may be said, in approximate summary, that Thackeray is the novelist +of memory--of our memories as well as his own. Dickens seems to expect +all his characters, like amusing strangers arriving at lunch: as if they +gave him not only pleasure, but surprise. But Thackeray is everybody's +past--is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of +dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished +conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed for ever +in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques +now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at +once the hundred ghosts of oneself. + +For this purpose Thackeray was equipped with a singularly easy and +sympathetic style, carved in slow soft curves where Dickens hacked out +his images with a hatchet. There was a sort of avuncular indulgence +about his attitude; what he called his "preaching" was at worst a sort +of grumbling, ending with the sentiment that boys will be boys and that +there's nothing new under the sun. He was not really either a cynic or a +_censor morum_; but (in another sense than Chaucer's) a gentle pardoner: +having seen the weaknesses he is sometimes almost weak about them. He +really comes nearer to exculpating Pendennis or Ethel Newcome than any +other author, who saw what he saw, would have been. The rare wrath of +such men is all the more effective; and there are passages in _Vanity +Fair_ and still more in _The Book of Snobs_, where he does make the +dance of wealth and fashion look stiff and monstrous, like a Babylonian +masquerade. But he never quite did it in such a way as to turn the +course of the Victorian Age. + +It may seem strange to say that Thackeray did not know enough of the +world; yet this was the truth about him in large matters of the +philosophy of life, and especially of his own time. He did not know the +way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian +epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news. In +one of his delightful asides he imagines two little clerks commenting +erroneously on the appearance of Lady Kew or Sir Brian Newcome in the +Park, and says: "How should Jones and Brown, who are not, _vous +comprenez, du monde_, understand these mysteries?" But I think Thackeray +knew quite as little about Jones and Brown as they knew about Newcome +and Kew; his world was _le monde_. Hence he seemed to take it for +granted that the Victorian compromise would last; while Dickens (who +knew his Jones and Brown) had already guessed that it would not. +Thackeray did not realise that the Victorian platform was a moving +platform. To take but one instance, he was a Radical like Dickens; all +really representative Victorians, except perhaps Tennyson, were +Radicals. But he seems to have thought of all reform as simple and +straightforward and all of a piece; as if Catholic Emancipation, the New +Poor Law, Free Trade and the Factory Acts and Popular Education were all +parts of one almost self-evident evolution of enlightenment. Dickens, +being in touch with the democracy, had already discovered that the +country had come to a dark place of divided ways and divided counsels. +In _Hard Times_ he realised Democracy at war with Radicalism; and +became, with so incompatible an ally as Ruskin, not indeed a Socialist, +but certainly an anti-Individualist. In _Our Mutual Friend_ he felt the +strength of the new rich, and knew they had begun to transform the +aristocracy, instead of the aristocracy transforming them. He knew that +Veneering had carried off Twemlow in triumph. He very nearly knew what +we all know to-day: that, so far from it being possible to plod along +the progressive road with more votes and more Free Trade, England must +either sharply become very much more democratic or as rapidly become +very much less so. + +There gathers round these two great novelists a considerable group of +good novelists, who more or less mirror their mid-Victorian mood. Wilkie +Collins may be said to be in this way a lesser Dickens and Anthony +Trollope a lesser Thackeray. Wilkie Collins is chiefly typical of his +time in this respect: that while his moral and religious conceptions +were as mechanical as his carefully constructed fictitious conspiracies, +he nevertheless informed the latter with a sort of involuntary mysticism +which dealt wholly with the darker side of the soul. For this was one +of the most peculiar of the problems of the Victorian mind. The idea of +the supernatural was perhaps at as low an ebb as it had ever +been--certainly much lower than it is now. But in spite of this, and in +spite of a certain ethical cheeriness that was almost _de rigueur_--the +strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the +Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They +might have ghost stories, but not saints' stories. They could trifle +with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the +pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that +the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for +example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ritual and +popular legend that has clustered round Christmas through all the +Christian ages, it is a truly extraordinary thing to reflect that +Dickens (wishing to have in _The Christmas Carol_ a little happy +supernaturalism by way of a change) actually had to make up a mythology +for himself. Here was one of the rare cases where Dickens, in a real and +human sense, did suffer from the lack of culture. For the rest, Wilkie +Collins is these two elements: the mechanical and the mystical; both +very good of their kind. He is one of the few novelists in whose case it +is proper and literal to speak of his "plots." He was a plotter; he went +about to slay Godfrey Ablewhite as coldly and craftily as the Indians +did. But he also had a sound though sinister note of true magic; as in +the repetition of the two white dresses in _The Woman in White_; or of +the dreams with their double explanations in _Armadale_. His ghosts do +walk. They are alive; and walk as softly as Count Fosco, but as solidly. +Finally, _The Moonstone_ is probably the best detective tale in the +world. + +Anthony Trollope, a clear and very capable realist, represents rather +another side of the Victorian spirit of comfort; its leisureliness, its +love of detail, especially of domestic detail; its love of following +characters and kindred from book to book and from generation to +generation. Dickens very seldom tried this latter experiment, and then +(as in _Master Humphrey's Clock_) unsuccessfully; those magnesium blazes +of his were too brilliant and glaring to be indefinitely prolonged. But +Thackeray was full of it; and we often feel that the characters in _The +Newcomes_ or _Philip_ might legitimately complain that their talk and +tale are being perpetually interrupted and pestered by people out of +other books. Within his narrower limits, Trollope was a more strict and +masterly realist than Thackeray, and even those who would call his +personages "types" would admit that they are as vivid as characters. It +was a bustling but a quiet world that he described: politics before the +coming of the Irish and the Socialists; the Church in the lull between +the Oxford Movement and the modern High Anglican energy. And it is +notable in the Victorian spirit once more that though his clergymen are +all of them real men and many of them good men, it never really occurs +to us to think of them as the priests of a religion. + +Charles Reade may be said to go along with these; and Disraeli and even +Kingsley; not because these three very different persons had anything +particular in common, but because they all fell short of the first rank +in about the same degree. Charles Reade had a kind of cold coarseness +about him, not morally but artistically, which keeps him out of the best +literature as such: but he is of importance to the Victorian development +in another way; because he has the harsher and more tragic note that has +come later in the study of our social problems. He is the first of the +angry realists. Kingsley's best books may be called boys' books. There +is a real though a juvenile poetry in _Westward Ho!_ and though that +narrative, historically considered, is very much of a lie, it is a good, +thundering honest lie. There are also genuinely eloquent things in +_Hypatia_, and a certain electric atmosphere of sectarian excitement +that Kingsley kept himself in, and did know how to convey. He said he +wrote the book in his heart's blood. This is an exaggeration, but there +is a truth in it; and one does feel that he may have relieved his +feelings by writing it in red ink. As for Disraeli, his novels are able +and interesting considered as everything except novels, and are an +important contribution precisely because they are written by an alien +who did not take our politics so seriously as Trollope did. They are +important again as showing those later Victorian changes which men like +Thackeray missed. Disraeli did do something towards revealing the +dishonesty of our politics--even if he had done a good deal towards +bringing it about. + +Between this group and the next there hovers a figure very hard to +place; not higher in letters than these, yet not easy to class with +them; I mean Bulwer Lytton. He was no greater than they were; yet +somehow he seems to take up more space. He did not, in the ultimate +reckoning, do anything in particular: but he was a figure; rather as +Oscar Wilde was later a figure. You could not have the Victorian Age +without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his +dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere +polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round +interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic +swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real +touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always +turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in +a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost Oriental ostentation was used +by the young Thackeray as something on which to sharpen his new razor of +Victorian common sense. His pose as a dilettante satirist inflamed the +execrable temper of Tennyson, and led to those lively comparisons to a +bandbox and a lion in curlpapers. He interposed the glove of warning and +the tear of sensibility between us and the proper ending of _Great +Expectations_. Of his own books, by far the best are the really charming +comedies about _The Caxtons_ and _Kenelm Chillingly_; none of his other +works have a high literary importance now, with the possible exception +of _A Strange Story_; but his _Coming Race_ is historically interesting +as foreshadowing those novels of the future which were afterwards such a +weapon of the Socialists. Lastly, there was an element indefinable about +Lytton, which often is in adventurers; which amounts to a suspicion that +there was something in him after all. It rang out of him when he said to +the hesitating Crimean Parliament: "Destroy your Government and save +your army." + +With the next phase of Victorian fiction we enter a new world; the +later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways +weaker world in which we live to-day. The subtle and sad change that +was passing like twilight across the English brain at this time is very +well expressed in the fact that men have come to mention the great name +of Meredith in the same breath as Mr. Thomas Hardy. Both writers, +doubtless, disagreed with the orthodox religion of the ordinary English +village. Most of us have disagreed with that religion until we made the +simple discovery that it does not exist. But in any age where ideas +could be even feebly disentangled from each other, it would have been +evident at once that Meredith and Hardy were, intellectually speaking, +mortal enemies. They were much more opposed to each other than Newman +was to Kingsley; or than Abelard was to St. Bernard. But then they +collided in a sceptical age, which is like colliding in a London fog. +There can never be any clear controversy in a sceptical age. + +Nevertheless both Hardy and Meredith did mean something; and they did +mean diametrically opposite things. Meredith was perhaps the only man +in the modern world who has almost had the high honour of rising out of +the low estate of a Pantheist into the high estate of a Pagan. A Pagan +is a person who can do what hardly any person for the last two thousand +years could do: a person who can take Nature naturally. It is due to +Meredith to say that no one outside a few of the great Greeks has ever +taken Nature so naturally as he did. And it is also due to him to say +that no one outside Colney Hatch ever took Nature so unnaturally as it +was taken in what Mr. Hardy has had the blasphemy to call Wessex Tales. +This division between the two points of view is vital; because the turn +of the nineteenth century was a very sharp one; by it we have reached +the rapids in which we find ourselves to-day. + +Meredith really is a Pantheist. You can express it by saying that God is +the great All: you can express it much more intelligently by saying that +Pan is the great god. But there is some sense in it, and the sense is +this: that some people believe that this world is sufficiently good at +bottom for us to trust ourselves to it without very much knowing why. It +is the whole point in most of Meredith's tales that there is something +behind us that often saves us when we understand neither it nor +ourselves. He sometimes talked mere intellectualism about women: but +that is because the most brilliant brains can get tired. Meredith's +brain was quite tired when it wrote some of its most quoted and least +interesting epigrams: like that about passing Seraglio Point, but not +doubling Cape Turk. Those who can see Meredith's mind in that are with +those who can see Dickens' mind in Little Nell. Both were chivalrous +pronouncements on behalf of oppressed females: neither has any earthly +meaning as ideas. + +But what Meredith did do for women was not to emancipate them (which +means nothing) but to express them, which means a great deal. And he +often expressed them right, even when he expressed himself wrong. Take, +for instance, that phrase so often quoted: "Woman will be the last thing +civilised by man." Intellectually it is something worse than false; it +is the opposite of what he was always attempting to say. So far from +admitting any equality in the sexes, it logically admits that a man may +use against a woman any chains or whips he has been in the habit of +using against a tiger or a bear. He stood as the special champion of +female dignity: but I cannot remember any author, Eastern or Western, +who has so calmly assumed that man is the master and woman merely the +material, as Meredith really does in this phrase. Any one who knows a +free woman (she is generally a married woman) will immediately be +inclined to ask two simple and catastrophic questions, first: "Why +should woman be civilised?" and, second: "Why, if she is to be +civilised, should she be civilised by man?" In the mere intellectualism +of the matter, Meredith seems to be talking the most brutal sex +mastery: he, at any rate, has not doubled Cape Turk, nor even passed +Seraglio Point. Now why is it that we all really feel that this +Meredithian passage is not so insolently masculine as in mere logic it +would seem? I think it is for this simple reason: that there is +something about Meredith making us feel that it is not woman he +disbelieves in, but civilisation. It is a dark undemonstrated feeling +that Meredith would really be rather sorry if woman were civilised by +man--or by anything else. When we have got that, we have got the real +Pagan--the man that does believe in Pan. + +It is proper to put this philosophic matter first, before the æsthetic +appreciation of Meredith, because with Meredith a sort of passing bell +has rung and the Victorian orthodoxy is certainly no longer safe. +Dickens and Carlyle, as we have said, rebelled against the orthodox +compromise: but Meredith has escaped from it. Cosmopolitanism, +Socialism, Feminism are already in the air; and Queen Victoria has +begun to look like Mrs. Grundy. But to escape from a city is one thing: +to choose a road is another. The free-thinker who found himself outside +the Victorian city, found himself also in the fork of two very different +naturalistic paths. One of them went upwards through a tangled but +living forest to lonely but healthy hills: the other went down to a +swamp. Hardy went down to botanise in the swamp, while Meredith climbed +towards the sun. Meredith became, at his best, a sort of daintily +dressed Walt Whitman: Hardy became a sort of village atheist brooding +and blaspheming over the village idiot. It is largely because the +free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they +want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their +small but sincere movement has failed. + +For the duel is deadly; and any agnostic who wishes to be anything more +than a Nihilist must sympathise with one version of nature or the +other. The God of Meredith is impersonal; but he is often more healthy +and kindly than any of the persons. That of Thomas Hardy is almost made +personal by the intense feeling that he is poisonous. Nature is always +coming in to save Meredith's women; Nature is always coming in to betray +and ruin Hardy's. It has been said that if God had not existed it would +have been necessary to invent Him. But it is not often, as in Mr. +Hardy's case, that it is necessary to invent Him in order to prove how +unnecessary (and undesirable) He is. But Mr. Hardy is anthropomorphic +out of sheer atheism. He personifies the universe in order to give it a +piece of his mind. But the fight is unequal for the old philosophical +reason: that the universe had already given Mr. Hardy a piece of _its_ +mind to fight with. One curious result of this divergence in the two +types of sceptic is this: that when these two brilliant novelists break +down or blow up or otherwise lose for a moment their artistic +self-command, they are both equally wild, but wild in opposite +directions. Meredith shows an extravagance in comedy which, if it were +not so complicated, every one would call broad farce. But Mr. Hardy has +the honour of inventing a new sort of game, which may be called the +extravagance of depression. The placing of the weak lover and his new +love in such a place that they actually see the black flag announcing +that Tess has been hanged is utterly inexcusable in art and probability; +it is a cruel practical joke. But it is a practical joke at which even +its author cannot brighten up enough to laugh. + +But it is when we consider the great artistic power of these two +writers, with all their eccentricities, that we see even more clearly +that free-thought was, as it were, a fight between finger-posts. For it +is the remarkable fact that it was the man who had the healthy and manly +outlook who had the crabbed and perverse style; it was the man who had +the crabbed and perverse outlook who had the healthy and manly style. +The reader may well have complained of paradox when I observed above +that Meredith, unlike most neo-Pagans, did in his way take Nature +naturally. It may be suggested, in tones of some remonstrance, that +things like "though pierced by the cruel acerb," or "thy fleetingness is +bigger in the ghost," or "her gabbling grey she eyes askant," or "sheer +film of the surface awag" are not taking Nature naturally. And this is +true of Meredith's style, but it is not true of his spirit; nor even, +apparently, of his serious opinions. In one of the poems I have quoted +he actually says of those who live nearest to that Nature he was always +praising-- + + "Have they but held her laws and nature dear, + They mouth no sentence of inverted wit"; + +which certainly was what Meredith himself was doing most of the time. +But a similar paradox of the combination of plain tastes with twisted +phrases can also be seen in Browning. Something of the same can be seen +in many of the cavalier poets. I do not understand it: it may be that +the fertility of a cheerful mind crowds everything, so that the tree is +entangled in its own branches; or it may be that the cheerful mind cares +less whether it is understood or not; as a man is less articulate when +he is humming than when he is calling for help. + +Certainly Meredith suffers from applying a complex method to men and +things he does not mean to be complex; nay, honestly admires for being +simple. The conversations between Diana and Redworth fail of their full +contrast because Meredith can afford the twopence for Diana coloured, +but cannot afford the penny for Redworth plain. Meredith's ideals were +neither sceptical nor finicky: but they can be called insufficient. He +had, perhaps, over and above his honest Pantheism two convictions +profound enough to be called prejudices. He was probably of Welsh +blood, certainly of Celtic sympathies, and he set himself more swiftly +though more subtly than Ruskin or Swinburne to undermining the enormous +complacency of John Bull. He also had a sincere hope in the strength of +womanhood, and may be said, almost without hyperbole, to have begotten +gigantic daughters. He may yet suffer for his chivalric interference as +many champions do. I have little doubt that when St. George had killed +the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. But certainly neither +of these two vital enthusiasms touched the Victorian trouble. The +disaster of the modern English is not that they are not Celtic, but that +they are not English. The tragedy of the modern woman is not that she is +not allowed to follow man, but that she follows him far too slavishly. +This conscious and theorising Meredith did not get very near his problem +and is certainly miles away from ours. But the other Meredith was a +creator; which means a god. That is true of him which is true of so +different a man as Dickens, that all one can say of him is that he is +full of good things. A reader opening one of his books feels like a +schoolboy opening a hamper which he knows to have somehow cost a hundred +pounds. He may be more bewildered by it than by an ordinary hamper; but +he gets the impression of a real richness of thought; and that is what +one really gets from such riots of felicity as _Evan Harrington_ or +_Harry Richmond_. His philosophy may be barren, but he was not. And the +chief feeling among those that enjoy him is a mere wish that more people +could enjoy him too. + +I end here upon Hardy and Meredith; because this parting of the ways to +open optimism and open pessimism really was the end of the Victorian +peace. There are many other men, very nearly as great, on whom I might +delight to linger: on Shorthouse, for instance, who in one way goes with +Mrs. Browning or Coventry Patmore. I mean that he has a wide culture, +which is called by some a narrow religion. When we think what even the +best novels about cavaliers have been (written by men like Scott or +Stevenson) it is a wonderful thing that the author of _John Inglesant_ +could write a cavalier romance in which he forgot Cromwell but +remembered Hobbes. But Shorthouse is outside the period in fiction in +the same sort of way in which Francis Thompson is outside it in poetry. +He did not accept the Victorian basis. He knew too much. + +There is one more matter that may best be considered here, though +briefly: it illustrates the extreme difficulty of dealing with the +Victorian English in a book like this, because of their eccentricity; +not of opinions, but of character and artistic form. There are several +great Victorians who will not fit into any of the obvious categories I +employ; because they will not fit into anything, hardly into the world +itself. Where Germany or Italy would relieve the monotony of mankind by +paying serious respect to an artist, or a scholar, or a patriotic +warrior, or a priest--it was always the instinct of the English to do it +by pointing out a Character. Dr. Johnson has faded as a poet or a +critic, but he survives as a Character. Cobbett is neglected +(unfortunately) as a publicist and pamphleteer, but he is remembered as +a Character. Now these people continued to crop up through the Victorian +time; and each stands so much by himself that I shall end these pages +with a profound suspicion that I have forgotten to mention a Character +of gigantic dimensions. Perhaps the best example of such eccentrics is +George Borrow; who sympathised with unsuccessful nomads like the gipsies +while every one else sympathised with successful nomads like the Jews; +who had a genius like the west wind for the awakening of wild and casual +friendships and the drag and attraction of the roads. But whether George +Borrow ought to go into the section devoted to philosophers, or the +section devoted to novelists, or the section devoted to liars, nobody +else has ever known, even if he did. + +But the strongest case of this Victorian power of being abruptly +original in a corner can be found in two things: the literature meant +merely for children and the literature meant merely for fun. It is true +that these two very Victorian things often melted into each other (as +was the way of Victorian things), but not sufficiently to make it safe +to mass them together without distinction. Thus there was George +Macdonald, a Scot of genius as genuine as Carlyle's; he could write +fairy-tales that made all experience a fairy-tale. He could give the +real sense that every one had the end of an elfin thread that must at +last lead them into Paradise. It was a sort of optimist Calvinism. But +such really significant fairy-tales were accidents of genius. Of the +Victorian Age as a whole it is true to say that it did discover a new +thing; a thing called Nonsense. It may be doubted whether this thing was +really invented to please children. Rather it was invented by old +people trying to prove their first childhood, and sometimes succeeding +only in proving their second. But whatever else the thing was, it was +English and it was individual. Lewis Carroll gave mathematics a holiday: +he carried logic into the wild lands of illogicality. Edward Lear, a +richer, more romantic and therefore more truly Victorian buffoon, +improved the experiment. But the more we study it, the more we shall, I +think, conclude that it reposed on something more real and profound in +the Victorians than even their just and exquisite appreciation of +children. It came from the deep Victorian sense of humour. + +It may appear, because I have used from time to time the only possible +phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as +a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a +final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon--and a successful +one. He was a humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That +which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the +English--the duty of not taking him seriously. The strong and shrewd +Victorian humour appears in every slash of the pencil of Charles Keene; +in every undergraduate inspiration of Calverley or "Q." or J. K. S. They +had largely forgotten both art and arms: but the gods had left them +laughter. + +But the final proof that the Victorians were alive by this laughter, can +be found in the fact they could manage and master for a moment even the +cosmopolitan modern theatre. They could contrive to put "The Bab +Ballads" on the stage. To turn a private name into a public epithet is a +thing given to few: but the word "Gilbertian" will probably last longer +than the name Gilbert. + +It meant a real Victorian talent; that of exploding unexpectedly and +almost, as it seemed, unintentionally. Gilbert made good jokes by the +thousand; but he never (in his best days) made the joke that could +possibly have been expected of him. This is the last essential of the +Victorian. Laugh at him as a limited man, a moralist, conventionalist, +an opportunist, a formalist. But remember also that he was really a +humorist; and may still be laughing at you. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS + + +What was really unsatisfactory in Victorian literature is something much +easier to feel than to state. It was not so much a superiority in the +men of other ages to the Victorian men. It was a superiority of +Victorian men to themselves. The individual was unequal. Perhaps that is +why the society became unequal: I cannot say. They were lame giants; the +strongest of them walked on one leg a little shorter than the other. A +great man in any age must be a common man, and also an uncommon man. +Those that are only uncommon men are perverts and sowers of pestilence. +But somehow the great Victorian man was more and less than this. He was +at once a giant and a dwarf. When he has been sweeping the sky in +circles infinitely great, he suddenly shrivels into something +indescribably small. There is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from +a high creative mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when +George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There are also +moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without even the excuse of +sex. But in all these cases the alteration comes as a thing quite abrupt +and unreasonable. We do not feel this acute angle anywhere in Homer or +in Virgil or in Chaucer or in Shakespeare or in Dryden; such things as +they knew they knew. It is no disgrace to Homer that he had not +discovered Britain; or to Virgil that he had not discovered America; or +to Chaucer that he had not discovered the solar system; or to Dryden +that he had not discovered the steam-engine. But we do most frequently +feel, with the Victorians, that the very vastness of the number of +things they know illustrates the abrupt abyss of the things they do not +know. We feel, in a sort of way, that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Carlyle when he asks the Irish why they do not bestir themselves and +re-forest their country: saying not a word about the soaking up of every +sort of profit by the landlords which made that and every other Irish +improvement impossible. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Ruskin when he says, with a solemn visage, that building in iron is ugly +and unreal, but that the weightiest objection is that there is no +mention of it in the Bible; we feel as if he had just said he could find +no hair-brushes in Habakkuk. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man +like Thackeray when he proposes that people should be forcibly prevented +from being nuns, merely because he has no fixed intention of becoming a +nun himself. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like Tennyson, +when he talks of the French revolutions, the huge crusades that had +recreated the whole of his civilisation, as being "no graver than a +schoolboy's barring out." We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Browning to make spluttering and spiteful puns about the names Newman, +Wiseman, and Manning. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Newman when he confesses that for some time he felt as if he couldn't +come in to the Catholic Church, because of that dreadful Mr. Daniel +O'Connell, who had the vulgarity to fight for his own country. We feel +that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like Dickens, when he makes a blind +brute and savage out of a man like St. Dunstan; it sounds as if it were +not Dickens talking but Dombey. We feel it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Swinburne, when he has a Jingo fit and calls the Boer children in the +concentration camps "Whelps of treacherous dams whom none save we have +spared to starve and slay": we feel that Swinburne, for the first time, +really has become an immoral and indecent writer. All this is a certain +odd provincialism peculiar to the English in that great century: they +were in a kind of pocket; they appealed to too narrow a public opinion; +I am certain that no French or German men of the same genius made such +remarks. Renan was the enemy of the Catholic Church; but who can imagine +Renan writing of it as Kingsley or Dickens did? Taine was the enemy of +the French Revolution; but who can imagine Taine talking about it as +Tennyson or Newman talked? Even Matthew Arnold, though he saw this peril +and prided himself on escaping it, did not altogether escape it. There +must be (to use an Irishism) something shallow in the depths of any man +who talks about the _Zeitgeist_ as if it were a living thing. + +But this defect is very specially the key to the case of the two great +Victorian poets, Tennyson and Browning; the two spirited or beautiful +tunes, so to speak, to which the other events marched or danced. It was +especially so of Tennyson, for a reason which raises some of the most +real problems about his poetry. Tennyson, of course, owed a great deal +to Virgil. There is no question of plagiarism here; a debt to Virgil is +like a debt to Nature. But Tennyson was a provincial Virgil. In such +passages as that about the schoolboy's barring out he might be called a +suburban Virgil. I mean that he tried to have the universal balance of +all the ideas at which the great Roman had aimed: but he hadn't got hold +of all the ideas to balance. Hence his work was not a balance of truths, +like the universe. It was a balance of whims; like the British +Constitution. It is intensely typical of Tennyson's philosophical temper +that he was almost the only Poet Laureate who was not ludicrous. It is +not absurd to think of Tennyson as tuning his harp in praise of Queen +Victoria: that is, it is not absurd in the same sense as Chaucer's harp +hallowed by dedication to Richard II or Wordsworth's harp hallowed by +dedication to George IV is absurd. Richard's court could not properly +appreciate either Chaucer's daisies or his "devotion." George IV would +not have gone pottering about Helvellyn in search of purity and the +simple annals of the poor. But Tennyson did sincerely believe in the +Victorian compromise; and sincerity is never undignified. He really did +hold a great many of the same views as Queen Victoria, though he was +gifted with a more fortunate literary style. If Dickens is Cobbett's +democracy stirring in its grave, Tennyson is the exquisitely ornamental +extinguisher on the flame of the first revolutionary poets. England has +settled down; England has become Victorian. The compromise was +interesting, it was national and for a long time it was successful: +there is still a great deal to be said for it. But it was as freakish +and unphilosophic, as arbitrary and untranslatable, as a beggar's +patched coat or a child's secret language. Now it is here that Browning +had a certain odd advantage over Tennyson; which has, perhaps, somewhat +exaggerated his intellectual superiority to him. Browning's eccentric +style was more suitable to the poetry of a nation of eccentrics; of +people for the time being removed far from the centre of intellectual +interests. The hearty and pleasant task of expressing one's intense +dislike of something one doesn't understand is much more poetically +achieved by saying, in a general way "Grrr--you swine!" than it is by +laboured lines such as "the red fool-fury of the Seine." We all feel +that there is more of the man in Browning here; more of Dr. Johnson or +Cobbett. Browning is the Englishman taking himself wilfully, following +his nose like a bull-dog, going by his own likes and dislikes. We cannot +help feeling that Tennyson is the Englishman taking himself +seriously--an awful sight. One's memory flutters unhappily over a +certain letter about the Papal Guards written by Sir Willoughby +Patterne. It is here chiefly that Tennyson suffers by that very +Virgilian loveliness and dignity of diction which he put to the service +of such a small and anomalous national scheme. Virgil had the best news +to tell as well as the best words to tell it in. His world might be +sad; but it was the largest world one could live in before the coming of +Christianity. If he told the Romans to spare the vanquished and to war +down the mighty, at least he was more or less well informed about who +_were_ mighty and who _were_ vanquished. But when Tennyson wrote verses +like-- + + "Of freedom in her regal seat, + Of England; not the schoolboy heat, + The blind hysterics of the Celt" + +he quite literally did not know one word of what he was talking about; +he did not know what Celts are, or what hysterics are, or what freedom +was, or what regal was or even of what England was--in the living Europe +of that time. + +His religious range was very much wider and wiser than his political; +but here also he suffered from treating as true universality a thing +that was only a sort of lukewarm local patriotism. Here also he +suffered by the very splendour and perfection of his poetical powers. He +was quite the opposite of the man who cannot express himself; the +inarticulate singer who dies with all his music in him. He had a great +deal to say; but he had much more power of expression than was wanted +for anything he had to express. He could not think up to the height of +his own towering style. + +For whatever else Tennyson was, he was a great poet; no mind that feels +itself free, that is, above the ebb and flow of fashion, can feel +anything but contempt for the later effort to discredit him in that +respect. It is true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian +poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in +his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more +or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the +mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"--"Flits by +the sea-blue bird of March"--"Leafless ribs and iron horns"--"When the +long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"--in all these cases one word is the +keystone of an arch which would fall into ruin without it. But there are +other strong phrases that recall not Stevenson but rather their common +master, Virgil--"Tears from the depths of some divine despair"--"There +is fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate"--"Was a +great water; and the moon was full"--"God made Himself an awful rose of +dawn." These do not depend on a word but on an idea: they might even be +translated. It is also true, I think, that he was first and last a lyric +poet. He was always best when he expressed himself shortly. In long +poems he had an unfortunate habit of eventually saying very nearly the +opposite of what he meant to say. I will take only two instances of what +I mean. In the _Idylls of the King_, and in _In Memoriam_ (his two +sustained and ambitious efforts), particular phrases are always flashing +out the whole fire of the truth; the truth that Tennyson meant. But +owing to his English indolence, his English aristocratic +irresponsibility, his English vagueness in thought, he always managed to +make the main poem mean exactly what he did not mean. Thus, these two +lines which simply say that + + "Lancelot was the first in tournament, + But Arthur mightiest in the battle-field" + +do really express what he meant to express about Arthur being after all +"the highest, yet most human too; not Lancelot, nor another." But as his +hero is actually developed, we have exactly the opposite impression; +that poor old Lancelot, with all his faults, was much more of a man than +Arthur. He was a Victorian in the bad as well as the good sense; he +could not keep priggishness out of long poems. Or again, take the case +of _In Memoriam_. I will quote one verse (probably incorrectly) which +has always seemed to me splendid, and which does express what the whole +poem should express--but hardly does. + + "That we may lift from out the dust, + A voice as unto him that hears + A cry above the conquered years + Of one that ever works, and trust." + +The poem should have been a cry above the conquered years. It might well +have been that if the poet could have said sharply at the end of it, as +a pure piece of dogma, "I've forgotten every feature of the man's face: +I know God holds him alive." But under the influence of the mere +leisurely length of the thing, the reader _does_ rather receive the +impression that the wound has been healed only by time; and that the +victor hours _can_ boast that this is the man that loved and lost, but +all he was is overworn. This is not the truth; and Tennyson did not +intend it for the truth. It is simply the result of the lack of +something militant, dogmatic and structural in him: whereby he could not +be trusted with the trail of a very long literary process without +entangling himself like a kitten playing cat's-cradle. + +Browning, as above suggested, got on much better with eccentric and +secluded England because he treated it as eccentric and secluded; a +place where one could do what one liked. To a considerable extent he did +do what he liked; arousing not a few complaints; and many doubts and +conjectures as to why on earth he liked it. Many comparatively +sympathetic persons pondered upon what pleasure it could give any man to +write _Sordello_ or rhyme "end-knot" to "offend not." Nevertheless he +was no anarchist and no mystagogue; and even where he was defective, his +defect has commonly been stated wrongly. The two chief charges against +him were a contempt for form unworthy of an artist, and a poor pride in +obscurity. The obscurity is true, though not, I think, the pride in it; +but the truth about this charge rather rises out of the truth about the +other. The other charge is not true. Browning cared very much for form; +he cared very much for style. You may not happen to like his style; but +he did. To say that he had not enough mastery over form to express +himself perfectly like Tennyson or Swinburne is like criticising the +griffin of a mediæval gargoyle without even knowing that it is a +griffin; treating it as an infantile and unsuccessful attempt at a +classical angel. A poet indifferent to form ought to mean a poet who did +not care what form he used as long as he expressed his thoughts. He +might be a rather entertaining sort of poet; telling a smoking-room +story in blank verse or writing a hunting-song in the Spenserian stanza; +giving a realistic analysis of infanticide in a series of triolets; or +proving the truth of Immortality in a long string of limericks. Browning +certainly had no such indifference. Almost every poem of Browning, +especially the shortest and most successful ones, was moulded or graven +in some special style, generally grotesque, but invariably deliberate. +In most cases whenever he wrote a new song he wrote a new kind of song. +The new lyric is not only of a different metre, but of a different +shape. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as +that horrible one beginning "John, Master of the Temple of God," with +its weird choruses and creepy prose directions. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _Pisgah-sights_. No +one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _Time's +Revenges_. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same +style as _Meeting at Night_ and _Parting at Morning_. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _The Flight of the +Duchess_, or in the same style as _The Grammarian's Funeral_, or in the +same style as _A Star_, or in the same style as that astounding lyric +which begins abruptly "Some people hang pictures up." These metres and +manners were not accidental; they really do suit the sort of spiritual +experiment Browning was making in each case. Browning, then, was not +chaotic; he was deliberately grotesque. But there certainly was, over +and above this grotesqueness, a perversity and irrationality about the +man which led him to play the fool in the middle of his own poems; to +leave off carving gargoyles and simply begin throwing stones. His +curious complicated puns are an example of this: Hood had used the pun +to make a sentence or a sentiment especially pointed and clear. In +Browning the word with two meanings seems to mean rather less, if +anything, than the word with one. It also applies to his trick of +setting himself to cope with impossible rhymes. It may be fun, though it +is not poetry, to try rhyming to ranunculus; but even the fun +presupposes that you _do_ rhyme to it; and I will affirm, and hold under +persecution, that "Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle-us" does not rhyme to +it. + +The obscurity, to which he must in a large degree plead guilty, was, +curiously enough, the result rather of the gay artist in him than the +deep thinker. It is patience in the Browning students; in Browning it +was only impatience. He wanted to say something comic and energetic and +he wanted to say it quick. And, between his artistic skill in the +fantastic and his temperamental turn for the abrupt, the idea sometimes +flashed past unseen. But it is quite an error to suppose that these are +the dark mines containing his treasure. The two or three great and true +things he really had to say he generally managed to say quite simply. +Thus he really did want to say that God had indeed made man and woman +one flesh; that the sex relation was religious in this real sense that +even in our sin and despair we take it for granted and expect a sort of +virtue in it. The feelings of the bad husband about the good wife, for +instance, are about as subtle and entangled as any matter on this earth; +and Browning really had something to say about them. But he said it in +some of the plainest and most unmistakable words in all literature; as +lucid as a flash of lightning. "Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" +Or again, he did really want to say that death and such moral terrors +were best taken in a military spirit; he could not have said it more +simply than: "I was ever a fighter; one fight more, the best and the +last." He did really wish to say that human life was unworkable unless +immortality were implied in it every other moment; he could not have +said it more simply: "leave now to dogs and apes; Man has for ever." The +obscurities were not merely superficial, but often covered quite +superficial ideas. He was as likely as not to be most unintelligible of +all in writing a compliment in a lady's album. I remember in my boyhood +(when Browning kept us awake like coffee) a friend reading out the poem +about the portrait to which I have already referred, reading it in that +rapid dramatic way in which this poet must be read. And I was profoundly +puzzled at the passage where it seemed to say that the cousin +disparaged the picture, "while John scorns ale." I could not think what +this sudden teetotalism on the part of John had to do with the affair, +but I forgot to ask at the time and it was only years afterwards that, +looking at the book, I found it was "John's corns ail," a very +Browningesque way of saying he winced. Most of Browning's obscurity is +of that sort--the mistakes are almost as quaint as misprints--and the +Browning student, in that sense, is more a proof reader than a disciple. +For the rest his real religion was of the most manly, even the most +boyish sort. He is called an optimist; but the word suggests a +calculated contentment which was not in the least one of his vices. What +he really was was a romantic. He offered the cosmos as an adventure +rather than a scheme. He did not explain evil, far less explain it away; +he enjoyed defying it. He was a troubadour even in theology and +metaphysics: like the _Jongleurs de Dieu_ of St. Francis. He may be said +to have serenaded heaven with a guitar, and even, so to speak, tried to +climb there with a rope ladder. Thus his most vivid things are the +red-hot little love lyrics, or rather, little love dramas. He did one +really original and admirable thing: he managed the real details of +modern love affairs in verse, and love is the most realistic thing in +the world. He substituted the street with the green blind for the faded +garden of Watteau, and the "blue spirt of a lighted match" for the +monotony of the evening star. + +Before leaving him it should be added that he was fitted to deepen the +Victorian mind, but not to broaden it. With all his Italian sympathies +and Italian residence, he was not the man to get Victorian England out +of its provincial rut: on many things Kingsley himself was not so +narrow. His celebrated wife was wider and wiser than he in this sense; +for she was, however one-sidedly, involved in the emotions of central +European politics. She defended Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel; and +intelligently, as one conscious of the case against them both. As to +why it now seems simple to defend the first Italian King, but absurd to +defend the last French Emperor--well, the reason is sad and simple. It +is concerned with certain curious things called success and failure, and +I ought to have considered it under the heading of _The Book of Snobs_. +But Elizabeth Barrett, at least, was no snob: her political poems have +rather an impatient air, as if they were written, and even published, +rather prematurely--just before the fall of her idol. These old +political poems of hers are too little read to-day; they are amongst the +most sincere documents on the history of the times, and many modern +blunders could be corrected by the reading of them. And Elizabeth +Barrett had a strength really rare among women poets; the strength of +the phrase. She excelled in her sex, in epigram, almost as much as +Voltaire in his. Pointed phrases like: "Martyrs by the pang without the +palm"--or "Incense to sweeten a crime and myrrh to embitter a curse," +these expressions, which are witty after the old fashion of the conceit, +came quite freshly and spontaneously to her quite modern mind. But the +first fact is this, that these epigrams of hers were never so true as +when they turned on one of the two or three pivots on which contemporary +Europe was really turning. She is by far the most European of all the +English poets of that age; all of them, even her own much greater +husband, look local beside her. Tennyson and the rest are nowhere. Take +any positive political fact, such as the final fall of Napoleon. +Tennyson wrote these profoundly foolish lines-- + + "He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak + Madman!" + +as if the defeat of an English regiment were a violation of the laws of +Nature. Mrs. Browning knew no more facts about Napoleon, perhaps, than +Tennyson did; but she knew the truth. Her epigram on Napoleon's fall is +in one line + + "And kings crept out again to feel the sun." + +Talleyrand would have clapped his horrible old hands at that. Her +instinct about the statesman and the soldier was very like Jane Austen's +instinct for the gentleman and the man. It is not unnoticeable that as +Miss Austen spent most of her life in a village, Miss Barrett spent most +of her life on a sofa. The godlike power of guessing seems (for some +reason I do not understand) to grow under such conditions. Unfortunately +Mrs. Browning was like all the other Victorians in going a little lame, +as I have roughly called it, having one leg shorter than the other. But +her case was, in one sense, extreme. She exaggerated both ways. She was +too strong and too weak, or (as a false sex philosophy would express it) +too masculine and too feminine. I mean that she hit the centre of +weakness with almost the same emphatic precision with which she hit the +centre of strength. She could write finally of the factory wheels +"grinding life down from its mark," a strong and strictly true +observation. Unfortunately she could also write of Euripides "with his +droppings of warm tears." She could write in _A Drama of Exile_, a +really fine exposition, touching the later relation of Adam and the +animals: unfortunately the tears were again turned on at the wrong +moment at the main; and the stage direction commands a silence, only +broken by the dropping of angel's tears. How much noise is made by +angel's tears? Is it a sound of emptied buckets, or of garden hose, or +of mountain cataracts? That is the sort of question which Elizabeth +Barrett's extreme love of the extreme was always tempting people to ask. +Yet the question, as asked, does her a heavy historical injustice; we +remember all the lines in her work which were weak enough to be called +"womanly," we forget the multitude of strong lines that are strong +enough to be called "manly"; lines that Kingsley or Henley would have +jumped for joy to print in proof of their manliness. She had one of the +peculiar talents of true rhetoric, that of a powerful concentration. As +to the critic who thinks her poetry owed anything to the great poet who +was her husband, he can go and live in the same hotel with the man who +can believe that George Eliot owed anything to the extravagant +imagination of Mr. George Henry Lewes. So far from Browning inspiring or +interfering, he did not in one sense interfere enough. Her real +inferiority to him in literature is that he was consciously while she +was unconsciously absurd. + +It is natural, in the matter of Victorian moral change, to take +Swinburne as the next name here. He is the only poet who was also, in +the European sense, on the spot; even if, in the sense of the Gilbertian +song, the spot was barred. He also knew that something rather crucial +was happening to Christendom; he thought it was getting unchristened. It +is even a little amusing, indeed, that these two Pro-Italian poets +almost conducted a political correspondence in rhyme. Mrs. Browning +sternly reproached those who had ever doubted the good faith of the King +of Sardinia, whom she acclaimed as being truly a king. Swinburne, +lyrically alluding to her as "Sea-eagle of English feather," broadly +hinted that the chief blunder of that wild fowl had been her support of +an autocratic adventurer: "calling a crowned man royal, that was no more +than a king." But it is not fair, even in this important connection, to +judge Swinburne by _Songs Before Sunrise_. They were songs before a +sunrise that has never turned up. Their dogmatic assertions have for a +long time past stared starkly at us as nonsense. As, for instance, the +phrase "Glory to Man in the Highest, for man is the master of things"; +after which there is evidently nothing to be said, except that it is +not true. But even where Swinburne had his greater grip, as in that +grave and partly just poem _Before a Crucifix_, Swinburne, the most +Latin, the most learned, the most largely travelled of the Victorians, +still knows far less of the facts than even Mrs. Browning. The whole of +the poem, _Before a Crucifix_, breaks down by one mere mistake. It +imagines that the French or Italian peasants who fell on their knees +before the Crucifix did so because they were slaves. They fell on their +knees because they were free men, probably owning their own farms. +Swinburne could have found round about Putney plenty of slaves who had +no crucifixes: but only crucifixions. + +When we come to ethics and philosophy, doubtless we find Swinburne in +full revolt, not only against the temperate idealism of Tennyson, but +against the genuine piety and moral enthusiasm of people like Mrs. +Browning. But here again Swinburne is very English, nay, he is very +Victorian, for his revolt is illogical. For the purposes of intelligent +insurrection against priests and kings, Swinburne ought to have +described the natural life of man, free and beautiful, and proved from +this both the noxiousness and the needlessness of such chains. +Unfortunately Swinburne rebelled against Nature first and then tried to +rebel against religion for doing exactly the same thing that he had +done. His songs of joy are not really immoral; but his songs of sorrow +are. But when he merely hurls at the priest the assertion that flesh is +grass and life is sorrow, he really lays himself open to the restrained +answer, "So I have ventured, on various occasions, to remark." When he +went forth, as it were, as the champion of pagan change and pleasure, he +heard uplifted the grand choruses of his own _Atalanta_, in his rear, +refusing hope. + +The splendid diction that blazes through the whole of that drama, that +still dances exquisitely in the more lyrical _Poems and Ballads_, makes +some marvellous appearances in _Songs Before Sunrise_, and then mainly +falters and fades away, is, of course, the chief thing about Swinburne. +The style is the man; and some will add that it does not, thus +unsupported, amount to much of a man. But the style itself suffers some +injustice from those who would speak thus. The views expressed are often +quite foolish and often quite insincere; but the style itself is a +manlier and more natural thing than is commonly made out. It is not in +the least languorous or luxurious or merely musical and sensuous, as one +would gather from both the eulogies and the satires, from the conscious +and the unconscious imitations. On the contrary, it is a sort of +fighting and profane parody of the Old Testament; and its lines are made +of short English words like the short Roman swords. The first line of +one of his finest poems, for instance, runs, "I have lived long enough +to have seen one thing, that love hath an end." In that sentence only +one small "e" gets outside the monosyllable. Through all his +interminable tragedies, he was fondest of lines like-- + + "If ever I leave off to honour you + God give me shame; I were the worst churl born." + +The dramas were far from being short and dramatic; but the words really +were. Nor was his verse merely smooth; except his very bad verse, like +"the lilies and languors of virtue, to the raptures and roses of vice," +which both, in cheapness of form and foolishness of sentiment, may be +called the worst couplet in the world's literature. In his real poetry +(even in the same poem) his rhythm and rhyme are as original and +ambitious as Browning; and the only difference between him and Browning +is, not that he is smooth and without ridges, but that he always crests +the ridge triumphantly and Browning often does not-- + + "On thy bosom though many a kiss be, + There are none such as knew it of old. + Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, + Male ringlets or feminine gold, + That thy lips met with under the statue + Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves + From the eyes of the garden-god at you + Across the fig-leaves." + +Look at the rhymes in that verse, and you will see they are as stiff a +task as Browning's: only they are successful. That is the real strength +of Swinburne--a style. It was a style that nobody could really imitate; +and least of all Swinburne himself, though he made the attempt all +through his later years. He was, if ever there was one, an inspired +poet. I do not think it the highest sort of poet. And you never discover +who is an inspired poet until the inspiration goes. + +With Swinburne we step into the circle of that later Victorian influence +which was very vaguely called Æsthetic. Like all human things, but +especially Victorian things, it was not only complex but confused. +Things in it that were at one on the emotional side were flatly at war +on the intellectual. In the section of the painters, it was the allies +or pupils of Ruskin, pious, almost painfully exact, and copying mediæval +details rather for their truth than their beauty. In the section of the +poets it was pretty loose, Swinburne being the leader of the revels. But +there was one great man who was in both sections, a painter and a poet, +who may be said to bestride the chasm like a giant. It is in an odd and +literal sense true that the name of Rossetti is important here, for the +name implies the nationality. I have loosely called Carlyle and the +Brontës the romance from the North; the nearest to a general definition +of the Æsthetic movement is to call it the romance from the South. It is +that warm wind that had never blown so strong since Chaucer, standing in +his cold English April, had smelt the spring in Provence. The Englishman +has always found it easier to get inspiration from the Italians than +from the French; they call to each other across that unconquered castle +of reason. Browning's _Englishman in Italy_, Browning's _Italian in +England_, were both happier than either would have been in France. +Rossetti was the Italian in England, as Browning was the Englishman in +Italy; and the first broad fact about the artistic revolution Rossetti +wrought is written when we have written his name. But if the South lets +in warmth or heat, it also lets in hardness. The more the orange tree is +luxuriant in growth, the less it is loose in outline. And it is exactly +where the sea is slightly warmer than marble that it looks slightly +harder. This, I think, is the one universal power behind the Æsthetic +and Pre-Raphaelite movements, which all agreed in two things at least: +strictness in the line and strength, nay violence, in the colour. + +Rossetti was a remarkable man in more ways than one; he did not succeed +in any art; if he had he would probably never have been heard of. It was +his happy knack of half failing in both the arts that has made him a +success. If he had been as good a poet as Tennyson, he would have been a +poet who painted pictures. If he had been as good a painter as +Burne-Jones, he would have been a painter who wrote poems. It is odd to +note on the very threshold of the extreme art movement that this great +artist largely succeeded by not defining his art. His poems were too +pictorial. His pictures were too poetical. That is why they really +conquered the cold satisfaction of the Victorians, because they did mean +something, even if it was a small artistic thing. + +Rossetti was one with Ruskin, on the one hand, and Swinburne on the +other, in reviving the decorative instinct of the Middle Ages. While +Ruskin, in letters only, praised that decoration Rossetti and his +friends repeated it. They almost made patterns of their poems. That +frequent return of the refrain which was foolishly discussed by +Professor Nordau was, in Rossetti's case, of such sadness as sometimes +to amount to sameness. The criticism on him, from a mediæval point of +view, is not that he insisted on a chorus, but that he could not insist +on a jolly chorus. Many of his poems were truly mediæval, but they would +have been even more mediæval if he could ever have written such a +refrain as "Tally Ho!" or even "Tooral-ooral" instead of "Tall Troy's on +fire." With Rossetti goes, of course, his sister, a real poet, though +she also illustrated that Pre-Raphaelite's conflict of views that +covered their coincidence of taste. Both used the angular outlines, the +burning transparencies, the fixed but still unfathomable symbols of the +great mediæval civilisation; but Rossetti used the religious imagery (on +the whole) irreligiously, Christina Rossetti used it religiously but (on +the whole) so to make it seem a narrower religion. + +One poet, or, to speak more strictly, one poem, belongs to the same +general atmosphere and impulse as Swinburne; the free but languid +atmosphere of later Victorian art. But this time the wind blew from +hotter and heavier gardens than the gardens of Italy. Edward +Fitzgerald, a cultured eccentric, a friend of Tennyson, produced what +professed to be a translation of the Persian poet Omar, who wrote +quatrains about wine and roses and things in general. Whether the +Persian original, in its own Persian way, was greater or less than this +version I must not discuss here, and could not discuss anywhere. But it +is quite clear that Fitzgerald's work is much too good to be a good +translation. It is as personal and creative a thing as ever was written; +and the best expression of a bad mood, a mood that may, for all I know, +be permanent in Persia, but was certainly at this time particularly +fashionable in England. In the technical sense of literature it is one +of the most remarkable achievements of that age; as poetical as +Swinburne and far more perfect. In this verbal sense its most arresting +quality is a combination of something haunting and harmonious that flows +by like a river or a song, with something else that is compact and +pregnant like a pithy saying picked out in rock by the chisel of some +pagan philosopher. It is at once a tune that escapes and an inscription +that remains. Thus, alone among the reckless and romantic verses that +first rose in Coleridge or Keats, it preserves something also of the wit +and civilisation of the eighteenth century. Lines like "a Muezzin from +the tower of darkness cries," or "Their mouths are stopped with dust" +are successful in the same sense as "Pinnacled dim in the intense inane" +or "Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways." But-- + + "Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before + I swore; but was I sober when I swore?" + +is equally successful in the same sense as-- + + "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer + And without sneering teach the rest to sneer." + +It thus earned a right to be considered the complete expression of that +scepticism and sensual sadness into which later Victorian literature was +more and more falling away: a sort of bible of unbelief. For a cold fit +had followed the hot fit of Swinburne, which was of a feverish sort: he +had set out to break down without having, or even thinking he had, the +rudiments of rebuilding in him; and he effected nothing national even in +the way of destruction. The Tennysonians still walked past him as primly +as a young ladies' school--the Browningites still inked their eyebrows +and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning +himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy +from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century +sceptics did not really shake the respectable world and alter it, as the +eighteenth-century sceptics had done; but that was because the +eighteenth-century sceptics were something more than sceptics, and +believed in Greek tragedies, in Roman laws, in the Republic. The +Swinburnian sceptics had nothing to fight for but a frame of mind; and +when ordinary English people listened to it, they came to the conclusion +that it was a frame of mind they would rather hear about than +experience. But these later poets did, so to speak, spread their soul in +all the empty spaces; weaker brethren, disappointed artists, unattached +individuals, very young people, were sapped or swept away by these +songs; which, so far as any particular sense in them goes, were almost +songs without words. It is because there is something which is after all +indescribably manly, intellectual, firm about Fitzgerald's way of +phrasing the pessimism that he towers above the slope that was tumbling +down to the decadents. But it is still pessimism, a thing unfit for a +white man; a thing like opium, that may often be a poison and sometimes +a medicine, but never a food for us, who are driven by an inner command +not only to think but to live, not only to live but to grow, and not +only to grow but to build. + +And, indeed, we see the insufficiency of such sad extremes even in the +next name among the major poets; we see the Swinburnian parody of +mediævalism, the inverted Catholicism of the decadents, struggling to +get back somehow on its feet. The æsthetic school had, not quite +unjustly, the name of mere dilettanti. But it is fair to say that in the +next of them, a workman and a tradesman, we already feel something of +that return to real issues leading up to the real revolts that broke up +Victorianism at last. In the mere art of words, indeed, William Morris +carried much further than Swinburne or Rossetti the mere imitation of +stiff mediæval ornament. The other mediævalists had their modern +moments; which were (if they had only known it) much more mediæval than +their mediæval moments. Swinburne could write-- + + "We shall see Buonaparte the bastard + Kick heels with his throat in a rope." + +One has an uneasy feeling that William Morris would have written +something like-- + + "And the kin of the ill king Bonaparte + Hath a high gallows for all his part." + +Rossetti could, for once in a way, write poetry about a real woman and +call her "Jenny." One has a disturbed suspicion that Morris would have +called her "Jehanne." + +But all that seems at first more archaic and decorative about Morris +really arose from the fact that he was more virile and real than either +Swinburne or Rossetti. It arose from the fact that he really was, what +he so often called himself, a craftsman. He had enough masculine +strength to be tidy: that is, after the masculine manner, tidy about his +own trade. If his poems were too like wallpapers, it was because he +really could make wallpapers. He knew that lines of poetry ought to be +in a row, as palings ought to be in a row; and he knew that neither +palings nor poetry looks any the worse for being simple or even severe. +In a sense Morris was all the more creative because he felt the hard +limits of creation as he would have felt them if he were not working in +words but in wood; and if he was unduly dominated by the mere +conventions of the mediævals, it was largely because they were (whatever +else they were) the very finest fraternity of free workmen the world is +ever likely to see. + +The very things that were urged against Morris are in this sense part of +his ethical importance; part of the more promising and wholesome turn he +was half unconsciously giving to the movement of modern art. His hazier +fellow-Socialists blamed him because he made money; but this was at +least in some degree because he made other things to make money: it was +part of the real and refreshing fact that at last an æsthete had +appeared who could make something. If he was a capitalist, at least he +was what later capitalists cannot or will not be--something higher than +a capitalist, a tradesman. As compared with aristocrats like Swinburne +or aliens like Rossetti, he was vitally English and vitally Victorian. +He inherits some of that paradoxical glory which Napoleon gave +reluctantly to a nation of shopkeepers. He was the last of that nation; +he did not go out golfing: like that founder of the artistic shopman, +Samuel Richardson, "he kept his shop, and his shop kept him." The +importance of his Socialism can easily be exaggerated. Among other +lesser points, he was not a Socialist; he was a sort of Dickensian +anarchist. His instinct for titles was always exquisite. It is part of +his instinct of decoration: for on a page the title always looks +important and the printed mass of matter a mere dado under it. And no +one had ever nobler titles than _The Roots of the Mountains_ or _The +Wood at the End of the World_. The reader feels he hardly need read the +fairy-tale because the title is so suggestive. But, when all is said, he +never chose a better title than that of his social Utopia, _News from +Nowhere_. He wrote it while the last Victorians were already embarked on +their bold task of fixing the future--of narrating to-day what has +happened to-morrow. They named their books by cold titles suggesting +straight corridors of marble--titles like _Looking Backward_. But Morris +was an artist as well as an anarchist. _News from Nowhere_ is an +irresponsible title; and it is an irresponsible book. It does not +describe the problem solved; it does not describe wealth either wielded +by the State or divided equally among the citizens. It simply describes +an undiscovered country where every one feels good-natured all day. That +he could even dream so is his true dignity as a poet. He was the first +of the Æsthetes to smell mediævalism as a smell of the morning; and not +as a mere scent of decay. + +With him the poetry that had been peculiarly Victorian practically +ends; and, on the whole, it is a happy ending. There are many other +minor names of major importance; but for one reason or other they do not +derive from the schools that had dominated this epoch as such. Thus +Thompson, the author of _The City of Dreadful Night_, was a fine poet; +but his pessimism combined with a close pugnacity does not follow any of +the large but loose lines of the Swinburnian age. But he was a great +person--he knew how to be democratic in the dark. Thus Coventry Patmore +was a much greater person. He was bursting with ideas, like +Browning--and truer ideas as a rule. He was as eccentric and florid and +Elizabethan as Browning; and often in moods and metres that even +Browning was never wild enough to think of. No one will ever forget the +first time he read Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God +made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the +sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers asked for the +rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but +discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the +Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. +The Victorian English simply thought him an indecent sentimentalist, as +they did all the hot and humble religious diarists of Italy or Spain. +Something of the same fate followed the most powerful of that last +Victorian group who were called "Minor Poets." They numbered many other +fine artists: notably Mr. William Watson, who is truly Victorian in that +he made a manly attempt to tread down the decadents and return to the +right reason of Wordsworth-- + + "I have not paid the world + The evil and the insolent courtesy + Of offering it my baseness as a gift." + +But none of them were able even to understand Francis Thompson; his +sky-scraping humility, his mountains of mystical detail, his occasional +and unashamed weakness, his sudden and sacred blasphemies. Perhaps the +shortest definition of the Victorian Age is that he stood outside it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE + + +If it be curiously and carefully considered it will, I think, appear +more and more true that the struggle between the old spiritual theory +and the new material theory in England ended simply in a deadlock; and a +deadlock that has endured. It is still impossible to say absolutely that +England is a Christian country or a heathen country; almost exactly as +it was impossible when Herbert Spencer began to write. Separate elements +of both sorts are alive, and even increasingly alive. But neither the +believer nor the unbeliever has the impudence to call himself the +Englishman. Certainly the great Victorian rationalism has succeeded in +doing a damage to religion. It has done what is perhaps the worst of all +damages to religion. It has driven it entirely into the power of the +religious people. Men like Newman, men like Coventry Patmore, men who +would have been mystics in any case, were driven back upon being much +more extravagantly religious than they would have been in a religious +country. Men like Huxley, men like Kingsley, men like most Victorian +men, were equally driven back on being irreligious; that is, on doubting +things which men's normal imagination does not necessarily doubt. But +certainly the most final and forcible fact is that this war ended like +the battle of Sheriffmuir, as the poet says; they both did fight, and +both did beat, and both did run away. They have left to their +descendants a treaty that has become a dull torture. Men may believe in +immortality, and none of the men know why. Men may not believe in +miracles, and none of the men know why. The Christian Church had been +just strong enough to check the conquest of her chief citadels. The +rationalist movement had been just strong enough to conquer some of her +outposts, as it seemed, for ever. Neither was strong enough to expel the +other; and Victorian England was in a state which some call liberty and +some call lockjaw. + +But the situation can be stated another way. There came a time, roughly +somewhere about 1880, when the two great positive enthusiasms of Western +Europe had for the time exhausted each other--Christianity and the +French Revolution. About that time there used to be a sad and not +unsympathetic jest going about to the effect that Queen Victoria might +very well live longer than the Prince of Wales. Somewhat in the same +way, though the republican impulse was hardly a hundred years old and +the religious impulse nearly two thousand, yet as far as England was +concerned, the old wave and the new seemed to be spent at the same time. +On the one hand Darwin, especially through the strong journalistic +genius of Huxley, had won a very wide spread though an exceedingly +vague victory. I do not mean that Darwin's own doctrine was vague; his +was merely one particular hypothesis about how animal variety might have +arisen; and that particular hypothesis, though it will always be +interesting, is now very much the reverse of secure. But it is only in +the strictly scientific world and among strictly scientific men that +Darwin's detailed suggestion has largely broken down. The general public +impression that he had entirely proved his case (whatever it was) was +early arrived at, and still remains. It was and is hazily associated +with the negation of religion. But (and this is the important point) it +was also associated with the negation of democracy. The same +Mid-Victorian muddle-headedness that made people think that "evolution" +meant that we need not admit the supremacy of God, also made them think +that "survival" meant that we must admit the supremacy of men. Huxley +had no hand in spreading these fallacies; he was a fair fighter; and he +told his own followers, who spoke thus, most emphatically not to play +the fool. He said most strongly that his or any theory of evolution left +the old philosophical arguments for a creator, right or wrong, exactly +where they were before. He also said most emphatically that any one who +used the argument of Nature against the ideal of justice or an equal +law, was as senseless as a gardener who should fight on the side of the +ill weeds merely because they grew apace. I wish, indeed, that in such a +rude summary as this, I had space to do justice to Huxley as a literary +man and a moralist. He had a live taste and talent for the English +tongue, which he devoted to the task of keeping Victorian rationalism +rational. He did not succeed. As so often happens when a rather +unhealthy doubt is in the atmosphere, the strongest words of their great +captain could not keep the growing crowds of agnostics back from the +most hopeless and inhuman extremes of destructive thought. Nonsense not +yet quite dead about the folly of allowing the unfit to survive began +to be more and more wildly whispered. Such helpless specimens of +"advanced thought" are, of course, quite as inconsistent with Darwinism +as they are with democracy or with any other intelligent proposition +ever offered. But these unintelligent propositions were offered; and the +ultimate result was this rather important one: that the harshness of +Utilitarianism began to turn into downright tyranny. That beautiful +faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air +of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had +redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay--all that seemed slowly and +sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in +the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was +bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation +evaporated; the mean calculation remained. One could still calculate in +clear statistical tables, how many men lived, how many men died. One +must not ask how they lived; for that is politics. One must not ask how +they died; for that is religion. And religion and politics were ruled +out of all the Later Victorian debating clubs; even including the +debating club at Westminster. What third thing they were discussing, +which was neither religion nor politics, I do not know. I have tried the +experiment of reading solidly through a vast number of their records and +reviews and discussions; and still I do not know. The only third thing I +can think of to balance religion and politics is art; and no one well +acquainted with the debates at St. Stephen's will imagine that the art +of extreme eloquence was the cause of the confusion. None will maintain +that our political masters are removed from us by an infinite artistic +superiority in the choice of words. The politicians know nothing of +politics, which is their own affair: they know nothing of religion, +which is certainly not their affair: it may legitimately be said that +they have to do with nothing; they have reached that low and last level +where a man knows as little about his own claim, as he does about his +enemies'. In any case there can be no doubt about the effect of this +particular situation on the problem of ethics and science. The duty of +dragging truth out by the tail or the hind leg or any other corner one +can possibly get hold of, a perfectly sound duty in itself, had somehow +come into collision with the older and larger duty of knowing something +about the organism and ends of a creature; or, in the everyday phrase, +being able to make head or tail of it. This paradox pursued and +tormented the Victorians. They could not or would not see that humanity +repels or welcomes the railway-train, simply according to what people +come by it. They could not see that one welcomes or smashes the +telephone, according to what words one hears in it. They really seem to +have felt that the train could be a substitute for its own passengers; +or the telephone a substitute for its own voice. + +In any case it is clear that a change had begun to pass over scientific +inquiry, of which we have seen the culmination in our own day. There had +begun that easy automatic habit, of science as an oiled and +smooth-running machine, that habit of treating things as obviously +unquestionable, when, indeed, they are obviously questionable. This +began with vaccination in the Early Victorian Age; it extended to the +early licence of vivisection in its later age; it has found a sort of +fitting foolscap, or crown of crime and folly, in the thing called +Eugenics. In all three cases the point was not so much that the pioneers +had not proved their case; it was rather that, by an unexpressed rule of +respectability, they were not required to prove it. This rather abrupt +twist of the rationalistic mind in the direction of arbitrary power, +certainly weakened the Liberal movement from within. And meanwhile it +was being weakened by heavy blows from without. + +There is a week that is the turn of the year; there was a year that was +the turn of the century. About 1870 the force of the French Revolution +faltered and fell: the year that was everywhere the death of Liberal +ideas: the year when Paris fell: the year when Dickens died. While the +new foes of freedom, the sceptics and scientists, were damaging +democracy in ideas, the old foes of freedom, the emperors and the kings, +were damaging her more heavily in arms. For a moment it almost seemed +that the old Tory ring of iron, the Holy Alliance, had recombined +against France. But there was just this difference: that the Holy +Alliance was now not arguably, but almost avowedly, an Unholy Alliance. +It was an alliance between those who still thought they could deny the +dignity of man and those who had recently begun to have a bright hope of +denying even the dignity of God. Eighteenth-century Prussia was +Protestant and probably religious. Nineteenth-century Prussia was almost +utterly atheist. Thus the old spirit of liberty felt itself shut up at +both ends, that which was called progressive and that which was called +reactionary: barricaded by Bismarck with blood and iron and by Darwin by +blood and bones. The enormous depression which infects many excellent +people born about this time, probably has this cause. + +It was a great calamity that the freedom of Wilkes and the faith of Dr. +Johnson fought each other. But it was an even worse calamity that they +practically killed each other. They killed each other almost +simultaneously, like Herminius and Mamilius. Liberalism (in Newman's +sense) really did strike Christianity through headpiece and through +head; that is, it did daze and stun the ignorant and ill-prepared +intellect of the English Christian. And Christianity did smite +Liberalism through breastplate and through breast; that is, it did +succeed, through arms and all sorts of awful accidents, in piercing more +or less to the heart of the Utilitarian--and finding that he had none. +Victorian Protestantism had not head enough for the business; Victorian +Radicalism had not heart enough for the business. Down fell they dead +together, exactly as Macaulay's Lay says, and still stood all who saw +them fall almost until the hour at which I write. + +This coincident collapse of both religious and political idealism +produced a curious cold air of emptiness and real subconscious +agnosticism such as is extremely unusual in the history of mankind. It +is what Mr. Wells, with his usual verbal delicacy and accuracy, spoke of +as that ironical silence that follows a great controversy. It is what +people less intelligent than Mr. Wells meant by calling themselves _fin +de siècle_; though, of course, rationally speaking, there is no more +reason for being sad towards the end of a hundred years than towards the +end of five hundred fortnights. There was no arithmetical autumn, but +there was a spiritual one. And it came from the fact suggested in the +paragraphs above; the sense that man's two great inspirations had +failed him together. The Christian religion was much more dead in the +eighteenth century than it was in the nineteenth century. But the +republican enthusiasm was also much more alive. If their scepticism was +cold, and their faith even colder, their practical politics were wildly +idealistic; and if they doubted the kingdom of heaven, they were +gloriously credulous about the chances of it coming on earth. In the +same way the old pagan republican feeling was much more dead in the +feudal darkness of the eleventh or twelfth centuries, than it was even a +century later; but if creative politics were at their lowest, creative +theology was almost at its highest point of energy. + +The modern world, in fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen +between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the +cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediæval stool +that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the +two values as intensely valuable. It could not believe in the bonds that +bound men; but, then, neither could it believe in the men they bound. It +was always restrained in its hatred of slavery by a half remembrance of +its yet greater hatred of liberty. They were almost alone, I think, in +thus carrying to its extreme the negative attitude already noted in Miss +Arabella Allen. Anselm would have despised a civic crown, but he would +not have despised a relic. Voltaire would have despised a relic; but he +would not have despised a vote. We hardly find them both despised till +we come to the age of Oscar Wilde. + +These years that followed on that double disillusionment were like one +long afternoon in a rich house on a rainy day. It was not merely that +everybody believed that nothing would happen; it was also that everybody +believed that anything happening was even duller than nothing happening. +It was in this stale atmosphere that a few flickers of the old +Swinburnian flame survived; and were called Art. The great men of the +older artistic movement did not live in this time; rather they lived +through it. But this time did produce an interregnum of art that had a +truth of its own; though that truth was near to being only a consistent +lie. + +The movement of those called Æsthetes (as satirised in _Patience_) and +the movement of those afterwards called Decadents (satirised in Mr. +Street's delightful _Autobiography of a Boy_) had the same captain; or +at any rate the same bandmaster. Oscar Wilde walked in front of the +first procession wearing a sunflower, and in front of the second +procession wearing a green carnation. With the æsthetic movement and its +more serious elements, I deal elsewhere; but the second appearance of +Wilde is also connected with real intellectual influences, largely +negative, indeed, but subtle and influential. The mark in most of the +arts of this time was a certain quality which those who like it would +call "uniqueness of aspect," and those who do not like it "not quite +coming off." I mean the thing meant something from one standpoint; but +its mark was that the _smallest_ change of standpoint made it unmeaning +and unthinkable--a foolish joke. A beggar painted by Rembrandt is as +solid as a statue, however roughly he is sketched in; the soul can walk +all round him like a public monument. We see he would have other +aspects; and that they would all be the aspects of a beggar. Even if one +did not admit the extraordinary qualities in the painting, one would +have to admit the ordinary qualities in the sitter. If it is not a +masterpiece it is a man. But a nocturne by Whistler of mist on the +Thames is either a masterpiece or it is nothing; it is either a nocturne +or a nightmare of childish nonsense. Made in a certain mood, viewed +through a certain temperament, conceived under certain conventions, it +may be, it often is, an unreplaceable poem, a vision that may never be +seen again. But the moment it ceases to be a splendid picture it ceases +to be a picture at all. Or, again, if _Hamlet_ is not a great tragedy it +is an uncommonly good tale. The people and the posture of affairs would +still be there even if one thought that Shakespeare's moral attitude was +wrong. Just as one could imagine all the other sides of Rembrandt's +beggar, so, with the mind's eye (Horatio), one can see all four sides of +the castle of Elsinore. One might tell the tale from the point of view +of Laërtes or Claudius or Polonius or the gravedigger; and it would +still be a good tale and the same tale. But if we take a play like +_Pelléas and Mélisande_, we shall find that unless we grasp the +particular fairy thread of thought the poet rather hazily flings to us, +we cannot grasp anything whatever. Except from one extreme poetic point +of view, the thing is not a play; it is not a bad play, it is a mass of +clotted nonsense. One whole act describes the lovers going to look for a +ring in a distant cave when they both know they have dropped it down a +well. Seen from some secret window on some special side of the soul's +turret, this might convey a sense of faerie futility in our human life. +But it is quite obvious that unless it called forth that one kind of +sympathy, it would call forth nothing but laughter and rotten eggs. In +the same play the husband chases his wife with a drawn sword, the wife +remarking at intervals "I am not gay." Now there may really be an idea +in this; the idea of human misfortune coming most cruelly upon the +optimism of innocence; that the lonely human heart says, like a child at +a party, "I am not enjoying myself as I thought I should." But it is +plain that unless one thinks of this idea (and of this idea only) the +expression is not in the least unsuccessful pathos; it is very broad and +highly successful farce. Maeterlinck and the decadents, in short, may +fairly boast of being subtle; but they must not mind if they are called +narrow. + +This is the spirit of Wilde's work and of most of the literary work done +in that time and fashion. It is, as Mr. Arthur Symons said, an attitude; +but it is an attitude in the flat, not in the round; not a statue, but +the cardboard king in a toy-theatre, which can only be looked at from +the front. In Wilde's own poetry we have particularly a perpetually +toppling possibility of the absurd; a sense of just falling too short or +just going too far. "Plant lilies at my head" has something wrong about +it; something silly that is not there in-- + + "And put a grey stone at my head" + +in the old ballad. But even where Wilde was right, he had a way of being +right with this excessive strain on the reader's sympathy (and gravity) +which was the mark of all these men with a "point of view." There is a +very sound sonnet of his in which he begins by lamenting mere anarchy, +as hostile to the art and civilisation that were his only gods; but ends +by saying-- + + "And yet + These Christs that die upon the barricades + God knows that I am with them--in some ways." + +Now that is really very true; that is the way a man of wide reading and +worldly experience, but not ungenerous impulses, does feel about the +mere fanatic, who is at once a nuisance to humanity and an honour to +human nature. Yet who can read that last line without feeling that Wilde +is poised on the edge of a precipice of bathos; that the phrase comes +very near to being quite startlingly silly. It is as in the case of +Maeterlinck, let the reader move his standpoint one inch nearer the +popular standpoint, and there is nothing for the thing but harsh, +hostile, unconquerable mirth. Somehow the image of Wilde lolling like an +elegant leviathan on a sofa, and saying between the whiffs of a scented +cigarette that martyrdom is martyrdom in some respects, has seized on +and mastered all more delicate considerations in the mind. It is unwise +in a poet to goad the sleeping lion of laughter. + +In less dexterous hands the decadent idea, what there was of it, went +entirely to pieces, which nobody has troubled to pick up. Oddly enough +(unless this be always the Nemesis of excess) it began to be +insupportable in the very ways in which it claimed specially to be +subtle and tactful; in the feeling for different art-forms, in the +welding of subject and style, in the appropriateness of the epithet and +the unity of the mood. Wilde himself wrote some things that were not +immorality, but merely bad taste; not the bad taste of the conservative +suburbs, which merely means anything violent or shocking, but real bad +taste; as in a stern subject treated in a florid style; an over-dressed +woman at a supper of old friends; or a bad joke that nobody had time to +laugh at. This mixture of sensibility and coarseness in the man was very +curious; and I for one cannot endure (for example) his sensual way of +speaking of dead substances, satin or marble or velvet, as if he were +stroking a lot of dogs and cats. But there was a sort of power--or at +least weight--in his coarseness. His lapses were those proper to the one +good thing he really was, an Irish swashbuckler--a fighter. Some of the +Roman Emperors might have had the same luxuriousness and yet the same +courage. But the later decadents were far worse, especially the decadent +critics, the decadent illustrators--there were even decadent publishers. +And they utterly lost the light and reason of their existence: they were +masters of the clumsy and the incongruous. I will take only one example. +Aubrey Beardsley may be admired as an artist or no; he does not enter +into the scope of this book. But it is true that there is a certain +brief mood, a certain narrow aspect of life, which he renders to the +imagination rightly. It is mostly felt under white, deathly lights in +Piccadilly, with the black hollow of heaven behind shiny hats or painted +faces: a horrible impression that all mankind are masks. This being the +thing Beardsley could express (and the only thing he could express), it +is the solemn and awful fact that he was set down to illustrate Malory's +_Morte d'Arthur_. There is no need to say more; taste, in the artist's +sense, must have been utterly dead. They might as well have employed +Burne-Jones to illustrate _Martin Chuzzlewit_. It would not have been +more ludicrous than putting this portrayer of evil puppets, with their +thin lines like wire and their small faces like perverted children's, to +trace against the grand barbaric forests the sin and the sorrow of +Lancelot. + +To return to the chief of the decadents, I will not speak of the end of +the individual story: there was horror and there was expiation. And, as +my conscience goes at least, no man should say one word that could +weaken the horror--or the pardon. But there is one literary consequence +of the thing which must be mentioned, because it bears us on to that +much breezier movement which first began to break in upon all this +ghastly idleness--I mean the Socialist Movement. I do not mean "_De +Profundis_"; I do not think he had got to the real depths when he wrote +that book. I mean the one real thing he ever wrote: _The Ballad of +Reading Gaol_; in which we hear a cry for common justice and brotherhood +very much deeper, more democratic and more true to the real trend of the +populace to-day, than anything the Socialists ever uttered even in the +boldest pages of Bernard Shaw. + +Before we pass on to the two expansive movements in which the Victorian +Age really ended, the accident of a distinguished artist is available +for estimating this somewhat cool and sad afternoon of the epoch at its +purest; not in lounging pessimism or luxurious aberrations, but in +earnest skill and a high devotion to letters. This change that had come, +like the change from a golden sunset to a grey twilight, can be very +adequately measured if we compare the insight and intricacy of Meredith +with the insight and intricacy of Mr. Henry James. The characters of +both are delicate and indisputable; but we must all have had a feeling +that the characters in Meredith are gods, but that the characters in +Henry James are ghosts. I do not mean that they are unreal: I believe in +ghosts. So does Mr. Henry James; he has written some of his very finest +literature about the little habits of these creatures. He is in the deep +sense of a dishonoured word, a Spiritualist if ever there was one. But +Meredith was a materialist as well. The difference is that a ghost is a +disembodied spirit; while a god (to be worth worrying about) must be an +embodied spirit. The presence of soul and substance together involves +one of the two or three things which most of the Victorians did not +understand--the thing called a sacrament. It is because he had a natural +affinity for this mystical materialism that Meredith, in spite of his +affectations, is a poet: and, in spite of his Victorian Agnosticism (or +ignorance) is a pious Pagan and not a mere Pantheist. Mr. Henry James is +at the other extreme. His thrill is not so much in symbol or mysterious +emblem as in the absence of interventions and protections between mind +and mind. It is not mystery: it is rather a sort of terror at knowing +too much. He lives in glass houses; he is akin to Maeterlinck in a +feeling of the nakedness of souls. None of the Meredithian things, wind +or wine or sex or stark nonsense, ever gets between Mr. James and his +prey. But the thing is a deficiency as well as a talent: we cannot but +admire the figures that walk about in his afternoon drawing-rooms; but +we have a certain sense that they are figures that have no faces. + +For the rest, he is most widely known, or perhaps only most widely +chaffed, because of a literary style that lends itself to parody and is +a glorious feast for Mr. Max Beerbohm. It may be called The Hampered, or +Obstacle Race Style, in which one continually trips over commas and +relative clauses; and where the sense has to be perpetually qualified +lest it should mean too much. But such satire, however friendly, is in +some sense unfair to him; because it leaves out his sense of general +artistic design, which is not only high, but bold. This appears, I +think, most strongly in his short stories; in his long novels the reader +(or at least one reader) does get rather tired of everybody treating +everybody else in a manner which in real life would be an impossible +intellectual strain. But in his short studies there is the unanswerable +thing called real originality; especially in the very shape and point of +the tale. It may sound odd to compare him to Mr. Rudyard Kipling: but he +is like Kipling and also like Wells in this practical sense: that no one +ever wrote a story at all like the _Mark of the Beast_; no one ever +wrote a story at all like _A Kink in Space_: and in the same sense no +one ever wrote a story like _The Great Good Place_. It is alone in order +and species; and it is masterly. He struck his deepest note in that +terrible story, _The Turn of the Screw_; and though there is in the +heart of that horror a truth of repentance and religion, it is again +notable of the Victorian writers that the only supernatural note they +can strike assuredly is the tragic and almost the diabolic. Only Mr. Max +Beerbohm has been able to imagine Mr. Henry James writing about +Christmas. + +Now upon this interregnum, this cold and brilliant waiting-room which +was Henry James at its highest and Wilde at its worst, there broke in +two positive movements, largely honest though essentially unhistoric and +profane, which were destined to crack up the old Victorian solidity past +repair. The first was Bernard Shaw and the Socialists: the second was +Rudyard Kipling and the Imperialists. I take the Socialists first not +because they necessarily came so in order of time, but because they were +less the note upon which the epoch actually ended. + +William Morris, of whom we have already spoken, may be said to +introduce the Socialists, but rather in a social sense than a +philosophical. He was their friend, and in a sort of political way, +their father; but he was not their founder, for he would not have +believed a word of what they ultimately came to say. Nor is this the +conventional notion of the old man not keeping pace with the audacity of +the young. Morris would have been disgusted not with the wildness, but +the tameness of our tidy Fabians. He was not a Socialist, but he was a +Revolutionist; he didn't know much more about what he was; but he knew +that. In this way, being a full-blooded fellow, he rather repeats the +genial sulkiness of Dickens. And if we take this fact about him first, +we shall find it a key to the whole movement of this time. For the one +dominating truth which overshadows everything else at this point is a +political and economic one. The Industrial System, run by a small class +of Capitalists on a theory of competitive contract, had been quite +honestly established by the early Victorians and was one of the primary +beliefs of Victorianism. The Industrial System, so run, had become +another name for hell. By Morris's time and ever since, England has been +divided into three classes: Knaves, Fools, and Revolutionists. + +History is full of forgotten controversies; and those who speak of +Socialism now have nearly all forgotten that for some time it was an +almost equal fight between Socialism and Anarchism for the leadership of +the exodus from Capitalism. It is here that Herbert Spencer comes in +logically, though not chronologically; also that much more interesting +man, Auberon Herbert. Spencer has no special place as a man of letters; +and a vastly exaggerated place as a philosopher. His real importance was +that he was very nearly an Anarchist. The indefinable greatness there is +about him after all, in spite of the silliest and smuggest limitations, +is in a certain consistency and completeness from his own point of +view. There is something mediæval, and therefore manful, about writing a +book about everything in the world. Now this simplicity expressed itself +in politics in carrying the Victorian worship of liberty to the most +ridiculous lengths; almost to the length of voluntary taxes and +voluntary insurance against murder. He tried, in short, to solve the +problem of the State by eliminating the State from it. He was resisted +in this by the powerful good sense of Huxley; but his books became +sacred books for a rising generation of rather bewildered rebels, who +thought we might perhaps get out of the mess if everybody did as he +liked. + +Thus the Anarchists and Socialists fought a battle over the death-bed of +Victorian Industrialism; in which the Socialists (that is, those who +stood for increasing instead of diminishing the power of Government) won +a complete victory and have almost exterminated their enemy. The +Anarchist one meets here and there nowadays is a sad sight; he is +disappointed with the future, as well as with the past. + +This victory of the Socialists was largely a literary victory; because +it was effected and popularised not only by a wit, but by a sincere wit; +and one who had the same sort of militant lucidity that Huxley had shown +in the last generation and Voltaire in the last century. A young Irish +journalist, impatient of the impoverished Protestantism and Liberalism +to which he had been bred, came out as the champion of Socialism not as +a matter of sentiment, but as a matter of common sense. The primary +position of Bernard Shaw towards the Victorian Age may be roughly +summarised thus: the typical Victorian said coolly: "Our system may not +be a perfect system, but it works." Bernard Shaw replied, even more +coolly: "It may be a perfect system, for all I know or care. But it does +not work." He and a society called the Fabians, which once exercised +considerable influence, followed this shrewd and sound strategic hint +to avoid mere emotional attack on the cruelty of Capitalism; and to +concentrate on its clumsiness, its ludicrous incapacity to do its own +work. This campaign succeeded, in the sense that while (in the educated +world) it was the Socialist who looked the fool at the beginning of that +campaign, it is the Anti-Socialist who looks the fool at the end of it. +But while it won the educated classes it lost the populace for ever. It +dried up those springs of blood and tears out of which all revolt must +come if it is to be anything but bureaucratic readjustment. We began +this book with the fires of the French Revolution still burning, but +burning low. Bernard Shaw was honestly in revolt in his own way: but it +was Bernard Shaw who trod out the last ember of the Great Revolution. +Bernard Shaw proceeded to apply to many other things the same sort of +hilarious realism which he thus successfully applied to the industrial +problem. He also enjoyed giving people a piece of his mind; but a piece +of his mind was a more appetising and less raw-looking object than a +piece of Hardy's. There were many modes of revolt growing all around +him; Shaw supported them--and supplanted them. Many were pitting the +realism of war against the romance of war: they succeeded in making the +fight dreary and repulsive, but the book dreary and repulsive too. Shaw, +in _Arms and the Man_, did manage to make war funny as well as +frightful. Many were questioning the right of revenge or punishment; but +they wrote their books in such a way that the reader was ready to +release all mankind if he might revenge himself on the author. Shaw, in +_Captain Brassbound's Conversion_, really showed at its best the merry +mercy of the pagan; that beautiful human nature that can neither rise to +penance nor sink to revenge. Many had proved that even the most +independent incomes drank blood out of the veins of the oppressed: but +they wrote it in such a style that their readers knew more about +depression than oppression. In _Widowers' Houses_ Shaw very nearly (but +not quite) succeeded in making a farce out of statistics. And the +ultimate utility of his brilliant interruption can best be expressed in +the very title of that play. When ages of essential European ethics have +said "widows' houses," it suddenly occurs to him to say "but what about +widowers' houses?" There is a sort of insane equity about it which was +what Bernard Shaw had the power to give, and gave. + +Out of the same social ferment arose a man of equally unquestionable +genius, Mr. H. G. Wells. His first importance was that he wrote great +adventure stories in the new world the men of science had discovered. He +walked on a round slippery world as boldly as Ulysses or Tom Jones had +worked on a flat one. Cyrano de Bergerac or Baron Munchausen, or other +typical men of science, had treated the moon as a mere flat silver +mirror in which Man saw his own image--the Man in the Moon. Wells +treated the moon as a globe, like our own; bringing forth monsters as +moonish as we are earthy. The exquisitely penetrating political and +social satire he afterwards wrote belongs to an age later than the +Victorian. But because, even from the beginning, his whole trend was +Socialist, it is right to place him here. + +While the old Victorian ideas were being disturbed by an increasing +torture at home, they were also intoxicated by a new romance from +abroad. It did not come from Italy with Rossetti and Browning, or from +Persia with Fitzgerald: but it came from countries as remote, countries +which were (as the simple phrase of that period ran) "painted red" on +the map. It was an attempt to reform England through the newer nations; +by the criticism of the forgotten colonies, rather than of the forgotten +classes. Both Socialism and Imperialism were utterly alien to the +Victorian idea. From the point of view of a Victorian aristocrat like +Palmerston, Socialism would be the cheek of gutter snipes; Imperialism +would be the intrusion of cads. But cads are not alone concerned. + +Broadly, the phase in which the Victorian epoch closed was what can only +be called the Imperialist phase. Between that and us stands a very +individual artist who must nevertheless be connected with that phase. As +I said at the beginning, Macaulay (or, rather, the mind Macaulay shared +with most of his powerful middle class) remains as a sort of pavement or +flat foundation under all the Victorians. They discussed the dogmas +rather than denied them. Now one of the dogmas of Macaulay was the dogma +of progress. A fair statement of the truth in it is not really so hard. +Investigation of anything naturally takes some little time. It takes +some time to sort letters so as to find a letter: it takes some time to +test a gas-bracket so as to find the leak; it takes some time to sift +evidence so as to find the truth. Now the curse that fell on the later +Victorians was this: that they began to value the time more than the +truth. One felt so secretarial when sorting letters that one never found +the letter; one felt so scientific in explaining gas that one never +found the leak; and one felt so judicial, so impartial, in weighing +evidence that one had to be bribed to come to any conclusion at all. +This was the last note of the Victorians: procrastination was called +progress. + +Now if we look for the worst fruits of this fallacy we shall find them +in historical criticism. There is a curious habit of treating any one +who comes before a strong movement as the "forerunner" of that movement. +That is, he is treated as a sort of slave running in advance of a great +army. Obviously, the analogy really arises from St. John the Baptist, +for whom the phrase "forerunner" was rather peculiarly invented. Equally +obviously, such a phrase only applies to an alleged or real divine +event: otherwise the forerunner would be a founder. Unless Jesus had +been the Baptist's God, He would simply have been his disciple. + +Nevertheless the fallacy of the "forerunner" has been largely used in +literature. Thus men will call a universal satirist like Langland a +"morning star of the Reformation," or some such rubbish; whereas the +Reformation was not larger, but much smaller than Langland. It was +simply the victory of one class of his foes, the greedy merchants, over +another class of his foes, the lazy abbots. In real history this +constantly occurs; that some small movement happens to favour one of the +million things suggested by some great man; whereupon the great man is +turned into the running slave of the small movement. Thus certain +sectarian movements borrowed the sensationalism without the +sacramentalism of Wesley. Thus certain groups of decadents found it +easier to imitate De Quincey's opium than his eloquence. Unless we grasp +this plain common sense (that you or I are not responsible for what some +ridiculous sect a hundred years hence may choose to do with what we say) +the peculiar position of Stevenson in later Victorian letters cannot +begin to be understood. For he was a very universal man; and talked some +sense not only on every subject, but, so far as it is logically +possible, in every sense. But the glaring deficiencies of the Victorian +compromise had by that time begun to gape so wide that he was forced, by +mere freedom of philosophy and fancy, to urge the neglected things. And +yet this very urgency certainly brought on an opposite fever, which he +would not have liked if he had lived to understand it. He liked Kipling, +though with many healthy hesitations; but he would not have liked the +triumph of Kipling: which was the success of the politician and the +failure of the poet. Yet when we look back up the false perspective of +time, Stevenson does seem in a sense to have prepared that imperial and +downward path. + +I shall not talk here, any more than anywhere else in this book, about +the "sedulous ape" business. No man ever wrote as well as Stevenson who +cared only about writing. Yet there is a sense, though a misleading one, +in which his original inspirations were artistic rather than purely +philosophical. To put the point in that curt covenanting way which he +himself could sometimes command, he thought it immoral to neglect +romance. The whole of his real position was expressed in that phrase of +one of his letters "our civilisation is a dingy ungentlemanly business: +it drops so much out of a man." On the whole he concluded that what had +been dropped out of the man was the boy. He pursued pirates as Defoe +would have fled from them; and summed up his simplest emotions in that +touching _cri de coeur_ "shall we never shed blood?" He did for the +penny dreadful what Coleridge had done for the penny ballad. He proved +that, because it was really human, it could really rise as near to +heaven as human nature could take it. If Thackeray is our youth, +Stevenson is our boyhood: and though this is not the most artistic +thing in him, it is the most important thing in the history of Victorian +art. All the other fine things he did were, for curious reasons, remote +from the current of his age. For instance, he had the good as well as +the bad of coming from a Scotch Calvinist's house. No man in that age +had so healthy an instinct for the actuality of positive evil. In _The +Master of Ballantrae_ he did prove with a pen of steel, that the Devil +is a gentleman--but is none the less the Devil. It is also +characteristic of him (and of the revolt from Victorian respectability +in general) that his most blood-and-thunder sensational tale is also +that which contains his most intimate and bitter truth. _Dr. Jekyll and +Mr. Hyde_ is a double triumph; it has the outside excitement that +belongs to Conan Doyle with the inside excitement that belongs to Henry +James. Alas, it is equally characteristic of the Victorian time that +while nearly every Englishman has enjoyed the anecdote, hardly one +Englishman has seen the joke--I mean the point. You will find twenty +allusions to Jekyll and Hyde in a day's newspaper reading. You will also +find that all such allusions suppose the two personalities to be equal, +neither caring for the other. Or more roughly, they think the book means +that man can be cloven into two creatures, good and evil. The whole stab +of the story is that man _can't_: because while evil does not care for +good, good must care for evil. Or, in other words, man cannot escape +from God, because good is the God in man; and insists on omniscience. +This point, which is good psychology and also good theology and also +good art, has missed its main intention merely because it was also good +story-telling. + +If the rather vague Victorian public did not appreciate the deep and +even tragic ethics with which Stevenson was concerned, still less were +they of a sort to appreciate the French finish and fastidiousness of his +style; in which he seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his +pen, like a man playing spillikins. But that style also had a quality +that could be felt; it had a military edge to it, an _acies_; and there +was a kind of swordsmanship about it. Thus all the circumstances led, +not so much to the narrowing of Stevenson to the romance of the fighting +spirit; but the narrowing of his influence to that romance. He had a +great many other things to say; but this was what we were willing to +hear: a reaction against the gross contempt for soldiering which had +really given a certain Chinese deadness to the Victorians. Yet another +circumstance thrust him down the same path; and in a manner not wholly +fortunate. The fact that he was a sick man immeasurably increases the +credit to his manhood in preaching a sane levity and pugnacious +optimism. But it also forbade him full familiarity with the actualities +of sport, war, or comradeship: and here and there his note is false in +these matters, and reminds one (though very remotely) of the mere +provincial bully that Henley sometimes sank to be. + +For Stevenson had at his elbow a friend, an invalid like himself, a man +of courage and stoicism like himself; but a man in whom everything that +Stevenson made delicate and rational became unbalanced and blind. The +difference is, moreover, that Stevenson was quite right in claiming that +he could treat his limitation as an accident; that his medicines "did +not colour his life." His life was really coloured out of a shilling +paint-box, like his toy-theatre: such high spirits as he had are the key +to him: his sufferings are not the key to him. But Henley's sufferings +are the key to Henley; much must be excused him, and there is much to be +excused. The result was that while there was always a certain dainty +equity about Stevenson's judgments, even when he was wrong, Henley +seemed to think that on the right side the wronger you were the better. +There was much that was feminine in him; and he is most understandable +when surprised in those little solitary poems which speak of emotions +mellowed, of sunset and a quiet end. Henley hurled himself into the new +fashion of praising Colonial adventure at the expense both of the +Christian and the republican traditions; but the sentiment did not +spread widely until the note was struck outside England in one of the +conquered countries; and a writer of Anglo-Indian short stories showed +the stamp of the thing called genius; that indefinable, dangerous and +often temporary thing. + +For it is really impossible to criticise Rudyard Kipling as part of +Victorian literature, because he is the end of such literature. He has +many other powerful elements; an Indian element, which makes him +exquisitely sympathetic with the Indian; a vague Jingo influence which +makes him sympathetic with the man that crushes the Indian; a vague +journalistic sympathy with the men that misrepresent everything that has +happened to the Indian; but of the Victorian virtues, nothing. + +All that was right or wrong in Kipling was expressed in the final +convulsion that he almost in person managed to achieve. The nearest that +any honest man can come to the thing called "impartiality" is to confess +that he is partial. I therefore confess that I think this last turn of +the Victorian Age was an unfortunate turn; much on the other side can be +said, and I hope will be said. But about the facts there can be no +question. The Imperialism of Kipling was equally remote from the +Victorian caution and the Victorian idealism: and our subject does quite +seriously end here. The world was full of the trampling of totally new +forces, gold was sighted from far in a sort of cynical romanticism: the +guns opened across Africa; and the great queen died. + + * * * * * + +Of what will now be the future of so separate and almost secretive an +adventure of the English, the present writer will not permit himself, +even for an instant, to prophesy. The Victorian Age made one or two +mistakes, but they were mistakes that were really useful; that is, +mistakes that were really mistaken. They thought that commerce outside a +country must extend peace: it has certainly often extended war. They +thought that commerce inside a country must certainly promote +prosperity; it has largely promoted poverty. But for them these were +experiments; for us they ought to be lessons. If _we_ continue the +capitalist use of the populace--if _we_ continue the capitalist use of +external arms, it will lie heavy on the living. The dishonour will not +be on the dead. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + +After having surveyed the immense field presented in such a volume as +Mr. George Mair's _Modern English Literature_ in this series, or, more +fully, in the _Cambridge History of Modern Literature_, the later volume +of Chambers' _English Literature_, Mr. Gosse's _History of Modern +English Literature_, or Henry Morley's _English Literature in the Reign +of Victoria_, the wise reader will choose some portion for closer study, +and will go straight to the originals before he has any further traffic +with critics or commentators, however able. + +He will then need the aid of fuller biographies. Some Victorian _Lives_ +are already classic, or nearly so, among them Sir G. Trevelyan's +_Macaulay_, Forster's _Dickens_, Mrs. Gaskell's _Charlotte Brontë_, +Froude's _Carlyle_, and Sir E. T. Cook's _Ruskin_. With these may be +ranged the great _Dictionary of National Biography_. The "English Men of +Letters" Series includes H. D. Traill's _Coleridge_, Ainger's _Lamb_, +Trollope's _Thackeray_, Leslie Stephen's _George Eliot_, Herbert Paul's +_Matthew Arnold_, Sir A. Lyall's _Tennyson_, G. K. Chesterton's _Robert +Browning_, and A. C. Benson's _Fitzgerald_. At least two autobiographies +must be named, those of Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and, as +antidote to Newman's _Apologia_, the gay self-revelations of Borrow, and +Jefferies' _Story of My Heart_. Other considerable volumes are W. J. +Cross's _George Eliot_, Lionel Johnson's _Art of Thomas Hardy_, Mr. W. M. +Rossetti's _Dante G. Rossetti_, Colvin's _R. L. Stevenson_, J. W. +Mackail's _William Morris_, Holman Hunt's _Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood_, +Sir Leslie Stephen's _The Utilitarians_, Buxton Forman's _Our Living +Poets_, Edward Thomas's _Swinburne_, Monypenny's _Disraeli_, Dawson's +_Victorian Novelists_, and Stedman's _Victorian Poets_. The "Everyman" +_Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature_ is useful for +dates. + +The latter half of the second volume of Mr. F. A. Mumby's _Letters of +Literary Men_ is devoted to the Victorian Age. There are fuller +collections of the _Letters_ of Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Dickens, the +Brownings, Fitzgerald, Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, and more +recently the _Letters of George Meredith_, edited by his son. + +Among the important critical writers of the period, Matthew Arnold +(_Essays in Criticism_, _Study of Celtic Literature_, etc.) stands +easily first. Others are John, now Lord, Morley (_Studies in +Literature_, etc.), Augustine Birrell (_Obiter Dicta_, _Essays_), W. E. +Henley (_Views and Reviews_), J. Addington Symonds (_Essays_), J. +Churton Collins, Richard Garnett, Stopford A. Brooke, George E. B. +Saintsbury (_History of Criticism_), R. H. Hutton (_Contemporary +Thought_), J. M. Robertson (_Modern Humanists_, _Buckle_, etc.), Frederic +Harrison (_The Choice of Books_, etc.), Andrew Lang, Walter Bagehot, +Edmund Gosse, Prof. Dowden, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir A. T. Quiller +Couch. + + + + +INDEX + + +Æsthetes, the, and Decadents, 218-27 +Arnold, Matthew, 73-79, 87 +Austen, Jane, 92, 105, 109 + +Bentham, 36 +Blake, 20 +Borrow, 151 +Brontë, Charlotte, 92, 105, 110-14 +----, Emily, 113 +Browning, Elizabeth B., 176-82 +----, R., 40-41, 159, 162-63 +Byron, 22 + +Carlyle, 40, 49-62, 158 +Carroll, Lewis, 153 +Cobbett, 16-17, 88, 151 +Coleridge, 20 +Collins, Wilkie, 130, 132 + +Darwin, 38, 206-7, 209 +De Quincey, 23-25, 65 +Dickens, 40, 79-89, 100, 106, 119-23, 129, 131 +Disraeli, 42, 135 + +Eliot, George, 92, 103-9, 157 + +Faber, 46 +Fitzgerald, 192-95 +French Revolution, Influence of, 18-21 +Froude, 60, 62 + +Gaskell, Mrs., 94 +Gilbert, 154 + +Hardy, Thomas, 138-39, 143-45 +Hazlitt, 23 +Henley, W. E., 247-48 +Hood, Thomas, 25-27 +Hughes, Tom, 73 +Humour, Victorian, 152-55 +Hunt, Leigh, 23 +Huxley, 39-40, 205 + +Imperialism, 60, 239 + +James, Henry, 228-31 + +Keats, 20 +Keble, 45 +Kingsley, 40, 59, 64, 72, 134-35 +Kipling, R., 60, 249-50 + +Lamb, 23 +Landor, 23 +Lear, Edward, 153 +Literary temperament, the English, 13-16 +Lytton, Bulwer, 135-37 + +Macaulay, 28-36, 55 +Macdonald, George, 152 +Maurice, F. D., 40, 73 +Melbourne, Lord, 42 +Meredith, George, 138-49, 228 +Mill, J. S., 36-37, 55 +Morris, Wm., 196-200, 232 + +Newman, 38, 40, 45-48, 78, 159 +Novel, The Modern, 90-99 + +Oliphant, Mrs., 116-17 +"Ouida," 117 +Oxford Movement, 42-45 + +Pater, Walter, 69-71 +Patmore, 48, 201-2 +Pre-Raphaelite School, 68, 72 + +Reade, Charles, 134 +Rossetti, D. G. and C., 71, 188-91 +Ruskin, 40, 62-8, 70, 158 + +Science, Victorian, 208-12 +Shaw, G. B., 60, 235-38 +Shelley, 22-23 +Shorthouse, 149-50 +Socialism, 60, 67, 122, 198, 227, 231-39 +Spencer, Herbert, 75, 233-34 +Stevenson, R. L., 243-49 +Swinburne, 69, 159, 181-88 + +Tennyson, 40, 64, 160-69 +Thackeray, 100, 110, 123-30, 158 +Thompson, Francis, 48, 201, 202 +Trollope, Anthony, 130, 132-33 + +Watson, Wm., 202 +Wells, H. G., 238-39 +Wilde, Oscar, 218-23 +Women, Victorian, 91, 99, 104, 115-16, 140 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Victorian Age in Literature, by +G. K. 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K. Chesterton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Victorian Age in Literature + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: June 20, 2006 [EBook #18639] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Karina Aleksandrova, Juliet Sutherland and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="front"> +<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page 1"> </span><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a>HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY<br /> +OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE</h2> + + +<p class="center">No. 61</p> + +<p class="center"><i>Editors:</i></p> + +<ul class="editors"> +<li>The Rt. Hon. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.</li> +<li>Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, Litt.D., LL.D., F.B.A.</li> +<li>Prof. Sir J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.</li> +<li>Prof. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.</li> +</ul> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 2"> </span><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a><i>A complete classified list of the volumes of The Home University +Library already published to be found at the back of this book.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h1><span class="pagenum" title="Page 3"> </span><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a>THE VICTORIAN AGE<br /> +IN LITERATURE</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>G. K. CHESTERTON</h2> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h4>NEW YORK<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</h4> + +<h4>LONDON<br /> +THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LTD.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h4 class="smcap"><span class="pagenum" title="Page 4"> </span><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a>Copyright, 1913,<br /> +by<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</h4> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page 5"> </span><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + + + + + +<div class="center"> +<table class="toc" cellpadding="5" summary="contents"> +<thead> +<tr><th>CHAP.</th><th colspan="2" align="right">PAGE</th></tr> +</thead> +<tbody> +<tr><td> </td><td>Introduction</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right">I</td><td>The Victorian Compromise and its Enemies</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right">II</td><td>The Great Victorian Novelists</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right">III</td><td>The Great Victorian Poets</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right">IV</td><td>The Break-up of the Compromise</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td> </td><td>Bibliographical Note</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td> </td><td>Index</td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td></tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 6"> </span><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a>The Editors wish to explain that this book is not put forward as an +authoritative history of Victorian literature. It is a free and personal +statement of views and impressions about the significance of Victorian +literature made by Mr. Chesterton at the Editors' express invitation.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h1><span class="pagenum" title="Page 7"> </span><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7"></a>THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE</h1> + + + +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> + + +<p>A section of a long and splendid literature can be most conveniently +treated in one of two ways. It can be divided as one cuts a currant cake +or a Gruyère cheese, taking the currants (or the holes) as they come. Or +it can be divided as one cuts wood—along the grain: if one thinks that +there is a grain. But the two are never the same: the names never come +in the same order in actual time as they come in any serious study of a +spirit or a tendency. The critic who wishes to move onward with the life +of an epoch, must be always running backwards and forwards among its +mere dates; just as a branch bends back and forth continually; yet the +grain<span class="pagenum" title="Page 8"> </span><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8"></a> in the branch runs true like an unbroken river.</p> + +<p>Mere chronological order, indeed, is almost as arbitrary as alphabetical +order. To deal with Darwin, Dickens, Browning, in the sequence of the +birthday book would be to forge about as real a chain as the "Tacitus, +Tolstoy, Tupper" of a biographical dictionary. It might lend itself +more, perhaps, to accuracy: and it might satisfy that school of critics +who hold that every artist should be treated as a solitary craftsman, +indifferent to the commonwealth and unconcerned about moral things. To +write on that principle in the present case, however, would involve all +those delicate difficulties, known to politicians, which beset the +public defence of a doctrine which one heartily disbelieves. It is quite +needless here to go into the old "art for art's sake"—business, or +explain at length why individual artists cannot be reviewed without +reference to their traditions and creeds. It is enough to say that with +other<span class="pagenum" title="Page 9"> </span><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a> creeds they would have been, for literary purposes, other +individuals. Their views do not, of course, make the brains in their +heads any more than the ink in their pens. But it is equally evident +that mere brain-power, without attributes or aims, a wheel revolving in +the void, would be a subject about as entertaining as ink. The moment we +differentiate the minds, we must differentiate by doctrines and moral +sentiments. A mere sympathy for democratic merry-making and mourning +will not make a man a writer like Dickens. But without that sympathy +Dickens would not be a writer like Dickens; and probably not a writer at +all. A mere conviction that Catholic thought is the clearest as well as +the best disciplined, will not make a man a writer like Newman. But +without that conviction Newman would not be a writer like Newman; and +probably not a writer at all. It is useless for the æsthete (or any +other anarchist) to urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart +from his<span class="pagenum" title="Page 10"> </span><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a> attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his +individuality: men are never individual when alone.</p> + +<p>It only remains for me, therefore, to take the more delicate and +entangled task; and deal with the great Victorians, not only by dates +and names, but rather by schools and streams of thought. It is a task +for which I feel myself wholly incompetent; but as that applies to every +other literary enterprise I ever went in for, the sensation is not +wholly novel: indeed, it is rather reassuring than otherwise to realise +that I am now doing something that nobody could do properly. The chief +peril of the process, however, will be an inevitable tendency to make +the spiritual landscape too large for the figures. I must ask for +indulgence if such criticism traces too far back into politics or ethics +the roots of which great books were the blossoms; makes Utilitarianism +more important than <i>Liberty</i> or talks more of the Oxford Movement than +of <i>The Christian Year</i>. I can only answer<span class="pagenum" title="Page 11"> </span><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a> in the very temper of the +age of which I write: for I also was born a Victorian; and sympathise +not a little with the serious Victorian spirit. I can only answer, I +shall not make religion more important than it was to Keble, or politics +more sacred than they were to Mill.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page 12"> </span><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES</h3> + + +<p>The previous literary life of this country had left vigorous many old +forces in the Victorian time, as in our time. Roman Britain and Mediæval +England are still not only alive but lively; for real development is not +leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from +a root. Even when we improve we never progress. For progress, the +metaphor from the road, implies a man leaving his home behind him: but +improvement means a man exalting the towers or extending the gardens of +his home. The ancient English literature was like all the several +literatures of Christendom, alike in its likeness, alike in its very +unlikeness. Like all European cultures, it was European; like all +European cultures, it was something more<span class="pagenum" title="Page 13"> </span><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a> than European. A most marked +and unmanageable national temperament is plain in Chaucer and the +ballads of Robin Hood; in spite of deep and sometimes disastrous changes +of national policy, that note is still unmistakable in Shakespeare, in +Johnson and his friends, in Cobbett, in Dickens. It is vain to dream of +defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a +smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to +explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, +"Well, you know holly—mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this +logical method in the comparison of plants or nations. But if he had +said to the Teuton, "Well, you know Germany—England's the +opposite"—the definition, though fallacious, would not have been wholly +false. England, like all Christian countries, absorbed valuable elements +from the forests and the rude romanticism of the North; but, like all +Christian countries, it drank its longest<span class="pagenum" title="Page 14"> </span><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a> literary draughts from the +classic fountains of the ancients: nor was this (as is so often loosely +thought) a matter of the mere "Renaissance." The English tongue and +talent of speech did not merely flower suddenly into the gargantuan +polysyllables of the great Elizabethans; it had always been full of the +popular Latin of the Middle Ages. But whatever balance of blood and +racial idiom one allows, it is really true that the only suggestion that +gets near the Englishman is to hint how far he is from the German. The +Germans, like the Welsh, can sing perfectly serious songs perfectly +seriously in chorus: can with clear eyes and clear voices join together +in words of innocent and beautiful personal passion, for a false maiden +or a dead child. The nearest one can get to defining the poetic temper +of Englishmen is to say that they couldn't do this even for beer. They +can sing in chorus, and louder than other Christians: but they must have +in their songs something, I know not what, that is at<span class="pagenum" title="Page 15"> </span><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a> once shamefaced +and rowdy. If the matter be emotional, it must somehow be also broad, +common and comic, as "Wapping Old Stairs" and "Sally in Our Alley." If +it be patriotic, it must somehow be openly bombastic and, as it were, +indefensible, like "Rule Britannia" or like that superb song (I never +knew its name, if it has one) that records the number of leagues from +Ushant to the Scilly Isles. Also there is a tender love-lyric called "O +Tarry Trousers" which is even more English than the heart of <i>The +Midsummer Night's Dream</i>. But our greatest bards and sages have often +shown a tendency to rant it and roar it like true British sailors; to +employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half +humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants +of Victor Hugo. A piece of Hugo's eloquence is either a serious triumph +or a serious collapse: one feels the poet is offended at a smile. But +Shakespeare seems rather proud of talking nonsense: I never can read +that rousing and<span class="pagenum" title="Page 16"> </span><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a> mounting description of the storm, where it comes to—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Who take the ruffian billows by the top,<br /></span> +<span>Curling their monstrous heads, and <em>hanging</em> them<br /></span> +<span>With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">without seeing an immense balloon rising from the ground, with +Shakespeare grinning over the edge of the car, and saying, "You can't +stop me: I am above reason now." That is the nearest we can get to the +general national spirit, which we have now to follow through one brief +and curious but very national episode.</p> + +<p>Three years before the young queen was crowned, William Cobbett was +buried at Farnham. It may seem strange to begin with this great +neglected name, rather than the old age of Wordsworth or the young death +of Shelley. But to any one who feels<span class="pagenum" title="Page 17"> </span><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a> literature as human, the empty +chair of Cobbett is more solemn and significant than the throne. With +him died the sort of democracy that was a return to Nature, and which +only poets and mobs can understand. After him Radicalism is urban—and +Toryism suburban. Going through green Warwickshire, Cobbett might have +thought of the crops and Shelley of the clouds. But Shelley would have +called Birmingham what Cobbett called it—a hell-hole. Cobbett was one +with after Liberals in the ideal of Man under an equal law, a citizen of +no mean city. He differed from after Liberals in strongly affirming that +Liverpool and Leeds are mean cities.</p> + +<p>It is no idle Hibernianism to say that towards the end of the eighteenth +century the most important event in English history happened in France. +It would seem still more perverse, yet it would be still more precise, +to say that the most important event in English history was the event +that never happened at all—the English Revolution on<span class="pagenum" title="Page 18"> </span><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a> the lines of the +French Revolution. Its failure was not due to any lack of fervour or +even ferocity in those who would have brought it about: from the time +when the first shout went up for Wilkes to the time when the last +Luddite fires were quenched in a cold rain of rationalism, the spirit of +Cobbett, of rural republicanism, of English and patriotic democracy, +burned like a beacon. The revolution failed because it was foiled by +another revolution; an aristocratic revolution, a victory of the rich +over the poor. It was about this time that the common lands were finally +enclosed; that the more cruel game laws were first established; that +England became finally a land of landlords instead of common +land-owners. I will not call it a Tory reaction; for much of the worst +of it (especially of the land-grabbing) was done by Whigs; but we may +certainly call it Anti-Jacobin. Now this fact, though political, is not +only relevant but essential to everything that concerned literature. The +upshot<span class="pagenum" title="Page 19"> </span><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a> was that though England was full of the revolutionary ideas, +nevertheless there was no revolution. And the effect of this in turn was +that from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the +nineteenth the spirit of revolt in England took a wholly literary form. +In France it was what people did that was wild and elemental; in England +it was what people wrote. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the +English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were +rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.</p> + +<p>It has been well and wittily said (as illustrating the mildness of +English and the violence of French developments) that the same Gospel of +Rousseau which in France produced the Terror, in England produced +<i>Sandford and Merton</i>. But people forget that in literature the English +were by no means restrained by Mr. Barlow; and that if we turn from +politics to art, we shall find the two parts peculiarly reversed. It +would be<span class="pagenum" title="Page 20"> </span><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a> equally true to say that the same eighteenth-century +emancipation which in France produced the pictures of David, in England +produced the pictures of Blake. There never were, I think, men who gave +to the imagination so much of the sense of having broken out into the +very borderlands of being, as did the great English poets of the +romantic or revolutionary period; than Coleridge in the secret sunlight +of the Antarctic, where the waters were like witches' oils; than Keats +looking out of those extreme mysterious casements upon that ultimate +sea. The heroes and criminals of the great French crisis would have been +quite as incapable of such imaginative independence as Keats and +Coleridge would have been incapable of winning the battle of Wattignies. +In Paris the tree of liberty was a garden tree, clipped very correctly; +and Robespierre used the razor more regularly than the guillotine. +Danton, who knew and admired English literature, would have cursed +freely over <i>Kubla Khan</i>;<span class="pagenum" title="Page 21"> </span><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a> and if the Committee of Public Safety had not +already executed Shelley as an aristocrat, they would certainly have +locked him up for a madman. Even Hébert (the one really vile +Revolutionist), had he been reproached by English poets with worshipping +the Goddess of Reason, might legitimately have retorted that it was +rather the Goddess of Unreason that they set up to be worshipped. +Verbally considered, Carlyle's <i>French Revolution</i> was more +revolutionary than the real French Revolution: and if Carrier, in an +exaggerative phrase, empurpled the Loire with carnage, Turner almost +literally set the Thames on fire.</p> + +<p>This trend of the English Romantics to carry out the revolutionary idea +not savagely in works, but very wildly indeed in words, had several +results; the most important of which was this. It started English +literature after the Revolution with a sort of bent towards independence +and eccentricity, which in the brighter wits became individuality, and +in the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 22"> </span><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a> duller ones, Individualism. English Romantics, English Liberals, +were not public men making a republic, but poets, each seeing a vision. +The lonelier version of liberty was a sort of aristocratic anarchism in +Byron and Shelley; but though in Victorian times it faded into much +milder prejudices and much more <i>bourgeois</i> crotchets, England retained +from that twist a certain odd separation and privacy. England became +much more of an island than she had ever been before. There fell from +her about this time, not only the understanding of France or Germany, +but to her own long and yet lingering disaster, the understanding of +Ireland. She had not joined in the attempt to create European democracy; +nor did she, save in the first glow of Waterloo, join in the +counter-attempt to destroy it. The life in her literature was still, to +a large extent, the romantic liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane +truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and +to natural rights. But that which<span class="pagenum" title="Page 23"> </span><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a> in Rousseau was a creed, became in +Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and +their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of +those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his +decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley and Godwin; +Lamb with his bibliomania and creed of pure caprice, the most unique of +all geniuses; Leigh Hunt with his Bohemian impecuniosity; Landor with +his tempestuous temper, throwing plates on the floor; Hazlitt with his +bitterness and his low love affair; even that healthier and happier +Bohemian, Peacock. With these, in one sense at least, goes De Quincey. +He was, unlike most of these embers of the revolutionary age in letters, +a Tory; and was attached to the political army which is best represented +in letters by the virile laughter and leisure of Wilson's <i>Noctes +Ambrosianæ</i>. But he had nothing in common with that environment. It +remained for some time as a Tory tradition,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 24"> </span><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a> which balanced the cold and +brilliant aristocracy of the Whigs. It lived on the legend of Trafalgar; +the sense that insularity was independence; the sense that anomalies are +as jolly as family jokes; the general sense that old salts are the salt +of the earth. It still lives in some old songs about Nelson or Waterloo, +which are vastly more pompous and vastly more sincere than the cockney +cocksureness of later Jingo lyrics. But it is hard to connect De Quincey +with it; or, indeed, with anything else. De Quincey would certainly have +been a happier man, and almost certainly a better man, if he had got +drunk on toddy with Wilson, instead of getting calm and clear (as he +himself describes) on opium, and with no company but a book of German +metaphysics. But he would hardly have revealed those wonderful vistas +and perspectives of prose, which permit one to call him the first and +most powerful of the decadents: those sentences that lengthen out like +nightmare corridors, or<span class="pagenum" title="Page 25"> </span><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a> rise higher and higher like impossible eastern +pagodas. He was a morbid fellow, and far less moral than Burns; for when +Burns confessed excess he did not defend it. But he has cast a gigantic +shadow on our literature, and was as certainly a genius as Poe. Also he +had humour, which Poe had not. And if any one still smarting from the +pinpricks of Wilde or Whistler, wants to convict them of plagiarism in +their "art for art" epigrams—he will find most of what they said said +better in <i>Murder as One of the Fine Arts</i>.</p> + +<p>One great man remains of this elder group, who did their last work only +under Victoria; he knew most of the members of it, yet he did not belong +to it in any corporate sense. He was a poor man and an invalid, with +Scotch blood and a strong, though perhaps only inherited, quarrel with +the old Calvinism; by name Thomas Hood. Poverty and illness forced him +to the toils of an incessant jester; and the revolt against gloomy +religion made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 26"> </span><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a> direction of +a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that +includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really +employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), +but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is +said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three +meanings, for there was also the abstract truth that would have been +there with no pun at all. The pun of Hood is underrated, like the "wit" +of Voltaire, by those who forget that the words of Voltaire were not +pins, but swords. In Hood at his best the verbal neatness only gives to +the satire or the scorn a ring of finality such as is given by rhyme. +For rhyme does go with reason, since the aim of both is to bring things +to an end. The tragic necessity of puns tautened and hardened Hood's +genius; so that there is always a sort of shadow of that sharpness +across all his serious poems, falling like the shadow of a sword. +"Sewing at once<span class="pagenum" title="Page 27"> </span><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a> with a double thread a shroud as well as a shirt"—"We +thought her dying when she slept, and sleeping when she died"—"Oh God, +that bread should be so dear and flesh and blood so cheap"—none can +fail to note in these a certain fighting discipline of phrase, a +compactness and point which was well trained in lines like "A +cannon-ball took off his legs, so he laid down his arms." In France he +would have been a great epigrammatist, like Hugo. In England he is a +punster.</p> + +<p>There was nothing at least in this group I have loosely called the +Eccentrics that disturbs the general sense that all their generation was +part of the sunset of the great revolutionary poets. This fading glamour +affected England in a sentimental and, to some extent, a snobbish +direction; making men feel that great lords with long curls and whiskers +were naturally the wits that led the world. But it affected England also +negatively and by reaction; for it associated<span class="pagenum" title="Page 28"> </span><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a> such men as Byron with +superiority, but not with success. The English middle classes were led +to distrust poetry almost as much as they admired it. They could not +believe that either vision at the one end or violence at the other could +ever be practical. They were deaf to that great warning of Hugo: "You +say the poet is in the clouds; but so is the thunderbolt." Ideals +exhausted themselves in the void; Victorian England, very unwisely, +would have no more to do with idealists in politics. And this, chiefly, +because there had been about these great poets a young and splendid +sterility; since the pantheist Shelley was in fact washed under by the +wave of the world, or Byron sank in death as he drew the sword for +Hellas.</p> + +<p>The chief turn of nineteenth-century England was taken about the time +when a footman at Holland House opened a door and announced "Mr. +Macaulay." Macaulay's literary popularity was representative and it was +deserved; but his presence among<span class="pagenum" title="Page 29"> </span><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a> the great Whig families marks an +epoch. He was the son of one of the first "friends of the negro," whose +honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre +smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his +colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly +gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of the +Puritan tenets but retention of the Puritan tone which marked his class +and generation), lifted him into a sphere which was utterly opposite to +that from which he came. This Whig world was exclusive; but it was not +narrow. It was very difficult for an outsider to get into it; but if he +did get into it he was in a much freer atmosphere than any other in +England. Of those aristocrats, the Old Guard of the eighteenth century, +many denied God, many defended Bonaparte, and nearly all sneered at the +Royal Family. Nor did wealth or birth make any barriers for those once +within this singular Whig world.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 30"> </span><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a> The platform was high, but it was +level. Moreover the upstart nowadays pushes himself by wealth: but the +Whigs could choose their upstarts. In that world Macaulay found Rogers, +with his phosphorescent and corpse-like brilliancy; there he found +Sydney Smith, bursting with crackers of common sense, an admirable old +heathen; there he found Tom Moore, the romantic of the Regency, a +shortened shadow of Lord Byron. That he reached this platform and +remained on it is, I say, typical of a turning-point in the century. For +the fundamental fact of early Victorian history was this: the decision +of the middle classes to employ their new wealth in backing up a sort of +aristocratical compromise, and not (like the middle class in the French +Revolution) insisting on a clean sweep and a clear democratic programme. +It went along with the decision of the aristocracy to recruit itself +more freely from the middle class. It was then also that Victorian +"prudery" began: the great lords yielded on<span class="pagenum" title="Page 31"> </span><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a> this as on Free Trade. +These two decisions have made the doubtful England of to-day; and +Macaulay is typical of them; he is the <i>bourgeois</i> in Belgravia. The +alliance is marked by his great speeches for Lord Grey's Reform Bill: it +is marked even more significantly in his speech against the Chartists. +Cobbett was dead.</p> + +<p>Macaulay makes the foundation of the Victorian age in all its very +English and unique elements: its praise of Puritan politics and +abandonment of Puritan theology; its belief in a cautious but perpetual +patching up of the Constitution; its admiration for industrial wealth. +But above all he typifies the two things that really make the Victorian +Age itself, the cheapness and narrowness of its conscious formulæ; the +richness and humanity of its unconscious tradition. There were two +Macaulays, a rational Macaulay who was generally wrong, and a romantic +Macaulay who was almost invariably right. All that was small in him +derives from the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 32"> </span><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a> dull parliamentarism of men like Sir James Mackintosh; +but all that was great in him has much more kinship with the festive +antiquarianism of Sir Walter Scott.</p> + +<p>As a philosopher he had only two thoughts; and neither of them is true. +The first was that politics, as an experimental science, must go on +improving, along with clocks, pistols or penknives, by the mere +accumulation of experiment and variety. He was, indeed, far too +strong-minded a man to accept the hazy modern notion that the soul in +its highest sense can change: he seems to have held that religion can +never get any better and that poetry rather tends to get worse. But he +did not see the flaw in his political theory; which is that unless the +soul improves with time there is no guarantee that the accumulations of +experience will be adequately used. Figures do not add themselves up; +birds do not label or stuff themselves; comets do not calculate their +own courses; these things are done by the soul of man. And if the soul +of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 33"> </span><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a> man is subject to other laws, is liable to sin, to sleep, to +anarchism or to suicide, then all sciences including politics may fall +as sterile and lie as fallow as before man's reason was made. Macaulay +seemed sometimes to talk as if clocks produced clocks, or guns had +families of little pistols, or a penknife littered like a pig. The other +view he held was the more or less utilitarian theory of toleration; that +we should get the best butcher whether he was a Baptist or a +Muggletonian, and the best soldier whether he was a Wesleyan or an +Irvingite. The compromise worked well enough in an England Protestant in +bulk; but Macaulay ought to have seen that it has its limitations. A +good butcher might be a Baptist; he is not very likely to be a Buddhist. +A good soldier might be a Wesleyan; he would hardly be a Quaker. For the +rest, Macaulay was concerned to interpret the seventeenth century in +terms of the triumph of the Whigs as champions of public rights; and he +upheld this one-sidedly but not malig<span class="pagenum" title="Page 34"> </span><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>nantly in a style of rounded and +ringing sentences, which at its best is like steel and at its worst like +tin.</p> + +<p>This was the small conscious Macaulay; the great unconscious Macaulay +was very different. His noble enduring quality in our literature is +this: that he truly had an abstract passion for history; a warm, poetic +and sincere enthusiasm for great things as such; an ardour and appetite +for great books, great battles, great cities, great men. He felt and +used names like trumpets. The reader's greatest joy is in the writer's +own joy, when he can let his last phrase fall like a hammer on some +resounding name like Hildebrand or Charlemagne, on the eagles of Rome or +the pillars of Hercules. As with Walter Scott, some of the best things +in his prose and poetry are the surnames that he did not make. And it is +remarkable to notice that this romance of history, so far from making +him more partial or untrustworthy, was the only thing that made him +moderately just. His reason was<span class="pagenum" title="Page 35"> </span><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a> entirely one-sided and fanatical. It +was his imagination that was well-balanced and broad. He was +monotonously certain that only Whigs were right; but it was necessary +that Tories should at least be great, that his heroes might have foemen +worthy of their steel. If there was one thing in the world he hated it +was a High Church Royalist parson; yet when Jeremy Collier the Jacobite +priest raises a real banner, all Macaulay's blood warms with the mere +prospect of a fight. "It is inspiriting to see how gallantly the +solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies formidable separately, and, +it might have been thought, irresistible when combined; distributes his +swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh, +treads the wretched D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet; and +strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden." +That is exactly where Macaulay is great; because he is almost Homeric. +The whole triumph turns upon mere names; but men are<span class="pagenum" title="Page 36"> </span><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a> commanded by +names. So his poem on the Armada is really a good geography book gone +mad; one sees the map of England come alive and march and mix under the +eye.</p> + +<p>The chief tragedy in the trend of later literature may be expressed by +saying that the smaller Macaulay conquered the larger. Later men had +less and less of that hot love of history he had inherited from Scott. +They had more and more of that cold science of self-interests which he +had learnt from Bentham.</p> + +<p>The name of this great man, though it belongs to a period before the +Victorian, is, like the name of Cobbett, very important to it. In +substance Macaulay accepted the conclusions of Bentham; though he +offered brilliant objections to all his arguments. In any case the soul +of Bentham (if he had one) went marching on, like John Brown; and in the +central Victorian movement it was certainly he who won. John Stuart Mill +was the final flower of that growth. He was<span class="pagenum" title="Page 37"> </span><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a> himself fresh and delicate +and pure; but that is the business of a flower. Though he had to preach +a hard rationalism in religion, a hard competition in economics, a hard +egoism in ethics, his own soul had all that silvery sensitiveness that +can be seen in his fine portrait by Watts. He boasted none of that +brutal optimism with which his friends and followers of the Manchester +School expounded their cheery negations. There was about Mill even a +sort of embarrassment; he exhibited all the wheels of his iron universe +rather reluctantly, like a gentleman in trade showing ladies over his +factory. There shone in him a beautiful reverence for women, which is +all the more touching because, in his department, as it were, he could +only offer them so dry a gift as the Victorian Parliamentary Franchise.</p> + +<p>Now in trying to describe how the Victorian writers stood to each other, +we must recur to the very real difficulty noted at the beginning: the +difficulty of keeping the moral order parallel with the chronological +order.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 38"> </span><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a> For the mind moves by instincts, associations, premonitions and +not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will +occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. +Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: +notions will be first defined long after they are dead. It is no good +getting the almanac to look up moonshine; and most literature in this +sense is moonshine. Thus Wordsworth shrank back into Toryism, as it +were, from a Shelleyan extreme of pantheism as yet disembodied. Thus +Newman took down the iron sword of dogma to parry a blow not yet +delivered, that was coming from the club of Darwin. For this reason no +one can understand tradition, or even history, who has not some +tenderness for anachronism.</p> + +<p>Now for the great part of the Victorian era the utilitarian tradition +which reached its highest in Mill held the centre of the field; it was +the philosophy in office, so to speak. It sustained its march of +codification and inquiry<span class="pagenum" title="Page 39"> </span><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a> until it had made possible the great victories +of Darwin and Huxley and Wallace. If we take Macaulay at the beginning +of the epoch and Huxley at the end of it, we shall find that they had +much in common. They were both square-jawed, simple men, greedy of +controversy but scornful of sophistry, dead to mysticism but very much +alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence +of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was +much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that +when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror +of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, +rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric +as Ruskin himself could have managed. The difference that the period had +developed can best be seen if we consider this: that while neither was +of a spiritual sort, Macaulay took it for granted that common sense +required some kind of theology, while<span class="pagenum" title="Page 40"> </span><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a> Huxley took it for granted that +common sense meant having none. Macaulay, it is said, never talked about +his religion: but Huxley was always talking about the religion he hadn't +got.</p> + +<p>But though this simple Victorian rationalism held the centre, and in a +certain sense <em>was</em> the Victorian era, it was assailed on many sides, +and had been assailed even before the beginning of that era. The rest of +the intellectual history of the time is a series of reactions against +it, which come wave after wave. They have succeeded in shaking it, but +not in dislodging it from the modern mind. The first of these was the +Oxford Movement; a bow that broke when it had let loose the flashing +arrow that was Newman. The second reaction was one man; without teachers +or pupils—Dickens. The third reaction was a group that tried to create +a sort of new romantic Protestantism, to pit against both Reason and +Rome—Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, Maurice—perhaps Tennyson.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 41"> </span><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a> Browning +also was at once romantic and Puritan; but he belonged to no group, and +worked against materialism in a manner entirely his own. Though as a boy +he bought eagerly Shelley's revolutionary poems, he did not think of +becoming a revolutionary poet. He concentrated on the special souls of +men; seeking God in a series of private interviews. Hence Browning, +great as he is, is rather one of the Victorian novelists than wholly of +the Victorian poets. From Ruskin, again, descend those who may be called +the Pre-Raphaelites of prose and poetry.</p> + +<p>It is really with this rationalism triumphant, and with the romance of +these various attacks on it, that the study of Victorian literature +begins and proceeds. Bentham was already the prophet of a powerful sect; +Macaulay was already the historian of an historic party, before the true +Victorian epoch began. The middle classes were emerging in a state of +damaged Puritanism. The upper classes were utterly pagan. Their<span class="pagenum" title="Page 42"> </span><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a> clear +and courageous testimony remains in those immortal words of Lord +Melbourne, who had led the young queen to the throne and long stood +there as her protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian +religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into +private life——" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne +became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is +well mirrored in his novels—for he was a man who felt at home in +mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the +accidents that must always eat the edges of any systematic +circumference, it may still be said that the Utilitarians held the fort.</p> + +<p>Of the Oxford Movement what remains most strongly in the Victorian Epoch +centres round the challenge of Newman, its one great literary man. But +the movement as a whole had been of great significance in the very +genesis and make up of the society: yet that significance is not quite +easy immediately to<span class="pagenum" title="Page 43"> </span><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a> define. It was certainly not æsthetic ritualism; +scarcely one of the Oxford High Churchmen was what we should call a +Ritualist. It was certainly not a conscious reaching out towards Rome: +except on a Roman Catholic theory which might explain all our unrests by +that dim desire. It knew little of Europe, it knew nothing of Ireland, +to which any merely Roman Catholic revulsion would obviously have +turned. In the first instance, I think, the more it is studied, the more +it would appear that it was a movement of mere religion as such. It was +not so much a taste for Catholic dogma, but simply a hunger for dogma. +For dogma means the serious satisfaction of the mind. Dogma does not +mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought. It was a revolt +against the Victorian spirit in one particular aspect of it; which may +roughly be called (in a cosy and domestic Victorian metaphor) having +your cake and eating it too. It saw that the solid and serious +Victorians were fundamentally frivo<span class="pagenum" title="Page 44"> </span><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>lous—because they were +fundamentally inconsistent.</p> + +<p>A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent +talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So +long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a +shape. Mahomet created, when he forbade wine but allowed five wives: he +created a very big thing, which we have still to deal with. The first +French Republic created, when it affirmed property and abolished +peerages; France still stands like a square, four-sided building which +Europe has besieged in vain. The men of the Oxford Movement would have +been horrified at being compared either with Moslems or Jacobins. But +their sub-conscious thirst was for something that Moslems and Jacobins +had and ordinary Anglicans had not: the exalted excitement of +consistency. If you were a Moslem you were not a Bacchanal. If you were +a Republican you were not a peer. And<span class="pagenum" title="Page 45"> </span><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a> so the Oxford men, even in their +first and dimmest stages, felt that if you were a Churchman you were not +a Dissenter. The Oxford Movement was, out of the very roots of its +being, a rational movement; almost a rationalist movement. In that it +differed sharply from the other reactions that shook the Utilitarian +compromise; the blinding mysticism of Carlyle, the mere manly +emotionalism of Dickens. It was an appeal to reason: reason said that if +a Christian had a feast day he must have a fast day too. Otherwise, all +days ought to be alike; and this was that very Utilitarianism against +which their Oxford Movement was the first and most rational assault.</p> + +<p>This idea, even by reason of its reason, narrowed into a sort of sharp +spear, of which the spear blade was Newman. It did forget many of the +other forces that were fighting on its side. But the movement could +boast, first and last, many men who had this eager dogmatic quality: +Keble, who spoilt a poem<span class="pagenum" title="Page 46"> </span><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a> in order to recognise a doctrine; Faber, who +told the rich, almost with taunts, that God sent the poor as eagles to +strip them; Froude, who with Newman announced his return in the arrogant +motto of Achilles. But the greater part of all this happened before what +is properly our period; and in that period Newman, and perhaps Newman +alone, is the expression and summary of the whole school. It was +certainly in the Victorian Age, and after his passage to Rome, that +Newman claimed his complete right to be in any book on modern English +literature. This is no place for estimating his theology: but one point +about it does clearly emerge. Whatever else is right, the theory that +Newman went over to Rome to find peace and an end of argument, is quite +unquestionably wrong. He had far more quarrels after he had gone over to +Rome. But, though he had far more quarrels, he had far fewer +compromises: and he was of that temper which is tortured more by +compromise than by quarrel. He was a<span class="pagenum" title="Page 47"> </span><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a> man at once of abnormal energy and +abnormal sensibility: nobody without that combination could have written +the <i>Apologia</i>. If he sometimes seemed to skin his enemies alive, it was +because he himself lacked a skin. In this sense his <i>Apologia</i> is a +triumph far beyond the ephemeral charge on which it was founded; in this +sense he does indeed (to use his own expression) vanquish not his +accuser but his judges. Many men would shrink from recording all their +cold fits and hesitations and prolonged inconsistencies: I am sure it +was the breath of life to Newman to confess them, now that he had done +with them for ever. His <i>Lectures on the Present Position of English +Catholics</i>, practically preached against a raging mob, rise not only +higher but happier, as his instant unpopularity increases. There is +something grander than humour, there is fun, in the very first lecture +about the British Constitution as explained to a meeting of Russians. +But always his triumphs are the triumphs of a highly sensitive man: a +man<span class="pagenum" title="Page 48"> </span><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a> must feel insults before he can so insultingly and splendidly +avenge them. He is a naked man, who carries a naked sword. The quality +of his literary style is so successful that it succeeds in escaping +definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate +patience, which waits until he has fixed all corners of an iron trap. +But the quality of his moral comment on the age remains what I have +said: a protest of the rationality of religion as against the increasing +irrationality of mere Victorian comfort and compromise. So far as the +present purpose is concerned, his protest died with him: he left few +imitators and (it may easily be conceived) no successful imitators. The +suggestion of him lingers on in the exquisite Elizabethan perversity of +Coventry Patmore; and has later flamed out from the shy volcano of +Francis Thompson. Otherwise (as we shall see in the parallel case of +Ruskin's Socialism) he has no followers in his own age: but very many in +ours.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 49"> </span><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>The next group of reactionaries or romantics or whatever we elect to +call them, gathers roughly around one great name. Scotland, from which +had come so many of those harsh economists who made the first Radical +philosophies of the Victorian Age, was destined also to fling forth (I +had almost said to spit forth) their fiercest and most extraordinary +enemy. The two primary things in Thomas Carlyle were his early Scotch +education and his later German culture. The first was in almost all +respects his strength; the latter in some respects his weakness. As an +ordinary lowland peasant, he inherited the really valuable historic +property of the Scots, their independence, their fighting spirit, and +their instinctive philosophic consideration of men merely as men. But he +was not an ordinary peasant. If he had laboured obscurely in his village +till death, he would have been yet locally a marked man; a man with a +wild eye, a man with an air of silent anger; perhaps a man at whom +stones were sometimes<span class="pagenum" title="Page 50"> </span><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a> thrown. A strain of disease and suffering ran +athwart both his body and his soul. In spite of his praise of silence, +it was only through his gift of utterance that he escaped madness. But +while his fellow-peasants would have seen this in him and perhaps mocked +it, they would also have seen something which they always expect in such +men, and they would have got it: vision, a power in the mind akin to +second sight. Like many ungainly or otherwise unattractive Scotchmen, he +was a seer. By which I do not mean to refer so much to his +transcendental rhapsodies about the World-soul or the Nature-garment or +the Mysteries and Eternities generally, these seem to me to belong more +to his German side and to be less sincere and vital. I mean a real power +of seeing things suddenly, not apparently reached by any process; a +grand power of guessing. He <em>saw</em> the crowd of the new States General, +Danton with his "rude flattened face," Robespierre peering mistily +through his spectacles. He <em>saw</em> the English<span class="pagenum" title="Page 51"> </span><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a> charge at Dunbar. He +<em>guessed</em> that Mirabeau, however dissipated and diseased, had something +sturdy inside him. He <em>guessed</em> that Lafayette, however brave and +victorious, had nothing inside him. He supported the lawlessness of +Cromwell, because across two centuries he almost physically <em>felt</em> the +feebleness and hopelessness of the moderate Parliamentarians. He said a +word of sympathy for the universally vituperated Jacobins of the +Mountain, because through thick veils of national prejudice and +misrepresentation, he felt the impossibility of the Gironde. He was +wrong in denying to Scott the power of being inside his characters: but +he really had a good deal of that power himself. It was one of his +innumerable and rather provincial crotchets to encourage prose as +against poetry. But, as a matter of fact, he himself was much greater +considered as a kind of poet than considered as anything else; and the +central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.</p> + +<p>He first emerged, as it were, as a student<span class="pagenum" title="Page 52"> </span><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a> and disciple of Goethe. The +connection was not wholly fortunate. With much of what Goethe really +stood for he was not really in sympathy; but in his own obstinate way, +he tried to knock his idol into shape instead of choosing another. He +pushed further and further the extravagances of a vivid but very +unbalanced and barbaric style, in the praise of a poet who really +represented the calmest classicism and the attempt to restore a Hellenic +equilibrium in the mind. It is like watching a shaggy Scandinavian +decorating a Greek statue washed up by chance on his shores. And while +the strength of Goethe was a strength of completion and serenity, which +Carlyle not only never found but never even sought, the weaknesses of +Goethe were of a sort that did not draw the best out of Carlyle. The one +civilised element that the German classicists forgot to put into their +beautiful balance was a sense of humour. And great poet as Goethe was, +there is to the last something faintly fatuous about his half +sceptical,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 53"> </span><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a> half sentimental self-importance; a Lord Chamberlain of +teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. +Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got +into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic +idealism, absurdly unaware of the complexity of things; as when he +perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that +people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote +Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. +Yet, though his general honesty is unquestionable, he was by no means +one of those who will give up a fancy under the shock of a fact. If by +sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to +admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy +cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most +sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages +are, one must frankly say, dis<span class="pagenum" title="Page 54"> </span><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>ingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a +generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, +not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic +historian. It bears most resemblance to the incurable prejudices of a +woman.</p> + +<p>For the rest there hovered behind all this transcendental haze a certain +presence of old northern paganism; he really had some sympathy with the +vast vague gods of that moody but not unmanly Nature-worship which seems +to have filled the darkness of the North before the coming of the Roman +Eagle or the Christian Cross. This he combined, allowing for certain +sceptical omissions, with the grisly Old Testament God he had heard +about in the black Sabbaths of his childhood; and so promulgated +(against both Rationalists and Catholics) a sort of heathen Puritanism: +Protestantism purged of its evidences of Christianity.</p> + +<p>His great and real work was the attack on Utilitarianism: which did real +good, though<span class="pagenum" title="Page 55"> </span><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a> there was much that was muddled and dangerous in the +historical philosophy which he preached as an alternative. It is his +real glory that he was the first to see clearly and say plainly the +great truth of our time; that the wealth of the state is not the +prosperity of the people. Macaulay and the Mills and all the regular run +of the Early Victorians, took it for granted that if Manchester was +getting richer, we had got hold of the key to comfort and progress. +Carlyle pointed out (with stronger sagacity and humour than he showed on +any other question) that it was just as true to say that Manchester was +getting poorer as that it was getting richer: or, in other words, that +Manchester was not getting richer at all, but only some of the less +pleasing people in Manchester. In this matter he is to be noted in +connection with national developments much later; for he thus became the +first prophet of the Socialists. <i>Sartor Resartus</i> is an admirable +fantasia; <i>The French Revolution</i> is, with all its faults, a really +fine<span class="pagenum" title="Page 56"> </span><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a> piece of history; the lectures on Heroes contain some masterly +sketches of personalities. But I think it is in <i>Past and Present</i>, and +the essay on <i>Chartism</i>, that Carlyle achieves the work he was chosen by +gods and men to achieve; which possibly might not have been achieved by +a happier or more healthy-minded man. He never rose to more deadly irony +than in such <i>macabre</i> descriptions as that of the poor woman proving +her sisterhood with the rich by giving them all typhoid fever; or that +perfect piece of <i>badinage</i> about "Overproduction of Shirts"; in which +he imagines the aristocrats claiming to be quite clear of this offence. +"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse <em>us</em> of overproduction? We +take the Heavens and the Earth to witness that we have produced nothing +at all.... He that accuses us of producing, let him show himself. Let +him say what and when." And he never wrote so sternly and justly as when +he compared the "divine sorrow" of Dante with the "undivine<span class="pagenum" title="Page 57"> </span><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a> sorrow" of +Utilitarianism, which had already come down to talking about the +breeding of the poor and to hinting at infanticide. This is a +representative quarrel; for if the Utilitarian spirit reached its +highest point in Mill, it certainly reached its lowest point in Malthus.</p> + +<p>One last element in the influence of Carlyle ought to be mentioned; +because it very strongly dominated his disciples—especially Kingsley, +and to some extent Tennyson and Ruskin. Because he frowned at the +cockney cheerfulness of the cheaper economists, they and others +represented him as a pessimist, and reduced all his azure infinities to +a fit of the blues. But Carlyle's philosophy, more carefully considered, +will be found to be dangerously optimist rather than pessimist. As a +thinker Carlyle is not sad, but recklessly and rather unscrupulously +satisfied. For he seems to have held the theory that good could not be +definitely defeated in this world; and that everything in the long run +finds its right level. It began with what we may call the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 58"> </span><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a> "Bible of +History" idea: that all affairs and politics were a clouded but unbroken +revelation of the divine. Thus any enormous and unaltered human +settlement—as the Norman Conquest or the secession of America—we must +suppose to be the will of God. It lent itself to picturesque treatment; +and Carlyle and the Carlyleans were above all things picturesque. It +gave them at first a rhetorical advantage over the Catholic and other +older schools. They could boast that their Creator was still creating; +that he was in Man and Nature, and was not hedged round in a Paradise or +imprisoned in a pyx. They could say their God had not grown too old for +war: that He was present at Gettysburg and Gravelotte as much as at +Gibeon and Gilboa. I do not mean that they literally said these +particular things: they are what I should have said had I been bribed to +defend their position. But they said things to the same effect: that +what manages finally to happen, happens for a higher purpose. Car<span class="pagenum" title="Page 59"> </span><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>lyle +said the French Revolution was a thing settled in the eternal councils +to be; and therefore (and not because it was right) attacking it was +"fighting against God." And Kingsley even carried the principle so far +as to tell a lady she should remain in the Church of England mainly +because God had put her there. But in spite of its superficial +spirituality and encouragement, it is not hard to see how such a +doctrine could be abused. It practically comes to saying that God is on +the side of the big battalions—or at least, of the victorious ones. +Thus a creed which set out to create conquerors would only corrupt +soldiers; corrupt them with a craven and unsoldierly worship of success: +and that which began as the philosophy of courage ends as the philosophy +of cowardice. If, indeed, Carlyle were right in saying that right is +only "rightly articulated" might, men would never articulate or move in +any way. For no act can have might before it is done: if there is no +right, it cannot rationally be done at all. This<span class="pagenum" title="Page 60"> </span><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a> element, like the +Anti-Utilitarian element, is to be kept in mind in connection with after +developments: for in this Carlyle is the first cry of Imperialism, as +(in the other case) of Socialism: and the two babes unborn who stir at +the trumpet are Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Kipling also +carries on from Carlyle the concentration on the purely Hebraic parts of +the Bible. The fallacy of this whole philosophy is that if God is indeed +present at a modern battle, He may be present not as on Gilboa but +Golgotha.</p> + +<p>Carlyle's direct historical worship of strength and the rest of it was +fortunately not very fruitful; and perhaps lingered only in Froude the +historian. Even he is more an interruption than a continuity. Froude +develops rather the harsher and more impatient moral counsels of his +master than like Ruskin the more romantic and sympathetic. He carries on +the tradition of Hero Worship: but carries far beyond Carlyle the +practice of worshipping people who cannot rationally be<span class="pagenum" title="Page 61"> </span><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a> called heroes. +In this matter that eccentric eye of the seer certainly helped Carlyle: +in Cromwell and Frederick the Great there was at least something +self-begotten, original or mystical; if they were not heroes they were +at least demigods or perhaps demons. But Froude set himself to the +praise of the Tudors, a much lower class of people; ill-conditioned +prosperous people who merely waxed fat and kicked. Such strength as +Henry VIII had was the strength of a badly trained horse that bolts, not +of any clear or courageous rider who controls him. There is a sort of +strong man mentioned in Scripture who, because he masters himself, is +more than he that takes a city. There is another kind of strong man +(known to the medical profession) who cannot master himself; and whom it +may take half a city to take alive. But for all that he is a low +lunatic, and not a hero; and of that sort were too many of the heroes +whom Froude attempted to praise. A kind of instinct kept Carlyle from +over-praising Henry VIII; or<span class="pagenum" title="Page 62"> </span><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a> that highly cultivated and complicated +liar, Queen Elizabeth. Here, the only importance of this is that one of +Carlyle's followers carried further that "strength" which was the real +weakness of Carlyle. I have heard that Froude's life of Carlyle was +unsympathetic; but if it was so it was a sort of parricide. For the +rest, like Macaulay, he was a picturesque and partisan historian: but, +like Macaulay (and unlike the craven scientific historians of to-day) he +was not ashamed of being partisan or of being picturesque. Such studies +as he wrote on the Elizabethan seamen and adventurers, represent very +triumphantly the sort of romance of England that all this school was +attempting to establish; and link him up with Kingsley and the rest.</p> + +<p>Ruskin may be very roughly regarded as the young lieutenant of Carlyle +in his war on Utilitarian Radicalism: but as an individual he presents +many and curious divergences. In the matter of style, he enriched +English without disordering it. And in the matter of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 63"> </span><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a> religion (which +was the key of this age as of every other) he did not, like Carlyle, set +up the romance of the great Puritans as a rival to the romance of the +Catholic Church. Rather he set up and worshipped all the arts and +trophies of the Catholic Church as a rival to the Church itself. None +need dispute that he held a perfectly tenable position if he chose to +associate early Florentine art with a Christianity still comparatively +pure, and such sensualities as the Renaissance bred with the corruption +of a Papacy. But this does not alter, as a merely artistic fact, the +strange air of ill-ease and irritation with which Ruskin seems to tear +down the gargoyles of Amiens or the marbles of Venice, as things of +which Europe is not worthy; and take them away with him to a really +careful museum, situated dangerously near Clapham. Many of the great men +of that generation, indeed, had a sort of divided mind; an ethical +headache which was literally a "splitting headache"; for there was a +schism in the sympathies.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 64"> </span><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a> When these men looked at some historic +object, like the Catholic Church or the French Revolution, they did not +know whether they loved or hated it most. Carlyle's two eyes were out of +focus, as one may say, when he looked at democracy: he had one eye on +Valmy and the other on Sedan. In the same way, Ruskin had a strong right +hand that wrote of the great mediæval minsters in tall harmonies and +traceries as splendid as their own; and also, so to speak, a weak and +feverish left hand that was always fidgeting and trying to take the pen +away—and write an evangelical tract about the immorality of foreigners. +Many of their contemporaries were the same. The sea of Tennyson's mind +was troubled under its serene surface. The incessant excitement of +Kingsley, though romantic and attractive in many ways, was a great deal +more like Nervous Christianity than Muscular Christianity. It would be +quite unfair to say of Ruskin that there was any major inconsistency +between his mediæ<span class="pagenum" title="Page 65"> </span><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a>val tastes and his very unmediæval temper: and minor +inconsistencies do not matter in anybody. But it is not quite unfair to +say of him that he seemed to want all parts of the Cathedral except the +altar.</p> + +<p>As an artist in prose he is one of the most miraculous products of the +extremely poetical genius of England. The length of a Ruskin sentence is +like that length in the long arrow that was boasted of by the drawers of +the long bow. He draws, not a cloth-yard shaft but a long lance to his +ear: he shoots a spear. But the whole goes light as a bird and straight +as a bullet. There is no Victorian writer before him to whom he even +suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De +Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a +rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I +have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the +turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence +branches<span class="pagenum" title="Page 66"> </span><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a> into brackets and relative clauses as a straight strong tree +branches into boughs and bifurcations, rather shaking off its burden +than merely adding to it. It is interesting to remember that Ruskin +wrote some of the best of these sentences in the attempt to show that he +did understand the growth of trees, and that nobody else did—except +Turner, of course. It is also (to those acquainted with his perverse and +wild rhetorical prejudices) even more amusing to remember that if a +Ruskin sentence (occupying one or two pages of small print) does not +remind us of the growth of a tree, the only other thing it does remind +of is the triumphant passage of a railway train.</p> + +<p>Ruskin left behind him in his turn two quite separate streams of +inspiration. The first and more practical was concerned, like Carlyle's +<i>Chartism</i>, with a challenge to the social conclusions of the orthodox +economists. He was not so great a man as Carlyle, but he was a much more +clear-headed man; and the point and stab of his challenge still really<span class="pagenum" title="Page 67"> </span><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a> +stands and sticks, like a dagger in a dead man. He answered the theory +that we must always get the cheapest labour we can, by pointing out that +we never do get the cheapest labour we can, in any matter about which we +really care twopence. We do not get the cheapest doctor. We either get a +doctor who charges nothing or a doctor who charges a recognised and +respectable fee. We do not trust the cheapest bishop. We do not allow +admirals to compete. We do not tell generals to undercut each other on +the eve of a war. We either employ none of them or we employ all of them +at an official rate of pay. All this was set out in the strongest and +least sentimental of his books, <i>Unto this Last</i>; but many suggestions +of it are scattered through <i>Sesame and Lilies</i>, <i>The Political Economy +of Art</i>, and even <i>Modern Painters</i>. On this side of his soul Ruskin +became the second founder of Socialism. The argument was not by any +means a complete or unconquerable weapon, but I think it knocked out +what little re<span class="pagenum" title="Page 68"> </span><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>mained of the brains of the early Victorian rationalists. +It is entirely nonsensical to speak of Ruskin as a lounging æsthete, who +strolled into economics, and talked sentimentalism. In plain fact, +Ruskin was seldom so sensible and logical (right or wrong) as when he +was talking about economics. He constantly talked the most glorious +nonsense about landscape and natural history, which it was his business +to understand. Within his own limits, he talked the most cold common +sense about political economy, which was no business of his at all.</p> + +<p>On the other side of his literary soul, his mere unwrapping of the +wealth and wonder of European art, he set going another influence, +earlier and vaguer than his influence on Socialism. He represented what +was at first the Pre-Raphaelite School in painting, but afterwards a +much larger and looser Pre-Raphaelite School in poetry and prose. The +word "looser" will not be found unfair if we remember how Swinburne and +all the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 69"> </span><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a> wildest friends of the Rossettis carried this movement forward. +They used the mediæval imagery to blaspheme the mediæval religion. +Ruskin's dark and doubtful decision to accept Catholic art but not +Catholic ethics had borne rapid or even flagrant fruit by the time that +Swinburne, writing about a harlot, composed a learned and sympathetic +and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.</p> + +<p>With the poets I deal in another part of this book; but the influence of +Ruskin's great prose touching art criticism can best be expressed in the +name of the next great prose writer on such subjects. That name is +Walter Pater: and the name is the full measure of the extent to which +Ruskin's vague but vast influence had escaped from his hands. Pater +eventually joined the Church of Rome (which would not have pleased +Ruskin at all), but it is surely fair to say of the mass of his work +that its moral tone is neither Puritan nor Catholic, but strictly and +splendidly Pagan. In Pater we have Ruskin without the prej<span class="pagenum" title="Page 70"> </span><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a>udices, that +is, without the funny parts. I may be wrong, but I cannot recall at this +moment a single passage in which Pater's style takes a holiday or in +which his wisdom plays the fool. Newman and Ruskin were as careful and +graceful stylists as he. Newman and Ruskin were as serious, elaborate, +and even academic thinkers as he. But Ruskin let himself go about +railways. Newman let himself go about Kingsley. Pater cannot let himself +go for the excellent reason that he wants to stay: to stay at the point +where all the keenest emotions meet, as he explains in the splendid +peroration of <i>The Renaissance</i>. The only objection to being where all +the keenest emotions meet is that you feel none of them.</p> + +<p>In this sense Pater may well stand for a substantial summary of the +æsthetes, apart from the purely poetical merits of men like Rossetti and +Swinburne. Like Swinburne and others he first attempted to use mediæval +tradition without trusting it. These people<span class="pagenum" title="Page 71"> </span><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a> wanted to see Paganism +<em>through</em> Christianity: because it involved the incidental amusement of +seeing through Christianity itself. They not only tried to be in all +ages at once (which is a very reasonable ambition, though not often +realised), but they wanted to be on all sides at once: which is +nonsense. Swinburne tries to question the philosophy of Christianity in +the metres of a Christmas carol: and Dante Rossetti tries to write as if +he were Christina Rossetti. Certainly the almost successful summit of +all this attempt is Pater's superb passage on the Mona Lisa; in which he +seeks to make her at once a mystery of good and a mystery of evil. The +philosophy is false; even evidently false, for it bears no fruit to-day. +There never was a woman, not Eve herself in the instant of temptation, +who could smile the same smile as the mother of Helen and the mother of +Mary. But it is the high-water mark of that vast attempt at an +impartiality reached through art: and no other mere artist ever rose so +high again.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 72"> </span><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>Apart from this Ruskinian offshoot through Pre-Raphaelitism into what +was called Æstheticism, the remains of the inspiration of Carlyle fill a +very large part in the Victorian life, but not strictly so large a part +in the Victorian literature. Charles Kingsley was a great publicist; a +popular preacher; a popular novelist; and (in two cases at least) a very +good novelist. His <i>Water Babies</i> is really a breezy and roaring freak; +like a holiday at the seaside—a holiday where one talks natural history +without taking it seriously. Some of the songs in this and other of his +works are very real songs: notably, "When all the World is Young, Lad," +which comes very near to being the only true defence of marriage in the +controversies of the nineteenth century. But when all this is allowed, +no one will seriously rank Kingsley, in the really literary sense, on +the level of Carlyle or Ruskin, Tennyson or Browning, Dickens or +Thackeray: and if such a place cannot be given to him, it can be given +even less to his<span class="pagenum" title="Page 73"> </span><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a> lusty and pleasant friend, Tom Hughes, whose +personality floats towards the frankness of the <i>Boy's Own Paper</i>; or to +his deep, suggestive metaphysical friend Maurice, who floats rather +towards <i>The Hibbert Journal</i>. The moral and social influence of these +things is not to be forgotten: but they leave the domain of letters. The +voice of Carlyle is not heard again in letters till the coming of +Kipling and Henley.</p> + +<p>One other name of great importance should appear here, because it cannot +appear very appropriately anywhere else: the man hardly belonged to the +same school as Ruskin and Carlyle, but fought many of their battles, and +was even more concentrated on their main task—the task of convicting +liberal <i>bourgeois</i> England of priggishness and provinciality. I mean, +of course, Matthew Arnold. Against Mill's "liberty" and Carlyle's +"strength" and Ruskin's "nature," he set up a new presence and entity +which he called "culture," the disinterested play of the mind<span class="pagenum" title="Page 74"> </span><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a> through +the sifting of the best books and authorities. Though a little dandified +in phrase, he was undoubtedly serious and public-spirited in intention. +He sometimes talked of culture almost as if it were a man, or at least a +church (for a church has a sort of personality): some may suspect that +culture was a man, whose name was Matthew Arnold. But Arnold was not +only right but highly valuable. If we have said that Carlyle was a man +that saw things, we may add that Arnold was chiefly valuable as a man +who knew things. Well as he was endowed intellectually, his power came +more from information than intellect. He simply happened to know certain +things, that Carlyle didn't know, that Kingsley didn't know, that Huxley +and Herbert Spencer didn't know: that England didn't know. He knew that +England was a part of Europe: and not so important a part as it had been +the morning after Waterloo. He knew that England was then (as it is now) +an oligarchical State, and<span class="pagenum" title="Page 75"> </span><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a> that many great nations are not. He knew +that a real democracy need not live and does not live in that perpetual +panic about using the powers of the State, which possessed men like +Spencer and Cobden. He knew a rational minimum of culture and common +courtesy could exist and did exist throughout large democracies. He knew +the Catholic Church had been in history "the Church of the multitude": +he knew it was not a sect. He knew that great landlords are no more a +part of the economic law than nigger-drivers: he knew that small owners +could and did prosper. He was not so much the philosopher as the man of +the world: he reminded us that Europe was a society while Ruskin was +treating it as a picture gallery. He was a sort of Heaven-sent courier. +His frontal attack on the vulgar and sullen optimism of Victorian +utility may be summoned up in the admirable sentence, in which he asked +the English what was the use of a train taking them quickly from +Islington to Camberwell, if it only took them "from a<span class="pagenum" title="Page 76"> </span><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a> dismal and +illiberal life in Islington to a dismal and illiberal life in +Camberwell?"</p> + +<p>His attitude to that great religious enigma round which all these great +men were grouped as in a ring, was individual and decidedly curious. He +seems to have believed that a "Historic Church," that is, some +established organisation with ceremonies and sacred books, etc., could +be perpetually preserved as a sort of vessel to contain the spiritual +ideas of the age, whatever those ideas might happen to be. He clearly +seems to have contemplated a melting away of the doctrines of the Church +and even of the meaning of the words: but he thought a certain need in +man would always be best satisfied by public worship and especially by +the great religious literatures of the past. He would embalm the body +that it might often be revisited by the soul—or souls. Something of the +sort has been suggested by Dr. Coit and others of the ethical societies +in our own time. But while Arnold would loosen the theological bonds of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 77"> </span><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a> +the Church, he would not loosen the official bonds of the State. You +must not disestablish the Church: you must not even leave the Church: +you must stop inside it and think what you choose. Enemies might say +that he was simply trying to establish and endow Agnosticism. It is +fairer and truer to say that unconsciously he was trying to restore +Paganism: for this State Ritualism without theology, and without much +belief, actually was the practice of the ancient world. Arnold may have +thought that he was building an altar to the Unknown God; but he was +really building it to Divus Cæsar.</p> + +<p>As a critic he was chiefly concerned to preserve criticism itself; to +set a measure to praise and blame and support the classics against the +fashions. It is here that it is specially true of him, if of no writer +else, that the style was the man. The most vital thing he invented was a +new style: founded on the patient unravelling of the tangled Victorian +ideas, as if they were matted hair under a<span class="pagenum" title="Page 78"> </span><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a> comb. He did not mind how +elaborately long he made a sentence, so long as he made it clear. He +would constantly repeat whole phrases word for word in the same +sentence, rather than risk ambiguity by abbreviation. His genius showed +itself in turning this method of a laborious lucidity into a peculiarly +exasperating form of satire and controversy. Newman's strength was in a +sort of stifled passion, a dangerous patience of polite logic and then: +"Cowards! if I advanced a step you would run away: it is not you I fear. +<i>Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis.</i>" If Newman seemed suddenly to fly +into a temper, Carlyle seemed never to fly out of one. But Arnold kept a +smile of heart-broken forbearance, as of the teacher in an idiot school, +that was enormously insulting. One trick he often tried with success. If +his opponent had said something foolish, like "the destiny of England is +in the great heart of England," Arnold would repeat the phrase again and +again until it looked more foolish than it really was. Thus<span class="pagenum" title="Page 79"> </span><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a> he recurs +again and again to "the British College of Health in the New Road" till +the reader wants to rush out and burn the place down. Arnold's great +error was that he sometimes thus wearied us of his own phrases, as well +as of his enemies'.</p> + +<p>These names are roughly representative of the long series of protests +against the cold commercial rationalism which held Parliament and the +schools through the earlier Victorian time, in so far as those protests +were made in the name of neglected intellect, insulted art, forgotten +heroism and desecrated religion. But already the Utilitarian citadel had +been more heavily bombarded on the other side by one lonely and +unlettered man of genius.</p> + +<p>The rise of Dickens is like the rising of a vast mob. This is not only +because his tales are indeed as crowded and populous as towns: for truly +it was not so much that Dickens appeared as that a hundred Dickens +characters appeared. It is also because he was<span class="pagenum" title="Page 80"> </span><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a> the sort of man who has +the impersonal impetus of a mob: what Poe meant when he truly said that +popular rumour, if really spontaneous, was like the intuition of the +individual man of genius. Those who speak scornfully of the ignorance of +the mob do not err as to the fact itself; their error is in not seeing +that just as a crowd is comparatively ignorant, so a crowd is +comparatively innocent. It will have the old and human faults; but it is +not likely to specialise in the special faults of that particular +society: because the effort of the strong and successful in all ages is +to keep the poor out of society. If the higher castes have developed +some special moral beauty or grace, as they occasionally do (for +instance, mediæval chivalry), it is likely enough, of course, that the +mass of men will miss it. But if they have developed some perversion or +over-emphasis, as they much more often do (for instance, the Renaissance +poisoning), then it will be the tendency of the mass of men to miss that +too.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 81"> </span><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a> The point might be put in many ways; you may say if you will that +the poor are always at the tail of the procession, and that whether they +are morally worse or better depends on whether humanity as a whole is +proceeding towards heaven or hell. When humanity is going to hell, the +poor are always nearest to heaven.</p> + +<p>Dickens was a mob—and a mob in revolt; he fought by the light of +nature; he had not a theory, but a thirst. If any one chooses to offer +the cheap sarcasm that his thirst was largely a thirst for milk-punch, I +am content to reply with complete gravity and entire contempt that in a +sense this is perfectly true. His thirst was for things as humble, as +human, as laughable as that daily bread for which we cry to God. He had +no particular plan of reform; or, when he had, it was startlingly petty +and parochial compared with the deep, confused clamour of comradeship +and insurrection that fills all his narrative. It would not be gravely +unjust to<span class="pagenum" title="Page 82"> </span><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a> him to compare him to his own heroine, Arabella Allen, who +"didn't know what she did like," but who (when confronted with Mr. Bob +Sawyer) "did know what she didn't like." Dickens did know what he didn't +like. He didn't like the Unrivalled Happiness which Mr. Roebuck praised; +the economic laws that were working so faultlessly in Fever Alley; the +wealth that was accumulating so rapidly in Bleeding Heart Yard. But, +above all, he didn't like the <em>mean</em> side of the Manchester philosophy: +the preaching of an impossible thrift and an intolerable temperance. He +hated the implication that because a man was a miser in Latin he must +also be a miser in English. And this meanness of the Utilitarians had +gone very far—infecting many finer minds who had fought the +Utilitarians. In the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, a thing like Malthus could be +championed by a man like Macaulay.</p> + +<p>The twin root facts of the revolution called Dickens are these: first, +that he attacked the cold Victorian compromise; second, that he<span class="pagenum" title="Page 83"> </span><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a> +attacked it without knowing he was doing it—certainly without knowing +that other people were doing it. He was attacking something which we +will call Mr. Gradgrind. He was utterly unaware (in any essential sense) +that any one else had attacked Mr. Gradgrind. All the other attacks had +come from positions of learning or cultured eccentricity of which he was +entirely ignorant, and to which, therefore (like a spirited fellow), he +felt a furious hostility. Thus, for instance, he hated that Little +Bethel to which Kit's mother went: he hated it simply as Kit hated it. +Newman could have told him it was hateful, because it had no root in +religious history; it was not even a sapling sprung of the seed of some +great human and heathen tree: it was a monstrous mushroom that grows in +the moonshine and dies in the dawn. Dickens knew no more of religious +history than Kit; he simply smelt the fungus, and it stank. Thus, again, +he hated that insolent luxury of a class counting itself a comfortable<span class="pagenum" title="Page 84"> </span><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a> +exception to all mankind; he hated it as Kate Nickleby hated Sir +Mulberry Hawke—by instinct. Carlyle could have told him that all the +world was full of that anger against the impudent fatness of the few. +But when Dickens wrote about Kate Nickleby, he knew about as much of the +world—as Kate Nickleby. He did write <i>The Tale of Two Cities</i> long +afterwards; but that was when he <em>had</em> been instructed by Carlyle. His +first revolutionism was as private and internal as feeling sea-sick. +Thus, once more, he wrote against Mr. Gradgrind long before he created +him. In <i>The Chimes</i>, conceived in quite his casual and charitable +season, with the <i>Christmas Carol</i> and the <i>Cricket on the Hearth</i>, he +hit hard at the economists. Ruskin, in the same fashion, would have told +him that the worst thing about the economists was that they were not +economists: that they missed many essential things even in economics. +But Dickens did not know whether they were economists or not: he only +knew<span class="pagenum" title="Page 85"> </span><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a> that they wanted hitting. Thus, to take a last case out of many, +Dickens travelled in a French railway train, and noticed that this +eccentric nation provided him with wine that he could drink and +sandwiches he could eat, and manners he could tolerate. And remembering +the ghastly sawdust-eating waiting-rooms of the North English railways, +he wrote that rich chapter in <i>Mugby Junction</i>. Matthew Arnold could +have told him that this was but a part of the general thinning down of +European civilisation in these islands at the edge of it; that for two +or three thousand years the Latin society has learnt how to drink wine, +and how not to drink too much of it. Dickens did not in the least +understand the Latin society: but he did understand the wine. If (to +prolong an idle but not entirely false metaphor) we have called Carlyle +a man who saw and Arnold a man who knew, we might truly call Dickens a +man who tasted, that is, a man who really felt. In spite of all the +silly talk about his vulgarity,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 86"> </span><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a> he really had, in the strict and +serious sense, good taste. All real good taste is gusto—the power of +appreciating the presence—or the absence—of a particular and positive +pleasure. He had no learning; he was not misled by the label on the +bottle—for that is what learning largely meant in his time. He opened +his mouth and shut his eyes and saw what the Age of Reason would give +him. And, having tasted it, he spat it out.</p> + +<p>I am constrained to consider Dickens here among the fighters; though I +ought (on the pure principles of Art) to be considering him in the +chapter which I have allotted to the story-tellers. But we should get +the whole Victorian perspective wrong, in my opinion at least, if we did +not see that Dickens was primarily the most successful of all the +onslaughts on the solid scientific school; because he did not attack +from the standpoint of extraordinary faith, like Newman; or the +standpoint of extraordinary inspiration, like Carlyle; or the standpoint +of extraordinary<span class="pagenum" title="Page 87"> </span><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a> detachment or serenity, like Arnold; but from the +standpoint of quite ordinary and quite hearty dislike. To give but one +instance more, Matthew Arnold, trying to carry into England constructive +educational schemes which he could see spread like a clear railway map +all over the Continent, was much badgered about what he really thought +was <em>wrong</em> with English middle-class education. Despairing of +explaining to the English middle class the idea of high and central +public instruction, as distinct from coarse and hole-and-corner private +instruction, he invoked the aid of Dickens. He said the English +middle-class school was the sort of school where Mr. Creakle sat, with +his buttered toast and his cane. Now Dickens had probably never seen any +other kind of school—certainly he had never understood the systematic +State Schools in which Arnold had learnt his lesson. But he saw the cane +and the buttered toast, and he <em>knew</em> that it was all wrong. In this +sense, Dickens, the great<span class="pagenum" title="Page 88"> </span><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a> romanticist, is truly the great realist also. +For he had no abstractions: he had nothing except realities out of which +to make a romance.</p> + +<p>With Dickens, then, re-arises that reality with which I began and which +(curtly, but I think not falsely) I have called Cobbett. In dealing with +fiction as such, I shall have occasion to say wherein Dickens is weaker +and stronger than that England of the eighteenth century: here it is +sufficient to say that he represents the return of Cobbett in this vital +sense; that he is proud of being the ordinary man. No one can understand +the thousand caricatures by Dickens who does not understand that he is +comparing them all with his own common sense. Dickens, in the bulk, +liked the things that Cobbett had liked; what is perhaps more to the +point, he hated the things that Cobbett had hated; the Tudors, the +lawyers, the leisurely oppression of the poor. Cobbett's fine fighting +journalism had been what is nowadays called<span class="pagenum" title="Page 89"> </span><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a> "personal," that is, it +supposed human beings to be human. But Cobbett was also personal in the +less satisfactory sense; he could only multiply monsters who were +exaggerations of his enemies or exaggerations of himself. Dickens was +personal in a more godlike sense; he could multiply persons. He could +create all the farce and tragedy of his age over again, with creatures +unborn to sin and creatures unborn to suffer. That which had not been +achieved by the fierce facts of Cobbett, the burning dreams of Carlyle, +the white-hot proofs of Newman, was really or very nearly achieved by a +crowd of impossible people. In the centre stood that citadel of atheist +industrialism: and if indeed it has ever been taken, it was taken by the +rush of that unreal army.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page 90"> </span><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS</h3> + + +<p>The Victorian novel was a thing entirely Victorian; quite unique and +suited to a sort of cosiness in that country and that age. But the novel +itself, though not merely Victorian, is mainly modern. No clear-headed +person wastes his time over definitions, except where he thinks his own +definition would probably be in dispute. I merely say, therefore, that +when I say "novel," I mean a fictitious narrative (almost invariably, +but not necessarily, in prose) of which the essential is that the story +is not told for the sake of its naked pointedness as an anecdote, or for +the sake of the irrelevant landscapes and visions that can be caught up +in it, but for the sake of some study of the difference between human +beings. There are<span class="pagenum" title="Page 91"> </span><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a> several things that make this mode of art unique. One +of the most conspicuous is that it is the art in which the conquests of +woman are quite beyond controversy. The proposition that Victorian women +have done well in politics and philosophy is not necessarily an untrue +proposition; but it is a partisan proposition. I never heard that many +women, let alone men, shared the views of Mary Wollstonecraft; I never +heard that millions of believers flocked to the religion tentatively +founded by Miss Frances Power Cobbe. They did, undoubtedly, flock to +Mrs. Eddy; but it will not be unfair to that lady to call her following +a sect, and not altogether unreasonable to say that such insane +exceptions prove the rule. Nor can I at this moment think of a single +modern woman writing on politics or abstract things, whose work is of +undisputed importance; except perhaps Mrs. Sidney Webb, who settles +things by the simple process of ordering about the citizens of a state, +as she might the servants in a kitchen. There<span class="pagenum" title="Page 92"> </span><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a> has been, at any rate, no +writer on moral or political theory that can be mentioned, without +seeming comic, in the same breath with the great female novelists. But +when we come to the novelists, the women have, on the whole, equality; +and certainly, in some points, superiority. Jane Austen is as strong in +her own way as Scott is in his. But she is, for all practical purposes, +never weak in her own way—and Scott very often is. Charlotte Brontë +dedicated <i>Jane Eyre</i> to the author of <i>Vanity Fair</i>. I should hesitate +to say that Charlotte Brontë's is a better book than Thackeray's, but I +think it might well be maintained that it is a better story. All sorts +of inquiring asses (equally ignorant of the old nature of woman and the +new nature of the novel) whispered wisely that George Eliot's novels +were really written by George Lewes. I will cheerfully answer for the +fact that, if they had been written by George Lewes, no one would ever +have read them. Those who have read his book on<span class="pagenum" title="Page 93"> </span><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a> Robespierre will have +no doubt about my meaning. I am no idolater of George Eliot; but a man +who could concoct such a crushing opiate about the most exciting +occasion in history certainly did not write <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>. +This is the first fact about the novel, that it is the introduction of a +new and rather curious kind of art; and it has been found to be +peculiarly feminine, from the first good novel by Fanny Burney to the +last good novel by Miss May Sinclair. The truth is, I think, that the +modern novel is a new thing; not new in its essence (for that is a +philosophy for fools), but new in the sense that it lets loose many of +the things that are old. It is a hearty and exhaustive overhauling of +that part of human existence which has always been the woman's province, +or rather kingdom; the play of personalities in private, the real +difference between Tommy and Joe. It is right that womanhood should +specialise in individuals, and be praised for doing so; just as in the +Middle Ages she specialised in<span class="pagenum" title="Page 94"> </span><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a> dignity and was praised for doing so. +People put the matter wrong when they say that the novel is a study of +human nature. Human nature is a thing that even men can understand. +Human nature is born of the pain of a woman; human nature plays at +peep-bo when it is two and at cricket when it is twelve; human nature +earns its living and desires the other sex and dies. What the novel +deals with is what women have to deal with; the differentiations, the +twists and turns of this eternal river. The key of this new form of art, +which we call fiction, is sympathy. And sympathy does not mean so much +feeling with all who feel, but rather suffering with all who suffer. And +it was inevitable, under such an inspiration, that more attention should +be given to the awkward corners of life than to its even flow. The very +promising domestic channel dug by the Victorian women, in books like +<i>Cranford</i>, by Mrs. Gaskell, would have got to the sea, if they had been +left alone to dig it. They might have<span class="pagenum" title="Page 95"> </span><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a> made domesticity a fairyland. +Unfortunately another idea, the idea of imitating men's cuffs and +collars and documents, cut across this purely female discovery and +destroyed it.</p> + +<p>It may seem mere praise of the novel to say it is the art of sympathy +and the study of human variations. But indeed, though this is a good +thing, it is not universally good. We have gained in sympathy; but we +have lost in brotherhood. Old quarrels had more equality than modern +exonerations. Two peasants in the Middle Ages quarrelled about their two +fields. But they went to the same church, served in the same semi-feudal +militia, and had the same morality, which ever might happen to be +breaking it at the moment. The very cause of their quarrel was the cause +of their fraternity; they both liked land. But suppose one of them a +teetotaler who desired the abolition of hops on both farms; suppose the +other a vegetarian who desired the abolition of chickens on both farms: +and it is at once apparent that a quarrel of quite<span class="pagenum" title="Page 96"> </span><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a> a different kind +would begin; and that in that quarrel it would not be a question of +farmer against farmer, but of individual against individual. This +fundamental sense of human fraternity can only exist in the presence of +positive religion. Man is merely man only when he is seen against the +sky. If he is seen against any landscape, he is only a man of that land. +If he is seen against any house, he is only a householder. Only where +death and eternity are intensely present can human beings fully feel +their fellowship. Once the divine darkness against which we stand is +really dismissed from the mind (as it was very nearly dismissed in the +Victorian time) the differences between human beings become +overpoweringly plain; whether they are expressed in the high caricatures +of Dickens or the low lunacies of Zola.</p> + +<p>This can be seen in a sort of picture in the Prologue of the <i>Canterbury +Tales</i>; which is already pregnant with the promise of the English novel. +The characters there are<span class="pagenum" title="Page 97"> </span><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a> at once graphically and delicately +differentiated; the Doctor with his rich cloak, his careful meals, his +coldness to religion; the Franklin, whose white beard was so fresh that +it recalled the daisies, and in whose house it snowed meat and drink; +the Summoner, from whose fearful face, like a red cherub's, the children +fled, and who wore a garland like a hoop; the Miller with his short red +hair and bagpipes and brutal head, with which he could break down a +door; the Lover who was as sleepless as a nightingale; the Knight, the +Cook, the Clerk of Oxford. Pendennis or the Cook, M. Mirabolant, is +nowhere so vividly varied by a few merely verbal strokes. But the great +difference is deeper and more striking. It is simply that Pendennis +would never have gone riding with a cook at all. Chaucer's knight rode +with a cook quite naturally; because the thing they were all seeking +together was as much above knighthood as it was above cookery. Soldiers +and swindlers and bullies and outcasts, they<span class="pagenum" title="Page 98"> </span><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a> were all going to the +shrine of a distant saint. To what sort of distant saint would Pendennis +and Colonel Newcome and Mr. Moss and Captain Costigan and Ridley the +butler and Bayham and Sir Barnes Newcome and Laura and the Duchess +d'Ivry and Warrington and Captain Blackball and Lady Kew travel, +laughing and telling tales together?</p> + +<p>The growth of the novel, therefore, must not be too easily called an +increase in the interest in humanity. It is an increase in the interest +in the things in which men differ; much fuller and finer work had been +done before about the things in which they agree. And this intense +interest in variety had its bad side as well as its good; it has rather +increased social distinctions in a serious and spiritual sense. Most of +the oblivion of democracy is due to the oblivion of death. But in its +own manner and measure, it was a real advance and experiment of the +European mind, like the public art of the Renaissance or the fairyland +of physical science explored<span class="pagenum" title="Page 99"> </span><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a> in the nineteenth century. It was a more +unquestionable benefit than these: and in that development women played +a peculiar part, English women especially, and Victorian women most of +all.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps partly, though certainly not entirely, this influence of +the great women writers that explains another very arresting and +important fact about the emergence of genuinely Victorian fiction. It +had been by this time decided, by the powers that had influence (and by +public opinion also, at least in the middle-class sense), that certain +verbal limits must be set to such literature. The novel must be what +some would call pure and others would call prudish; but what is not, +properly considered, either one or the other: it is rather a more or +less business proposal (right or wrong) that every writer shall draw the +line at literal physical description of things socially concealed. It +was originally merely verbal; it had not, primarily, any dream of +purifying the topic or the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 100"> </span><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a> moral tone. Dickens and Thackeray claimed +very properly the right to deal with shameful passions and suggest their +shameful culminations; Scott sometimes dealt with ideas positively +horrible—as in that grand Glenallan tragedy which is as appalling as +the <i>Œdipus</i> or <i>The Cenci</i>. None of these great men would have +tolerated for a moment being talked to (as the muddle-headed amateur +censors talk to artists to-day) about "wholesome" topics and suggestions +"that cannot elevate." They had to describe the great battle of good and +evil and they described both; but they accepted a working Victorian +compromise about what should happen behind the scenes and what on the +stage. Dickens did not claim the license of diction Fielding might have +claimed in repeating the senile ecstasies of Gride (let us say) over his +purchased bride: but Dickens does not leave the reader in the faintest +doubt about what sort of feelings they were; nor is there any reason why +he should. Thackeray would not<span class="pagenum" title="Page 101"> </span><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a> have described the toilet details of the +secret balls of Lord Steyne: he left that to Lady Cardigan. But no one +who had read Thackeray's version would be surprised at Lady Cardigan's. +But though the great Victorian novelists would not have permitted the +impudence of the suggestion that every part of their problem must be +wholesome and innocent in itself, it is still tenable (I do not say it +is certain) that by yielding to the Philistines on this verbal +compromise, they have in the long run worked for impurity rather than +purity. In one point I do certainly think that Victorian Bowdlerism did +pure harm. This is the simple point that, nine times out of ten, the +coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the +word that excuses it. A common evasion, for instance, substitutes for +the word that brands self-sale as the essential sin, a word which weakly +suggests that it is no more wicked than walking down the street. The +great peril of such soft mystifications is<span class="pagenum" title="Page 102"> </span><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a> that extreme evils (they +that are abnormal even by the standard of evil) have a very long start. +Where ordinary wrong is made unintelligible, extraordinary wrong can +count on remaining more unintelligible still; especially among those who +live in such an atmosphere of long words. It is a cruel comment on the +purity of the Victorian Age, that the age ended (save for the bursting +of a single scandal) in a thing being everywhere called "Art," "The +Greek Spirit," "The Platonic Ideal" and so on—which any navvy mending +the road outside would have stamped with a word as vile and as vulgar as +it deserved.</p> + +<p>This reticence, right or wrong, may have been connected with the +participation of women with men in the matter of fiction. It is an +important point: the sexes can only be coarse separately. It was +certainly also due, as I have already suggested, to the treaty between +the rich <i>bourgeoisie</i> and the old aristocracy, which both had to make, +for the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 103"> </span><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a> common and congenial purpose of keeping the English people +down. But it was due much more than this to a general moral atmosphere +in the Victorian Age. It is impossible to express that spirit except by +the electric bell of a name. It was latitudinarian, and yet it was +limited. It could be content with nothing less than the whole cosmos: +yet the cosmos with which it was content was small. It is false to say +it was without humour: yet there was something by instinct unsmiling in +it. It was always saying solidly that things were "enough"; and proving +by that sharpness (as of the shutting of a door) that they were not +enough. It took, I will not say its pleasures, but even its +emancipations, sadly. Definitions seem to escape this way and that in +the attempt to locate it as an idea. But every one will understand me if +I call it George Eliot.</p> + +<p>I begin with this great woman of letters for both the two reasons +already mentioned. She represents the rationalism of the old<span class="pagenum" title="Page 104"> </span><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a> Victorian +Age at its highest. She and Mill are like two great mountains at the end +of that long, hard chain which is the watershed of the Early Victorian +time. They alone rise high enough to be confused among the clouds—or +perhaps confused among the stars. They certainly were seeking truth, as +Newman and Carlyle were; the slow slope of the later Victorian vulgarity +does not lower their precipice and pinnacle. But I begin with this name +also because it emphasises the idea of modern fiction as a fresh and +largely a female thing. The novel of the nineteenth century was female; +as fully as the novel of the eighteenth century was male. It is quite +certain that no woman could have written <i>Roderick Random</i>. It is not +quite so certain that no woman could have written <i>Esmond</i>. The strength +and subtlety of woman had certainly sunk deep into English letters when +George Eliot began to write.</p> + +<p>Her originals and even her contemporaries had shown the feminine power +in fiction as<span class="pagenum" title="Page 105"> </span><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a> well or better than she. Charlotte Brontë, understood +along her own instincts, was as great; Jane Austen was greater. The +latter comes into our present consideration only as that most +exasperating thing, an ideal unachieved. It is like leaving an +unconquered fortress in the rear. No woman later has captured the +complete common sense of Jane Austen. She could keep her head, while all +the after women went about looking for their brains. She could describe +a man coolly; which neither George Eliot nor Charlotte Brontë could do. +She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what +she did not know—like a sound agnostic. But she belongs to a vanished +world before the great progressive age of which I write.</p> + +<p>One of the characteristics of the central Victorian spirit was a +tendency to substitute a certain more or less satisfied seriousness for +the extremes of tragedy and comedy. This is marked by a certain change +in George Eliot; as it is marked by a certain limitation or<span class="pagenum" title="Page 106"> </span><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a> moderation +in Dickens. Dickens was the People, as it was in the eighteenth century +and still largely is, in spite of all the talk for and against Board +School Education: comic, tragic, realistic, free-spoken, far looser in +words than in deeds. It marks the silent strength and pressure of the +spirit of the Victorian middle class that even to Dickens it never +occurred to revive the verbal coarseness of Smollett or Swift. The other +proof of the same pressure is the change in George Eliot. She was not a +genius in the elemental sense of Dickens; she could never have been +either so strong or so soft. But she did originally represent some of +the same popular realities: and her first books (at least as compared +with her latest) were full of sound fun and bitter pathos. Mr. Max +Beerbohm has remarked (in his glorious essay called <i>Ichabod</i>, I think), +that Silas Marner would not have forgotten his miserliness if George +Eliot had written of him in her maturity. I have a great regard for Mr. +Beerbohm's<span class="pagenum" title="Page 107"> </span><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a> literary judgments; and it may be so. But if literature +means anything more than a cold calculation of the chances, if there is +in it, as I believe, any deeper idea of detaching the spirit of life +from the dull obstacles of life, of permitting human nature really to +reveal itself as human, if (to put it shortly) literature has anything +on earth to do with being <em>interesting</em>—then I think we would rather +have a few more Marners than that rich maturity that gave us the +analysed dust-heaps of <i>Daniel Deronda</i>.</p> + +<p>In her best novels there is real humour, of a cool sparkling sort; there +is a strong sense of substantial character that has not yet degenerated +into psychology; there is a great deal of wisdom, chiefly about women; +indeed there is almost every element of literature except a certain +indescribable thing called <em>glamour</em>; which was the whole stock-in-trade +of the Brontës, which we feel in Dickens when Quilp clambers amid rotten +wood by the desolate river; and even in<span class="pagenum" title="Page 108"> </span><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a> Thackeray when Esmond with his +melancholy eyes wanders like some swarthy crow about the dismal avenues +of Castlewood. Of this quality (which some have called, but hastily, the +essential of literature) George Eliot had not little but nothing. Her +air is bright and intellectually even exciting; but it is like the air +of a cloudless day on the parade at Brighton. She sees people clearly, +but not through an atmosphere. And she can conjure up storms in the +conscious, but not in the subconscious mind.</p> + +<p>It is true (though the idea should not be exaggerated) that this +deficiency was largely due to her being cut off from all those +conceptions that had made the fiction of a Muse; the deep idea that +there are really demons and angels behind men. Certainly the increasing +atheism of her school spoilt her own particular imaginative talent: she +was far less free when she thought like Ladislaw than when she thought +like Casaubon. It also betrayed her on a matter specially requiring +common sense;<span class="pagenum" title="Page 109"> </span><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a> I mean sex. There is nothing that is so profoundly false +as rationalist flirtation. Each sex is trying to be both sexes at once; +and the result is a confusion more untruthful than any conventions. This +can easily be seen by comparing her with a greater woman who died before +the beginning of our present problem. Jane Austen was born before those +bonds which (we are told) protected woman from truth, were burst by the +Brontës or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that +Jane Austen knew much more about men than either of them. Jane Austen +may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth +that was protected from her. When Darcy, in finally confessing his +faults, says, "I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice +<em>though not in theory</em>," he gets nearer to a complete confession of the +intelligent male than ever was even hinted by the Byronic lapses of the +Brontës' heroes or the elaborate exculpations of George Eliot's. Jane +Austen, of course,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 110"> </span><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a> covered an infinitely smaller field than any of her +later rivals; but I have always believed in the victory of small +nationalities.</p> + +<p>The Brontës suggest themselves here; because their superficial +qualities, the qualities that can be seized upon in satire, were in this +an exaggeration of what was, in George Eliot, hardly more than an +omission. There was perhaps a time when Mr. Rawjester was more widely +known than Mr. Rochester. And certainly Mr. Rochester (to adopt the +diction of that other eminent country gentleman, Mr. Darcy) was simply +individualistic not only in practice, but in theory. Now any one may be +so in practice: but a man who is simply individualistic in theory must +merely be an ass. Undoubtedly the Brontës exposed themselves to some +misunderstanding by thus perpetually making the masculine creature much +more masculine than he wants to be. Thackeray (a man of strong though +sleepy virility) asked in his exquisite plaintive way: "Why do our lady +novelists make the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 111"> </span><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a> men bully the women?" It is, I think, unquestionably +true that the Brontës treated the male as an almost anarchic thing +coming in from outside nature; much as people on this planet regard a +comet. Even the really delicate and sustained comedy of Paul Emanuel is +not quite free from this air of studying something alien. The reply may +be made that the women in men's novels are equally fallacious. The reply +is probably just.</p> + +<p>What the Brontës really brought into fiction was exactly what Carlyle +brought into history; the blast of the mysticism of the North. They were +of Irish blood settled on the windy heights of Yorkshire; in that +country where Catholicism lingered latest, but in a superstitious form; +where modern industrialism came earliest and was more superstitious +still. The strong winds and sterile places, the old tyranny of barons +and the new and blacker tyranny of manufacturers, has made and left that +country a land of barbarians. All Charlotte Brontë's earlier work is<span class="pagenum" title="Page 112"> </span><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a> +full of that sullen and unmanageable world; moss-troopers turned +hurriedly into miners; the last of the old world forced into supporting +the very first crudities of the new. In this way Charlotte Brontë +represents the Victorian settlement in a special way. The Early +Victorian Industrialism is to George Eliot and to Charlotte Brontë, +rather as the Late Victorian Imperialism would have been to Mrs. Humphry +Ward in the centre of the empire and to Miss Olive Schreiner at the edge +of it. The real strength there is in characters like Robert Moore, when +he is dealing with anything except women, is the romance of industry in +its first advance: a romance that has not remained. On such fighting +frontiers people always exaggerate the strong qualities the masculine +sex does possess, and always add a great many strong qualities that it +does not possess. That is, briefly, all the reason in the Brontës on +this special subject: the rest is stark unreason. It can be most clearly +seen in that sister of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 113"> </span><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a> Charlotte Brontë's who has achieved the real +feat of remaining as a great woman rather than a great writer. There is +really, in a narrow but intense way, a tradition of Emily Brontë: as +there is a tradition of St. Peter or Dr. Johnson. People talk as if they +had known her, apart from her works. She must have been something more +than an original person; perhaps an origin. But so far as her written +works go she enters English letters only as an original person—and +rather a narrow one. Her imagination was sometimes superhuman—always +inhuman. <i>Wuthering Heights</i> might have been written by an eagle. She is +the strongest instance of these strong imaginations that made the other +sex a monster: for Heathcliffe fails as a man as catastrophically as he +succeeds as a demon. I think Emily Brontë was further narrowed by the +broadness of her religious views; but never, of course, so much as +George Eliot.</p> + +<p>In any case, it is Charlotte Brontë who enters Victorian literature. The +shortest way<span class="pagenum" title="Page 114"> </span><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a> of stating her strong contribution is, I think, this: that +she reached the highest romance through the lowest realism. She did not +set out with Amadis of Gaul in a forest or with Mr. Pickwick in a comic +club. She set out with herself, with her own dingy clothes, and +accidental ugliness, and flat, coarse, provincial household; and +forcibly fused all such muddy materials into a spirited fairy-tale. If +the first chapters on the home and school had not proved how heavy and +hateful <em>sanity</em> can be, there would really be less point in the +insanity of Mr. Rochester's wife—or the not much milder insanity of +Mrs. Rochester's husband. She discovered the secret of hiding the +sensational in the commonplace: and <i>Jane Eyre</i> remains the best of her +books (better even than <i>Villette</i>) because while it is a human document +written in blood, it is also one of the best blood-and-thunder detective +stories in the world.</p> + +<p>But while Emily Brontë was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and +while Charlotte<span class="pagenum" title="Page 115"> </span><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a> Brontë was at best like that warmer and more domestic +thing, a house on fire—they do connect themselves with the calm of +George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the +feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would have felt +rather ill if they had seen the things they foreran. This notion of a +hazy anticipation of after history has been absurdly overdone: as when +men connect Chaucer with the Reformation; which is like connecting Homer +with the Syracusan Expedition. But it is to some extent true that all +these great Victorian women had a sort of unrest in their souls. And the +proof of it is that (after what I will claim to call the healthier time +of Dickens and Thackeray) it began to be admitted by the great Victorian +men. If there had not been something in that irritation, we should +hardly have had to speak in these pages of <i>Diana of the Crossways</i> or +of <i>Tess of the D'Urbervilles</i>. To what this strange and very local sex +war has been due<span class="pagenum" title="Page 116"> </span><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a> I shall not ask, because I have no answer. That it was +due to votes or even little legal inequalities about marriage, I feel +myself here too close to realities even to discuss. My own guess is that +it has been due to the great neglect of the military spirit by the male +Victorians. The woman felt obscurely that she was still running her +mortal risk, while the man was not still running his. But I know nothing +about it; nor does anybody else.</p> + +<p>In so short a book on so vast, complex and living a subject, it is +impossible to drop even into the second rank of good authors, whose name +is legion; but it is impossible to leave that considerable female force +in fiction which has so largely made the very nature of the modern +novel, without mentioning two names which almost brought that second +rank up to the first rank. They were at utterly opposite poles. The one +succeeded by being a much mellower and more Christian George Eliot; the +other succeeded by being a much more mad and unchristian Emily Brontë.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 117"> </span><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a> +But Mrs. Oliphant and the author calling herself "Ouida" both forced +themselves well within the frontier of fine literature. <i>The Beleaguered +City</i> is literature in its highest sense; the other works of its author +tend to fall into fiction in its best working sense. Mrs. Oliphant was +infinitely saner in that city of ghosts than the cosmopolitan Ouida ever +was in any of the cities of men. Mrs. Oliphant would never have dared to +discover, either in heaven or hell, such a thing as a hairbrush with its +back encrusted with diamonds. But though Ouida was violent and weak +where Mrs. Oliphant might have been mild and strong, her own triumphs +were her own. She had a real power of expressing the senses through her +style; of conveying the very heat of blue skies or the bursting of +palpable pomegranates. And just as Mrs. Oliphant transfused her more +timid Victorian tales with a true and intense faith in the Christian +mystery—so Ouida, with infinite fury and infinite confusion of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 118"> </span><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a> +thought, did fill her books with Byron and the remains of the French +Revolution. In the track of such genius there has been quite an +accumulation of true talent as in the children's tales of Mrs. Ewing, +the historical tales of Miss Yonge, the tales of Mrs. Molesworth, and so +on. On a general review I do not think I have been wrong in taking the +female novelists first. I think they gave its special shape, its +temporary twist, to the Victorian novel.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless it is a shock (I almost dare to call it a relief) to come +back to the males. It is the more abrupt because the first name that +must be mentioned derives directly from the mere maleness of the Sterne +and Smollett novel. I have already spoken of Dickens as the most homely +and instinctive, and therefore probably the heaviest, of all the +onslaughts made on the central Victorian satisfaction. There is +therefore the less to say of him here, where we consider him only as a +novelist; but there is still much more<span class="pagenum" title="Page 119"> </span><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a> to say than can even conceivably +be said. Dickens, as we have stated, inherited the old comic, rambling +novel from Smollett and the rest. Dickens, as we have also stated, +consented to expurgate that novel. But when all origins and all +restraints have been defined and allowed for, the creature that came out +was such as we shall not see again. Smollett was coarse; but Smollett +was also cruel. Dickens was frequently horrible; he was never cruel. The +art of Dickens was the most exquisite of arts: it was the art of +enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a very human writer, had to be a very +human being; he had his faults and sensibilities in a strong degree; and +I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed everybody in his daily +life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and everybody has enjoyed +everybody in those books even till to-day. His books are full of baffled +villains stalking out or cowardly bullies kicked downstairs. But the +villains and the cowards are such delightful people<span class="pagenum" title="Page 120"> </span><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a> that the reader +always hopes the villain will put his head through a side window and +make a last remark; or that the bully will say one thing more, even from +the bottom of the stairs. The reader really hopes this; and he cannot +get rid of the fancy that the author hopes so too. I cannot at the +moment recall that Dickens ever killed a comic villain, except Quilp, +who was deliberately made even more villainous than comic. There can be +no serious fears for the life of Mr. Wegg in the muckcart; though Mr. +Pecksniff fell to be a borrower of money, and Mr. Mantalini to turning a +mangle, the human race has the comfort of thinking they are still alive: +and one might have the rapture of receiving a begging letter from Mr. +Pecksniff, or even of catching Mr. Mantalini collecting the washing, if +one always lurked about on Monday mornings. This sentiment (the true +artist will be relieved to hear) is entirely unmoral. Mrs. Wilfer +deserved death much more than Mr. Quilp, for she had succeeded in +poisoning<span class="pagenum" title="Page 121"> </span><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a> family life persistently, while he was (to say the least of +it) intermittent in his domesticity. But who can honestly say he does +not hope Mrs. Wilfer is still talking like Mrs. Wilfer—especially if it +is only in a book? This is the artistic greatness of Dickens, before and +after which there is really nothing to be said. He had the power of +creating people, both possible and impossible, who were simply precious +and priceless people; and anything subtler added to that truth really +only weakens it.</p> + +<p>The mention of Mrs. Wilfer (whom the heart is loth to leave) reminds one +of the only elementary ethical truth that is essential in the study of +Dickens. That is that he had broad or universal sympathies in a sense +totally unknown to the social reformers who wallow in such phrases. +Dickens (unlike the social reformers) really did sympathise with every +sort of victim of every sort of tyrant. He did truly pray for <em>all</em> who +are desolate and oppressed. If you try to tie him to any<span class="pagenum" title="Page 122"> </span><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a> cause narrower +than that Prayer Book definition, you will find you have shut out half +his best work. If, in your sympathy for Mrs. Quilp, you call Dickens the +champion of downtrodden woman, you will suddenly remember Mr. Wilfer, +and find yourself unable to deny the existence of downtrodden man. If in +your sympathy for Mr. Rouncewell you call Dickens the champion of a +manly middle-class Liberalism against Chesney Wold, you will suddenly +remember Stephen Blackpool—and find yourself unable to deny that Mr. +Rouncewell might be a pretty insupportable cock on his own dung-hill. If +in your sympathy for Stephen Blackpool you call Dickens a Socialist (as +does Mr. Pugh), and think of him as merely heralding the great +Collectivist revolt against Victorian Individualism and Capitalism, +which seemed so clearly to be the crisis at the end of this epoch—you +will suddenly remember the agreeable young Barnacle at the +Circumlocution Office: and you will be unable, for<span class="pagenum" title="Page 123"> </span><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a> very shame, to +assert that Dickens would have trusted the poor to a State Department. +Dickens did not merely believe in the brotherhood of men in the weak +modern way; he was the brotherhood of men, and knew it was a brotherhood +in sin as well as in aspiration. And he was not only larger than the old +factions he satirised; he was larger than any of our great social +schools that have gone forward since he died.</p> + +<p>The seemingly quaint custom of comparing Dickens and Thackeray existed +in their own time, and no one will dismiss it with entire disdain who +remembers that the Victorian tradition was domestic and genuine, even +when it was hoodwinked and unworldly. There must have been some reason +for making this imaginary duel between two quite separate and quite +amiable acquaintances. And there is, after all, some reason for it. It +is not, as was once cheaply said, that Thackeray went in for truth, and +Dickens for mere caricature. There is a huge accumulation of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 124"> </span><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a> truth, +down to the smallest detail, in Dickens: he seems sometimes a mere +mountain of facts. Thackeray, in comparison, often seems quite careless +and elusive; almost as if he did not quite know where all his characters +were. There is a truth behind the popular distinction; but it lies much +deeper. Perhaps the best way of stating it is this: that Dickens used +reality, while aiming at an effect of romance; while Thackeray used the +loose language and ordinary approaches of romance, while aiming at an +effect of reality. It was the special and splendid business of Dickens +to introduce us to people who would have been quite incredible if he had +not told us so much truth about them. It was the special and not less +splendid task of Thackeray to introduce us to people whom we knew +already. Paradoxically, but very practically, it followed that his +introductions were the longer of the two. When we hear of Aunt Betsy +Trotwood, we vividly envisage everything about her, from her gardening +gloves to<span class="pagenum" title="Page 125"> </span><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a> her seaside residence, from her hard, handsome face to her +tame lunatic laughing at the bedroom window. It is all so minutely true +that she must be true also. We only feel inclined to walk round the +English coast until we find that particular garden and that particular +aunt. But when we turn from the aunt of Copperfield to the uncle of +Pendennis, we are more likely to run round the coast trying to find a +watering-place where he isn't than one where he is. The moment one sees +Major Pendennis, one sees a hundred Major Pendennises. It is not a +matter of mere realism. Miss Trotwood's bonnet and gardening tools and +cupboard full of old-fashioned bottles are quite as true in the +materialistic way as the Major's cuffs and corner table and toast and +newspaper. Both writers are realistic: but Dickens writes realism in +order to make the incredible credible. Thackeray writes it in order to +make us recognise an old friend. Whether we shall be pleased to meet the +old friend is quite another matter: I think we<span class="pagenum" title="Page 126"> </span><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a> should be better pleased +to meet Miss Trotwood, and find, as David Copperfield did, a new friend, +a new world. But we recognise Major Pendennis even when we avoid him. +Henceforth Thackeray can count on our seeing him from his wig to his +well-blacked boots whenever he chooses to say "Major Pendennis paid a +call." Dickens, on the other hand, had to keep up an incessant +excitement about his characters; and no man on earth but he could have +kept it up.</p> + +<p>It may be said, in approximate summary, that Thackeray is the novelist +of memory—of our memories as well as his own. Dickens seems to expect +all his characters, like amusing strangers arriving at lunch: as if they +gave him not only pleasure, but surprise. But Thackeray is everybody's +past—is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of +dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished +conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed for ever +in some trivial<span class="pagenum" title="Page 127"> </span><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a> grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques +now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at +once the hundred ghosts of oneself.</p> + +<p>For this purpose Thackeray was equipped with a singularly easy and +sympathetic style, carved in slow soft curves where Dickens hacked out +his images with a hatchet. There was a sort of avuncular indulgence +about his attitude; what he called his "preaching" was at worst a sort +of grumbling, ending with the sentiment that boys will be boys and that +there's nothing new under the sun. He was not really either a cynic or a +<i>censor morum</i>; but (in another sense than Chaucer's) a gentle pardoner: +having seen the weaknesses he is sometimes almost weak about them. He +really comes nearer to exculpating Pendennis or Ethel Newcome than any +other author, who saw what he saw, would have been. The rare wrath of +such men is all the more effective; and there are passages in <i>Vanity +Fair</i> and still more in <i>The Book of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 128"> </span><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a> Snobs</i>, where he does make the +dance of wealth and fashion look stiff and monstrous, like a Babylonian +masquerade. But he never quite did it in such a way as to turn the +course of the Victorian Age.</p> + +<p>It may seem strange to say that Thackeray did not know enough of the +world; yet this was the truth about him in large matters of the +philosophy of life, and especially of his own time. He did not know the +way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian +epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news. In +one of his delightful asides he imagines two little clerks commenting +erroneously on the appearance of Lady Kew or Sir Brian Newcome in the +Park, and says: "How should Jones and Brown, who are not, <i>vous +comprenez, du monde</i>, understand these mysteries?" But I think Thackeray +knew quite as little about Jones and Brown as they knew about Newcome +and Kew; his world was <i>le monde</i>. Hence he seemed to take it for<span class="pagenum" title="Page 129"> </span><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a> +granted that the Victorian compromise would last; while Dickens (who +knew his Jones and Brown) had already guessed that it would not. +Thackeray did not realise that the Victorian platform was a moving +platform. To take but one instance, he was a Radical like Dickens; all +really representative Victorians, except perhaps Tennyson, were +Radicals. But he seems to have thought of all reform as simple and +straightforward and all of a piece; as if Catholic Emancipation, the New +Poor Law, Free Trade and the Factory Acts and Popular Education were all +parts of one almost self-evident evolution of enlightenment. Dickens, +being in touch with the democracy, had already discovered that the +country had come to a dark place of divided ways and divided counsels. +In <i>Hard Times</i> he realised Democracy at war with Radicalism; and +became, with so incompatible an ally as Ruskin, not indeed a Socialist, +but certainly an anti-Individualist. In <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> he felt the +strength of the new<span class="pagenum" title="Page 130"> </span><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a> rich, and knew they had begun to transform the +aristocracy, instead of the aristocracy transforming them. He knew that +Veneering had carried off Twemlow in triumph. He very nearly knew what +we all know to-day: that, so far from it being possible to plod along +the progressive road with more votes and more Free Trade, England must +either sharply become very much more democratic or as rapidly become +very much less so.</p> + +<p>There gathers round these two great novelists a considerable group of +good novelists, who more or less mirror their mid-Victorian mood. Wilkie +Collins may be said to be in this way a lesser Dickens and Anthony +Trollope a lesser Thackeray. Wilkie Collins is chiefly typical of his +time in this respect: that while his moral and religious conceptions +were as mechanical as his carefully constructed fictitious conspiracies, +he nevertheless informed the latter with a sort of involuntary mysticism +which dealt wholly with the darker side of the soul. For this<span class="pagenum" title="Page 131"> </span><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a> was one +of the most peculiar of the problems of the Victorian mind. The idea of +the supernatural was perhaps at as low an ebb as it had ever +been—certainly much lower than it is now. But in spite of this, and in +spite of a certain ethical cheeriness that was almost <i>de rigueur</i>—the +strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the +Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They +might have ghost stories, but not saints' stories. They could trifle +with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the +pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that +the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for +example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ritual and +popular legend that has clustered round Christmas through all the +Christian ages, it is a truly extraordinary thing to reflect that +Dickens (wishing to have in <i>The Christmas Carol</i> a little happy +supernaturalism by way of a change) actually had to make<span class="pagenum" title="Page 132"> </span><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a> up a mythology +for himself. Here was one of the rare cases where Dickens, in a real and +human sense, did suffer from the lack of culture. For the rest, Wilkie +Collins is these two elements: the mechanical and the mystical; both +very good of their kind. He is one of the few novelists in whose case it +is proper and literal to speak of his "plots." He was a plotter; he went +about to slay Godfrey Ablewhite as coldly and craftily as the Indians +did. But he also had a sound though sinister note of true magic; as in +the repetition of the two white dresses in <i>The Woman in White</i>; or of +the dreams with their double explanations in <i>Armadale</i>. His ghosts do +walk. They are alive; and walk as softly as Count Fosco, but as solidly. +Finally, <i>The Moonstone</i> is probably the best detective tale in the +world.</p> + +<p>Anthony Trollope, a clear and very capable realist, represents rather +another side of the Victorian spirit of comfort; its leisureliness, its +love of detail, especially of domestic<span class="pagenum" title="Page 133"> </span><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a> detail; its love of following +characters and kindred from book to book and from generation to +generation. Dickens very seldom tried this latter experiment, and then +(as in <i>Master Humphrey's Clock</i>) unsuccessfully; those magnesium blazes +of his were too brilliant and glaring to be indefinitely prolonged. But +Thackeray was full of it; and we often feel that the characters in <i>The +Newcomes</i> or <i>Philip</i> might legitimately complain that their talk and +tale are being perpetually interrupted and pestered by people out of +other books. Within his narrower limits, Trollope was a more strict and +masterly realist than Thackeray, and even those who would call his +personages "types" would admit that they are as vivid as characters. It +was a bustling but a quiet world that he described: politics before the +coming of the Irish and the Socialists; the Church in the lull between +the Oxford Movement and the modern High Anglican energy. And it is +notable in the Victorian spirit once more<span class="pagenum" title="Page 134"> </span><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a> that though his clergymen are +all of them real men and many of them good men, it never really occurs +to us to think of them as the priests of a religion.</p> + +<p>Charles Reade may be said to go along with these; and Disraeli and even +Kingsley; not because these three very different persons had anything +particular in common, but because they all fell short of the first rank +in about the same degree. Charles Reade had a kind of cold coarseness +about him, not morally but artistically, which keeps him out of the best +literature as such: but he is of importance to the Victorian development +in another way; because he has the harsher and more tragic note that has +come later in the study of our social problems. He is the first of the +angry realists. Kingsley's best books may be called boys' books. There +is a real though a juvenile poetry in <i>Westward Ho!</i> and though that +narrative, historically considered, is very much of a lie, it is a good, +thundering honest lie. There are also<span class="pagenum" title="Page 135"> </span><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a> genuinely eloquent things in +<i>Hypatia</i>, and a certain electric atmosphere of sectarian excitement +that Kingsley kept himself in, and did know how to convey. He said he +wrote the book in his heart's blood. This is an exaggeration, but there +is a truth in it; and one does feel that he may have relieved his +feelings by writing it in red ink. As for Disraeli, his novels are able +and interesting considered as everything except novels, and are an +important contribution precisely because they are written by an alien +who did not take our politics so seriously as Trollope did. They are +important again as showing those later Victorian changes which men like +Thackeray missed. Disraeli did do something towards revealing the +dishonesty of our politics—even if he had done a good deal towards +bringing it about.</p> + +<p>Between this group and the next there hovers a figure very hard to +place; not higher in letters than these, yet not easy to class with +them; I mean Bulwer Lytton. He was<span class="pagenum" title="Page 136"> </span><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a> no greater than they were; yet +somehow he seems to take up more space. He did not, in the ultimate +reckoning, do anything in particular: but he was a figure; rather as +Oscar Wilde was later a figure. You could not have the Victorian Age +without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his +dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere +polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round +interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic +swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real +touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always +turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in +a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost Oriental ostentation was used +by the young Thackeray as something on which to sharpen his new razor of +Victorian common sense. His pose as a dilettante satirist inflamed the +execrable temper of Tennyson, and led to<span class="pagenum" title="Page 137"> </span><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a> those lively comparisons to a +bandbox and a lion in curlpapers. He interposed the glove of warning and +the tear of sensibility between us and the proper ending of <i>Great +Expectations</i>. Of his own books, by far the best are the really charming +comedies about <i>The Caxtons</i> and <i>Kenelm Chillingly</i>; none of his other +works have a high literary importance now, with the possible exception +of <i>A Strange Story</i>; but his <i>Coming Race</i> is historically interesting +as foreshadowing those novels of the future which were afterwards such a +weapon of the Socialists. Lastly, there was an element indefinable about +Lytton, which often is in adventurers; which amounts to a suspicion that +there was something in him after all. It rang out of him when he said to +the hesitating Crimean Parliament: "Destroy your Government and save +your army."</p> + +<p>With the next phase of Victorian fiction we enter a new world; the +later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways +weaker world in which we live to-day.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 138"> </span><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a> The subtle and sad change that +was passing like twilight across the English brain at this time is very +well expressed in the fact that men have come to mention the great name +of Meredith in the same breath as Mr. Thomas Hardy. Both writers, +doubtless, disagreed with the orthodox religion of the ordinary English +village. Most of us have disagreed with that religion until we made the +simple discovery that it does not exist. But in any age where ideas +could be even feebly disentangled from each other, it would have been +evident at once that Meredith and Hardy were, intellectually speaking, +mortal enemies. They were much more opposed to each other than Newman +was to Kingsley; or than Abelard was to St. Bernard. But then they +collided in a sceptical age, which is like colliding in a London fog. +There can never be any clear controversy in a sceptical age.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless both Hardy and Meredith did mean something; and they did +mean diametrically opposite things. Meredith was<span class="pagenum" title="Page 139"> </span><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a> perhaps the only man +in the modern world who has almost had the high honour of rising out of +the low estate of a Pantheist into the high estate of a Pagan. A Pagan +is a person who can do what hardly any person for the last two thousand +years could do: a person who can take Nature naturally. It is due to +Meredith to say that no one outside a few of the great Greeks has ever +taken Nature so naturally as he did. And it is also due to him to say +that no one outside Colney Hatch ever took Nature so unnaturally as it +was taken in what Mr. Hardy has had the blasphemy to call Wessex Tales. +This division between the two points of view is vital; because the turn +of the nineteenth century was a very sharp one; by it we have reached +the rapids in which we find ourselves to-day.</p> + +<p>Meredith really is a Pantheist. You can express it by saying that God is +the great All: you can express it much more intelligently by saying that +Pan is the great god. But there is some sense in it, and the sense is<span class="pagenum" title="Page 140"> </span><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a> +this: that some people believe that this world is sufficiently good at +bottom for us to trust ourselves to it without very much knowing why. It +is the whole point in most of Meredith's tales that there is something +behind us that often saves us when we understand neither it nor +ourselves. He sometimes talked mere intellectualism about women: but +that is because the most brilliant brains can get tired. Meredith's +brain was quite tired when it wrote some of its most quoted and least +interesting epigrams: like that about passing Seraglio Point, but not +doubling Cape Turk. Those who can see Meredith's mind in that are with +those who can see Dickens' mind in Little Nell. Both were chivalrous +pronouncements on behalf of oppressed females: neither has any earthly +meaning as ideas.</p> + +<p>But what Meredith did do for women was not to emancipate them (which +means nothing) but to express them, which means a great deal. And he +often expressed them<span class="pagenum" title="Page 141"> </span><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a> right, even when he expressed himself wrong. Take, +for instance, that phrase so often quoted: "Woman will be the last thing +civilised by man." Intellectually it is something worse than false; it +is the opposite of what he was always attempting to say. So far from +admitting any equality in the sexes, it logically admits that a man may +use against a woman any chains or whips he has been in the habit of +using against a tiger or a bear. He stood as the special champion of +female dignity: but I cannot remember any author, Eastern or Western, +who has so calmly assumed that man is the master and woman merely the +material, as Meredith really does in this phrase. Any one who knows a +free woman (she is generally a married woman) will immediately be +inclined to ask two simple and catastrophic questions, first: "Why +should woman be civilised?" and, second: "Why, if she is to be +civilised, should she be civilised by man?" In the mere intellectualism +of the matter, Meredith seems to be<span class="pagenum" title="Page 142"> </span><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a> talking the most brutal sex +mastery: he, at any rate, has not doubled Cape Turk, nor even passed +Seraglio Point. Now why is it that we all really feel that this +Meredithian passage is not so insolently masculine as in mere logic it +would seem? I think it is for this simple reason: that there is +something about Meredith making us feel that it is not woman he +disbelieves in, but civilisation. It is a dark undemonstrated feeling +that Meredith would really be rather sorry if woman were civilised by +man—or by anything else. When we have got that, we have got the real +Pagan—the man that does believe in Pan.</p> + +<p>It is proper to put this philosophic matter first, before the æsthetic +appreciation of Meredith, because with Meredith a sort of passing bell +has rung and the Victorian orthodoxy is certainly no longer safe. +Dickens and Carlyle, as we have said, rebelled against the orthodox +compromise: but Meredith has escaped from it. Cosmopolitanism, +Socialism, Feminism are already in the air;<span class="pagenum" title="Page 143"> </span><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a> and Queen Victoria has +begun to look like Mrs. Grundy. But to escape from a city is one thing: +to choose a road is another. The free-thinker who found himself outside +the Victorian city, found himself also in the fork of two very different +naturalistic paths. One of them went upwards through a tangled but +living forest to lonely but healthy hills: the other went down to a +swamp. Hardy went down to botanise in the swamp, while Meredith climbed +towards the sun. Meredith became, at his best, a sort of daintily +dressed Walt Whitman: Hardy became a sort of village atheist brooding +and blaspheming over the village idiot. It is largely because the +free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they +want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their +small but sincere movement has failed.</p> + +<p>For the duel is deadly; and any agnostic who wishes to be anything more +than a Nihilist must sympathise with one version of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 144"> </span><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a> nature or the +other. The God of Meredith is impersonal; but he is often more healthy +and kindly than any of the persons. That of Thomas Hardy is almost made +personal by the intense feeling that he is poisonous. Nature is always +coming in to save Meredith's women; Nature is always coming in to betray +and ruin Hardy's. It has been said that if God had not existed it would +have been necessary to invent Him. But it is not often, as in Mr. +Hardy's case, that it is necessary to invent Him in order to prove how +unnecessary (and undesirable) He is. But Mr. Hardy is anthropomorphic +out of sheer atheism. He personifies the universe in order to give it a +piece of his mind. But the fight is unequal for the old philosophical +reason: that the universe had already given Mr. Hardy a piece of <em>its</em> +mind to fight with. One curious result of this divergence in the two +types of sceptic is this: that when these two brilliant novelists break +down or blow up or otherwise lose for a moment their artistic +self-command, they<span class="pagenum" title="Page 145"> </span><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a> are both equally wild, but wild in opposite +directions. Meredith shows an extravagance in comedy which, if it were +not so complicated, every one would call broad farce. But Mr. Hardy has +the honour of inventing a new sort of game, which may be called the +extravagance of depression. The placing of the weak lover and his new +love in such a place that they actually see the black flag announcing +that Tess has been hanged is utterly inexcusable in art and probability; +it is a cruel practical joke. But it is a practical joke at which even +its author cannot brighten up enough to laugh.</p> + +<p>But it is when we consider the great artistic power of these two +writers, with all their eccentricities, that we see even more clearly +that free-thought was, as it were, a fight between finger-posts. For it +is the remarkable fact that it was the man who had the healthy and manly +outlook who had the crabbed and perverse style; it was the man who had +the crabbed and perverse outlook<span class="pagenum" title="Page 146"> </span><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a> who had the healthy and manly style. +The reader may well have complained of paradox when I observed above +that Meredith, unlike most neo-Pagans, did in his way take Nature +naturally. It may be suggested, in tones of some remonstrance, that +things like "though pierced by the cruel acerb," or "thy fleetingness is +bigger in the ghost," or "her gabbling grey she eyes askant," or "sheer +film of the surface awag" are not taking Nature naturally. And this is +true of Meredith's style, but it is not true of his spirit; nor even, +apparently, of his serious opinions. In one of the poems I have quoted +he actually says of those who live nearest to that Nature he was always +praising—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Have they but held her laws and nature dear,<br /></span> +<span>They mouth no sentence of inverted wit";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">which certainly was what Meredith himself was doing most of the time. +But a similar paradox of the combination of plain tastes<span class="pagenum" title="Page 147"> </span><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a> with twisted +phrases can also be seen in Browning. Something of the same can be seen +in many of the cavalier poets. I do not understand it: it may be that +the fertility of a cheerful mind crowds everything, so that the tree is +entangled in its own branches; or it may be that the cheerful mind cares +less whether it is understood or not; as a man is less articulate when +he is humming than when he is calling for help.</p> + +<p>Certainly Meredith suffers from applying a complex method to men and +things he does not mean to be complex; nay, honestly admires for being +simple. The conversations between Diana and Redworth fail of their full +contrast because Meredith can afford the twopence for Diana coloured, +but cannot afford the penny for Redworth plain. Meredith's ideals were +neither sceptical nor finicky: but they can be called insufficient. He +had, perhaps, over and above his honest Pantheism two convictions +profound enough to be called prejudices. He was probably of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 148"> </span><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a> Welsh +blood, certainly of Celtic sympathies, and he set himself more swiftly +though more subtly than Ruskin or Swinburne to undermining the enormous +complacency of John Bull. He also had a sincere hope in the strength of +womanhood, and may be said, almost without hyperbole, to have begotten +gigantic daughters. He may yet suffer for his chivalric interference as +many champions do. I have little doubt that when St. George had killed +the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. But certainly neither +of these two vital enthusiasms touched the Victorian trouble. The +disaster of the modern English is not that they are not Celtic, but that +they are not English. The tragedy of the modern woman is not that she is +not allowed to follow man, but that she follows him far too slavishly. +This conscious and theorising Meredith did not get very near his problem +and is certainly miles away from ours. But the other Meredith was a +creator; which means a god. That is true of him<span class="pagenum" title="Page 149"> </span><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a> which is true of so +different a man as Dickens, that all one can say of him is that he is +full of good things. A reader opening one of his books feels like a +schoolboy opening a hamper which he knows to have somehow cost a hundred +pounds. He may be more bewildered by it than by an ordinary hamper; but +he gets the impression of a real richness of thought; and that is what +one really gets from such riots of felicity as <i>Evan Harrington</i> or +<i>Harry Richmond</i>. His philosophy may be barren, but he was not. And the +chief feeling among those that enjoy him is a mere wish that more people +could enjoy him too.</p> + +<p>I end here upon Hardy and Meredith; because this parting of the ways to +open optimism and open pessimism really was the end of the Victorian +peace. There are many other men, very nearly as great, on whom I might +delight to linger: on Shorthouse, for instance, who in one way goes with +Mrs. Browning or Coventry Patmore. I mean that he has a wide culture, +which is<span class="pagenum" title="Page 150"> </span><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a> called by some a narrow religion. When we think what even the +best novels about cavaliers have been (written by men like Scott or +Stevenson) it is a wonderful thing that the author of <i>John Inglesant</i> +could write a cavalier romance in which he forgot Cromwell but +remembered Hobbes. But Shorthouse is outside the period in fiction in +the same sort of way in which Francis Thompson is outside it in poetry. +He did not accept the Victorian basis. He knew too much.</p> + +<p>There is one more matter that may best be considered here, though +briefly: it illustrates the extreme difficulty of dealing with the +Victorian English in a book like this, because of their eccentricity; +not of opinions, but of character and artistic form. There are several +great Victorians who will not fit into any of the obvious categories I +employ; because they will not fit into anything, hardly into the world +itself. Where Germany or Italy would relieve the monotony of mankind by +paying serious respect to an artist,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 151"> </span><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a> or a scholar, or a patriotic +warrior, or a priest—it was always the instinct of the English to do it +by pointing out a Character. Dr. Johnson has faded as a poet or a +critic, but he survives as a Character. Cobbett is neglected +(unfortunately) as a publicist and pamphleteer, but he is remembered as +a Character. Now these people continued to crop up through the Victorian +time; and each stands so much by himself that I shall end these pages +with a profound suspicion that I have forgotten to mention a Character +of gigantic dimensions. Perhaps the best example of such eccentrics is +George Borrow; who sympathised with unsuccessful nomads like the gipsies +while every one else sympathised with successful nomads like the Jews; +who had a genius like the west wind for the awakening of wild and casual +friendships and the drag and attraction of the roads. But whether George +Borrow ought to go into the section devoted to philosophers, or the +section devoted to novelists, or the section de<span class="pagenum" title="Page 152"> </span><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>voted to liars, nobody +else has ever known, even if he did.</p> + +<p>But the strongest case of this Victorian power of being abruptly +original in a corner can be found in two things: the literature meant +merely for children and the literature meant merely for fun. It is true +that these two very Victorian things often melted into each other (as +was the way of Victorian things), but not sufficiently to make it safe +to mass them together without distinction. Thus there was George +Macdonald, a Scot of genius as genuine as Carlyle's; he could write +fairy-tales that made all experience a fairy-tale. He could give the +real sense that every one had the end of an elfin thread that must at +last lead them into Paradise. It was a sort of optimist Calvinism. But +such really significant fairy-tales were accidents of genius. Of the +Victorian Age as a whole it is true to say that it did discover a new +thing; a thing called Nonsense. It may be doubted whether this thing was +really invented to<span class="pagenum" title="Page 153"> </span><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a> please children. Rather it was invented by old +people trying to prove their first childhood, and sometimes succeeding +only in proving their second. But whatever else the thing was, it was +English and it was individual. Lewis Carroll gave mathematics a holiday: +he carried logic into the wild lands of illogicality. Edward Lear, a +richer, more romantic and therefore more truly Victorian buffoon, +improved the experiment. But the more we study it, the more we shall, I +think, conclude that it reposed on something more real and profound in +the Victorians than even their just and exquisite appreciation of +children. It came from the deep Victorian sense of humour.</p> + +<p>It may appear, because I have used from time to time the only possible +phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as +a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a +final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon—and a successful +one. He was a<span class="pagenum" title="Page 154"> </span><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a> humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That +which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the +English—the duty of not taking him seriously. The strong and shrewd +Victorian humour appears in every slash of the pencil of Charles Keene; +in every undergraduate inspiration of Calverley or "Q." or J. K. S. They +had largely forgotten both art and arms: but the gods had left them +laughter.</p> + +<p>But the final proof that the Victorians were alive by this laughter, can +be found in the fact they could manage and master for a moment even the +cosmopolitan modern theatre. They could contrive to put "The Bab +Ballads" on the stage. To turn a private name into a public epithet is a +thing given to few: but the word "Gilbertian" will probably last longer +than the name Gilbert.</p> + +<p>It meant a real Victorian talent; that of exploding unexpectedly and +almost, as it<span class="pagenum" title="Page 155"> </span><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a> seemed, unintentionally. Gilbert made good jokes by the +thousand; but he never (in his best days) made the joke that could +possibly have been expected of him. This is the last essential of the +Victorian. Laugh at him as a limited man, a moralist, conventionalist, +an opportunist, a formalist. But remember also that he was really a +humorist; and may still be laughing at you.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page 156"> </span><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS</h3> + + +<p>What was really unsatisfactory in Victorian literature is something much +easier to feel than to state. It was not so much a superiority in the +men of other ages to the Victorian men. It was a superiority of +Victorian men to themselves. The individual was unequal. Perhaps that is +why the society became unequal: I cannot say. They were lame giants; the +strongest of them walked on one leg a little shorter than the other. A +great man in any age must be a common man, and also an uncommon man. +Those that are only uncommon men are perverts and sowers of pestilence. +But somehow the great Victorian man was more and less than this. He was +at once a giant and a dwarf. When he has been sweeping the sky in +circles infinitely<span class="pagenum" title="Page 157"> </span><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a> great, he suddenly shrivels into something +indescribably small. There is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from +a high creative mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when +George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There are also +moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without even the excuse of +sex. But in all these cases the alteration comes as a thing quite abrupt +and unreasonable. We do not feel this acute angle anywhere in Homer or +in Virgil or in Chaucer or in Shakespeare or in Dryden; such things as +they knew they knew. It is no disgrace to Homer that he had not +discovered Britain; or to Virgil that he had not discovered America; or +to Chaucer that he had not discovered the solar system; or to Dryden +that he had not discovered the steam-engine. But we do most frequently +feel, with the Victorians, that the very vastness of the number of +things they know illustrates the abrupt abyss of the things they do not +know.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 158"> </span><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a> We feel, in a sort of way, that it <em>is</em> a disgrace to a man like +Carlyle when he asks the Irish why they do not bestir themselves and +re-forest their country: saying not a word about the soaking up of every +sort of profit by the landlords which made that and every other Irish +improvement impossible. We feel that it <em>is</em> a disgrace to a man like +Ruskin when he says, with a solemn visage, that building in iron is ugly +and unreal, but that the weightiest objection is that there is no +mention of it in the Bible; we feel as if he had just said he could find +no hair-brushes in Habakkuk. We feel that it <em>is</em> a disgrace to a man +like Thackeray when he proposes that people should be forcibly prevented +from being nuns, merely because he has no fixed intention of becoming a +nun himself. We feel that it <em>is</em> a disgrace to a man like Tennyson, +when he talks of the French revolutions, the huge crusades that had +recreated the whole of his civilisation, as being "no graver than a +schoolboy's barring out." We feel that it <em>is</em> a disgrace<span class="pagenum" title="Page 159"> </span><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a> to a man like +Browning to make spluttering and spiteful puns about the names Newman, +Wiseman, and Manning. We feel that it <em>is</em> a disgrace to a man like +Newman when he confesses that for some time he felt as if he couldn't +come in to the Catholic Church, because of that dreadful Mr. Daniel +O'Connell, who had the vulgarity to fight for his own country. We feel +that it <em>is</em> a disgrace to a man like Dickens, when he makes a blind +brute and savage out of a man like St. Dunstan; it sounds as if it were +not Dickens talking but Dombey. We feel it <em>is</em> a disgrace to a man like +Swinburne, when he has a Jingo fit and calls the Boer children in the +concentration camps "Whelps of treacherous dams whom none save we have +spared to starve and slay": we feel that Swinburne, for the first time, +really has become an immoral and indecent writer. All this is a certain +odd provincialism peculiar to the English in that great century: they +were in a kind of pocket; they appealed to too narrow<span class="pagenum" title="Page 160"> </span><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a> a public opinion; +I am certain that no French or German men of the same genius made such +remarks. Renan was the enemy of the Catholic Church; but who can imagine +Renan writing of it as Kingsley or Dickens did? Taine was the enemy of +the French Revolution; but who can imagine Taine talking about it as +Tennyson or Newman talked? Even Matthew Arnold, though he saw this peril +and prided himself on escaping it, did not altogether escape it. There +must be (to use an Irishism) something shallow in the depths of any man +who talks about the <i>Zeitgeist</i> as if it were a living thing.</p> + +<p>But this defect is very specially the key to the case of the two great +Victorian poets, Tennyson and Browning; the two spirited or beautiful +tunes, so to speak, to which the other events marched or danced. It was +especially so of Tennyson, for a reason which raises some of the most +real problems about his poetry. Tennyson, of course, owed a great deal +to Virgil. There is no question of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 161"> </span><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a> plagiarism here; a debt to Virgil is +like a debt to Nature. But Tennyson was a provincial Virgil. In such +passages as that about the schoolboy's barring out he might be called a +suburban Virgil. I mean that he tried to have the universal balance of +all the ideas at which the great Roman had aimed: but he hadn't got hold +of all the ideas to balance. Hence his work was not a balance of truths, +like the universe. It was a balance of whims; like the British +Constitution. It is intensely typical of Tennyson's philosophical temper +that he was almost the only Poet Laureate who was not ludicrous. It is +not absurd to think of Tennyson as tuning his harp in praise of Queen +Victoria: that is, it is not absurd in the same sense as Chaucer's harp +hallowed by dedication to Richard II or Wordsworth's harp hallowed by +dedication to George IV is absurd. Richard's court could not properly +appreciate either Chaucer's daisies or his "devotion." George IV would +not have gone pottering about Helvellyn in search<span class="pagenum" title="Page 162"> </span><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a> of purity and the +simple annals of the poor. But Tennyson did sincerely believe in the +Victorian compromise; and sincerity is never undignified. He really did +hold a great many of the same views as Queen Victoria, though he was +gifted with a more fortunate literary style. If Dickens is Cobbett's +democracy stirring in its grave, Tennyson is the exquisitely ornamental +extinguisher on the flame of the first revolutionary poets. England has +settled down; England has become Victorian. The compromise was +interesting, it was national and for a long time it was successful: +there is still a great deal to be said for it. But it was as freakish +and unphilosophic, as arbitrary and untranslatable, as a beggar's +patched coat or a child's secret language. Now it is here that Browning +had a certain odd advantage over Tennyson; which has, perhaps, somewhat +exaggerated his intellectual superiority to him. Browning's eccentric +style was more suitable to the poetry of a nation of eccentrics; of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 163"> </span><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a> +people for the time being removed far from the centre of intellectual +interests. The hearty and pleasant task of expressing one's intense +dislike of something one doesn't understand is much more poetically +achieved by saying, in a general way "Grrr—you swine!" than it is by +laboured lines such as "the red fool-fury of the Seine." We all feel +that there is more of the man in Browning here; more of Dr. Johnson or +Cobbett. Browning is the Englishman taking himself wilfully, following +his nose like a bull-dog, going by his own likes and dislikes. We cannot +help feeling that Tennyson is the Englishman taking himself +seriously—an awful sight. One's memory flutters unhappily over a +certain letter about the Papal Guards written by Sir Willoughby +Patterne. It is here chiefly that Tennyson suffers by that very +Virgilian loveliness and dignity of diction which he put to the service +of such a small and anomalous national scheme. Virgil had the best news +to tell as well as the best words to<span class="pagenum" title="Page 164"> </span><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a> tell it in. His world might be +sad; but it was the largest world one could live in before the coming of +Christianity. If he told the Romans to spare the vanquished and to war +down the mighty, at least he was more or less well informed about who +<em>were</em> mighty and who <em>were</em> vanquished. But when Tennyson wrote verses +like—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Of freedom in her regal seat,<br /></span> +<span>Of England; not the schoolboy heat,<br /></span> +<span>The blind hysterics of the Celt"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">he quite literally did not know one word of what he was talking about; +he did not know what Celts are, or what hysterics are, or what freedom +was, or what regal was or even of what England was—in the living Europe +of that time.</p> + +<p>His religious range was very much wider and wiser than his political; +but here also he suffered from treating as true universality a thing +that was only a sort of lukewarm local<span class="pagenum" title="Page 165"> </span><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a> patriotism. Here also he +suffered by the very splendour and perfection of his poetical powers. He +was quite the opposite of the man who cannot express himself; the +inarticulate singer who dies with all his music in him. He had a great +deal to say; but he had much more power of expression than was wanted +for anything he had to express. He could not think up to the height of +his own towering style.</p> + +<p>For whatever else Tennyson was, he was a great poet; no mind that feels +itself free, that is, above the ebb and flow of fashion, can feel +anything but contempt for the later effort to discredit him in that +respect. It is true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian +poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in +his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more +or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the +mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"—"Flits by +the sea-blue bird<span class="pagenum" title="Page 166"> </span><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a> of March"—"Leafless ribs and iron horns"—"When the +long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"—in all these cases one word is the +keystone of an arch which would fall into ruin without it. But there are +other strong phrases that recall not Stevenson but rather their common +master, Virgil—"Tears from the depths of some divine despair"—"There +is fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate"—"Was a +great water; and the moon was full"—"God made Himself an awful rose of +dawn." These do not depend on a word but on an idea: they might even be +translated. It is also true, I think, that he was first and last a lyric +poet. He was always best when he expressed himself shortly. In long +poems he had an unfortunate habit of eventually saying very nearly the +opposite of what he meant to say. I will take only two instances of what +I mean. In the <i>Idylls of the King</i>, and in <i>In Memoriam</i> (his two +sustained and ambitious efforts), particular phrases are always flashing +out the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 167"> </span><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a> whole fire of the truth; the truth that Tennyson meant. But +owing to his English indolence, his English aristocratic +irresponsibility, his English vagueness in thought, he always managed to +make the main poem mean exactly what he did not mean. Thus, these two +lines which simply say that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Lancelot was the first in tournament,<br /></span> +<span>But Arthur mightiest in the battle-field"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">do really express what he meant to express about Arthur being after all +"the highest, yet most human too; not Lancelot, nor another." But as his +hero is actually developed, we have exactly the opposite impression; +that poor old Lancelot, with all his faults, was much more of a man than +Arthur. He was a Victorian in the bad as well as the good sense; he +could not keep priggishness out of long poems. Or again, take the case +of <i>In Memoriam</i>. I will quote one verse (probably incorrectly) which +has always seemed to me splendid, and which<span class="pagenum" title="Page 168"> </span><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a> does express what the whole +poem should express—but hardly does.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"That we may lift from out the dust,<br /></span> +<span>A voice as unto him that hears<br /></span> +<span>A cry above the conquered years<br /></span> +<span>Of one that ever works, and trust."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">The poem should have been a cry above the conquered years. It might well +have been that if the poet could have said sharply at the end of it, as +a pure piece of dogma, "I've forgotten every feature of the man's face: +I know God holds him alive." But under the influence of the mere +leisurely length of the thing, the reader <em>does</em> rather receive the +impression that the wound has been healed only by time; and that the +victor hours <em>can</em> boast that this is the man that loved and lost, but +all he was is overworn. This is not the truth; and Tennyson did not +intend it for the truth. It is simply the result of the lack of +something militant, dogmatic and structural in him: whereby he could not +be<span class="pagenum" title="Page 169"> </span><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a> trusted with the trail of a very long literary process without +entangling himself like a kitten playing cat's-cradle.</p> + +<p>Browning, as above suggested, got on much better with eccentric and +secluded England because he treated it as eccentric and secluded; a +place where one could do what one liked. To a considerable extent he did +do what he liked; arousing not a few complaints; and many doubts and +conjectures as to why on earth he liked it. Many comparatively +sympathetic persons pondered upon what pleasure it could give any man to +write <i>Sordello</i> or rhyme "end-knot" to "offend not." Nevertheless he +was no anarchist and no mystagogue; and even where he was defective, his +defect has commonly been stated wrongly. The two chief charges against +him were a contempt for form unworthy of an artist, and a poor pride in +obscurity. The obscurity is true, though not, I think, the pride in it; +but the truth about this charge rather rises out of the truth about the +other. The other charge<span class="pagenum" title="Page 170"> </span><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a> is not true. Browning cared very much for form; +he cared very much for style. You may not happen to like his style; but +he did. To say that he had not enough mastery over form to express +himself perfectly like Tennyson or Swinburne is like criticising the +griffin of a mediæval gargoyle without even knowing that it is a +griffin; treating it as an infantile and unsuccessful attempt at a +classical angel. A poet indifferent to form ought to mean a poet who did +not care what form he used as long as he expressed his thoughts. He +might be a rather entertaining sort of poet; telling a smoking-room +story in blank verse or writing a hunting-song in the Spenserian stanza; +giving a realistic analysis of infanticide in a series of triolets; or +proving the truth of Immortality in a long string of limericks. Browning +certainly had no such indifference. Almost every poem of Browning, +especially the shortest and most successful ones, was moulded or graven +in some special style, generally grotesque, but invariably<span class="pagenum" title="Page 171"> </span><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a> deliberate. +In most cases whenever he wrote a new song he wrote a new kind of song. +The new lyric is not only of a different metre, but of a different +shape. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as +that horrible one beginning "John, Master of the Temple of God," with +its weird choruses and creepy prose directions. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as <i>Pisgah-sights</i>. No +one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as <i>Time's +Revenges</i>. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same +style as <i>Meeting at Night</i> and <i>Parting at Morning</i>. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as <i>The Flight of the +Duchess</i>, or in the same style as <i>The Grammarian's Funeral</i>, or in the +same style as <i>A Star</i>, or in the same style as that astounding lyric +which begins abruptly "Some people hang pictures up." These metres and +manners were not accidental; they really do suit the sort of spiritual +experiment Browning was making in<span class="pagenum" title="Page 172"> </span><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a> each case. Browning, then, was not +chaotic; he was deliberately grotesque. But there certainly was, over +and above this grotesqueness, a perversity and irrationality about the +man which led him to play the fool in the middle of his own poems; to +leave off carving gargoyles and simply begin throwing stones. His +curious complicated puns are an example of this: Hood had used the pun +to make a sentence or a sentiment especially pointed and clear. In +Browning the word with two meanings seems to mean rather less, if +anything, than the word with one. It also applies to his trick of +setting himself to cope with impossible rhymes. It may be fun, though it +is not poetry, to try rhyming to ranunculus; but even the fun +presupposes that you <em>do</em> rhyme to it; and I will affirm, and hold under +persecution, that "Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle-us" does not rhyme to +it.</p> + +<p>The obscurity, to which he must in a large degree plead guilty, was, +curiously enough, the result rather of the gay artist in him than<span class="pagenum" title="Page 173"> </span><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a> the +deep thinker. It is patience in the Browning students; in Browning it +was only impatience. He wanted to say something comic and energetic and +he wanted to say it quick. And, between his artistic skill in the +fantastic and his temperamental turn for the abrupt, the idea sometimes +flashed past unseen. But it is quite an error to suppose that these are +the dark mines containing his treasure. The two or three great and true +things he really had to say he generally managed to say quite simply. +Thus he really did want to say that God had indeed made man and woman +one flesh; that the sex relation was religious in this real sense that +even in our sin and despair we take it for granted and expect a sort of +virtue in it. The feelings of the bad husband about the good wife, for +instance, are about as subtle and entangled as any matter on this earth; +and Browning really had something to say about them. But he said it in +some of the plainest and most unmistakable words in all literature; as +lucid<span class="pagenum" title="Page 174"> </span><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a> as a flash of lightning. "Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" +Or again, he did really want to say that death and such moral terrors +were best taken in a military spirit; he could not have said it more +simply than: "I was ever a fighter; one fight more, the best and the +last." He did really wish to say that human life was unworkable unless +immortality were implied in it every other moment; he could not have +said it more simply: "leave now to dogs and apes; Man has for ever." The +obscurities were not merely superficial, but often covered quite +superficial ideas. He was as likely as not to be most unintelligible of +all in writing a compliment in a lady's album. I remember in my boyhood +(when Browning kept us awake like coffee) a friend reading out the poem +about the portrait to which I have already referred, reading it in that +rapid dramatic way in which this poet must be read. And I was profoundly +puzzled at the passage where it seemed to say that the cousin +dis<span class="pagenum" title="Page 175"> </span><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>paraged the picture, "while John scorns ale." I could not think what +this sudden teetotalism on the part of John had to do with the affair, +but I forgot to ask at the time and it was only years afterwards that, +looking at the book, I found it was "John's corns ail," a very +Browningesque way of saying he winced. Most of Browning's obscurity is +of that sort—the mistakes are almost as quaint as misprints—and the +Browning student, in that sense, is more a proof reader than a disciple. +For the rest his real religion was of the most manly, even the most +boyish sort. He is called an optimist; but the word suggests a +calculated contentment which was not in the least one of his vices. What +he really was was a romantic. He offered the cosmos as an adventure +rather than a scheme. He did not explain evil, far less explain it away; +he enjoyed defying it. He was a troubadour even in theology and +metaphysics: like the <i>Jongleurs de Dieu</i> of St. Francis. He may be said +to have serenaded heaven with a guitar,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 176"> </span><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a> and even, so to speak, tried to +climb there with a rope ladder. Thus his most vivid things are the +red-hot little love lyrics, or rather, little love dramas. He did one +really original and admirable thing: he managed the real details of +modern love affairs in verse, and love is the most realistic thing in +the world. He substituted the street with the green blind for the faded +garden of Watteau, and the "blue spirt of a lighted match" for the +monotony of the evening star.</p> + +<p>Before leaving him it should be added that he was fitted to deepen the +Victorian mind, but not to broaden it. With all his Italian sympathies +and Italian residence, he was not the man to get Victorian England out +of its provincial rut: on many things Kingsley himself was not so +narrow. His celebrated wife was wider and wiser than he in this sense; +for she was, however one-sidedly, involved in the emotions of central +European politics. She defended Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel; and +intelligently, as one con<span class="pagenum" title="Page 177"> </span><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>scious of the case against them both. As to +why it now seems simple to defend the first Italian King, but absurd to +defend the last French Emperor—well, the reason is sad and simple. It +is concerned with certain curious things called success and failure, and +I ought to have considered it under the heading of <i>The Book of Snobs</i>. +But Elizabeth Barrett, at least, was no snob: her political poems have +rather an impatient air, as if they were written, and even published, +rather prematurely—just before the fall of her idol. These old +political poems of hers are too little read to-day; they are amongst the +most sincere documents on the history of the times, and many modern +blunders could be corrected by the reading of them. And Elizabeth +Barrett had a strength really rare among women poets; the strength of +the phrase. She excelled in her sex, in epigram, almost as much as +Voltaire in his. Pointed phrases like: "Martyrs by the pang without the +palm"—or "Incense to sweeten a crime<span class="pagenum" title="Page 178"> </span><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a> and myrrh to embitter a curse," +these expressions, which are witty after the old fashion of the conceit, +came quite freshly and spontaneously to her quite modern mind. But the +first fact is this, that these epigrams of hers were never so true as +when they turned on one of the two or three pivots on which contemporary +Europe was really turning. She is by far the most European of all the +English poets of that age; all of them, even her own much greater +husband, look local beside her. Tennyson and the rest are nowhere. Take +any positive political fact, such as the final fall of Napoleon. +Tennyson wrote these profoundly foolish lines—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak<br /></span> +<span>Madman!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">as if the defeat of an English regiment were a violation of the laws of +Nature. Mrs. Browning knew no more facts about Napoleon,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 179"> </span><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a> perhaps, than +Tennyson did; but she knew the truth. Her epigram on Napoleon's fall is +in one line</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"And kings crept out again to feel the sun."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">Talleyrand would have clapped his horrible old hands at that. Her +instinct about the statesman and the soldier was very like Jane Austen's +instinct for the gentleman and the man. It is not unnoticeable that as +Miss Austen spent most of her life in a village, Miss Barrett spent most +of her life on a sofa. The godlike power of guessing seems (for some +reason I do not understand) to grow under such conditions. Unfortunately +Mrs. Browning was like all the other Victorians in going a little lame, +as I have roughly called it, having one leg shorter than the other. But +her case was, in one sense, extreme. She exaggerated both ways. She was +too strong and too weak, or (as a false sex philosophy would express it) +too masculine and too feminine. I mean that she hit the centre of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 180"> </span><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a> +weakness with almost the same emphatic precision with which she hit the +centre of strength. She could write finally of the factory wheels +"grinding life down from its mark," a strong and strictly true +observation. Unfortunately she could also write of Euripides "with his +droppings of warm tears." She could write in <i>A Drama of Exile</i>, a +really fine exposition, touching the later relation of Adam and the +animals: unfortunately the tears were again turned on at the wrong +moment at the main; and the stage direction commands a silence, only +broken by the dropping of angel's tears. How much noise is made by +angel's tears? Is it a sound of emptied buckets, or of garden hose, or +of mountain cataracts? That is the sort of question which Elizabeth +Barrett's extreme love of the extreme was always tempting people to ask. +Yet the question, as asked, does her a heavy historical injustice; we +remember all the lines in her work which were weak enough to be called +"womanly,"<span class="pagenum" title="Page 181"> </span><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a> we forget the multitude of strong lines that are strong +enough to be called "manly"; lines that Kingsley or Henley would have +jumped for joy to print in proof of their manliness. She had one of the +peculiar talents of true rhetoric, that of a powerful concentration. As +to the critic who thinks her poetry owed anything to the great poet who +was her husband, he can go and live in the same hotel with the man who +can believe that George Eliot owed anything to the extravagant +imagination of Mr. George Henry Lewes. So far from Browning inspiring or +interfering, he did not in one sense interfere enough. Her real +inferiority to him in literature is that he was consciously while she +was unconsciously absurd.</p> + +<p>It is natural, in the matter of Victorian moral change, to take +Swinburne as the next name here. He is the only poet who was also, in +the European sense, on the spot; even if, in the sense of the Gilbertian +song, the spot was barred. He also knew that<span class="pagenum" title="Page 182"> </span><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a> something rather crucial +was happening to Christendom; he thought it was getting unchristened. It +is even a little amusing, indeed, that these two Pro-Italian poets +almost conducted a political correspondence in rhyme. Mrs. Browning +sternly reproached those who had ever doubted the good faith of the King +of Sardinia, whom she acclaimed as being truly a king. Swinburne, +lyrically alluding to her as "Sea-eagle of English feather," broadly +hinted that the chief blunder of that wild fowl had been her support of +an autocratic adventurer: "calling a crowned man royal, that was no more +than a king." But it is not fair, even in this important connection, to +judge Swinburne by <i>Songs Before Sunrise</i>. They were songs before a +sunrise that has never turned up. Their dogmatic assertions have for a +long time past stared starkly at us as nonsense. As, for instance, the +phrase "Glory to Man in the Highest, for man is the master of things"; +after which there is evidently nothing to be<span class="pagenum" title="Page 183"> </span><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a> said, except that it is +not true. But even where Swinburne had his greater grip, as in that +grave and partly just poem <i>Before a Crucifix</i>, Swinburne, the most +Latin, the most learned, the most largely travelled of the Victorians, +still knows far less of the facts than even Mrs. Browning. The whole of +the poem, <i>Before a Crucifix</i>, breaks down by one mere mistake. It +imagines that the French or Italian peasants who fell on their knees +before the Crucifix did so because they were slaves. They fell on their +knees because they were free men, probably owning their own farms. +Swinburne could have found round about Putney plenty of slaves who had +no crucifixes: but only crucifixions.</p> + +<p>When we come to ethics and philosophy, doubtless we find Swinburne in +full revolt, not only against the temperate idealism of Tennyson, but +against the genuine piety and moral enthusiasm of people like Mrs. +Browning. But here again Swinburne is very English, nay, he is very +Victorian, for his revolt is<span class="pagenum" title="Page 184"> </span><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a> illogical. For the purposes of intelligent +insurrection against priests and kings, Swinburne ought to have +described the natural life of man, free and beautiful, and proved from +this both the noxiousness and the needlessness of such chains. +Unfortunately Swinburne rebelled against Nature first and then tried to +rebel against religion for doing exactly the same thing that he had +done. His songs of joy are not really immoral; but his songs of sorrow +are. But when he merely hurls at the priest the assertion that flesh is +grass and life is sorrow, he really lays himself open to the restrained +answer, "So I have ventured, on various occasions, to remark." When he +went forth, as it were, as the champion of pagan change and pleasure, he +heard uplifted the grand choruses of his own <i>Atalanta</i>, in his rear, +refusing hope.</p> + +<p>The splendid diction that blazes through the whole of that drama, that +still dances exquisitely in the more lyrical <i>Poems and Ballads</i>, makes +some marvellous appear<span class="pagenum" title="Page 185"> </span><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a>ances in <i>Songs Before Sunrise</i>, and then mainly +falters and fades away, is, of course, the chief thing about Swinburne. +The style is the man; and some will add that it does not, thus +unsupported, amount to much of a man. But the style itself suffers some +injustice from those who would speak thus. The views expressed are often +quite foolish and often quite insincere; but the style itself is a +manlier and more natural thing than is commonly made out. It is not in +the least languorous or luxurious or merely musical and sensuous, as one +would gather from both the eulogies and the satires, from the conscious +and the unconscious imitations. On the contrary, it is a sort of +fighting and profane parody of the Old Testament; and its lines are made +of short English words like the short Roman swords. The first line of +one of his finest poems, for instance, runs, "I have lived long enough +to have seen one thing, that love hath an end." In that sentence only +one small "e" gets outside the monosyllable.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 186"> </span><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a> Through all his +interminable tragedies, he was fondest of lines like—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"If ever I leave off to honour you<br /></span> +<span>God give me shame; I were the worst churl born."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">The dramas were far from being short and dramatic; but the words really +were. Nor was his verse merely smooth; except his very bad verse, like +"the lilies and languors of virtue, to the raptures and roses of vice," +which both, in cheapness of form and foolishness of sentiment, may be +called the worst couplet in the world's literature. In his real poetry +(even in the same poem) his rhythm and rhyme are as original and +ambitious as Browning; and the only difference between him and Browning +is, not that he is smooth and without ridges, but that he always crests +the ridge triumphantly and Browning often does not—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"On thy bosom though many a kiss be,<br /></span> +<span>There are none such as knew it of old.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 187"> </span><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a><br /></span> +<span>Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe,<br /></span> +<span>Male ringlets or feminine gold,<br /></span> +<span>That thy lips met with under the statue<br /></span> +<span>Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves<br /></span> +<span>From the eyes of the garden-god at you<br /></span> +<span>Across the fig-leaves."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">Look at the rhymes in that verse, and you will see they are as stiff a +task as Browning's: only they are successful. That is the real strength +of Swinburne—a style. It was a style that nobody could really imitate; +and least of all Swinburne himself, though he made the attempt all +through his later years. He was, if ever there was one, an inspired +poet. I do not think it the highest sort of poet. And you never discover +who is an inspired poet until the inspiration goes.</p> + +<p>With Swinburne we step into the circle of that later Victorian influence +which was very vaguely called Æsthetic. Like all human things, but +especially Victorian things, it was not only complex but confused. +Things in<span class="pagenum" title="Page 188"> </span><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a> it that were at one on the emotional side were flatly at war +on the intellectual. In the section of the painters, it was the allies +or pupils of Ruskin, pious, almost painfully exact, and copying mediæval +details rather for their truth than their beauty. In the section of the +poets it was pretty loose, Swinburne being the leader of the revels. But +there was one great man who was in both sections, a painter and a poet, +who may be said to bestride the chasm like a giant. It is in an odd and +literal sense true that the name of Rossetti is important here, for the +name implies the nationality. I have loosely called Carlyle and the +Brontës the romance from the North; the nearest to a general definition +of the Æsthetic movement is to call it the romance from the South. It is +that warm wind that had never blown so strong since Chaucer, standing in +his cold English April, had smelt the spring in Provence. The Englishman +has always found it easier to get inspiration from the Italians than +from the French; they call to each other<span class="pagenum" title="Page 189"> </span><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a> across that unconquered castle +of reason. Browning's <i>Englishman in Italy</i>, Browning's <i>Italian in +England</i>, were both happier than either would have been in France. +Rossetti was the Italian in England, as Browning was the Englishman in +Italy; and the first broad fact about the artistic revolution Rossetti +wrought is written when we have written his name. But if the South lets +in warmth or heat, it also lets in hardness. The more the orange tree is +luxuriant in growth, the less it is loose in outline. And it is exactly +where the sea is slightly warmer than marble that it looks slightly +harder. This, I think, is the one universal power behind the Æsthetic +and Pre-Raphaelite movements, which all agreed in two things at least: +strictness in the line and strength, nay violence, in the colour.</p> + +<p>Rossetti was a remarkable man in more ways than one; he did not succeed +in any art; if he had he would probably never have been heard of. It was +his happy knack of half failing in both the arts that has made him a<span class="pagenum" title="Page 190"> </span><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a> +success. If he had been as good a poet as Tennyson, he would have been a +poet who painted pictures. If he had been as good a painter as +Burne-Jones, he would have been a painter who wrote poems. It is odd to +note on the very threshold of the extreme art movement that this great +artist largely succeeded by not defining his art. His poems were too +pictorial. His pictures were too poetical. That is why they really +conquered the cold satisfaction of the Victorians, because they did mean +something, even if it was a small artistic thing.</p> + +<p>Rossetti was one with Ruskin, on the one hand, and Swinburne on the +other, in reviving the decorative instinct of the Middle Ages. While +Ruskin, in letters only, praised that decoration Rossetti and his +friends repeated it. They almost made patterns of their poems. That +frequent return of the refrain which was foolishly discussed by +Professor Nordau was, in Rossetti's case, of such sadness as sometimes +to amount to sameness. The criticism<span class="pagenum" title="Page 191"> </span><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a> on him, from a mediæval point of +view, is not that he insisted on a chorus, but that he could not insist +on a jolly chorus. Many of his poems were truly mediæval, but they would +have been even more mediæval if he could ever have written such a +refrain as "Tally Ho!" or even "Tooral-ooral" instead of "Tall Troy's on +fire." With Rossetti goes, of course, his sister, a real poet, though +she also illustrated that Pre-Raphaelite's conflict of views that +covered their coincidence of taste. Both used the angular outlines, the +burning transparencies, the fixed but still unfathomable symbols of the +great mediæval civilisation; but Rossetti used the religious imagery (on +the whole) irreligiously, Christina Rossetti used it religiously but (on +the whole) so to make it seem a narrower religion.</p> + +<p>One poet, or, to speak more strictly, one poem, belongs to the same +general atmosphere and impulse as Swinburne; the free but languid +atmosphere of later Victorian art. But this time the wind blew from +hotter and<span class="pagenum" title="Page 192"> </span><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a> heavier gardens than the gardens of Italy. Edward +Fitzgerald, a cultured eccentric, a friend of Tennyson, produced what +professed to be a translation of the Persian poet Omar, who wrote +quatrains about wine and roses and things in general. Whether the +Persian original, in its own Persian way, was greater or less than this +version I must not discuss here, and could not discuss anywhere. But it +is quite clear that Fitzgerald's work is much too good to be a good +translation. It is as personal and creative a thing as ever was written; +and the best expression of a bad mood, a mood that may, for all I know, +be permanent in Persia, but was certainly at this time particularly +fashionable in England. In the technical sense of literature it is one +of the most remarkable achievements of that age; as poetical as +Swinburne and far more perfect. In this verbal sense its most arresting +quality is a combination of something haunting and harmonious that flows +by like a river or a song, with something else that is compact<span class="pagenum" title="Page 193"> </span><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a> and +pregnant like a pithy saying picked out in rock by the chisel of some +pagan philosopher. It is at once a tune that escapes and an inscription +that remains. Thus, alone among the reckless and romantic verses that +first rose in Coleridge or Keats, it preserves something also of the wit +and civilisation of the eighteenth century. Lines like "a Muezzin from +the tower of darkness cries," or "Their mouths are stopped with dust" +are successful in the same sense as "Pinnacled dim in the intense inane" +or "Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways." But—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before<br /></span> +<span>I swore; but was I sober when I swore?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">is equally successful in the same sense as—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer<br /></span> +<span>And without sneering teach the rest to sneer."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent"><span class="pagenum" title="Page 194"> </span><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>It thus earned a right to be considered the complete expression of that +scepticism and sensual sadness into which later Victorian literature was +more and more falling away: a sort of bible of unbelief. For a cold fit +had followed the hot fit of Swinburne, which was of a feverish sort: he +had set out to break down without having, or even thinking he had, the +rudiments of rebuilding in him; and he effected nothing national even in +the way of destruction. The Tennysonians still walked past him as primly +as a young ladies' school—the Browningites still inked their eyebrows +and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning +himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy +from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century +sceptics did not really shake the respectable world and alter it, as the +eighteenth-century sceptics had done; but that was because the +eighteenth-century sceptics were something more than sceptics,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 195"> </span><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a> and +believed in Greek tragedies, in Roman laws, in the Republic. The +Swinburnian sceptics had nothing to fight for but a frame of mind; and +when ordinary English people listened to it, they came to the conclusion +that it was a frame of mind they would rather hear about than +experience. But these later poets did, so to speak, spread their soul in +all the empty spaces; weaker brethren, disappointed artists, unattached +individuals, very young people, were sapped or swept away by these +songs; which, so far as any particular sense in them goes, were almost +songs without words. It is because there is something which is after all +indescribably manly, intellectual, firm about Fitzgerald's way of +phrasing the pessimism that he towers above the slope that was tumbling +down to the decadents. But it is still pessimism, a thing unfit for a +white man; a thing like opium, that may often be a poison and sometimes +a medicine, but never a food for us, who are driven by an inner command +not<span class="pagenum" title="Page 196"> </span><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a> only to think but to live, not only to live but to grow, and not +only to grow but to build.</p> + +<p>And, indeed, we see the insufficiency of such sad extremes even in the +next name among the major poets; we see the Swinburnian parody of +mediævalism, the inverted Catholicism of the decadents, struggling to +get back somehow on its feet. The æsthetic school had, not quite +unjustly, the name of mere dilettanti. But it is fair to say that in the +next of them, a workman and a tradesman, we already feel something of +that return to real issues leading up to the real revolts that broke up +Victorianism at last. In the mere art of words, indeed, William Morris +carried much further than Swinburne or Rossetti the mere imitation of +stiff mediæval ornament. The other mediævalists had their modern +moments; which were (if they had only known it) much more mediæval than +their mediæval moments. Swinburne could write—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum" title="Page 197"> </span><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a><span>"We shall see Buonaparte the bastard<br /></span> +<span>Kick heels with his throat in a rope."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">One has an uneasy feeling that William Morris would have written +something like—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"And the kin of the ill king Bonaparte<br /></span> +<span>Hath a high gallows for all his part."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">Rossetti could, for once in a way, write poetry about a real woman and +call her "Jenny." One has a disturbed suspicion that Morris would have +called her "Jehanne."</p> + +<p>But all that seems at first more archaic and decorative about Morris +really arose from the fact that he was more virile and real than either +Swinburne or Rossetti. It arose from the fact that he really was, what +he so often called himself, a craftsman. He had enough masculine +strength to be tidy: that is, after the masculine manner, tidy about his +own trade. If his poems were too like wallpapers, it was because he +really could make wall<span class="pagenum" title="Page 198"> </span><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>papers. He knew that lines of poetry ought to be +in a row, as palings ought to be in a row; and he knew that neither +palings nor poetry looks any the worse for being simple or even severe. +In a sense Morris was all the more creative because he felt the hard +limits of creation as he would have felt them if he were not working in +words but in wood; and if he was unduly dominated by the mere +conventions of the mediævals, it was largely because they were (whatever +else they were) the very finest fraternity of free workmen the world is +ever likely to see.</p> + +<p>The very things that were urged against Morris are in this sense part of +his ethical importance; part of the more promising and wholesome turn he +was half unconsciously giving to the movement of modern art. His hazier +fellow-Socialists blamed him because he made money; but this was at +least in some degree because he made other things to make money: it was +part of the real and refreshing fact that at last an æsthete had +appeared who<span class="pagenum" title="Page 199"> </span><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a> could make something. If he was a capitalist, at least he +was what later capitalists cannot or will not be—something higher than +a capitalist, a tradesman. As compared with aristocrats like Swinburne +or aliens like Rossetti, he was vitally English and vitally Victorian. +He inherits some of that paradoxical glory which Napoleon gave +reluctantly to a nation of shopkeepers. He was the last of that nation; +he did not go out golfing: like that founder of the artistic shopman, +Samuel Richardson, "he kept his shop, and his shop kept him." The +importance of his Socialism can easily be exaggerated. Among other +lesser points, he was not a Socialist; he was a sort of Dickensian +anarchist. His instinct for titles was always exquisite. It is part of +his instinct of decoration: for on a page the title always looks +important and the printed mass of matter a mere dado under it. And no +one had ever nobler titles than <i>The Roots of the Mountains</i> or <i>The +Wood at the End of the World</i>. The reader feels he hardly need read<span class="pagenum" title="Page 200"> </span><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a> the +fairy-tale because the title is so suggestive. But, when all is said, he +never chose a better title than that of his social Utopia, <i>News from +Nowhere</i>. He wrote it while the last Victorians were already embarked on +their bold task of fixing the future—of narrating to-day what has +happened to-morrow. They named their books by cold titles suggesting +straight corridors of marble—titles like <i>Looking Backward</i>. But Morris +was an artist as well as an anarchist. <i>News from Nowhere</i> is an +irresponsible title; and it is an irresponsible book. It does not +describe the problem solved; it does not describe wealth either wielded +by the State or divided equally among the citizens. It simply describes +an undiscovered country where every one feels good-natured all day. That +he could even dream so is his true dignity as a poet. He was the first +of the Æsthetes to smell mediævalism as a smell of the morning; and not +as a mere scent of decay.</p> + +<p>With him the poetry that had been pecul<span class="pagenum" title="Page 201"> </span><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a>iarly Victorian practically +ends; and, on the whole, it is a happy ending. There are many other +minor names of major importance; but for one reason or other they do not +derive from the schools that had dominated this epoch as such. Thus +Thompson, the author of <i>The City of Dreadful Night</i>, was a fine poet; +but his pessimism combined with a close pugnacity does not follow any of +the large but loose lines of the Swinburnian age. But he was a great +person—he knew how to be democratic in the dark. Thus Coventry Patmore +was a much greater person. He was bursting with ideas, like +Browning—and truer ideas as a rule. He was as eccentric and florid and +Elizabethan as Browning; and often in moods and metres that even +Browning was never wild enough to think of. No one will ever forget the +first time he read Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God +made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the +sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers<span class="pagenum" title="Page 202"> </span><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a> asked for the +rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but +discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the +Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. +The Victorian English simply thought him an indecent sentimentalist, as +they did all the hot and humble religious diarists of Italy or Spain. +Something of the same fate followed the most powerful of that last +Victorian group who were called "Minor Poets." They numbered many other +fine artists: notably Mr. William Watson, who is truly Victorian in that +he made a manly attempt to tread down the decadents and return to the +right reason of Wordsworth—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"I have not paid the world<br /></span> +<span>The evil and the insolent courtesy<br /></span> +<span>Of offering it my baseness as a gift."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">But none of them were able even to understand Francis Thompson; his +sky-scraping<span class="pagenum" title="Page 203"> </span><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a> humility, his mountains of mystical detail, his occasional +and unashamed weakness, his sudden and sacred blasphemies. Perhaps the +shortest definition of the Victorian Age is that he stood outside it.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page 204"> </span><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE</h3> + + +<p>If it be curiously and carefully considered it will, I think, appear +more and more true that the struggle between the old spiritual theory +and the new material theory in England ended simply in a deadlock; and a +deadlock that has endured. It is still impossible to say absolutely that +England is a Christian country or a heathen country; almost exactly as +it was impossible when Herbert Spencer began to write. Separate elements +of both sorts are alive, and even increasingly alive. But neither the +believer nor the unbeliever has the impudence to call himself the +Englishman. Certainly the great Victorian rationalism has succeeded in +doing a damage to religion. It has done what is perhaps the worst of all +damages to religion. It has<span class="pagenum" title="Page 205"> </span><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a> driven it entirely into the power of the +religious people. Men like Newman, men like Coventry Patmore, men who +would have been mystics in any case, were driven back upon being much +more extravagantly religious than they would have been in a religious +country. Men like Huxley, men like Kingsley, men like most Victorian +men, were equally driven back on being irreligious; that is, on doubting +things which men's normal imagination does not necessarily doubt. But +certainly the most final and forcible fact is that this war ended like +the battle of Sheriffmuir, as the poet says; they both did fight, and +both did beat, and both did run away. They have left to their +descendants a treaty that has become a dull torture. Men may believe in +immortality, and none of the men know why. Men may not believe in +miracles, and none of the men know why. The Christian Church had been +just strong enough to check the conquest of her chief citadels. The +rationalist movement<span class="pagenum" title="Page 206"> </span><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a> had been just strong enough to conquer some of her +outposts, as it seemed, for ever. Neither was strong enough to expel the +other; and Victorian England was in a state which some call liberty and +some call lockjaw.</p> + +<p>But the situation can be stated another way. There came a time, roughly +somewhere about 1880, when the two great positive enthusiasms of Western +Europe had for the time exhausted each other—Christianity and the +French Revolution. About that time there used to be a sad and not +unsympathetic jest going about to the effect that Queen Victoria might +very well live longer than the Prince of Wales. Somewhat in the same +way, though the republican impulse was hardly a hundred years old and +the religious impulse nearly two thousand, yet as far as England was +concerned, the old wave and the new seemed to be spent at the same time. +On the one hand Darwin, especially through the strong journalistic +genius of Huxley, had won a very wide spread though an exceedingly<span class="pagenum" title="Page 207"> </span><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a> +vague victory. I do not mean that Darwin's own doctrine was vague; his +was merely one particular hypothesis about how animal variety might have +arisen; and that particular hypothesis, though it will always be +interesting, is now very much the reverse of secure. But it is only in +the strictly scientific world and among strictly scientific men that +Darwin's detailed suggestion has largely broken down. The general public +impression that he had entirely proved his case (whatever it was) was +early arrived at, and still remains. It was and is hazily associated +with the negation of religion. But (and this is the important point) it +was also associated with the negation of democracy. The same +Mid-Victorian muddle-headedness that made people think that "evolution" +meant that we need not admit the supremacy of God, also made them think +that "survival" meant that we must admit the supremacy of men. Huxley +had no hand in spreading these fallacies; he was a fair<span class="pagenum" title="Page 208"> </span><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a> fighter; and he +told his own followers, who spoke thus, most emphatically not to play +the fool. He said most strongly that his or any theory of evolution left +the old philosophical arguments for a creator, right or wrong, exactly +where they were before. He also said most emphatically that any one who +used the argument of Nature against the ideal of justice or an equal +law, was as senseless as a gardener who should fight on the side of the +ill weeds merely because they grew apace. I wish, indeed, that in such a +rude summary as this, I had space to do justice to Huxley as a literary +man and a moralist. He had a live taste and talent for the English +tongue, which he devoted to the task of keeping Victorian rationalism +rational. He did not succeed. As so often happens when a rather +unhealthy doubt is in the atmosphere, the strongest words of their great +captain could not keep the growing crowds of agnostics back from the +most hopeless and inhuman extremes of destructive thought. Nonsense not +yet quite<span class="pagenum" title="Page 209"> </span><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a> dead about the folly of allowing the unfit to survive began +to be more and more wildly whispered. Such helpless specimens of +"advanced thought" are, of course, quite as inconsistent with Darwinism +as they are with democracy or with any other intelligent proposition +ever offered. But these unintelligent propositions were offered; and the +ultimate result was this rather important one: that the harshness of +Utilitarianism began to turn into downright tyranny. That beautiful +faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air +of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had +redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay—all that seemed slowly and +sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in +the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was +bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation +evaporated; the mean calculation remained. One could still calculate in +clear statistical tables,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 210"> </span><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a> how many men lived, how many men died. One +must not ask how they lived; for that is politics. One must not ask how +they died; for that is religion. And religion and politics were ruled +out of all the Later Victorian debating clubs; even including the +debating club at Westminster. What third thing they were discussing, +which was neither religion nor politics, I do not know. I have tried the +experiment of reading solidly through a vast number of their records and +reviews and discussions; and still I do not know. The only third thing I +can think of to balance religion and politics is art; and no one well +acquainted with the debates at St. Stephen's will imagine that the art +of extreme eloquence was the cause of the confusion. None will maintain +that our political masters are removed from us by an infinite artistic +superiority in the choice of words. The politicians know nothing of +politics, which is their own affair: they know nothing of religion, +which is certainly not their<span class="pagenum" title="Page 211"> </span><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a> affair: it may legitimately be said that +they have to do with nothing; they have reached that low and last level +where a man knows as little about his own claim, as he does about his +enemies'. In any case there can be no doubt about the effect of this +particular situation on the problem of ethics and science. The duty of +dragging truth out by the tail or the hind leg or any other corner one +can possibly get hold of, a perfectly sound duty in itself, had somehow +come into collision with the older and larger duty of knowing something +about the organism and ends of a creature; or, in the everyday phrase, +being able to make head or tail of it. This paradox pursued and +tormented the Victorians. They could not or would not see that humanity +repels or welcomes the railway-train, simply according to what people +come by it. They could not see that one welcomes or smashes the +telephone, according to what words one hears in it. They really seem to +have felt that the train could be a substitute for its<span class="pagenum" title="Page 212"> </span><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a> own passengers; +or the telephone a substitute for its own voice.</p> + +<p>In any case it is clear that a change had begun to pass over scientific +inquiry, of which we have seen the culmination in our own day. There had +begun that easy automatic habit, of science as an oiled and +smooth-running machine, that habit of treating things as obviously +unquestionable, when, indeed, they are obviously questionable. This +began with vaccination in the Early Victorian Age; it extended to the +early licence of vivisection in its later age; it has found a sort of +fitting foolscap, or crown of crime and folly, in the thing called +Eugenics. In all three cases the point was not so much that the pioneers +had not proved their case; it was rather that, by an unexpressed rule of +respectability, they were not required to prove it. This rather abrupt +twist of the rationalistic mind in the direction of arbitrary power, +certainly weakened the Liberal movement from within. And meanwhile it +was being weakened by heavy blows from without.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 213"> </span><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>There is a week that is the turn of the year; there was a year that was +the turn of the century. About 1870 the force of the French Revolution +faltered and fell: the year that was everywhere the death of Liberal +ideas: the year when Paris fell: the year when Dickens died. While the +new foes of freedom, the sceptics and scientists, were damaging +democracy in ideas, the old foes of freedom, the emperors and the kings, +were damaging her more heavily in arms. For a moment it almost seemed +that the old Tory ring of iron, the Holy Alliance, had recombined +against France. But there was just this difference: that the Holy +Alliance was now not arguably, but almost avowedly, an Unholy Alliance. +It was an alliance between those who still thought they could deny the +dignity of man and those who had recently begun to have a bright hope of +denying even the dignity of God. Eighteenth-century Prussia was +Protestant and probably religious. Nineteenth-century Prussia was almost +utterly atheist.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 214"> </span><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a> Thus the old spirit of liberty felt itself shut up at +both ends, that which was called progressive and that which was called +reactionary: barricaded by Bismarck with blood and iron and by Darwin by +blood and bones. The enormous depression which infects many excellent +people born about this time, probably has this cause.</p> + +<p>It was a great calamity that the freedom of Wilkes and the faith of Dr. +Johnson fought each other. But it was an even worse calamity that they +practically killed each other. They killed each other almost +simultaneously, like Herminius and Mamilius. Liberalism (in Newman's +sense) really did strike Christianity through headpiece and through +head; that is, it did daze and stun the ignorant and ill-prepared +intellect of the English Christian. And Christianity did smite +Liberalism through breastplate and through breast; that is, it did +succeed, through arms and all sorts of awful accidents, in piercing more +or less to the heart of the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 215"> </span><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a> Utilitarian—and finding that he had none. +Victorian Protestantism had not head enough for the business; Victorian +Radicalism had not heart enough for the business. Down fell they dead +together, exactly as Macaulay's Lay says, and still stood all who saw +them fall almost until the hour at which I write.</p> + +<p>This coincident collapse of both religious and political idealism +produced a curious cold air of emptiness and real subconscious +agnosticism such as is extremely unusual in the history of mankind. It +is what Mr. Wells, with his usual verbal delicacy and accuracy, spoke of +as that ironical silence that follows a great controversy. It is what +people less intelligent than Mr. Wells meant by calling themselves <i>fin +de siècle</i>; though, of course, rationally speaking, there is no more +reason for being sad towards the end of a hundred years than towards the +end of five hundred fortnights. There was no arithmetical autumn, but +there was a spiritual one. And it came from the fact suggested in the +para<span class="pagenum" title="Page 216"> </span><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a>graphs above; the sense that man's two great inspirations had +failed him together. The Christian religion was much more dead in the +eighteenth century than it was in the nineteenth century. But the +republican enthusiasm was also much more alive. If their scepticism was +cold, and their faith even colder, their practical politics were wildly +idealistic; and if they doubted the kingdom of heaven, they were +gloriously credulous about the chances of it coming on earth. In the +same way the old pagan republican feeling was much more dead in the +feudal darkness of the eleventh or twelfth centuries, than it was even a +century later; but if creative politics were at their lowest, creative +theology was almost at its highest point of energy.</p> + +<p>The modern world, in fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen +between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the +cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediæval stool<span class="pagenum" title="Page 217"> </span><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a> +that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the +two values as intensely valuable. It could not believe in the bonds that +bound men; but, then, neither could it believe in the men they bound. It +was always restrained in its hatred of slavery by a half remembrance of +its yet greater hatred of liberty. They were almost alone, I think, in +thus carrying to its extreme the negative attitude already noted in Miss +Arabella Allen. Anselm would have despised a civic crown, but he would +not have despised a relic. Voltaire would have despised a relic; but he +would not have despised a vote. We hardly find them both despised till +we come to the age of Oscar Wilde.</p> + +<p>These years that followed on that double disillusionment were like one +long afternoon in a rich house on a rainy day. It was not merely that +everybody believed that nothing would happen; it was also that everybody +believed that anything happening was even duller than nothing happening. +It was in<span class="pagenum" title="Page 218"> </span><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a> this stale atmosphere that a few flickers of the old +Swinburnian flame survived; and were called Art. The great men of the +older artistic movement did not live in this time; rather they lived +through it. But this time did produce an interregnum of art that had a +truth of its own; though that truth was near to being only a consistent +lie.</p> + +<p>The movement of those called Æsthetes (as satirised in <i>Patience</i>) and +the movement of those afterwards called Decadents (satirised in Mr. +Street's delightful <i>Autobiography of a Boy</i>) had the same captain; or +at any rate the same bandmaster. Oscar Wilde walked in front of the +first procession wearing a sunflower, and in front of the second +procession wearing a green carnation. With the æsthetic movement and its +more serious elements, I deal elsewhere; but the second appearance of +Wilde is also connected with real intellectual influences, largely +negative, indeed, but subtle and influential. The mark in most of the +arts of this time was a certain quality which<span class="pagenum" title="Page 219"> </span><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a> those who like it would +call "uniqueness of aspect," and those who do not like it "not quite +coming off." I mean the thing meant something from one standpoint; but +its mark was that the <em>smallest</em> change of standpoint made it unmeaning +and unthinkable—a foolish joke. A beggar painted by Rembrandt is as +solid as a statue, however roughly he is sketched in; the soul can walk +all round him like a public monument. We see he would have other +aspects; and that they would all be the aspects of a beggar. Even if one +did not admit the extraordinary qualities in the painting, one would +have to admit the ordinary qualities in the sitter. If it is not a +masterpiece it is a man. But a nocturne by Whistler of mist on the +Thames is either a masterpiece or it is nothing; it is either a nocturne +or a nightmare of childish nonsense. Made in a certain mood, viewed +through a certain temperament, conceived under certain conventions, it +may be, it often is, an unreplaceable poem, a vision<span class="pagenum" title="Page 220"> </span><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a> that may never be +seen again. But the moment it ceases to be a splendid picture it ceases +to be a picture at all. Or, again, if <i>Hamlet</i> is not a great tragedy it +is an uncommonly good tale. The people and the posture of affairs would +still be there even if one thought that Shakespeare's moral attitude was +wrong. Just as one could imagine all the other sides of Rembrandt's +beggar, so, with the mind's eye (Horatio), one can see all four sides of +the castle of Elsinore. One might tell the tale from the point of view +of Laërtes or Claudius or Polonius or the gravedigger; and it would +still be a good tale and the same tale. But if we take a play like +<i>Pelléas and Mélisande</i>, we shall find that unless we grasp the +particular fairy thread of thought the poet rather hazily flings to us, +we cannot grasp anything whatever. Except from one extreme poetic point +of view, the thing is not a play; it is not a bad play, it is a mass of +clotted nonsense. One whole act describes the lovers going to look for a +ring in<span class="pagenum" title="Page 221"> </span><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a> a distant cave when they both know they have dropped it down a +well. Seen from some secret window on some special side of the soul's +turret, this might convey a sense of faerie futility in our human life. +But it is quite obvious that unless it called forth that one kind of +sympathy, it would call forth nothing but laughter and rotten eggs. In +the same play the husband chases his wife with a drawn sword, the wife +remarking at intervals "I am not gay." Now there may really be an idea +in this; the idea of human misfortune coming most cruelly upon the +optimism of innocence; that the lonely human heart says, like a child at +a party, "I am not enjoying myself as I thought I should." But it is +plain that unless one thinks of this idea (and of this idea only) the +expression is not in the least unsuccessful pathos; it is very broad and +highly successful farce. Maeterlinck and the decadents, in short, may +fairly boast of being subtle; but they must not mind if they are called +narrow.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 222"> </span><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>This is the spirit of Wilde's work and of most of the literary work done +in that time and fashion. It is, as Mr. Arthur Symons said, an attitude; +but it is an attitude in the flat, not in the round; not a statue, but +the cardboard king in a toy-theatre, which can only be looked at from +the front. In Wilde's own poetry we have particularly a perpetually +toppling possibility of the absurd; a sense of just falling too short or +just going too far. "Plant lilies at my head" has something wrong about +it; something silly that is not there in—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"And put a grey stone at my head"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">in the old ballad. But even where Wilde was right, he had a way of being +right with this excessive strain on the reader's sympathy (and gravity) +which was the mark of all these men with a "point of view." There is a +very sound sonnet of his in which he begins by lamenting mere anarchy, +as hostile to the art and civilisation that were his only gods; but ends +by saying—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="pagenum" title="Page 223"> </span><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a><span class="i12">"And yet<br /></span> +<span>These Christs that die upon the barricades<br /></span> +<span>God knows that I am with them—in some ways."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="noindent">Now that is really very true; that is the way a man of wide reading and +worldly experience, but not ungenerous impulses, does feel about the +mere fanatic, who is at once a nuisance to humanity and an honour to +human nature. Yet who can read that last line without feeling that Wilde +is poised on the edge of a precipice of bathos; that the phrase comes +very near to being quite startlingly silly. It is as in the case of +Maeterlinck, let the reader move his standpoint one inch nearer the +popular standpoint, and there is nothing for the thing but harsh, +hostile, unconquerable mirth. Somehow the image of Wilde lolling like an +elegant leviathan on a sofa, and saying between the whiffs of a scented +cigarette that martyrdom is martyrdom in some respects, has seized on +and mastered all more delicate<span class="pagenum" title="Page 224"> </span><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a> considerations in the mind. It is unwise +in a poet to goad the sleeping lion of laughter.</p> + +<p>In less dexterous hands the decadent idea, what there was of it, went +entirely to pieces, which nobody has troubled to pick up. Oddly enough +(unless this be always the Nemesis of excess) it began to be +insupportable in the very ways in which it claimed specially to be +subtle and tactful; in the feeling for different art-forms, in the +welding of subject and style, in the appropriateness of the epithet and +the unity of the mood. Wilde himself wrote some things that were not +immorality, but merely bad taste; not the bad taste of the conservative +suburbs, which merely means anything violent or shocking, but real bad +taste; as in a stern subject treated in a florid style; an over-dressed +woman at a supper of old friends; or a bad joke that nobody had time to +laugh at. This mixture of sensibility and coarseness in the man was very +curious; and I for one cannot endure (for example) his sensual way of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 225"> </span><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a> +speaking of dead substances, satin or marble or velvet, as if he were +stroking a lot of dogs and cats. But there was a sort of power—or at +least weight—in his coarseness. His lapses were those proper to the one +good thing he really was, an Irish swashbuckler—a fighter. Some of the +Roman Emperors might have had the same luxuriousness and yet the same +courage. But the later decadents were far worse, especially the decadent +critics, the decadent illustrators—there were even decadent publishers. +And they utterly lost the light and reason of their existence: they were +masters of the clumsy and the incongruous. I will take only one example. +Aubrey Beardsley may be admired as an artist or no; he does not enter +into the scope of this book. But it is true that there is a certain +brief mood, a certain narrow aspect of life, which he renders to the +imagination rightly. It is mostly felt under white, deathly lights in +Piccadilly, with the black hollow of heaven behind shiny hats or painted +faces: a horrible<span class="pagenum" title="Page 226"> </span><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a> impression that all mankind are masks. This being the +thing Beardsley could express (and the only thing he could express), it +is the solemn and awful fact that he was set down to illustrate Malory's +<i>Morte d'Arthur</i>. There is no need to say more; taste, in the artist's +sense, must have been utterly dead. They might as well have employed +Burne-Jones to illustrate <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. It would not have been +more ludicrous than putting this portrayer of evil puppets, with their +thin lines like wire and their small faces like perverted children's, to +trace against the grand barbaric forests the sin and the sorrow of +Lancelot.</p> + +<p>To return to the chief of the decadents, I will not speak of the end of +the individual story: there was horror and there was expiation. And, as +my conscience goes at least, no man should say one word that could +weaken the horror—or the pardon. But there is one literary consequence +of the thing which must be mentioned, because it bears<span class="pagenum" title="Page 227"> </span><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a> us on to that +much breezier movement which first began to break in upon all this +ghastly idleness—I mean the Socialist Movement. I do not mean "<i>De +Profundis</i>"; I do not think he had got to the real depths when he wrote +that book. I mean the one real thing he ever wrote: <i>The Ballad of +Reading Gaol</i>; in which we hear a cry for common justice and brotherhood +very much deeper, more democratic and more true to the real trend of the +populace to-day, than anything the Socialists ever uttered even in the +boldest pages of Bernard Shaw.</p> + +<p>Before we pass on to the two expansive movements in which the Victorian +Age really ended, the accident of a distinguished artist is available +for estimating this somewhat cool and sad afternoon of the epoch at its +purest; not in lounging pessimism or luxurious aberrations, but in +earnest skill and a high devotion to letters. This change that had come, +like the change from a golden sunset to a grey twilight, can be very +adequately<span class="pagenum" title="Page 228"> </span><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a> measured if we compare the insight and intricacy of Meredith +with the insight and intricacy of Mr. Henry James. The characters of +both are delicate and indisputable; but we must all have had a feeling +that the characters in Meredith are gods, but that the characters in +Henry James are ghosts. I do not mean that they are unreal: I believe in +ghosts. So does Mr. Henry James; he has written some of his very finest +literature about the little habits of these creatures. He is in the deep +sense of a dishonoured word, a Spiritualist if ever there was one. But +Meredith was a materialist as well. The difference is that a ghost is a +disembodied spirit; while a god (to be worth worrying about) must be an +embodied spirit. The presence of soul and substance together involves +one of the two or three things which most of the Victorians did not +understand—the thing called a sacrament. It is because he had a natural +affinity for this mystical materialism that Meredith, in spite of his +affectations, is a poet: and,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 229"> </span><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a> in spite of his Victorian Agnosticism (or +ignorance) is a pious Pagan and not a mere Pantheist. Mr. Henry James is +at the other extreme. His thrill is not so much in symbol or mysterious +emblem as in the absence of interventions and protections between mind +and mind. It is not mystery: it is rather a sort of terror at knowing +too much. He lives in glass houses; he is akin to Maeterlinck in a +feeling of the nakedness of souls. None of the Meredithian things, wind +or wine or sex or stark nonsense, ever gets between Mr. James and his +prey. But the thing is a deficiency as well as a talent: we cannot but +admire the figures that walk about in his afternoon drawing-rooms; but +we have a certain sense that they are figures that have no faces.</p> + +<p>For the rest, he is most widely known, or perhaps only most widely +chaffed, because of a literary style that lends itself to parody and is +a glorious feast for Mr. Max Beerbohm. It may be called The Hampered, or +Obstacle Race Style, in which one continually trips<span class="pagenum" title="Page 230"> </span><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a> over commas and +relative clauses; and where the sense has to be perpetually qualified +lest it should mean too much. But such satire, however friendly, is in +some sense unfair to him; because it leaves out his sense of general +artistic design, which is not only high, but bold. This appears, I +think, most strongly in his short stories; in his long novels the reader +(or at least one reader) does get rather tired of everybody treating +everybody else in a manner which in real life would be an impossible +intellectual strain. But in his short studies there is the unanswerable +thing called real originality; especially in the very shape and point of +the tale. It may sound odd to compare him to Mr. Rudyard Kipling: but he +is like Kipling and also like Wells in this practical sense: that no one +ever wrote a story at all like the <i>Mark of the Beast</i>; no one ever +wrote a story at all like <i>A Kink in Space</i>: and in the same sense no +one ever wrote a story like <i>The Great Good Place</i>. It is alone in order +and species; and it is masterly.<span class="pagenum" title="Page 231"> </span><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a> He struck his deepest note in that +terrible story, <i>The Turn of the Screw</i>; and though there is in the +heart of that horror a truth of repentance and religion, it is again +notable of the Victorian writers that the only supernatural note they +can strike assuredly is the tragic and almost the diabolic. Only Mr. Max +Beerbohm has been able to imagine Mr. Henry James writing about +Christmas.</p> + +<p>Now upon this interregnum, this cold and brilliant waiting-room which +was Henry James at its highest and Wilde at its worst, there broke in +two positive movements, largely honest though essentially unhistoric and +profane, which were destined to crack up the old Victorian solidity past +repair. The first was Bernard Shaw and the Socialists: the second was +Rudyard Kipling and the Imperialists. I take the Socialists first not +because they necessarily came so in order of time, but because they were +less the note upon which the epoch actually ended.</p> + +<p>William Morris, of whom we have already<span class="pagenum" title="Page 232"> </span><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a> spoken, may be said to +introduce the Socialists, but rather in a social sense than a +philosophical. He was their friend, and in a sort of political way, +their father; but he was not their founder, for he would not have +believed a word of what they ultimately came to say. Nor is this the +conventional notion of the old man not keeping pace with the audacity of +the young. Morris would have been disgusted not with the wildness, but +the tameness of our tidy Fabians. He was not a Socialist, but he was a +Revolutionist; he didn't know much more about what he was; but he knew +that. In this way, being a full-blooded fellow, he rather repeats the +genial sulkiness of Dickens. And if we take this fact about him first, +we shall find it a key to the whole movement of this time. For the one +dominating truth which overshadows everything else at this point is a +political and economic one. The Industrial System, run by a small class +of Capitalists on a theory of competitive contract, had been quite +honestly<span class="pagenum" title="Page 233"> </span><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a> established by the early Victorians and was one of the primary +beliefs of Victorianism. The Industrial System, so run, had become +another name for hell. By Morris's time and ever since, England has been +divided into three classes: Knaves, Fools, and Revolutionists.</p> + +<p>History is full of forgotten controversies; and those who speak of +Socialism now have nearly all forgotten that for some time it was an +almost equal fight between Socialism and Anarchism for the leadership of +the exodus from Capitalism. It is here that Herbert Spencer comes in +logically, though not chronologically; also that much more interesting +man, Auberon Herbert. Spencer has no special place as a man of letters; +and a vastly exaggerated place as a philosopher. His real importance was +that he was very nearly an Anarchist. The indefinable greatness there is +about him after all, in spite of the silliest and smuggest limitations, +is in a certain consistency and completeness from his own<span class="pagenum" title="Page 234"> </span><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a> point of +view. There is something mediæval, and therefore manful, about writing a +book about everything in the world. Now this simplicity expressed itself +in politics in carrying the Victorian worship of liberty to the most +ridiculous lengths; almost to the length of voluntary taxes and +voluntary insurance against murder. He tried, in short, to solve the +problem of the State by eliminating the State from it. He was resisted +in this by the powerful good sense of Huxley; but his books became +sacred books for a rising generation of rather bewildered rebels, who +thought we might perhaps get out of the mess if everybody did as he +liked.</p> + +<p>Thus the Anarchists and Socialists fought a battle over the death-bed of +Victorian Industrialism; in which the Socialists (that is, those who +stood for increasing instead of diminishing the power of Government) won +a complete victory and have almost exterminated their enemy. The +Anarchist one meets here and there nowadays is a sad sight; he is<span class="pagenum" title="Page 235"> </span><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a> +disappointed with the future, as well as with the past.</p> + +<p>This victory of the Socialists was largely a literary victory; because +it was effected and popularised not only by a wit, but by a sincere wit; +and one who had the same sort of militant lucidity that Huxley had shown +in the last generation and Voltaire in the last century. A young Irish +journalist, impatient of the impoverished Protestantism and Liberalism +to which he had been bred, came out as the champion of Socialism not as +a matter of sentiment, but as a matter of common sense. The primary +position of Bernard Shaw towards the Victorian Age may be roughly +summarised thus: the typical Victorian said coolly: "Our system may not +be a perfect system, but it works." Bernard Shaw replied, even more +coolly: "It may be a perfect system, for all I know or care. But it does +not work." He and a society called the Fabians, which once exercised +considerable influence, followed this shrewd and sound<span class="pagenum" title="Page 236"> </span><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a> strategic hint +to avoid mere emotional attack on the cruelty of Capitalism; and to +concentrate on its clumsiness, its ludicrous incapacity to do its own +work. This campaign succeeded, in the sense that while (in the educated +world) it was the Socialist who looked the fool at the beginning of that +campaign, it is the Anti-Socialist who looks the fool at the end of it. +But while it won the educated classes it lost the populace for ever. It +dried up those springs of blood and tears out of which all revolt must +come if it is to be anything but bureaucratic readjustment. We began +this book with the fires of the French Revolution still burning, but +burning low. Bernard Shaw was honestly in revolt in his own way: but it +was Bernard Shaw who trod out the last ember of the Great Revolution. +Bernard Shaw proceeded to apply to many other things the same sort of +hilarious realism which he thus successfully applied to the industrial +problem. He also enjoyed giving people a piece of his mind; but a piece +of his<span class="pagenum" title="Page 237"> </span><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a> mind was a more appetising and less raw-looking object than a +piece of Hardy's. There were many modes of revolt growing all around +him; Shaw supported them—and supplanted them. Many were pitting the +realism of war against the romance of war: they succeeded in making the +fight dreary and repulsive, but the book dreary and repulsive too. Shaw, +in <i>Arms and the Man</i>, did manage to make war funny as well as +frightful. Many were questioning the right of revenge or punishment; but +they wrote their books in such a way that the reader was ready to +release all mankind if he might revenge himself on the author. Shaw, in +<i>Captain Brassbound's Conversion</i>, really showed at its best the merry +mercy of the pagan; that beautiful human nature that can neither rise to +penance nor sink to revenge. Many had proved that even the most +independent incomes drank blood out of the veins of the oppressed: but +they wrote it in such a style that their readers knew more about +depression than oppression. In <i>Widowers'<span class="pagenum" title="Page 238"> </span><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a> Houses</i> Shaw very nearly (but +not quite) succeeded in making a farce out of statistics. And the +ultimate utility of his brilliant interruption can best be expressed in +the very title of that play. When ages of essential European ethics have +said "widows' houses," it suddenly occurs to him to say "but what about +widowers' houses?" There is a sort of insane equity about it which was +what Bernard Shaw had the power to give, and gave.</p> + +<p>Out of the same social ferment arose a man of equally unquestionable +genius, Mr. H. G. Wells. His first importance was that he wrote great +adventure stories in the new world the men of science had discovered. He +walked on a round slippery world as boldly as Ulysses or Tom Jones had +worked on a flat one. Cyrano de Bergerac or Baron Munchausen, or other +typical men of science, had treated the moon as a mere flat silver +mirror in which Man saw his own image—the Man in the Moon. Wells +treated the moon<span class="pagenum" title="Page 239"> </span><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a> as a globe, like our own; bringing forth monsters as +moonish as we are earthy. The exquisitely penetrating political and +social satire he afterwards wrote belongs to an age later than the +Victorian. But because, even from the beginning, his whole trend was +Socialist, it is right to place him here.</p> + +<p>While the old Victorian ideas were being disturbed by an increasing +torture at home, they were also intoxicated by a new romance from +abroad. It did not come from Italy with Rossetti and Browning, or from +Persia with Fitzgerald: but it came from countries as remote, countries +which were (as the simple phrase of that period ran) "painted red" on +the map. It was an attempt to reform England through the newer nations; +by the criticism of the forgotten colonies, rather than of the forgotten +classes. Both Socialism and Imperialism were utterly alien to the +Victorian idea. From the point of view of a Victorian aristocrat like +Palmerston, Socialism would be the cheek of gutter snipes;<span class="pagenum" title="Page 240"> </span><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a> Imperialism +would be the intrusion of cads. But cads are not alone concerned.</p> + +<p>Broadly, the phase in which the Victorian epoch closed was what can only +be called the Imperialist phase. Between that and us stands a very +individual artist who must nevertheless be connected with that phase. As +I said at the beginning, Macaulay (or, rather, the mind Macaulay shared +with most of his powerful middle class) remains as a sort of pavement or +flat foundation under all the Victorians. They discussed the dogmas +rather than denied them. Now one of the dogmas of Macaulay was the dogma +of progress. A fair statement of the truth in it is not really so hard. +Investigation of anything naturally takes some little time. It takes +some time to sort letters so as to find a letter: it takes some time to +test a gas-bracket so as to find the leak; it takes some time to sift +evidence so as to find the truth. Now the curse that fell on the later +Victorians was this: that they began to value the<span class="pagenum" title="Page 241"> </span><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a> time more than the +truth. One felt so secretarial when sorting letters that one never found +the letter; one felt so scientific in explaining gas that one never +found the leak; and one felt so judicial, so impartial, in weighing +evidence that one had to be bribed to come to any conclusion at all. +This was the last note of the Victorians: procrastination was called +progress.</p> + +<p>Now if we look for the worst fruits of this fallacy we shall find them +in historical criticism. There is a curious habit of treating any one +who comes before a strong movement as the "forerunner" of that movement. +That is, he is treated as a sort of slave running in advance of a great +army. Obviously, the analogy really arises from St. John the Baptist, +for whom the phrase "forerunner" was rather peculiarly invented. Equally +obviously, such a phrase only applies to an alleged or real divine +event: otherwise the forerunner would be a founder. Unless Jesus had +been the Baptist's God, He would simply have been his disciple.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 242"> </span><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>Nevertheless the fallacy of the "forerunner" has been largely used in +literature. Thus men will call a universal satirist like Langland a +"morning star of the Reformation," or some such rubbish; whereas the +Reformation was not larger, but much smaller than Langland. It was +simply the victory of one class of his foes, the greedy merchants, over +another class of his foes, the lazy abbots. In real history this +constantly occurs; that some small movement happens to favour one of the +million things suggested by some great man; whereupon the great man is +turned into the running slave of the small movement. Thus certain +sectarian movements borrowed the sensationalism without the +sacramentalism of Wesley. Thus certain groups of decadents found it +easier to imitate De Quincey's opium than his eloquence. Unless we grasp +this plain common sense (that you or I are not responsible for what some +ridiculous sect a hundred years hence may choose to do with what we say) +the peculiar position of<span class="pagenum" title="Page 243"> </span><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a> Stevenson in later Victorian letters cannot +begin to be understood. For he was a very universal man; and talked some +sense not only on every subject, but, so far as it is logically +possible, in every sense. But the glaring deficiencies of the Victorian +compromise had by that time begun to gape so wide that he was forced, by +mere freedom of philosophy and fancy, to urge the neglected things. And +yet this very urgency certainly brought on an opposite fever, which he +would not have liked if he had lived to understand it. He liked Kipling, +though with many healthy hesitations; but he would not have liked the +triumph of Kipling: which was the success of the politician and the +failure of the poet. Yet when we look back up the false perspective of +time, Stevenson does seem in a sense to have prepared that imperial and +downward path.</p> + +<p>I shall not talk here, any more than anywhere else in this book, about +the "sedulous ape" business. No man ever wrote as well<span class="pagenum" title="Page 244"> </span><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a> as Stevenson who +cared only about writing. Yet there is a sense, though a misleading one, +in which his original inspirations were artistic rather than purely +philosophical. To put the point in that curt covenanting way which he +himself could sometimes command, he thought it immoral to neglect +romance. The whole of his real position was expressed in that phrase of +one of his letters "our civilisation is a dingy ungentlemanly business: +it drops so much out of a man." On the whole he concluded that what had +been dropped out of the man was the boy. He pursued pirates as Defoe +would have fled from them; and summed up his simplest emotions in that +touching <i>cri de cœur</i> "shall we never shed blood?" He did for the +penny dreadful what Coleridge had done for the penny ballad. He proved +that, because it was really human, it could really rise as near to +heaven as human nature could take it. If Thackeray is our youth, +Stevenson is our boyhood: and though this is not the most<span class="pagenum" title="Page 245"> </span><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a> artistic +thing in him, it is the most important thing in the history of Victorian +art. All the other fine things he did were, for curious reasons, remote +from the current of his age. For instance, he had the good as well as +the bad of coming from a Scotch Calvinist's house. No man in that age +had so healthy an instinct for the actuality of positive evil. In <i>The +Master of Ballantrae</i> he did prove with a pen of steel, that the Devil +is a gentleman—but is none the less the Devil. It is also +characteristic of him (and of the revolt from Victorian respectability +in general) that his most blood-and-thunder sensational tale is also +that which contains his most intimate and bitter truth. <i>Dr. Jekyll and +Mr. Hyde</i> is a double triumph; it has the outside excitement that +belongs to Conan Doyle with the inside excitement that belongs to Henry +James. Alas, it is equally characteristic of the Victorian time that +while nearly every Englishman has enjoyed the anecdote, hardly one +Englishman has seen the joke—I mean<span class="pagenum" title="Page 246"> </span><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a> the point. You will find twenty +allusions to Jekyll and Hyde in a day's newspaper reading. You will also +find that all such allusions suppose the two personalities to be equal, +neither caring for the other. Or more roughly, they think the book means +that man can be cloven into two creatures, good and evil. The whole stab +of the story is that man <i>can't</i>: because while evil does not care for +good, good must care for evil. Or, in other words, man cannot escape +from God, because good is the God in man; and insists on omniscience. +This point, which is good psychology and also good theology and also +good art, has missed its main intention merely because it was also good +story-telling.</p> + +<p>If the rather vague Victorian public did not appreciate the deep and +even tragic ethics with which Stevenson was concerned, still less were +they of a sort to appreciate the French finish and fastidiousness of his +style; in which he seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his +pen, like a man playing<span class="pagenum" title="Page 247"> </span><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a> spillikins. But that style also had a quality +that could be felt; it had a military edge to it, an <i>acies</i>; and there +was a kind of swordsmanship about it. Thus all the circumstances led, +not so much to the narrowing of Stevenson to the romance of the fighting +spirit; but the narrowing of his influence to that romance. He had a +great many other things to say; but this was what we were willing to +hear: a reaction against the gross contempt for soldiering which had +really given a certain Chinese deadness to the Victorians. Yet another +circumstance thrust him down the same path; and in a manner not wholly +fortunate. The fact that he was a sick man immeasurably increases the +credit to his manhood in preaching a sane levity and pugnacious +optimism. But it also forbade him full familiarity with the actualities +of sport, war, or comradeship: and here and there his note is false in +these matters, and reminds one (though very remotely) of the mere +provincial bully that Henley sometimes sank to be.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" title="Page 248"> </span><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a>For Stevenson had at his elbow a friend, an invalid like himself, a man +of courage and stoicism like himself; but a man in whom everything that +Stevenson made delicate and rational became unbalanced and blind. The +difference is, moreover, that Stevenson was quite right in claiming that +he could treat his limitation as an accident; that his medicines "did +not colour his life." His life was really coloured out of a shilling +paint-box, like his toy-theatre: such high spirits as he had are the key +to him: his sufferings are not the key to him. But Henley's sufferings +are the key to Henley; much must be excused him, and there is much to be +excused. The result was that while there was always a certain dainty +equity about Stevenson's judgments, even when he was wrong, Henley +seemed to think that on the right side the wronger you were the better. +There was much that was feminine in him; and he is most understandable +when surprised in those little solitary poems which speak of emotions +mellowed, of sunset<span class="pagenum" title="Page 249"> </span><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a> and a quiet end. Henley hurled himself into the new +fashion of praising Colonial adventure at the expense both of the +Christian and the republican traditions; but the sentiment did not +spread widely until the note was struck outside England in one of the +conquered countries; and a writer of Anglo-Indian short stories showed +the stamp of the thing called genius; that indefinable, dangerous and +often temporary thing.</p> + +<p>For it is really impossible to criticise Rudyard Kipling as part of +Victorian literature, because he is the end of such literature. He has +many other powerful elements; an Indian element, which makes him +exquisitely sympathetic with the Indian; a vague Jingo influence which +makes him sympathetic with the man that crushes the Indian; a vague +journalistic sympathy with the men that misrepresent everything that has +happened to the Indian; but of the Victorian virtues, nothing.</p> + +<p>All that was right or wrong in Kipling was<span class="pagenum" title="Page 250"> </span><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a> expressed in the final +convulsion that he almost in person managed to achieve. The nearest that +any honest man can come to the thing called "impartiality" is to confess +that he is partial. I therefore confess that I think this last turn of +the Victorian Age was an unfortunate turn; much on the other side can be +said, and I hope will be said. But about the facts there can be no +question. The Imperialism of Kipling was equally remote from the +Victorian caution and the Victorian idealism: and our subject does quite +seriously end here. The world was full of the trampling of totally new +forces, gold was sighted from far in a sort of cynical romanticism: the +guns opened across Africa; and the great queen died.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>Of what will now be the future of so separate and almost secretive an +adventure of the English, the present writer will not permit himself, +even for an instant, to prophesy. The Victorian Age made one or two +mistakes,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 251"> </span><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a> but they were mistakes that were really useful; that is, +mistakes that were really mistaken. They thought that commerce outside a +country must extend peace: it has certainly often extended war. They +thought that commerce inside a country must certainly promote +prosperity; it has largely promoted poverty. But for them these were +experiments; for us they ought to be lessons. If <em>we</em> continue the +capitalist use of the populace—if <em>we</em> continue the capitalist use of +external arms, it will lie heavy on the living. The dishonour will not +be on the dead.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a><span class="pagenum" title="Page 253"> </span><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE</h2> + + +<p>After having surveyed the immense field presented in such a volume as +Mr. George Mair's <i>Modern English Literature</i> in this series, or, more +fully, in the <i>Cambridge History of Modern Literature</i>, the later volume +of Chambers' <i>English Literature</i>, Mr. Gosse's <i>History of Modern +English Literature</i>, or Henry Morley's <i>English Literature in the Reign +of Victoria</i>, the wise reader will choose some portion for closer study, +and will go straight to the originals before he has any further traffic +with critics or commentators, however able.</p> + +<p>He will then need the aid of fuller biographies. Some Victorian <i>Lives</i> +are already classic, or nearly so, among them Sir G. Trevelyan's +<i>Macaulay</i>, Forster's <i>Dickens</i>, Mrs. Gaskell's <i>Charlotte Brontë</i>, +Froude's <i>Carlyle</i>, and Sir E. T. Cook's <i>Ruskin</i>. With these may be +ranged the great <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>. The "English Men of +Letters" Series includes H. D. Traill's <i>Coleridge</i>, Ainger's <i>Lamb</i>, +Trollope's <i>Thackeray</i>, Leslie Stephen's <i>George Eliot</i>, Herbert Paul's +<i>Matthew Arnold</i>, Sir A. Lyall's <i>Tennyson</i>, G. K. Chesterton's <i>Robert +Browning</i>, and A. C. Benson's <i>Fitzgerald</i>. At least two autobiographies +must be named, those of Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and, as +antidote to Newman's <i>Apologia</i>, the gay self-revelations of Borrow, and +Jefferies' <i>Story of My Heart</i>. Other considerable volumes are W. J. +Cross's <i>George Eliot</i>, Lionel Johnson's <i>Art of Thomas Hardy</i>, Mr. W. M. +Rossetti's <i>Dante G. Rossetti</i>, Colvin's <i>R. L. Stevenson</i>, J. W. +Mackail's <i>William Morris</i>, Holman Hunt's <i>Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood</i>, +Sir Leslie Stephen's <i>The Utilitarians</i>, Buxton Forman's <i>Our Living +Poets</i>, Edward Thomas's <i>Swinburne</i>, Monypenny's <i>Disraeli</i>, Dawson's +<i>Victorian Novelists</i>, and Stedman's <i>Victorian Poets</i>. The "Everyman" +<i>Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature</i> is useful for +dates.</p> + +<p>The latter half of the second volume of Mr. F. A. Mumby's <i>Letters of +Literary Men</i> is devoted to the Victorian Age. There are fuller +collections of the <i>Letters</i> of Leigh Hunt,<span class="pagenum" title="Page 254"> </span><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a> Thackeray, Dickens, the +Brownings, Fitzgerald, Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, and more +recently the <i>Letters of George Meredith</i>, edited by his son.</p> + +<p>Among the important critical writers of the period, Matthew Arnold +(<i>Essays in Criticism</i>, <i>Study of Celtic Literature</i>, etc.) stands +easily first. Others are John, now Lord, Morley (<i>Studies in +Literature</i>, etc.), Augustine Birrell (<i>Obiter Dicta</i>, <i>Essays</i>), W. E. +Henley (<i>Views and Reviews</i>), J. Addington Symonds (<i>Essays</i>), J. +Churton Collins, Richard Garnett, Stopford A. Brooke, George E. B. +Saintsbury (<i>History of Criticism</i>), R. H. Hutton (<i>Contemporary +Thought</i>), J. M. Robertson (<i>Modern Humanists</i>, <i>Buckle</i>, etc.), Frederic +Harrison (<i>The Choice of Books</i>, etc.), Andrew Lang, Walter Bagehot, +Edmund Gosse, Prof. Dowden, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir A. T. Quiller +Couch.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><span class="pagenum" title="Page 255"> </span><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>INDEX</h2> + + +<div class="index"> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Æsthetes, the, and Decadents, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> + +<li>Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>-<a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> + +<li>Austen, Jane, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Bentham, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> + +<li>Blake, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li>Borrow, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> + +<li>Brontë, Charlotte, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Emily, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Browning, Elizabeth B., <a href="#Page_176">176</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>R., <a href="#Page_40">40</a>-<a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_63">63</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Byron, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Carlyle, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li>Carroll, Lewis, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li>Cobbett, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>-<a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li> + +<li>Coleridge, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li>Collins, Wilkie, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Darwin, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li>De Quincey, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li> + +<li>Dickens, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> + +<li>Disraeli, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Eliot, George, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>-<a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Faber, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> + +<li>Fitzgerald, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> + +<li>French Revolution, Influence of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>-<a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> + +<li>Froude, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Gaskell, Mrs., <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li> + +<li>Gilbert, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Hardy, Thomas, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>-<a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li>Hazlitt, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li>Henley, W. E., <a href="#Page_247">247</a>-<a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> + +<li>Hood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>-<a href="#Page_27">27</a></li> + +<li>Hughes, Tom, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + +<li>Humour, Victorian, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> + +<li>Hunt, Leigh, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li>Huxley, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Imperialism, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>James, Henry, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>-<a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Keats, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li>Keble, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li>Kingsley, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>-<a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li>Kipling, R., <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Lamb, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li>Landor, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li>Lear, Edward, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li>Literary temperament, the English, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> + +<li>Lytton, Bulwer, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>-<a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Macaulay, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> + +<li>Macdonald, George, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li>Maurice, F. D., <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li> + +<li>Melbourne, Lord, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li>Meredith, George, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> + +<li>Mill, J. S., <a href="#Page_36">36</a>-<a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li> + +<li>Morris, Wm., <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Newman, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>-<a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li>Novel, The Modern, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Oliphant, Mrs., <a href="#Page_116">116</a>-<a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li>"Ouida," <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li>Oxford Movement, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><span class="pagenum" title="Page 256"> </span><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>Pater, Walter, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li>Patmore, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>-<a href="#Page_2">2</a></li> + +<li>Pre-Raphaelite School, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Reade, Charles, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> + +<li>Rossetti, D. G. and C., <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>-<a href="#Page_91">91</a></li> + +<li>Ruskin, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Science, Victorian, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> + +<li>Shaw, G. B., <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li>Shelley, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li>Shorthouse, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>-<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li>Socialism, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> + +<li>Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li>Stevenson, R. L., <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a></li> + +<li>Swinburne, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Tennyson, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + +<li>Thackeray, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>-<a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> + +<li>Thompson, Francis, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li>Trollope, Anthony, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>-<a href="#Page_33">33</a></li> +</ul> + + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Watson, Wm., <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li>Wells, H. G., <a href="#Page_238">238</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a></li> + +<li>Wilde, Oscar, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li>Women, Victorian, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>-<a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li> +</ul> + +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Victorian Age in Literature, by +G. K. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Victorian Age in Literature + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: June 20, 2006 [EBook #18639] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Karina Aleksandrova, Juliet Sutherland and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + +OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE + + +No. 61 + +_Editors:_ + +THE RT. HON. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. + +PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A. + +PROF. SIR J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. + +PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A. + +_A complete classified list of the volumes of The Home University +Library already published to be found at the back of this book._ + + + + +THE VICTORIAN AGE +IN LITERATURE + +BY + +G. K. CHESTERTON + +NEW YORK +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + +LONDON +THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LTD. + +COPYRIGHT, 1913, + +BY + +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAP. PAGE + + INTRODUCTION 7 + + I THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES 12 + + II THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS 90 + + III THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS 156 + + IV THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE 204 + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 253 + + INDEX 255 + + +The Editors wish to explain that this book is not put forward as an +authoritative history of Victorian literature. It is a free and personal +statement of views and impressions about the significance of Victorian +literature made by Mr. Chesterton at the Editors' express invitation. + + + + +THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +A section of a long and splendid literature can be most conveniently +treated in one of two ways. It can be divided as one cuts a currant cake +or a Gruyere cheese, taking the currants (or the holes) as they come. Or +it can be divided as one cuts wood--along the grain: if one thinks that +there is a grain. But the two are never the same: the names never come +in the same order in actual time as they come in any serious study of a +spirit or a tendency. The critic who wishes to move onward with the life +of an epoch, must be always running backwards and forwards among its +mere dates; just as a branch bends back and forth continually; yet the +grain in the branch runs true like an unbroken river. + +Mere chronological order, indeed, is almost as arbitrary as alphabetical +order. To deal with Darwin, Dickens, Browning, in the sequence of the +birthday book would be to forge about as real a chain as the "Tacitus, +Tolstoy, Tupper" of a biographical dictionary. It might lend itself +more, perhaps, to accuracy: and it might satisfy that school of critics +who hold that every artist should be treated as a solitary craftsman, +indifferent to the commonwealth and unconcerned about moral things. To +write on that principle in the present case, however, would involve all +those delicate difficulties, known to politicians, which beset the +public defence of a doctrine which one heartily disbelieves. It is quite +needless here to go into the old "art for art's sake"--business, or +explain at length why individual artists cannot be reviewed without +reference to their traditions and creeds. It is enough to say that with +other creeds they would have been, for literary purposes, other +individuals. Their views do not, of course, make the brains in their +heads any more than the ink in their pens. But it is equally evident +that mere brain-power, without attributes or aims, a wheel revolving in +the void, would be a subject about as entertaining as ink. The moment we +differentiate the minds, we must differentiate by doctrines and moral +sentiments. A mere sympathy for democratic merry-making and mourning +will not make a man a writer like Dickens. But without that sympathy +Dickens would not be a writer like Dickens; and probably not a writer at +all. A mere conviction that Catholic thought is the clearest as well as +the best disciplined, will not make a man a writer like Newman. But +without that conviction Newman would not be a writer like Newman; and +probably not a writer at all. It is useless for the aesthete (or any +other anarchist) to urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart +from his attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his +individuality: men are never individual when alone. + +It only remains for me, therefore, to take the more delicate and +entangled task; and deal with the great Victorians, not only by dates +and names, but rather by schools and streams of thought. It is a task +for which I feel myself wholly incompetent; but as that applies to every +other literary enterprise I ever went in for, the sensation is not +wholly novel: indeed, it is rather reassuring than otherwise to realise +that I am now doing something that nobody could do properly. The chief +peril of the process, however, will be an inevitable tendency to make +the spiritual landscape too large for the figures. I must ask for +indulgence if such criticism traces too far back into politics or ethics +the roots of which great books were the blossoms; makes Utilitarianism +more important than _Liberty_ or talks more of the Oxford Movement than +of _The Christian Year_. I can only answer in the very temper of the +age of which I write: for I also was born a Victorian; and sympathise +not a little with the serious Victorian spirit. I can only answer, I +shall not make religion more important than it was to Keble, or politics +more sacred than they were to Mill. + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES + + +The previous literary life of this country had left vigorous many old +forces in the Victorian time, as in our time. Roman Britain and Mediaeval +England are still not only alive but lively; for real development is not +leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from +a root. Even when we improve we never progress. For progress, the +metaphor from the road, implies a man leaving his home behind him: but +improvement means a man exalting the towers or extending the gardens of +his home. The ancient English literature was like all the several +literatures of Christendom, alike in its likeness, alike in its very +unlikeness. Like all European cultures, it was European; like all +European cultures, it was something more than European. A most marked +and unmanageable national temperament is plain in Chaucer and the +ballads of Robin Hood; in spite of deep and sometimes disastrous changes +of national policy, that note is still unmistakable in Shakespeare, in +Johnson and his friends, in Cobbett, in Dickens. It is vain to dream of +defining such vivid things; a national soul is as indefinable as a +smell, and as unmistakable. I remember a friend who tried impatiently to +explain the word "mistletoe" to a German, and cried at last, despairing, +"Well, you know holly--mistletoe's the opposite!" I do not commend this +logical method in the comparison of plants or nations. But if he had +said to the Teuton, "Well, you know Germany--England's the +opposite"--the definition, though fallacious, would not have been wholly +false. England, like all Christian countries, absorbed valuable elements +from the forests and the rude romanticism of the North; but, like all +Christian countries, it drank its longest literary draughts from the +classic fountains of the ancients: nor was this (as is so often loosely +thought) a matter of the mere "Renaissance." The English tongue and +talent of speech did not merely flower suddenly into the gargantuan +polysyllables of the great Elizabethans; it had always been full of the +popular Latin of the Middle Ages. But whatever balance of blood and +racial idiom one allows, it is really true that the only suggestion that +gets near the Englishman is to hint how far he is from the German. The +Germans, like the Welsh, can sing perfectly serious songs perfectly +seriously in chorus: can with clear eyes and clear voices join together +in words of innocent and beautiful personal passion, for a false maiden +or a dead child. The nearest one can get to defining the poetic temper +of Englishmen is to say that they couldn't do this even for beer. They +can sing in chorus, and louder than other Christians: but they must have +in their songs something, I know not what, that is at once shamefaced +and rowdy. If the matter be emotional, it must somehow be also broad, +common and comic, as "Wapping Old Stairs" and "Sally in Our Alley." If +it be patriotic, it must somehow be openly bombastic and, as it were, +indefensible, like "Rule Britannia" or like that superb song (I never +knew its name, if it has one) that records the number of leagues from +Ushant to the Scilly Isles. Also there is a tender love-lyric called "O +Tarry Trousers" which is even more English than the heart of _The +Midsummer Night's Dream_. But our greatest bards and sages have often +shown a tendency to rant it and roar it like true British sailors; to +employ an extravagance that is half conscious and therefore half +humorous. Compare, for example, the rants of Shakespeare with the rants +of Victor Hugo. A piece of Hugo's eloquence is either a serious triumph +or a serious collapse: one feels the poet is offended at a smile. But +Shakespeare seems rather proud of talking nonsense: I never can read +that rousing and mounting description of the storm, where it comes to-- + + "Who take the ruffian billows by the top, + Curling their monstrous heads, and _hanging_ them + With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds." + +without seeing an immense balloon rising from the ground, with +Shakespeare grinning over the edge of the car, and saying, "You can't +stop me: I am above reason now." That is the nearest we can get to the +general national spirit, which we have now to follow through one brief +and curious but very national episode. + +Three years before the young queen was crowned, William Cobbett was +buried at Farnham. It may seem strange to begin with this great +neglected name, rather than the old age of Wordsworth or the young death +of Shelley. But to any one who feels literature as human, the empty +chair of Cobbett is more solemn and significant than the throne. With +him died the sort of democracy that was a return to Nature, and which +only poets and mobs can understand. After him Radicalism is urban--and +Toryism suburban. Going through green Warwickshire, Cobbett might have +thought of the crops and Shelley of the clouds. But Shelley would have +called Birmingham what Cobbett called it--a hell-hole. Cobbett was one +with after Liberals in the ideal of Man under an equal law, a citizen of +no mean city. He differed from after Liberals in strongly affirming that +Liverpool and Leeds are mean cities. + +It is no idle Hibernianism to say that towards the end of the eighteenth +century the most important event in English history happened in France. +It would seem still more perverse, yet it would be still more precise, +to say that the most important event in English history was the event +that never happened at all--the English Revolution on the lines of the +French Revolution. Its failure was not due to any lack of fervour or +even ferocity in those who would have brought it about: from the time +when the first shout went up for Wilkes to the time when the last +Luddite fires were quenched in a cold rain of rationalism, the spirit of +Cobbett, of rural republicanism, of English and patriotic democracy, +burned like a beacon. The revolution failed because it was foiled by +another revolution; an aristocratic revolution, a victory of the rich +over the poor. It was about this time that the common lands were finally +enclosed; that the more cruel game laws were first established; that +England became finally a land of landlords instead of common +land-owners. I will not call it a Tory reaction; for much of the worst +of it (especially of the land-grabbing) was done by Whigs; but we may +certainly call it Anti-Jacobin. Now this fact, though political, is not +only relevant but essential to everything that concerned literature. The +upshot was that though England was full of the revolutionary ideas, +nevertheless there was no revolution. And the effect of this in turn was +that from the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the +nineteenth the spirit of revolt in England took a wholly literary form. +In France it was what people did that was wild and elemental; in England +it was what people wrote. It is a quaint comment on the notion that the +English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were +rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms. + +It has been well and wittily said (as illustrating the mildness of +English and the violence of French developments) that the same Gospel of +Rousseau which in France produced the Terror, in England produced +_Sandford and Merton_. But people forget that in literature the English +were by no means restrained by Mr. Barlow; and that if we turn from +politics to art, we shall find the two parts peculiarly reversed. It +would be equally true to say that the same eighteenth-century +emancipation which in France produced the pictures of David, in England +produced the pictures of Blake. There never were, I think, men who gave +to the imagination so much of the sense of having broken out into the +very borderlands of being, as did the great English poets of the +romantic or revolutionary period; than Coleridge in the secret sunlight +of the Antarctic, where the waters were like witches' oils; than Keats +looking out of those extreme mysterious casements upon that ultimate +sea. The heroes and criminals of the great French crisis would have been +quite as incapable of such imaginative independence as Keats and +Coleridge would have been incapable of winning the battle of Wattignies. +In Paris the tree of liberty was a garden tree, clipped very correctly; +and Robespierre used the razor more regularly than the guillotine. +Danton, who knew and admired English literature, would have cursed +freely over _Kubla Khan_; and if the Committee of Public Safety had not +already executed Shelley as an aristocrat, they would certainly have +locked him up for a madman. Even Hebert (the one really vile +Revolutionist), had he been reproached by English poets with worshipping +the Goddess of Reason, might legitimately have retorted that it was +rather the Goddess of Unreason that they set up to be worshipped. +Verbally considered, Carlyle's _French Revolution_ was more +revolutionary than the real French Revolution: and if Carrier, in an +exaggerative phrase, empurpled the Loire with carnage, Turner almost +literally set the Thames on fire. + +This trend of the English Romantics to carry out the revolutionary idea +not savagely in works, but very wildly indeed in words, had several +results; the most important of which was this. It started English +literature after the Revolution with a sort of bent towards independence +and eccentricity, which in the brighter wits became individuality, and +in the duller ones, Individualism. English Romantics, English Liberals, +were not public men making a republic, but poets, each seeing a vision. +The lonelier version of liberty was a sort of aristocratic anarchism in +Byron and Shelley; but though in Victorian times it faded into much +milder prejudices and much more _bourgeois_ crotchets, England retained +from that twist a certain odd separation and privacy. England became +much more of an island than she had ever been before. There fell from +her about this time, not only the understanding of France or Germany, +but to her own long and yet lingering disaster, the understanding of +Ireland. She had not joined in the attempt to create European democracy; +nor did she, save in the first glow of Waterloo, join in the +counter-attempt to destroy it. The life in her literature was still, to +a large extent, the romantic liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane +truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and +to natural rights. But that which in Rousseau was a creed, became in +Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and +their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of +those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his +decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley and Godwin; +Lamb with his bibliomania and creed of pure caprice, the most unique of +all geniuses; Leigh Hunt with his Bohemian impecuniosity; Landor with +his tempestuous temper, throwing plates on the floor; Hazlitt with his +bitterness and his low love affair; even that healthier and happier +Bohemian, Peacock. With these, in one sense at least, goes De Quincey. +He was, unlike most of these embers of the revolutionary age in letters, +a Tory; and was attached to the political army which is best represented +in letters by the virile laughter and leisure of Wilson's _Noctes +Ambrosianae_. But he had nothing in common with that environment. It +remained for some time as a Tory tradition, which balanced the cold and +brilliant aristocracy of the Whigs. It lived on the legend of Trafalgar; +the sense that insularity was independence; the sense that anomalies are +as jolly as family jokes; the general sense that old salts are the salt +of the earth. It still lives in some old songs about Nelson or Waterloo, +which are vastly more pompous and vastly more sincere than the cockney +cocksureness of later Jingo lyrics. But it is hard to connect De Quincey +with it; or, indeed, with anything else. De Quincey would certainly have +been a happier man, and almost certainly a better man, if he had got +drunk on toddy with Wilson, instead of getting calm and clear (as he +himself describes) on opium, and with no company but a book of German +metaphysics. But he would hardly have revealed those wonderful vistas +and perspectives of prose, which permit one to call him the first and +most powerful of the decadents: those sentences that lengthen out like +nightmare corridors, or rise higher and higher like impossible eastern +pagodas. He was a morbid fellow, and far less moral than Burns; for when +Burns confessed excess he did not defend it. But he has cast a gigantic +shadow on our literature, and was as certainly a genius as Poe. Also he +had humour, which Poe had not. And if any one still smarting from the +pinpricks of Wilde or Whistler, wants to convict them of plagiarism in +their "art for art" epigrams--he will find most of what they said said +better in _Murder as One of the Fine Arts_. + +One great man remains of this elder group, who did their last work only +under Victoria; he knew most of the members of it, yet he did not belong +to it in any corporate sense. He was a poor man and an invalid, with +Scotch blood and a strong, though perhaps only inherited, quarrel with +the old Calvinism; by name Thomas Hood. Poverty and illness forced him +to the toils of an incessant jester; and the revolt against gloomy +religion made him turn his wit, whenever he could, in the direction of +a defence of happier and humaner views. In the long great roll that +includes Homer and Shakespeare, he was the last great man who really +employed the pun. His puns were not all good (nor were Shakespeare's), +but the best of them were a strong and fresh form of art. The pun is +said to be a thing of two meanings; but with Hood there were three +meanings, for there was also the abstract truth that would have been +there with no pun at all. The pun of Hood is underrated, like the "wit" +of Voltaire, by those who forget that the words of Voltaire were not +pins, but swords. In Hood at his best the verbal neatness only gives to +the satire or the scorn a ring of finality such as is given by rhyme. +For rhyme does go with reason, since the aim of both is to bring things +to an end. The tragic necessity of puns tautened and hardened Hood's +genius; so that there is always a sort of shadow of that sharpness +across all his serious poems, falling like the shadow of a sword. +"Sewing at once with a double thread a shroud as well as a shirt"--"We +thought her dying when she slept, and sleeping when she died"--"Oh God, +that bread should be so dear and flesh and blood so cheap"--none can +fail to note in these a certain fighting discipline of phrase, a +compactness and point which was well trained in lines like "A +cannon-ball took off his legs, so he laid down his arms." In France he +would have been a great epigrammatist, like Hugo. In England he is a +punster. + +There was nothing at least in this group I have loosely called the +Eccentrics that disturbs the general sense that all their generation was +part of the sunset of the great revolutionary poets. This fading glamour +affected England in a sentimental and, to some extent, a snobbish +direction; making men feel that great lords with long curls and whiskers +were naturally the wits that led the world. But it affected England also +negatively and by reaction; for it associated such men as Byron with +superiority, but not with success. The English middle classes were led +to distrust poetry almost as much as they admired it. They could not +believe that either vision at the one end or violence at the other could +ever be practical. They were deaf to that great warning of Hugo: "You +say the poet is in the clouds; but so is the thunderbolt." Ideals +exhausted themselves in the void; Victorian England, very unwisely, +would have no more to do with idealists in politics. And this, chiefly, +because there had been about these great poets a young and splendid +sterility; since the pantheist Shelley was in fact washed under by the +wave of the world, or Byron sank in death as he drew the sword for +Hellas. + +The chief turn of nineteenth-century England was taken about the time +when a footman at Holland House opened a door and announced "Mr. +Macaulay." Macaulay's literary popularity was representative and it was +deserved; but his presence among the great Whig families marks an +epoch. He was the son of one of the first "friends of the negro," whose +honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre +smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his +colour, and would have turned away from red or yellow men as needlessly +gaudy. But his wit and his politics (combined with that dropping of the +Puritan tenets but retention of the Puritan tone which marked his class +and generation), lifted him into a sphere which was utterly opposite to +that from which he came. This Whig world was exclusive; but it was not +narrow. It was very difficult for an outsider to get into it; but if he +did get into it he was in a much freer atmosphere than any other in +England. Of those aristocrats, the Old Guard of the eighteenth century, +many denied God, many defended Bonaparte, and nearly all sneered at the +Royal Family. Nor did wealth or birth make any barriers for those once +within this singular Whig world. The platform was high, but it was +level. Moreover the upstart nowadays pushes himself by wealth: but the +Whigs could choose their upstarts. In that world Macaulay found Rogers, +with his phosphorescent and corpse-like brilliancy; there he found +Sydney Smith, bursting with crackers of common sense, an admirable old +heathen; there he found Tom Moore, the romantic of the Regency, a +shortened shadow of Lord Byron. That he reached this platform and +remained on it is, I say, typical of a turning-point in the century. For +the fundamental fact of early Victorian history was this: the decision +of the middle classes to employ their new wealth in backing up a sort of +aristocratical compromise, and not (like the middle class in the French +Revolution) insisting on a clean sweep and a clear democratic programme. +It went along with the decision of the aristocracy to recruit itself +more freely from the middle class. It was then also that Victorian +"prudery" began: the great lords yielded on this as on Free Trade. +These two decisions have made the doubtful England of to-day; and +Macaulay is typical of them; he is the _bourgeois_ in Belgravia. The +alliance is marked by his great speeches for Lord Grey's Reform Bill: it +is marked even more significantly in his speech against the Chartists. +Cobbett was dead. + +Macaulay makes the foundation of the Victorian age in all its very +English and unique elements: its praise of Puritan politics and +abandonment of Puritan theology; its belief in a cautious but perpetual +patching up of the Constitution; its admiration for industrial wealth. +But above all he typifies the two things that really make the Victorian +Age itself, the cheapness and narrowness of its conscious formulae; the +richness and humanity of its unconscious tradition. There were two +Macaulays, a rational Macaulay who was generally wrong, and a romantic +Macaulay who was almost invariably right. All that was small in him +derives from the dull parliamentarism of men like Sir James Mackintosh; +but all that was great in him has much more kinship with the festive +antiquarianism of Sir Walter Scott. + +As a philosopher he had only two thoughts; and neither of them is true. +The first was that politics, as an experimental science, must go on +improving, along with clocks, pistols or penknives, by the mere +accumulation of experiment and variety. He was, indeed, far too +strong-minded a man to accept the hazy modern notion that the soul in +its highest sense can change: he seems to have held that religion can +never get any better and that poetry rather tends to get worse. But he +did not see the flaw in his political theory; which is that unless the +soul improves with time there is no guarantee that the accumulations of +experience will be adequately used. Figures do not add themselves up; +birds do not label or stuff themselves; comets do not calculate their +own courses; these things are done by the soul of man. And if the soul +of man is subject to other laws, is liable to sin, to sleep, to +anarchism or to suicide, then all sciences including politics may fall +as sterile and lie as fallow as before man's reason was made. Macaulay +seemed sometimes to talk as if clocks produced clocks, or guns had +families of little pistols, or a penknife littered like a pig. The other +view he held was the more or less utilitarian theory of toleration; that +we should get the best butcher whether he was a Baptist or a +Muggletonian, and the best soldier whether he was a Wesleyan or an +Irvingite. The compromise worked well enough in an England Protestant in +bulk; but Macaulay ought to have seen that it has its limitations. A +good butcher might be a Baptist; he is not very likely to be a Buddhist. +A good soldier might be a Wesleyan; he would hardly be a Quaker. For the +rest, Macaulay was concerned to interpret the seventeenth century in +terms of the triumph of the Whigs as champions of public rights; and he +upheld this one-sidedly but not malignantly in a style of rounded and +ringing sentences, which at its best is like steel and at its worst like +tin. + +This was the small conscious Macaulay; the great unconscious Macaulay +was very different. His noble enduring quality in our literature is +this: that he truly had an abstract passion for history; a warm, poetic +and sincere enthusiasm for great things as such; an ardour and appetite +for great books, great battles, great cities, great men. He felt and +used names like trumpets. The reader's greatest joy is in the writer's +own joy, when he can let his last phrase fall like a hammer on some +resounding name like Hildebrand or Charlemagne, on the eagles of Rome or +the pillars of Hercules. As with Walter Scott, some of the best things +in his prose and poetry are the surnames that he did not make. And it is +remarkable to notice that this romance of history, so far from making +him more partial or untrustworthy, was the only thing that made him +moderately just. His reason was entirely one-sided and fanatical. It +was his imagination that was well-balanced and broad. He was +monotonously certain that only Whigs were right; but it was necessary +that Tories should at least be great, that his heroes might have foemen +worthy of their steel. If there was one thing in the world he hated it +was a High Church Royalist parson; yet when Jeremy Collier the Jacobite +priest raises a real banner, all Macaulay's blood warms with the mere +prospect of a fight. "It is inspiriting to see how gallantly the +solitary outlaw advances to attack enemies formidable separately, and, +it might have been thought, irresistible when combined; distributes his +swashing blows right and left among Wycherley, Congreve and Vanbrugh, +treads the wretched D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet; and +strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden." +That is exactly where Macaulay is great; because he is almost Homeric. +The whole triumph turns upon mere names; but men are commanded by +names. So his poem on the Armada is really a good geography book gone +mad; one sees the map of England come alive and march and mix under the +eye. + +The chief tragedy in the trend of later literature may be expressed by +saying that the smaller Macaulay conquered the larger. Later men had +less and less of that hot love of history he had inherited from Scott. +They had more and more of that cold science of self-interests which he +had learnt from Bentham. + +The name of this great man, though it belongs to a period before the +Victorian, is, like the name of Cobbett, very important to it. In +substance Macaulay accepted the conclusions of Bentham; though he +offered brilliant objections to all his arguments. In any case the soul +of Bentham (if he had one) went marching on, like John Brown; and in the +central Victorian movement it was certainly he who won. John Stuart Mill +was the final flower of that growth. He was himself fresh and delicate +and pure; but that is the business of a flower. Though he had to preach +a hard rationalism in religion, a hard competition in economics, a hard +egoism in ethics, his own soul had all that silvery sensitiveness that +can be seen in his fine portrait by Watts. He boasted none of that +brutal optimism with which his friends and followers of the Manchester +School expounded their cheery negations. There was about Mill even a +sort of embarrassment; he exhibited all the wheels of his iron universe +rather reluctantly, like a gentleman in trade showing ladies over his +factory. There shone in him a beautiful reverence for women, which is +all the more touching because, in his department, as it were, he could +only offer them so dry a gift as the Victorian Parliamentary Franchise. + +Now in trying to describe how the Victorian writers stood to each other, +we must recur to the very real difficulty noted at the beginning: the +difficulty of keeping the moral order parallel with the chronological +order. For the mind moves by instincts, associations, premonitions and +not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will +occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. +Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: +notions will be first defined long after they are dead. It is no good +getting the almanac to look up moonshine; and most literature in this +sense is moonshine. Thus Wordsworth shrank back into Toryism, as it +were, from a Shelleyan extreme of pantheism as yet disembodied. Thus +Newman took down the iron sword of dogma to parry a blow not yet +delivered, that was coming from the club of Darwin. For this reason no +one can understand tradition, or even history, who has not some +tenderness for anachronism. + +Now for the great part of the Victorian era the utilitarian tradition +which reached its highest in Mill held the centre of the field; it was +the philosophy in office, so to speak. It sustained its march of +codification and inquiry until it had made possible the great victories +of Darwin and Huxley and Wallace. If we take Macaulay at the beginning +of the epoch and Huxley at the end of it, we shall find that they had +much in common. They were both square-jawed, simple men, greedy of +controversy but scornful of sophistry, dead to mysticism but very much +alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence +of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was +much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that +when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror +of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, +rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric +as Ruskin himself could have managed. The difference that the period had +developed can best be seen if we consider this: that while neither was +of a spiritual sort, Macaulay took it for granted that common sense +required some kind of theology, while Huxley took it for granted that +common sense meant having none. Macaulay, it is said, never talked about +his religion: but Huxley was always talking about the religion he hadn't +got. + +But though this simple Victorian rationalism held the centre, and in a +certain sense _was_ the Victorian era, it was assailed on many sides, +and had been assailed even before the beginning of that era. The rest of +the intellectual history of the time is a series of reactions against +it, which come wave after wave. They have succeeded in shaking it, but +not in dislodging it from the modern mind. The first of these was the +Oxford Movement; a bow that broke when it had let loose the flashing +arrow that was Newman. The second reaction was one man; without teachers +or pupils--Dickens. The third reaction was a group that tried to create +a sort of new romantic Protestantism, to pit against both Reason and +Rome--Carlyle, Ruskin, Kingsley, Maurice--perhaps Tennyson. Browning +also was at once romantic and Puritan; but he belonged to no group, and +worked against materialism in a manner entirely his own. Though as a boy +he bought eagerly Shelley's revolutionary poems, he did not think of +becoming a revolutionary poet. He concentrated on the special souls of +men; seeking God in a series of private interviews. Hence Browning, +great as he is, is rather one of the Victorian novelists than wholly of +the Victorian poets. From Ruskin, again, descend those who may be called +the Pre-Raphaelites of prose and poetry. + +It is really with this rationalism triumphant, and with the romance of +these various attacks on it, that the study of Victorian literature +begins and proceeds. Bentham was already the prophet of a powerful sect; +Macaulay was already the historian of an historic party, before the true +Victorian epoch began. The middle classes were emerging in a state of +damaged Puritanism. The upper classes were utterly pagan. Their clear +and courageous testimony remains in those immortal words of Lord +Melbourne, who had led the young queen to the throne and long stood +there as her protector. "No one has more respect for the Christian +religion than I have; but really, when it comes to intruding it into +private life----" What was pure paganism in the politics of Melbourne +became a sort of mystical cynicism in the politics of Disraeli; and is +well mirrored in his novels--for he was a man who felt at home in +mirrors. With every allowance for aliens and eccentrics and all the +accidents that must always eat the edges of any systematic +circumference, it may still be said that the Utilitarians held the fort. + +Of the Oxford Movement what remains most strongly in the Victorian Epoch +centres round the challenge of Newman, its one great literary man. But +the movement as a whole had been of great significance in the very +genesis and make up of the society: yet that significance is not quite +easy immediately to define. It was certainly not aesthetic ritualism; +scarcely one of the Oxford High Churchmen was what we should call a +Ritualist. It was certainly not a conscious reaching out towards Rome: +except on a Roman Catholic theory which might explain all our unrests by +that dim desire. It knew little of Europe, it knew nothing of Ireland, +to which any merely Roman Catholic revulsion would obviously have +turned. In the first instance, I think, the more it is studied, the more +it would appear that it was a movement of mere religion as such. It was +not so much a taste for Catholic dogma, but simply a hunger for dogma. +For dogma means the serious satisfaction of the mind. Dogma does not +mean the absence of thought, but the end of thought. It was a revolt +against the Victorian spirit in one particular aspect of it; which may +roughly be called (in a cosy and domestic Victorian metaphor) having +your cake and eating it too. It saw that the solid and serious +Victorians were fundamentally frivolous--because they were +fundamentally inconsistent. + +A man making the confession of any creed worth ten minutes' intelligent +talk, is always a man who gains something and gives up something. So +long as he does both he can create: for he is making an outline and a +shape. Mahomet created, when he forbade wine but allowed five wives: he +created a very big thing, which we have still to deal with. The first +French Republic created, when it affirmed property and abolished +peerages; France still stands like a square, four-sided building which +Europe has besieged in vain. The men of the Oxford Movement would have +been horrified at being compared either with Moslems or Jacobins. But +their sub-conscious thirst was for something that Moslems and Jacobins +had and ordinary Anglicans had not: the exalted excitement of +consistency. If you were a Moslem you were not a Bacchanal. If you were +a Republican you were not a peer. And so the Oxford men, even in their +first and dimmest stages, felt that if you were a Churchman you were not +a Dissenter. The Oxford Movement was, out of the very roots of its +being, a rational movement; almost a rationalist movement. In that it +differed sharply from the other reactions that shook the Utilitarian +compromise; the blinding mysticism of Carlyle, the mere manly +emotionalism of Dickens. It was an appeal to reason: reason said that if +a Christian had a feast day he must have a fast day too. Otherwise, all +days ought to be alike; and this was that very Utilitarianism against +which their Oxford Movement was the first and most rational assault. + +This idea, even by reason of its reason, narrowed into a sort of sharp +spear, of which the spear blade was Newman. It did forget many of the +other forces that were fighting on its side. But the movement could +boast, first and last, many men who had this eager dogmatic quality: +Keble, who spoilt a poem in order to recognise a doctrine; Faber, who +told the rich, almost with taunts, that God sent the poor as eagles to +strip them; Froude, who with Newman announced his return in the arrogant +motto of Achilles. But the greater part of all this happened before what +is properly our period; and in that period Newman, and perhaps Newman +alone, is the expression and summary of the whole school. It was +certainly in the Victorian Age, and after his passage to Rome, that +Newman claimed his complete right to be in any book on modern English +literature. This is no place for estimating his theology: but one point +about it does clearly emerge. Whatever else is right, the theory that +Newman went over to Rome to find peace and an end of argument, is quite +unquestionably wrong. He had far more quarrels after he had gone over to +Rome. But, though he had far more quarrels, he had far fewer +compromises: and he was of that temper which is tortured more by +compromise than by quarrel. He was a man at once of abnormal energy and +abnormal sensibility: nobody without that combination could have written +the _Apologia_. If he sometimes seemed to skin his enemies alive, it was +because he himself lacked a skin. In this sense his _Apologia_ is a +triumph far beyond the ephemeral charge on which it was founded; in this +sense he does indeed (to use his own expression) vanquish not his +accuser but his judges. Many men would shrink from recording all their +cold fits and hesitations and prolonged inconsistencies: I am sure it +was the breath of life to Newman to confess them, now that he had done +with them for ever. His _Lectures on the Present Position of English +Catholics_, practically preached against a raging mob, rise not only +higher but happier, as his instant unpopularity increases. There is +something grander than humour, there is fun, in the very first lecture +about the British Constitution as explained to a meeting of Russians. +But always his triumphs are the triumphs of a highly sensitive man: a +man must feel insults before he can so insultingly and splendidly +avenge them. He is a naked man, who carries a naked sword. The quality +of his literary style is so successful that it succeeds in escaping +definition. The quality of his logic is that of a long but passionate +patience, which waits until he has fixed all corners of an iron trap. +But the quality of his moral comment on the age remains what I have +said: a protest of the rationality of religion as against the increasing +irrationality of mere Victorian comfort and compromise. So far as the +present purpose is concerned, his protest died with him: he left few +imitators and (it may easily be conceived) no successful imitators. The +suggestion of him lingers on in the exquisite Elizabethan perversity of +Coventry Patmore; and has later flamed out from the shy volcano of +Francis Thompson. Otherwise (as we shall see in the parallel case of +Ruskin's Socialism) he has no followers in his own age: but very many in +ours. + +The next group of reactionaries or romantics or whatever we elect to +call them, gathers roughly around one great name. Scotland, from which +had come so many of those harsh economists who made the first Radical +philosophies of the Victorian Age, was destined also to fling forth (I +had almost said to spit forth) their fiercest and most extraordinary +enemy. The two primary things in Thomas Carlyle were his early Scotch +education and his later German culture. The first was in almost all +respects his strength; the latter in some respects his weakness. As an +ordinary lowland peasant, he inherited the really valuable historic +property of the Scots, their independence, their fighting spirit, and +their instinctive philosophic consideration of men merely as men. But he +was not an ordinary peasant. If he had laboured obscurely in his village +till death, he would have been yet locally a marked man; a man with a +wild eye, a man with an air of silent anger; perhaps a man at whom +stones were sometimes thrown. A strain of disease and suffering ran +athwart both his body and his soul. In spite of his praise of silence, +it was only through his gift of utterance that he escaped madness. But +while his fellow-peasants would have seen this in him and perhaps mocked +it, they would also have seen something which they always expect in such +men, and they would have got it: vision, a power in the mind akin to +second sight. Like many ungainly or otherwise unattractive Scotchmen, he +was a seer. By which I do not mean to refer so much to his +transcendental rhapsodies about the World-soul or the Nature-garment or +the Mysteries and Eternities generally, these seem to me to belong more +to his German side and to be less sincere and vital. I mean a real power +of seeing things suddenly, not apparently reached by any process; a +grand power of guessing. He _saw_ the crowd of the new States General, +Danton with his "rude flattened face," Robespierre peering mistily +through his spectacles. He _saw_ the English charge at Dunbar. He +_guessed_ that Mirabeau, however dissipated and diseased, had something +sturdy inside him. He _guessed_ that Lafayette, however brave and +victorious, had nothing inside him. He supported the lawlessness of +Cromwell, because across two centuries he almost physically _felt_ the +feebleness and hopelessness of the moderate Parliamentarians. He said a +word of sympathy for the universally vituperated Jacobins of the +Mountain, because through thick veils of national prejudice and +misrepresentation, he felt the impossibility of the Gironde. He was +wrong in denying to Scott the power of being inside his characters: but +he really had a good deal of that power himself. It was one of his +innumerable and rather provincial crotchets to encourage prose as +against poetry. But, as a matter of fact, he himself was much greater +considered as a kind of poet than considered as anything else; and the +central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child. + +He first emerged, as it were, as a student and disciple of Goethe. The +connection was not wholly fortunate. With much of what Goethe really +stood for he was not really in sympathy; but in his own obstinate way, +he tried to knock his idol into shape instead of choosing another. He +pushed further and further the extravagances of a vivid but very +unbalanced and barbaric style, in the praise of a poet who really +represented the calmest classicism and the attempt to restore a Hellenic +equilibrium in the mind. It is like watching a shaggy Scandinavian +decorating a Greek statue washed up by chance on his shores. And while +the strength of Goethe was a strength of completion and serenity, which +Carlyle not only never found but never even sought, the weaknesses of +Goethe were of a sort that did not draw the best out of Carlyle. The one +civilised element that the German classicists forgot to put into their +beautiful balance was a sense of humour. And great poet as Goethe was, +there is to the last something faintly fatuous about his half +sceptical, half sentimental self-importance; a Lord Chamberlain of +teacup politics; an earnest and elderly flirt; a German of the Germans. +Now Carlyle had humour; he had it in his very style, but it never got +into his philosophy. His philosophy largely remained a heavy Teutonic +idealism, absurdly unaware of the complexity of things; as when he +perpetually repeated (as with a kind of flat-footed stamping) that +people ought to tell the truth; apparently supposing, to quote +Stevenson's phrase, that telling the truth is as easy as blind hookey. +Yet, though his general honesty is unquestionable, he was by no means +one of those who will give up a fancy under the shock of a fact. If by +sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to +admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy +cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most +sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great--these passages +are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a +generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, +not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic +historian. It bears most resemblance to the incurable prejudices of a +woman. + +For the rest there hovered behind all this transcendental haze a certain +presence of old northern paganism; he really had some sympathy with the +vast vague gods of that moody but not unmanly Nature-worship which seems +to have filled the darkness of the North before the coming of the Roman +Eagle or the Christian Cross. This he combined, allowing for certain +sceptical omissions, with the grisly Old Testament God he had heard +about in the black Sabbaths of his childhood; and so promulgated +(against both Rationalists and Catholics) a sort of heathen Puritanism: +Protestantism purged of its evidences of Christianity. + +His great and real work was the attack on Utilitarianism: which did real +good, though there was much that was muddled and dangerous in the +historical philosophy which he preached as an alternative. It is his +real glory that he was the first to see clearly and say plainly the +great truth of our time; that the wealth of the state is not the +prosperity of the people. Macaulay and the Mills and all the regular run +of the Early Victorians, took it for granted that if Manchester was +getting richer, we had got hold of the key to comfort and progress. +Carlyle pointed out (with stronger sagacity and humour than he showed on +any other question) that it was just as true to say that Manchester was +getting poorer as that it was getting richer: or, in other words, that +Manchester was not getting richer at all, but only some of the less +pleasing people in Manchester. In this matter he is to be noted in +connection with national developments much later; for he thus became the +first prophet of the Socialists. _Sartor Resartus_ is an admirable +fantasia; _The French Revolution_ is, with all its faults, a really +fine piece of history; the lectures on Heroes contain some masterly +sketches of personalities. But I think it is in _Past and Present_, and +the essay on _Chartism_, that Carlyle achieves the work he was chosen by +gods and men to achieve; which possibly might not have been achieved by +a happier or more healthy-minded man. He never rose to more deadly irony +than in such _macabre_ descriptions as that of the poor woman proving +her sisterhood with the rich by giving them all typhoid fever; or that +perfect piece of _badinage_ about "Overproduction of Shirts"; in which +he imagines the aristocrats claiming to be quite clear of this offence. +"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse _us_ of overproduction? We +take the Heavens and the Earth to witness that we have produced nothing +at all.... He that accuses us of producing, let him show himself. Let +him say what and when." And he never wrote so sternly and justly as when +he compared the "divine sorrow" of Dante with the "undivine sorrow" of +Utilitarianism, which had already come down to talking about the +breeding of the poor and to hinting at infanticide. This is a +representative quarrel; for if the Utilitarian spirit reached its +highest point in Mill, it certainly reached its lowest point in Malthus. + +One last element in the influence of Carlyle ought to be mentioned; +because it very strongly dominated his disciples--especially Kingsley, +and to some extent Tennyson and Ruskin. Because he frowned at the +cockney cheerfulness of the cheaper economists, they and others +represented him as a pessimist, and reduced all his azure infinities to +a fit of the blues. But Carlyle's philosophy, more carefully considered, +will be found to be dangerously optimist rather than pessimist. As a +thinker Carlyle is not sad, but recklessly and rather unscrupulously +satisfied. For he seems to have held the theory that good could not be +definitely defeated in this world; and that everything in the long run +finds its right level. It began with what we may call the "Bible of +History" idea: that all affairs and politics were a clouded but unbroken +revelation of the divine. Thus any enormous and unaltered human +settlement--as the Norman Conquest or the secession of America--we must +suppose to be the will of God. It lent itself to picturesque treatment; +and Carlyle and the Carlyleans were above all things picturesque. It +gave them at first a rhetorical advantage over the Catholic and other +older schools. They could boast that their Creator was still creating; +that he was in Man and Nature, and was not hedged round in a Paradise or +imprisoned in a pyx. They could say their God had not grown too old for +war: that He was present at Gettysburg and Gravelotte as much as at +Gibeon and Gilboa. I do not mean that they literally said these +particular things: they are what I should have said had I been bribed to +defend their position. But they said things to the same effect: that +what manages finally to happen, happens for a higher purpose. Carlyle +said the French Revolution was a thing settled in the eternal councils +to be; and therefore (and not because it was right) attacking it was +"fighting against God." And Kingsley even carried the principle so far +as to tell a lady she should remain in the Church of England mainly +because God had put her there. But in spite of its superficial +spirituality and encouragement, it is not hard to see how such a +doctrine could be abused. It practically comes to saying that God is on +the side of the big battalions--or at least, of the victorious ones. +Thus a creed which set out to create conquerors would only corrupt +soldiers; corrupt them with a craven and unsoldierly worship of success: +and that which began as the philosophy of courage ends as the philosophy +of cowardice. If, indeed, Carlyle were right in saying that right is +only "rightly articulated" might, men would never articulate or move in +any way. For no act can have might before it is done: if there is no +right, it cannot rationally be done at all. This element, like the +Anti-Utilitarian element, is to be kept in mind in connection with after +developments: for in this Carlyle is the first cry of Imperialism, as +(in the other case) of Socialism: and the two babes unborn who stir at +the trumpet are Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Rudyard Kipling. Kipling also +carries on from Carlyle the concentration on the purely Hebraic parts of +the Bible. The fallacy of this whole philosophy is that if God is indeed +present at a modern battle, He may be present not as on Gilboa but +Golgotha. + +Carlyle's direct historical worship of strength and the rest of it was +fortunately not very fruitful; and perhaps lingered only in Froude the +historian. Even he is more an interruption than a continuity. Froude +develops rather the harsher and more impatient moral counsels of his +master than like Ruskin the more romantic and sympathetic. He carries on +the tradition of Hero Worship: but carries far beyond Carlyle the +practice of worshipping people who cannot rationally be called heroes. +In this matter that eccentric eye of the seer certainly helped Carlyle: +in Cromwell and Frederick the Great there was at least something +self-begotten, original or mystical; if they were not heroes they were +at least demigods or perhaps demons. But Froude set himself to the +praise of the Tudors, a much lower class of people; ill-conditioned +prosperous people who merely waxed fat and kicked. Such strength as +Henry VIII had was the strength of a badly trained horse that bolts, not +of any clear or courageous rider who controls him. There is a sort of +strong man mentioned in Scripture who, because he masters himself, is +more than he that takes a city. There is another kind of strong man +(known to the medical profession) who cannot master himself; and whom it +may take half a city to take alive. But for all that he is a low +lunatic, and not a hero; and of that sort were too many of the heroes +whom Froude attempted to praise. A kind of instinct kept Carlyle from +over-praising Henry VIII; or that highly cultivated and complicated +liar, Queen Elizabeth. Here, the only importance of this is that one of +Carlyle's followers carried further that "strength" which was the real +weakness of Carlyle. I have heard that Froude's life of Carlyle was +unsympathetic; but if it was so it was a sort of parricide. For the +rest, like Macaulay, he was a picturesque and partisan historian: but, +like Macaulay (and unlike the craven scientific historians of to-day) he +was not ashamed of being partisan or of being picturesque. Such studies +as he wrote on the Elizabethan seamen and adventurers, represent very +triumphantly the sort of romance of England that all this school was +attempting to establish; and link him up with Kingsley and the rest. + +Ruskin may be very roughly regarded as the young lieutenant of Carlyle +in his war on Utilitarian Radicalism: but as an individual he presents +many and curious divergences. In the matter of style, he enriched +English without disordering it. And in the matter of religion (which +was the key of this age as of every other) he did not, like Carlyle, set +up the romance of the great Puritans as a rival to the romance of the +Catholic Church. Rather he set up and worshipped all the arts and +trophies of the Catholic Church as a rival to the Church itself. None +need dispute that he held a perfectly tenable position if he chose to +associate early Florentine art with a Christianity still comparatively +pure, and such sensualities as the Renaissance bred with the corruption +of a Papacy. But this does not alter, as a merely artistic fact, the +strange air of ill-ease and irritation with which Ruskin seems to tear +down the gargoyles of Amiens or the marbles of Venice, as things of +which Europe is not worthy; and take them away with him to a really +careful museum, situated dangerously near Clapham. Many of the great men +of that generation, indeed, had a sort of divided mind; an ethical +headache which was literally a "splitting headache"; for there was a +schism in the sympathies. When these men looked at some historic +object, like the Catholic Church or the French Revolution, they did not +know whether they loved or hated it most. Carlyle's two eyes were out of +focus, as one may say, when he looked at democracy: he had one eye on +Valmy and the other on Sedan. In the same way, Ruskin had a strong right +hand that wrote of the great mediaeval minsters in tall harmonies and +traceries as splendid as their own; and also, so to speak, a weak and +feverish left hand that was always fidgeting and trying to take the pen +away--and write an evangelical tract about the immorality of foreigners. +Many of their contemporaries were the same. The sea of Tennyson's mind +was troubled under its serene surface. The incessant excitement of +Kingsley, though romantic and attractive in many ways, was a great deal +more like Nervous Christianity than Muscular Christianity. It would be +quite unfair to say of Ruskin that there was any major inconsistency +between his mediaeval tastes and his very unmediaeval temper: and minor +inconsistencies do not matter in anybody. But it is not quite unfair to +say of him that he seemed to want all parts of the Cathedral except the +altar. + +As an artist in prose he is one of the most miraculous products of the +extremely poetical genius of England. The length of a Ruskin sentence is +like that length in the long arrow that was boasted of by the drawers of +the long bow. He draws, not a cloth-yard shaft but a long lance to his +ear: he shoots a spear. But the whole goes light as a bird and straight +as a bullet. There is no Victorian writer before him to whom he even +suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De +Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a +rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I +have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the +turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence +branches into brackets and relative clauses as a straight strong tree +branches into boughs and bifurcations, rather shaking off its burden +than merely adding to it. It is interesting to remember that Ruskin +wrote some of the best of these sentences in the attempt to show that he +did understand the growth of trees, and that nobody else did--except +Turner, of course. It is also (to those acquainted with his perverse and +wild rhetorical prejudices) even more amusing to remember that if a +Ruskin sentence (occupying one or two pages of small print) does not +remind us of the growth of a tree, the only other thing it does remind +of is the triumphant passage of a railway train. + +Ruskin left behind him in his turn two quite separate streams of +inspiration. The first and more practical was concerned, like Carlyle's +_Chartism_, with a challenge to the social conclusions of the orthodox +economists. He was not so great a man as Carlyle, but he was a much more +clear-headed man; and the point and stab of his challenge still really +stands and sticks, like a dagger in a dead man. He answered the theory +that we must always get the cheapest labour we can, by pointing out that +we never do get the cheapest labour we can, in any matter about which we +really care twopence. We do not get the cheapest doctor. We either get a +doctor who charges nothing or a doctor who charges a recognised and +respectable fee. We do not trust the cheapest bishop. We do not allow +admirals to compete. We do not tell generals to undercut each other on +the eve of a war. We either employ none of them or we employ all of them +at an official rate of pay. All this was set out in the strongest and +least sentimental of his books, _Unto this Last_; but many suggestions +of it are scattered through _Sesame and Lilies_, _The Political Economy +of Art_, and even _Modern Painters_. On this side of his soul Ruskin +became the second founder of Socialism. The argument was not by any +means a complete or unconquerable weapon, but I think it knocked out +what little remained of the brains of the early Victorian rationalists. +It is entirely nonsensical to speak of Ruskin as a lounging aesthete, who +strolled into economics, and talked sentimentalism. In plain fact, +Ruskin was seldom so sensible and logical (right or wrong) as when he +was talking about economics. He constantly talked the most glorious +nonsense about landscape and natural history, which it was his business +to understand. Within his own limits, he talked the most cold common +sense about political economy, which was no business of his at all. + +On the other side of his literary soul, his mere unwrapping of the +wealth and wonder of European art, he set going another influence, +earlier and vaguer than his influence on Socialism. He represented what +was at first the Pre-Raphaelite School in painting, but afterwards a +much larger and looser Pre-Raphaelite School in poetry and prose. The +word "looser" will not be found unfair if we remember how Swinburne and +all the wildest friends of the Rossettis carried this movement forward. +They used the mediaeval imagery to blaspheme the mediaeval religion. +Ruskin's dark and doubtful decision to accept Catholic art but not +Catholic ethics had borne rapid or even flagrant fruit by the time that +Swinburne, writing about a harlot, composed a learned and sympathetic +and indecent parody on the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. + +With the poets I deal in another part of this book; but the influence of +Ruskin's great prose touching art criticism can best be expressed in the +name of the next great prose writer on such subjects. That name is +Walter Pater: and the name is the full measure of the extent to which +Ruskin's vague but vast influence had escaped from his hands. Pater +eventually joined the Church of Rome (which would not have pleased +Ruskin at all), but it is surely fair to say of the mass of his work +that its moral tone is neither Puritan nor Catholic, but strictly and +splendidly Pagan. In Pater we have Ruskin without the prejudices, that +is, without the funny parts. I may be wrong, but I cannot recall at this +moment a single passage in which Pater's style takes a holiday or in +which his wisdom plays the fool. Newman and Ruskin were as careful and +graceful stylists as he. Newman and Ruskin were as serious, elaborate, +and even academic thinkers as he. But Ruskin let himself go about +railways. Newman let himself go about Kingsley. Pater cannot let himself +go for the excellent reason that he wants to stay: to stay at the point +where all the keenest emotions meet, as he explains in the splendid +peroration of _The Renaissance_. The only objection to being where all +the keenest emotions meet is that you feel none of them. + +In this sense Pater may well stand for a substantial summary of the +aesthetes, apart from the purely poetical merits of men like Rossetti and +Swinburne. Like Swinburne and others he first attempted to use mediaeval +tradition without trusting it. These people wanted to see Paganism +_through_ Christianity: because it involved the incidental amusement of +seeing through Christianity itself. They not only tried to be in all +ages at once (which is a very reasonable ambition, though not often +realised), but they wanted to be on all sides at once: which is +nonsense. Swinburne tries to question the philosophy of Christianity in +the metres of a Christmas carol: and Dante Rossetti tries to write as if +he were Christina Rossetti. Certainly the almost successful summit of +all this attempt is Pater's superb passage on the Mona Lisa; in which he +seeks to make her at once a mystery of good and a mystery of evil. The +philosophy is false; even evidently false, for it bears no fruit to-day. +There never was a woman, not Eve herself in the instant of temptation, +who could smile the same smile as the mother of Helen and the mother of +Mary. But it is the high-water mark of that vast attempt at an +impartiality reached through art: and no other mere artist ever rose so +high again. + +Apart from this Ruskinian offshoot through Pre-Raphaelitism into what +was called AEstheticism, the remains of the inspiration of Carlyle fill a +very large part in the Victorian life, but not strictly so large a part +in the Victorian literature. Charles Kingsley was a great publicist; a +popular preacher; a popular novelist; and (in two cases at least) a very +good novelist. His _Water Babies_ is really a breezy and roaring freak; +like a holiday at the seaside--a holiday where one talks natural history +without taking it seriously. Some of the songs in this and other of his +works are very real songs: notably, "When all the World is Young, Lad," +which comes very near to being the only true defence of marriage in the +controversies of the nineteenth century. But when all this is allowed, +no one will seriously rank Kingsley, in the really literary sense, on +the level of Carlyle or Ruskin, Tennyson or Browning, Dickens or +Thackeray: and if such a place cannot be given to him, it can be given +even less to his lusty and pleasant friend, Tom Hughes, whose +personality floats towards the frankness of the _Boy's Own Paper_; or to +his deep, suggestive metaphysical friend Maurice, who floats rather +towards _The Hibbert Journal_. The moral and social influence of these +things is not to be forgotten: but they leave the domain of letters. The +voice of Carlyle is not heard again in letters till the coming of +Kipling and Henley. + +One other name of great importance should appear here, because it cannot +appear very appropriately anywhere else: the man hardly belonged to the +same school as Ruskin and Carlyle, but fought many of their battles, and +was even more concentrated on their main task--the task of convicting +liberal _bourgeois_ England of priggishness and provinciality. I mean, +of course, Matthew Arnold. Against Mill's "liberty" and Carlyle's +"strength" and Ruskin's "nature," he set up a new presence and entity +which he called "culture," the disinterested play of the mind through +the sifting of the best books and authorities. Though a little dandified +in phrase, he was undoubtedly serious and public-spirited in intention. +He sometimes talked of culture almost as if it were a man, or at least a +church (for a church has a sort of personality): some may suspect that +culture was a man, whose name was Matthew Arnold. But Arnold was not +only right but highly valuable. If we have said that Carlyle was a man +that saw things, we may add that Arnold was chiefly valuable as a man +who knew things. Well as he was endowed intellectually, his power came +more from information than intellect. He simply happened to know certain +things, that Carlyle didn't know, that Kingsley didn't know, that Huxley +and Herbert Spencer didn't know: that England didn't know. He knew that +England was a part of Europe: and not so important a part as it had been +the morning after Waterloo. He knew that England was then (as it is now) +an oligarchical State, and that many great nations are not. He knew +that a real democracy need not live and does not live in that perpetual +panic about using the powers of the State, which possessed men like +Spencer and Cobden. He knew a rational minimum of culture and common +courtesy could exist and did exist throughout large democracies. He knew +the Catholic Church had been in history "the Church of the multitude": +he knew it was not a sect. He knew that great landlords are no more a +part of the economic law than nigger-drivers: he knew that small owners +could and did prosper. He was not so much the philosopher as the man of +the world: he reminded us that Europe was a society while Ruskin was +treating it as a picture gallery. He was a sort of Heaven-sent courier. +His frontal attack on the vulgar and sullen optimism of Victorian +utility may be summoned up in the admirable sentence, in which he asked +the English what was the use of a train taking them quickly from +Islington to Camberwell, if it only took them "from a dismal and +illiberal life in Islington to a dismal and illiberal life in +Camberwell?" + +His attitude to that great religious enigma round which all these great +men were grouped as in a ring, was individual and decidedly curious. He +seems to have believed that a "Historic Church," that is, some +established organisation with ceremonies and sacred books, etc., could +be perpetually preserved as a sort of vessel to contain the spiritual +ideas of the age, whatever those ideas might happen to be. He clearly +seems to have contemplated a melting away of the doctrines of the Church +and even of the meaning of the words: but he thought a certain need in +man would always be best satisfied by public worship and especially by +the great religious literatures of the past. He would embalm the body +that it might often be revisited by the soul--or souls. Something of the +sort has been suggested by Dr. Coit and others of the ethical societies +in our own time. But while Arnold would loosen the theological bonds of +the Church, he would not loosen the official bonds of the State. You +must not disestablish the Church: you must not even leave the Church: +you must stop inside it and think what you choose. Enemies might say +that he was simply trying to establish and endow Agnosticism. It is +fairer and truer to say that unconsciously he was trying to restore +Paganism: for this State Ritualism without theology, and without much +belief, actually was the practice of the ancient world. Arnold may have +thought that he was building an altar to the Unknown God; but he was +really building it to Divus Caesar. + +As a critic he was chiefly concerned to preserve criticism itself; to +set a measure to praise and blame and support the classics against the +fashions. It is here that it is specially true of him, if of no writer +else, that the style was the man. The most vital thing he invented was a +new style: founded on the patient unravelling of the tangled Victorian +ideas, as if they were matted hair under a comb. He did not mind how +elaborately long he made a sentence, so long as he made it clear. He +would constantly repeat whole phrases word for word in the same +sentence, rather than risk ambiguity by abbreviation. His genius showed +itself in turning this method of a laborious lucidity into a peculiarly +exasperating form of satire and controversy. Newman's strength was in a +sort of stifled passion, a dangerous patience of polite logic and then: +"Cowards! if I advanced a step you would run away: it is not you I fear. +_Di me terrent, et Jupiter hostis._" If Newman seemed suddenly to fly +into a temper, Carlyle seemed never to fly out of one. But Arnold kept a +smile of heart-broken forbearance, as of the teacher in an idiot school, +that was enormously insulting. One trick he often tried with success. If +his opponent had said something foolish, like "the destiny of England is +in the great heart of England," Arnold would repeat the phrase again and +again until it looked more foolish than it really was. Thus he recurs +again and again to "the British College of Health in the New Road" till +the reader wants to rush out and burn the place down. Arnold's great +error was that he sometimes thus wearied us of his own phrases, as well +as of his enemies'. + +These names are roughly representative of the long series of protests +against the cold commercial rationalism which held Parliament and the +schools through the earlier Victorian time, in so far as those protests +were made in the name of neglected intellect, insulted art, forgotten +heroism and desecrated religion. But already the Utilitarian citadel had +been more heavily bombarded on the other side by one lonely and +unlettered man of genius. + +The rise of Dickens is like the rising of a vast mob. This is not only +because his tales are indeed as crowded and populous as towns: for truly +it was not so much that Dickens appeared as that a hundred Dickens +characters appeared. It is also because he was the sort of man who has +the impersonal impetus of a mob: what Poe meant when he truly said that +popular rumour, if really spontaneous, was like the intuition of the +individual man of genius. Those who speak scornfully of the ignorance of +the mob do not err as to the fact itself; their error is in not seeing +that just as a crowd is comparatively ignorant, so a crowd is +comparatively innocent. It will have the old and human faults; but it is +not likely to specialise in the special faults of that particular +society: because the effort of the strong and successful in all ages is +to keep the poor out of society. If the higher castes have developed +some special moral beauty or grace, as they occasionally do (for +instance, mediaeval chivalry), it is likely enough, of course, that the +mass of men will miss it. But if they have developed some perversion or +over-emphasis, as they much more often do (for instance, the Renaissance +poisoning), then it will be the tendency of the mass of men to miss that +too. The point might be put in many ways; you may say if you will that +the poor are always at the tail of the procession, and that whether they +are morally worse or better depends on whether humanity as a whole is +proceeding towards heaven or hell. When humanity is going to hell, the +poor are always nearest to heaven. + +Dickens was a mob--and a mob in revolt; he fought by the light of +nature; he had not a theory, but a thirst. If any one chooses to offer +the cheap sarcasm that his thirst was largely a thirst for milk-punch, I +am content to reply with complete gravity and entire contempt that in a +sense this is perfectly true. His thirst was for things as humble, as +human, as laughable as that daily bread for which we cry to God. He had +no particular plan of reform; or, when he had, it was startlingly petty +and parochial compared with the deep, confused clamour of comradeship +and insurrection that fills all his narrative. It would not be gravely +unjust to him to compare him to his own heroine, Arabella Allen, who +"didn't know what she did like," but who (when confronted with Mr. Bob +Sawyer) "did know what she didn't like." Dickens did know what he didn't +like. He didn't like the Unrivalled Happiness which Mr. Roebuck praised; +the economic laws that were working so faultlessly in Fever Alley; the +wealth that was accumulating so rapidly in Bleeding Heart Yard. But, +above all, he didn't like the _mean_ side of the Manchester philosophy: +the preaching of an impossible thrift and an intolerable temperance. He +hated the implication that because a man was a miser in Latin he must +also be a miser in English. And this meanness of the Utilitarians had +gone very far--infecting many finer minds who had fought the +Utilitarians. In the _Edinburgh Review_, a thing like Malthus could be +championed by a man like Macaulay. + +The twin root facts of the revolution called Dickens are these: first, +that he attacked the cold Victorian compromise; second, that he +attacked it without knowing he was doing it--certainly without knowing +that other people were doing it. He was attacking something which we +will call Mr. Gradgrind. He was utterly unaware (in any essential sense) +that any one else had attacked Mr. Gradgrind. All the other attacks had +come from positions of learning or cultured eccentricity of which he was +entirely ignorant, and to which, therefore (like a spirited fellow), he +felt a furious hostility. Thus, for instance, he hated that Little +Bethel to which Kit's mother went: he hated it simply as Kit hated it. +Newman could have told him it was hateful, because it had no root in +religious history; it was not even a sapling sprung of the seed of some +great human and heathen tree: it was a monstrous mushroom that grows in +the moonshine and dies in the dawn. Dickens knew no more of religious +history than Kit; he simply smelt the fungus, and it stank. Thus, again, +he hated that insolent luxury of a class counting itself a comfortable +exception to all mankind; he hated it as Kate Nickleby hated Sir +Mulberry Hawke--by instinct. Carlyle could have told him that all the +world was full of that anger against the impudent fatness of the few. +But when Dickens wrote about Kate Nickleby, he knew about as much of the +world--as Kate Nickleby. He did write _The Tale of Two Cities_ long +afterwards; but that was when he _had_ been instructed by Carlyle. His +first revolutionism was as private and internal as feeling sea-sick. +Thus, once more, he wrote against Mr. Gradgrind long before he created +him. In _The Chimes_, conceived in quite his casual and charitable +season, with the _Christmas Carol_ and the _Cricket on the Hearth_, he +hit hard at the economists. Ruskin, in the same fashion, would have told +him that the worst thing about the economists was that they were not +economists: that they missed many essential things even in economics. +But Dickens did not know whether they were economists or not: he only +knew that they wanted hitting. Thus, to take a last case out of many, +Dickens travelled in a French railway train, and noticed that this +eccentric nation provided him with wine that he could drink and +sandwiches he could eat, and manners he could tolerate. And remembering +the ghastly sawdust-eating waiting-rooms of the North English railways, +he wrote that rich chapter in _Mugby Junction_. Matthew Arnold could +have told him that this was but a part of the general thinning down of +European civilisation in these islands at the edge of it; that for two +or three thousand years the Latin society has learnt how to drink wine, +and how not to drink too much of it. Dickens did not in the least +understand the Latin society: but he did understand the wine. If (to +prolong an idle but not entirely false metaphor) we have called Carlyle +a man who saw and Arnold a man who knew, we might truly call Dickens a +man who tasted, that is, a man who really felt. In spite of all the +silly talk about his vulgarity, he really had, in the strict and +serious sense, good taste. All real good taste is gusto--the power of +appreciating the presence--or the absence--of a particular and positive +pleasure. He had no learning; he was not misled by the label on the +bottle--for that is what learning largely meant in his time. He opened +his mouth and shut his eyes and saw what the Age of Reason would give +him. And, having tasted it, he spat it out. + +I am constrained to consider Dickens here among the fighters; though I +ought (on the pure principles of Art) to be considering him in the +chapter which I have allotted to the story-tellers. But we should get +the whole Victorian perspective wrong, in my opinion at least, if we did +not see that Dickens was primarily the most successful of all the +onslaughts on the solid scientific school; because he did not attack +from the standpoint of extraordinary faith, like Newman; or the +standpoint of extraordinary inspiration, like Carlyle; or the standpoint +of extraordinary detachment or serenity, like Arnold; but from the +standpoint of quite ordinary and quite hearty dislike. To give but one +instance more, Matthew Arnold, trying to carry into England constructive +educational schemes which he could see spread like a clear railway map +all over the Continent, was much badgered about what he really thought +was _wrong_ with English middle-class education. Despairing of +explaining to the English middle class the idea of high and central +public instruction, as distinct from coarse and hole-and-corner private +instruction, he invoked the aid of Dickens. He said the English +middle-class school was the sort of school where Mr. Creakle sat, with +his buttered toast and his cane. Now Dickens had probably never seen any +other kind of school--certainly he had never understood the systematic +State Schools in which Arnold had learnt his lesson. But he saw the cane +and the buttered toast, and he _knew_ that it was all wrong. In this +sense, Dickens, the great romanticist, is truly the great realist also. +For he had no abstractions: he had nothing except realities out of which +to make a romance. + +With Dickens, then, re-arises that reality with which I began and which +(curtly, but I think not falsely) I have called Cobbett. In dealing with +fiction as such, I shall have occasion to say wherein Dickens is weaker +and stronger than that England of the eighteenth century: here it is +sufficient to say that he represents the return of Cobbett in this vital +sense; that he is proud of being the ordinary man. No one can understand +the thousand caricatures by Dickens who does not understand that he is +comparing them all with his own common sense. Dickens, in the bulk, +liked the things that Cobbett had liked; what is perhaps more to the +point, he hated the things that Cobbett had hated; the Tudors, the +lawyers, the leisurely oppression of the poor. Cobbett's fine fighting +journalism had been what is nowadays called "personal," that is, it +supposed human beings to be human. But Cobbett was also personal in the +less satisfactory sense; he could only multiply monsters who were +exaggerations of his enemies or exaggerations of himself. Dickens was +personal in a more godlike sense; he could multiply persons. He could +create all the farce and tragedy of his age over again, with creatures +unborn to sin and creatures unborn to suffer. That which had not been +achieved by the fierce facts of Cobbett, the burning dreams of Carlyle, +the white-hot proofs of Newman, was really or very nearly achieved by a +crowd of impossible people. In the centre stood that citadel of atheist +industrialism: and if indeed it has ever been taken, it was taken by the +rush of that unreal army. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS + + +The Victorian novel was a thing entirely Victorian; quite unique and +suited to a sort of cosiness in that country and that age. But the novel +itself, though not merely Victorian, is mainly modern. No clear-headed +person wastes his time over definitions, except where he thinks his own +definition would probably be in dispute. I merely say, therefore, that +when I say "novel," I mean a fictitious narrative (almost invariably, +but not necessarily, in prose) of which the essential is that the story +is not told for the sake of its naked pointedness as an anecdote, or for +the sake of the irrelevant landscapes and visions that can be caught up +in it, but for the sake of some study of the difference between human +beings. There are several things that make this mode of art unique. One +of the most conspicuous is that it is the art in which the conquests of +woman are quite beyond controversy. The proposition that Victorian women +have done well in politics and philosophy is not necessarily an untrue +proposition; but it is a partisan proposition. I never heard that many +women, let alone men, shared the views of Mary Wollstonecraft; I never +heard that millions of believers flocked to the religion tentatively +founded by Miss Frances Power Cobbe. They did, undoubtedly, flock to +Mrs. Eddy; but it will not be unfair to that lady to call her following +a sect, and not altogether unreasonable to say that such insane +exceptions prove the rule. Nor can I at this moment think of a single +modern woman writing on politics or abstract things, whose work is of +undisputed importance; except perhaps Mrs. Sidney Webb, who settles +things by the simple process of ordering about the citizens of a state, +as she might the servants in a kitchen. There has been, at any rate, no +writer on moral or political theory that can be mentioned, without +seeming comic, in the same breath with the great female novelists. But +when we come to the novelists, the women have, on the whole, equality; +and certainly, in some points, superiority. Jane Austen is as strong in +her own way as Scott is in his. But she is, for all practical purposes, +never weak in her own way--and Scott very often is. Charlotte Bronte +dedicated _Jane Eyre_ to the author of _Vanity Fair_. I should hesitate +to say that Charlotte Bronte's is a better book than Thackeray's, but I +think it might well be maintained that it is a better story. All sorts +of inquiring asses (equally ignorant of the old nature of woman and the +new nature of the novel) whispered wisely that George Eliot's novels +were really written by George Lewes. I will cheerfully answer for the +fact that, if they had been written by George Lewes, no one would ever +have read them. Those who have read his book on Robespierre will have +no doubt about my meaning. I am no idolater of George Eliot; but a man +who could concoct such a crushing opiate about the most exciting +occasion in history certainly did not write _The Mill on the Floss_. +This is the first fact about the novel, that it is the introduction of a +new and rather curious kind of art; and it has been found to be +peculiarly feminine, from the first good novel by Fanny Burney to the +last good novel by Miss May Sinclair. The truth is, I think, that the +modern novel is a new thing; not new in its essence (for that is a +philosophy for fools), but new in the sense that it lets loose many of +the things that are old. It is a hearty and exhaustive overhauling of +that part of human existence which has always been the woman's province, +or rather kingdom; the play of personalities in private, the real +difference between Tommy and Joe. It is right that womanhood should +specialise in individuals, and be praised for doing so; just as in the +Middle Ages she specialised in dignity and was praised for doing so. +People put the matter wrong when they say that the novel is a study of +human nature. Human nature is a thing that even men can understand. +Human nature is born of the pain of a woman; human nature plays at +peep-bo when it is two and at cricket when it is twelve; human nature +earns its living and desires the other sex and dies. What the novel +deals with is what women have to deal with; the differentiations, the +twists and turns of this eternal river. The key of this new form of art, +which we call fiction, is sympathy. And sympathy does not mean so much +feeling with all who feel, but rather suffering with all who suffer. And +it was inevitable, under such an inspiration, that more attention should +be given to the awkward corners of life than to its even flow. The very +promising domestic channel dug by the Victorian women, in books like +_Cranford_, by Mrs. Gaskell, would have got to the sea, if they had been +left alone to dig it. They might have made domesticity a fairyland. +Unfortunately another idea, the idea of imitating men's cuffs and +collars and documents, cut across this purely female discovery and +destroyed it. + +It may seem mere praise of the novel to say it is the art of sympathy +and the study of human variations. But indeed, though this is a good +thing, it is not universally good. We have gained in sympathy; but we +have lost in brotherhood. Old quarrels had more equality than modern +exonerations. Two peasants in the Middle Ages quarrelled about their two +fields. But they went to the same church, served in the same semi-feudal +militia, and had the same morality, which ever might happen to be +breaking it at the moment. The very cause of their quarrel was the cause +of their fraternity; they both liked land. But suppose one of them a +teetotaler who desired the abolition of hops on both farms; suppose the +other a vegetarian who desired the abolition of chickens on both farms: +and it is at once apparent that a quarrel of quite a different kind +would begin; and that in that quarrel it would not be a question of +farmer against farmer, but of individual against individual. This +fundamental sense of human fraternity can only exist in the presence of +positive religion. Man is merely man only when he is seen against the +sky. If he is seen against any landscape, he is only a man of that land. +If he is seen against any house, he is only a householder. Only where +death and eternity are intensely present can human beings fully feel +their fellowship. Once the divine darkness against which we stand is +really dismissed from the mind (as it was very nearly dismissed in the +Victorian time) the differences between human beings become +overpoweringly plain; whether they are expressed in the high caricatures +of Dickens or the low lunacies of Zola. + +This can be seen in a sort of picture in the Prologue of the _Canterbury +Tales_; which is already pregnant with the promise of the English novel. +The characters there are at once graphically and delicately +differentiated; the Doctor with his rich cloak, his careful meals, his +coldness to religion; the Franklin, whose white beard was so fresh that +it recalled the daisies, and in whose house it snowed meat and drink; +the Summoner, from whose fearful face, like a red cherub's, the children +fled, and who wore a garland like a hoop; the Miller with his short red +hair and bagpipes and brutal head, with which he could break down a +door; the Lover who was as sleepless as a nightingale; the Knight, the +Cook, the Clerk of Oxford. Pendennis or the Cook, M. Mirabolant, is +nowhere so vividly varied by a few merely verbal strokes. But the great +difference is deeper and more striking. It is simply that Pendennis +would never have gone riding with a cook at all. Chaucer's knight rode +with a cook quite naturally; because the thing they were all seeking +together was as much above knighthood as it was above cookery. Soldiers +and swindlers and bullies and outcasts, they were all going to the +shrine of a distant saint. To what sort of distant saint would Pendennis +and Colonel Newcome and Mr. Moss and Captain Costigan and Ridley the +butler and Bayham and Sir Barnes Newcome and Laura and the Duchess +d'Ivry and Warrington and Captain Blackball and Lady Kew travel, +laughing and telling tales together? + +The growth of the novel, therefore, must not be too easily called an +increase in the interest in humanity. It is an increase in the interest +in the things in which men differ; much fuller and finer work had been +done before about the things in which they agree. And this intense +interest in variety had its bad side as well as its good; it has rather +increased social distinctions in a serious and spiritual sense. Most of +the oblivion of democracy is due to the oblivion of death. But in its +own manner and measure, it was a real advance and experiment of the +European mind, like the public art of the Renaissance or the fairyland +of physical science explored in the nineteenth century. It was a more +unquestionable benefit than these: and in that development women played +a peculiar part, English women especially, and Victorian women most of +all. + +It is perhaps partly, though certainly not entirely, this influence of +the great women writers that explains another very arresting and +important fact about the emergence of genuinely Victorian fiction. It +had been by this time decided, by the powers that had influence (and by +public opinion also, at least in the middle-class sense), that certain +verbal limits must be set to such literature. The novel must be what +some would call pure and others would call prudish; but what is not, +properly considered, either one or the other: it is rather a more or +less business proposal (right or wrong) that every writer shall draw the +line at literal physical description of things socially concealed. It +was originally merely verbal; it had not, primarily, any dream of +purifying the topic or the moral tone. Dickens and Thackeray claimed +very properly the right to deal with shameful passions and suggest their +shameful culminations; Scott sometimes dealt with ideas positively +horrible--as in that grand Glenallan tragedy which is as appalling as +the _OEdipus_ or _The Cenci_. None of these great men would have +tolerated for a moment being talked to (as the muddle-headed amateur +censors talk to artists to-day) about "wholesome" topics and suggestions +"that cannot elevate." They had to describe the great battle of good and +evil and they described both; but they accepted a working Victorian +compromise about what should happen behind the scenes and what on the +stage. Dickens did not claim the license of diction Fielding might have +claimed in repeating the senile ecstasies of Gride (let us say) over his +purchased bride: but Dickens does not leave the reader in the faintest +doubt about what sort of feelings they were; nor is there any reason why +he should. Thackeray would not have described the toilet details of the +secret balls of Lord Steyne: he left that to Lady Cardigan. But no one +who had read Thackeray's version would be surprised at Lady Cardigan's. +But though the great Victorian novelists would not have permitted the +impudence of the suggestion that every part of their problem must be +wholesome and innocent in itself, it is still tenable (I do not say it +is certain) that by yielding to the Philistines on this verbal +compromise, they have in the long run worked for impurity rather than +purity. In one point I do certainly think that Victorian Bowdlerism did +pure harm. This is the simple point that, nine times out of ten, the +coarse word is the word that condemns an evil and the refined word the +word that excuses it. A common evasion, for instance, substitutes for +the word that brands self-sale as the essential sin, a word which weakly +suggests that it is no more wicked than walking down the street. The +great peril of such soft mystifications is that extreme evils (they +that are abnormal even by the standard of evil) have a very long start. +Where ordinary wrong is made unintelligible, extraordinary wrong can +count on remaining more unintelligible still; especially among those who +live in such an atmosphere of long words. It is a cruel comment on the +purity of the Victorian Age, that the age ended (save for the bursting +of a single scandal) in a thing being everywhere called "Art," "The +Greek Spirit," "The Platonic Ideal" and so on--which any navvy mending +the road outside would have stamped with a word as vile and as vulgar as +it deserved. + +This reticence, right or wrong, may have been connected with the +participation of women with men in the matter of fiction. It is an +important point: the sexes can only be coarse separately. It was +certainly also due, as I have already suggested, to the treaty between +the rich _bourgeoisie_ and the old aristocracy, which both had to make, +for the common and congenial purpose of keeping the English people +down. But it was due much more than this to a general moral atmosphere +in the Victorian Age. It is impossible to express that spirit except by +the electric bell of a name. It was latitudinarian, and yet it was +limited. It could be content with nothing less than the whole cosmos: +yet the cosmos with which it was content was small. It is false to say +it was without humour: yet there was something by instinct unsmiling in +it. It was always saying solidly that things were "enough"; and proving +by that sharpness (as of the shutting of a door) that they were not +enough. It took, I will not say its pleasures, but even its +emancipations, sadly. Definitions seem to escape this way and that in +the attempt to locate it as an idea. But every one will understand me if +I call it George Eliot. + +I begin with this great woman of letters for both the two reasons +already mentioned. She represents the rationalism of the old Victorian +Age at its highest. She and Mill are like two great mountains at the end +of that long, hard chain which is the watershed of the Early Victorian +time. They alone rise high enough to be confused among the clouds--or +perhaps confused among the stars. They certainly were seeking truth, as +Newman and Carlyle were; the slow slope of the later Victorian vulgarity +does not lower their precipice and pinnacle. But I begin with this name +also because it emphasises the idea of modern fiction as a fresh and +largely a female thing. The novel of the nineteenth century was female; +as fully as the novel of the eighteenth century was male. It is quite +certain that no woman could have written _Roderick Random_. It is not +quite so certain that no woman could have written _Esmond_. The strength +and subtlety of woman had certainly sunk deep into English letters when +George Eliot began to write. + +Her originals and even her contemporaries had shown the feminine power +in fiction as well or better than she. Charlotte Bronte, understood +along her own instincts, was as great; Jane Austen was greater. The +latter comes into our present consideration only as that most +exasperating thing, an ideal unachieved. It is like leaving an +unconquered fortress in the rear. No woman later has captured the +complete common sense of Jane Austen. She could keep her head, while all +the after women went about looking for their brains. She could describe +a man coolly; which neither George Eliot nor Charlotte Bronte could do. +She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what +she did not know--like a sound agnostic. But she belongs to a vanished +world before the great progressive age of which I write. + +One of the characteristics of the central Victorian spirit was a +tendency to substitute a certain more or less satisfied seriousness for +the extremes of tragedy and comedy. This is marked by a certain change +in George Eliot; as it is marked by a certain limitation or moderation +in Dickens. Dickens was the People, as it was in the eighteenth century +and still largely is, in spite of all the talk for and against Board +School Education: comic, tragic, realistic, free-spoken, far looser in +words than in deeds. It marks the silent strength and pressure of the +spirit of the Victorian middle class that even to Dickens it never +occurred to revive the verbal coarseness of Smollett or Swift. The other +proof of the same pressure is the change in George Eliot. She was not a +genius in the elemental sense of Dickens; she could never have been +either so strong or so soft. But she did originally represent some of +the same popular realities: and her first books (at least as compared +with her latest) were full of sound fun and bitter pathos. Mr. Max +Beerbohm has remarked (in his glorious essay called _Ichabod_, I think), +that Silas Marner would not have forgotten his miserliness if George +Eliot had written of him in her maturity. I have a great regard for Mr. +Beerbohm's literary judgments; and it may be so. But if literature +means anything more than a cold calculation of the chances, if there is +in it, as I believe, any deeper idea of detaching the spirit of life +from the dull obstacles of life, of permitting human nature really to +reveal itself as human, if (to put it shortly) literature has anything +on earth to do with being _interesting_--then I think we would rather +have a few more Marners than that rich maturity that gave us the +analysed dust-heaps of _Daniel Deronda_. + +In her best novels there is real humour, of a cool sparkling sort; there +is a strong sense of substantial character that has not yet degenerated +into psychology; there is a great deal of wisdom, chiefly about women; +indeed there is almost every element of literature except a certain +indescribable thing called _glamour_; which was the whole stock-in-trade +of the Brontes, which we feel in Dickens when Quilp clambers amid rotten +wood by the desolate river; and even in Thackeray when Esmond with his +melancholy eyes wanders like some swarthy crow about the dismal avenues +of Castlewood. Of this quality (which some have called, but hastily, the +essential of literature) George Eliot had not little but nothing. Her +air is bright and intellectually even exciting; but it is like the air +of a cloudless day on the parade at Brighton. She sees people clearly, +but not through an atmosphere. And she can conjure up storms in the +conscious, but not in the subconscious mind. + +It is true (though the idea should not be exaggerated) that this +deficiency was largely due to her being cut off from all those +conceptions that had made the fiction of a Muse; the deep idea that +there are really demons and angels behind men. Certainly the increasing +atheism of her school spoilt her own particular imaginative talent: she +was far less free when she thought like Ladislaw than when she thought +like Casaubon. It also betrayed her on a matter specially requiring +common sense; I mean sex. There is nothing that is so profoundly false +as rationalist flirtation. Each sex is trying to be both sexes at once; +and the result is a confusion more untruthful than any conventions. This +can easily be seen by comparing her with a greater woman who died before +the beginning of our present problem. Jane Austen was born before those +bonds which (we are told) protected woman from truth, were burst by the +Brontes or elaborately untied by George Eliot. Yet the fact remains that +Jane Austen knew much more about men than either of them. Jane Austen +may have been protected from truth: but it was precious little of truth +that was protected from her. When Darcy, in finally confessing his +faults, says, "I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice +_though not in theory_," he gets nearer to a complete confession of the +intelligent male than ever was even hinted by the Byronic lapses of the +Brontes' heroes or the elaborate exculpations of George Eliot's. Jane +Austen, of course, covered an infinitely smaller field than any of her +later rivals; but I have always believed in the victory of small +nationalities. + +The Brontes suggest themselves here; because their superficial +qualities, the qualities that can be seized upon in satire, were in this +an exaggeration of what was, in George Eliot, hardly more than an +omission. There was perhaps a time when Mr. Rawjester was more widely +known than Mr. Rochester. And certainly Mr. Rochester (to adopt the +diction of that other eminent country gentleman, Mr. Darcy) was simply +individualistic not only in practice, but in theory. Now any one may be +so in practice: but a man who is simply individualistic in theory must +merely be an ass. Undoubtedly the Brontes exposed themselves to some +misunderstanding by thus perpetually making the masculine creature much +more masculine than he wants to be. Thackeray (a man of strong though +sleepy virility) asked in his exquisite plaintive way: "Why do our lady +novelists make the men bully the women?" It is, I think, unquestionably +true that the Brontes treated the male as an almost anarchic thing +coming in from outside nature; much as people on this planet regard a +comet. Even the really delicate and sustained comedy of Paul Emanuel is +not quite free from this air of studying something alien. The reply may +be made that the women in men's novels are equally fallacious. The reply +is probably just. + +What the Brontes really brought into fiction was exactly what Carlyle +brought into history; the blast of the mysticism of the North. They were +of Irish blood settled on the windy heights of Yorkshire; in that +country where Catholicism lingered latest, but in a superstitious form; +where modern industrialism came earliest and was more superstitious +still. The strong winds and sterile places, the old tyranny of barons +and the new and blacker tyranny of manufacturers, has made and left that +country a land of barbarians. All Charlotte Bronte's earlier work is +full of that sullen and unmanageable world; moss-troopers turned +hurriedly into miners; the last of the old world forced into supporting +the very first crudities of the new. In this way Charlotte Bronte +represents the Victorian settlement in a special way. The Early +Victorian Industrialism is to George Eliot and to Charlotte Bronte, +rather as the Late Victorian Imperialism would have been to Mrs. Humphry +Ward in the centre of the empire and to Miss Olive Schreiner at the edge +of it. The real strength there is in characters like Robert Moore, when +he is dealing with anything except women, is the romance of industry in +its first advance: a romance that has not remained. On such fighting +frontiers people always exaggerate the strong qualities the masculine +sex does possess, and always add a great many strong qualities that it +does not possess. That is, briefly, all the reason in the Brontes on +this special subject: the rest is stark unreason. It can be most clearly +seen in that sister of Charlotte Bronte's who has achieved the real +feat of remaining as a great woman rather than a great writer. There is +really, in a narrow but intense way, a tradition of Emily Bronte: as +there is a tradition of St. Peter or Dr. Johnson. People talk as if they +had known her, apart from her works. She must have been something more +than an original person; perhaps an origin. But so far as her written +works go she enters English letters only as an original person--and +rather a narrow one. Her imagination was sometimes superhuman--always +inhuman. _Wuthering Heights_ might have been written by an eagle. She is +the strongest instance of these strong imaginations that made the other +sex a monster: for Heathcliffe fails as a man as catastrophically as he +succeeds as a demon. I think Emily Bronte was further narrowed by the +broadness of her religious views; but never, of course, so much as +George Eliot. + +In any case, it is Charlotte Bronte who enters Victorian literature. The +shortest way of stating her strong contribution is, I think, this: that +she reached the highest romance through the lowest realism. She did not +set out with Amadis of Gaul in a forest or with Mr. Pickwick in a comic +club. She set out with herself, with her own dingy clothes, and +accidental ugliness, and flat, coarse, provincial household; and +forcibly fused all such muddy materials into a spirited fairy-tale. If +the first chapters on the home and school had not proved how heavy and +hateful _sanity_ can be, there would really be less point in the +insanity of Mr. Rochester's wife--or the not much milder insanity of +Mrs. Rochester's husband. She discovered the secret of hiding the +sensational in the commonplace: and _Jane Eyre_ remains the best of her +books (better even than _Villette_) because while it is a human document +written in blood, it is also one of the best blood-and-thunder detective +stories in the world. + +But while Emily Bronte was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and +while Charlotte Bronte was at best like that warmer and more domestic +thing, a house on fire--they do connect themselves with the calm of +George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the +feminine advance. Many forerunners (if it comes to that) would have felt +rather ill if they had seen the things they foreran. This notion of a +hazy anticipation of after history has been absurdly overdone: as when +men connect Chaucer with the Reformation; which is like connecting Homer +with the Syracusan Expedition. But it is to some extent true that all +these great Victorian women had a sort of unrest in their souls. And the +proof of it is that (after what I will claim to call the healthier time +of Dickens and Thackeray) it began to be admitted by the great Victorian +men. If there had not been something in that irritation, we should +hardly have had to speak in these pages of _Diana of the Crossways_ or +of _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_. To what this strange and very local sex +war has been due I shall not ask, because I have no answer. That it was +due to votes or even little legal inequalities about marriage, I feel +myself here too close to realities even to discuss. My own guess is that +it has been due to the great neglect of the military spirit by the male +Victorians. The woman felt obscurely that she was still running her +mortal risk, while the man was not still running his. But I know nothing +about it; nor does anybody else. + +In so short a book on so vast, complex and living a subject, it is +impossible to drop even into the second rank of good authors, whose name +is legion; but it is impossible to leave that considerable female force +in fiction which has so largely made the very nature of the modern +novel, without mentioning two names which almost brought that second +rank up to the first rank. They were at utterly opposite poles. The one +succeeded by being a much mellower and more Christian George Eliot; the +other succeeded by being a much more mad and unchristian Emily Bronte. +But Mrs. Oliphant and the author calling herself "Ouida" both forced +themselves well within the frontier of fine literature. _The Beleaguered +City_ is literature in its highest sense; the other works of its author +tend to fall into fiction in its best working sense. Mrs. Oliphant was +infinitely saner in that city of ghosts than the cosmopolitan Ouida ever +was in any of the cities of men. Mrs. Oliphant would never have dared to +discover, either in heaven or hell, such a thing as a hairbrush with its +back encrusted with diamonds. But though Ouida was violent and weak +where Mrs. Oliphant might have been mild and strong, her own triumphs +were her own. She had a real power of expressing the senses through her +style; of conveying the very heat of blue skies or the bursting of +palpable pomegranates. And just as Mrs. Oliphant transfused her more +timid Victorian tales with a true and intense faith in the Christian +mystery--so Ouida, with infinite fury and infinite confusion of +thought, did fill her books with Byron and the remains of the French +Revolution. In the track of such genius there has been quite an +accumulation of true talent as in the children's tales of Mrs. Ewing, +the historical tales of Miss Yonge, the tales of Mrs. Molesworth, and so +on. On a general review I do not think I have been wrong in taking the +female novelists first. I think they gave its special shape, its +temporary twist, to the Victorian novel. + +Nevertheless it is a shock (I almost dare to call it a relief) to come +back to the males. It is the more abrupt because the first name that +must be mentioned derives directly from the mere maleness of the Sterne +and Smollett novel. I have already spoken of Dickens as the most homely +and instinctive, and therefore probably the heaviest, of all the +onslaughts made on the central Victorian satisfaction. There is +therefore the less to say of him here, where we consider him only as a +novelist; but there is still much more to say than can even conceivably +be said. Dickens, as we have stated, inherited the old comic, rambling +novel from Smollett and the rest. Dickens, as we have also stated, +consented to expurgate that novel. But when all origins and all +restraints have been defined and allowed for, the creature that came out +was such as we shall not see again. Smollett was coarse; but Smollett +was also cruel. Dickens was frequently horrible; he was never cruel. The +art of Dickens was the most exquisite of arts: it was the art of +enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a very human writer, had to be a very +human being; he had his faults and sensibilities in a strong degree; and +I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed everybody in his daily +life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and everybody has enjoyed +everybody in those books even till to-day. His books are full of baffled +villains stalking out or cowardly bullies kicked downstairs. But the +villains and the cowards are such delightful people that the reader +always hopes the villain will put his head through a side window and +make a last remark; or that the bully will say one thing more, even from +the bottom of the stairs. The reader really hopes this; and he cannot +get rid of the fancy that the author hopes so too. I cannot at the +moment recall that Dickens ever killed a comic villain, except Quilp, +who was deliberately made even more villainous than comic. There can be +no serious fears for the life of Mr. Wegg in the muckcart; though Mr. +Pecksniff fell to be a borrower of money, and Mr. Mantalini to turning a +mangle, the human race has the comfort of thinking they are still alive: +and one might have the rapture of receiving a begging letter from Mr. +Pecksniff, or even of catching Mr. Mantalini collecting the washing, if +one always lurked about on Monday mornings. This sentiment (the true +artist will be relieved to hear) is entirely unmoral. Mrs. Wilfer +deserved death much more than Mr. Quilp, for she had succeeded in +poisoning family life persistently, while he was (to say the least of +it) intermittent in his domesticity. But who can honestly say he does +not hope Mrs. Wilfer is still talking like Mrs. Wilfer--especially if it +is only in a book? This is the artistic greatness of Dickens, before and +after which there is really nothing to be said. He had the power of +creating people, both possible and impossible, who were simply precious +and priceless people; and anything subtler added to that truth really +only weakens it. + +The mention of Mrs. Wilfer (whom the heart is loth to leave) reminds one +of the only elementary ethical truth that is essential in the study of +Dickens. That is that he had broad or universal sympathies in a sense +totally unknown to the social reformers who wallow in such phrases. +Dickens (unlike the social reformers) really did sympathise with every +sort of victim of every sort of tyrant. He did truly pray for _all_ who +are desolate and oppressed. If you try to tie him to any cause narrower +than that Prayer Book definition, you will find you have shut out half +his best work. If, in your sympathy for Mrs. Quilp, you call Dickens the +champion of downtrodden woman, you will suddenly remember Mr. Wilfer, +and find yourself unable to deny the existence of downtrodden man. If in +your sympathy for Mr. Rouncewell you call Dickens the champion of a +manly middle-class Liberalism against Chesney Wold, you will suddenly +remember Stephen Blackpool--and find yourself unable to deny that Mr. +Rouncewell might be a pretty insupportable cock on his own dung-hill. If +in your sympathy for Stephen Blackpool you call Dickens a Socialist (as +does Mr. Pugh), and think of him as merely heralding the great +Collectivist revolt against Victorian Individualism and Capitalism, +which seemed so clearly to be the crisis at the end of this epoch--you +will suddenly remember the agreeable young Barnacle at the +Circumlocution Office: and you will be unable, for very shame, to +assert that Dickens would have trusted the poor to a State Department. +Dickens did not merely believe in the brotherhood of men in the weak +modern way; he was the brotherhood of men, and knew it was a brotherhood +in sin as well as in aspiration. And he was not only larger than the old +factions he satirised; he was larger than any of our great social +schools that have gone forward since he died. + +The seemingly quaint custom of comparing Dickens and Thackeray existed +in their own time, and no one will dismiss it with entire disdain who +remembers that the Victorian tradition was domestic and genuine, even +when it was hoodwinked and unworldly. There must have been some reason +for making this imaginary duel between two quite separate and quite +amiable acquaintances. And there is, after all, some reason for it. It +is not, as was once cheaply said, that Thackeray went in for truth, and +Dickens for mere caricature. There is a huge accumulation of truth, +down to the smallest detail, in Dickens: he seems sometimes a mere +mountain of facts. Thackeray, in comparison, often seems quite careless +and elusive; almost as if he did not quite know where all his characters +were. There is a truth behind the popular distinction; but it lies much +deeper. Perhaps the best way of stating it is this: that Dickens used +reality, while aiming at an effect of romance; while Thackeray used the +loose language and ordinary approaches of romance, while aiming at an +effect of reality. It was the special and splendid business of Dickens +to introduce us to people who would have been quite incredible if he had +not told us so much truth about them. It was the special and not less +splendid task of Thackeray to introduce us to people whom we knew +already. Paradoxically, but very practically, it followed that his +introductions were the longer of the two. When we hear of Aunt Betsy +Trotwood, we vividly envisage everything about her, from her gardening +gloves to her seaside residence, from her hard, handsome face to her +tame lunatic laughing at the bedroom window. It is all so minutely true +that she must be true also. We only feel inclined to walk round the +English coast until we find that particular garden and that particular +aunt. But when we turn from the aunt of Copperfield to the uncle of +Pendennis, we are more likely to run round the coast trying to find a +watering-place where he isn't than one where he is. The moment one sees +Major Pendennis, one sees a hundred Major Pendennises. It is not a +matter of mere realism. Miss Trotwood's bonnet and gardening tools and +cupboard full of old-fashioned bottles are quite as true in the +materialistic way as the Major's cuffs and corner table and toast and +newspaper. Both writers are realistic: but Dickens writes realism in +order to make the incredible credible. Thackeray writes it in order to +make us recognise an old friend. Whether we shall be pleased to meet the +old friend is quite another matter: I think we should be better pleased +to meet Miss Trotwood, and find, as David Copperfield did, a new friend, +a new world. But we recognise Major Pendennis even when we avoid him. +Henceforth Thackeray can count on our seeing him from his wig to his +well-blacked boots whenever he chooses to say "Major Pendennis paid a +call." Dickens, on the other hand, had to keep up an incessant +excitement about his characters; and no man on earth but he could have +kept it up. + +It may be said, in approximate summary, that Thackeray is the novelist +of memory--of our memories as well as his own. Dickens seems to expect +all his characters, like amusing strangers arriving at lunch: as if they +gave him not only pleasure, but surprise. But Thackeray is everybody's +past--is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of +dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished +conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed for ever +in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques +now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at +once the hundred ghosts of oneself. + +For this purpose Thackeray was equipped with a singularly easy and +sympathetic style, carved in slow soft curves where Dickens hacked out +his images with a hatchet. There was a sort of avuncular indulgence +about his attitude; what he called his "preaching" was at worst a sort +of grumbling, ending with the sentiment that boys will be boys and that +there's nothing new under the sun. He was not really either a cynic or a +_censor morum_; but (in another sense than Chaucer's) a gentle pardoner: +having seen the weaknesses he is sometimes almost weak about them. He +really comes nearer to exculpating Pendennis or Ethel Newcome than any +other author, who saw what he saw, would have been. The rare wrath of +such men is all the more effective; and there are passages in _Vanity +Fair_ and still more in _The Book of Snobs_, where he does make the +dance of wealth and fashion look stiff and monstrous, like a Babylonian +masquerade. But he never quite did it in such a way as to turn the +course of the Victorian Age. + +It may seem strange to say that Thackeray did not know enough of the +world; yet this was the truth about him in large matters of the +philosophy of life, and especially of his own time. He did not know the +way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian +epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news. In +one of his delightful asides he imagines two little clerks commenting +erroneously on the appearance of Lady Kew or Sir Brian Newcome in the +Park, and says: "How should Jones and Brown, who are not, _vous +comprenez, du monde_, understand these mysteries?" But I think Thackeray +knew quite as little about Jones and Brown as they knew about Newcome +and Kew; his world was _le monde_. Hence he seemed to take it for +granted that the Victorian compromise would last; while Dickens (who +knew his Jones and Brown) had already guessed that it would not. +Thackeray did not realise that the Victorian platform was a moving +platform. To take but one instance, he was a Radical like Dickens; all +really representative Victorians, except perhaps Tennyson, were +Radicals. But he seems to have thought of all reform as simple and +straightforward and all of a piece; as if Catholic Emancipation, the New +Poor Law, Free Trade and the Factory Acts and Popular Education were all +parts of one almost self-evident evolution of enlightenment. Dickens, +being in touch with the democracy, had already discovered that the +country had come to a dark place of divided ways and divided counsels. +In _Hard Times_ he realised Democracy at war with Radicalism; and +became, with so incompatible an ally as Ruskin, not indeed a Socialist, +but certainly an anti-Individualist. In _Our Mutual Friend_ he felt the +strength of the new rich, and knew they had begun to transform the +aristocracy, instead of the aristocracy transforming them. He knew that +Veneering had carried off Twemlow in triumph. He very nearly knew what +we all know to-day: that, so far from it being possible to plod along +the progressive road with more votes and more Free Trade, England must +either sharply become very much more democratic or as rapidly become +very much less so. + +There gathers round these two great novelists a considerable group of +good novelists, who more or less mirror their mid-Victorian mood. Wilkie +Collins may be said to be in this way a lesser Dickens and Anthony +Trollope a lesser Thackeray. Wilkie Collins is chiefly typical of his +time in this respect: that while his moral and religious conceptions +were as mechanical as his carefully constructed fictitious conspiracies, +he nevertheless informed the latter with a sort of involuntary mysticism +which dealt wholly with the darker side of the soul. For this was one +of the most peculiar of the problems of the Victorian mind. The idea of +the supernatural was perhaps at as low an ebb as it had ever +been--certainly much lower than it is now. But in spite of this, and in +spite of a certain ethical cheeriness that was almost _de rigueur_--the +strange fact remains that the only sort of supernaturalism the +Victorians allowed to their imaginations was a sad supernaturalism. They +might have ghost stories, but not saints' stories. They could trifle +with the curse or unpardoning prophecy of a witch, but not with the +pardon of a priest. They seem to have held (I believe erroneously) that +the supernatural was safest when it came from below. When we think (for +example) of the uncountable riches of religious art, imagery, ritual and +popular legend that has clustered round Christmas through all the +Christian ages, it is a truly extraordinary thing to reflect that +Dickens (wishing to have in _The Christmas Carol_ a little happy +supernaturalism by way of a change) actually had to make up a mythology +for himself. Here was one of the rare cases where Dickens, in a real and +human sense, did suffer from the lack of culture. For the rest, Wilkie +Collins is these two elements: the mechanical and the mystical; both +very good of their kind. He is one of the few novelists in whose case it +is proper and literal to speak of his "plots." He was a plotter; he went +about to slay Godfrey Ablewhite as coldly and craftily as the Indians +did. But he also had a sound though sinister note of true magic; as in +the repetition of the two white dresses in _The Woman in White_; or of +the dreams with their double explanations in _Armadale_. His ghosts do +walk. They are alive; and walk as softly as Count Fosco, but as solidly. +Finally, _The Moonstone_ is probably the best detective tale in the +world. + +Anthony Trollope, a clear and very capable realist, represents rather +another side of the Victorian spirit of comfort; its leisureliness, its +love of detail, especially of domestic detail; its love of following +characters and kindred from book to book and from generation to +generation. Dickens very seldom tried this latter experiment, and then +(as in _Master Humphrey's Clock_) unsuccessfully; those magnesium blazes +of his were too brilliant and glaring to be indefinitely prolonged. But +Thackeray was full of it; and we often feel that the characters in _The +Newcomes_ or _Philip_ might legitimately complain that their talk and +tale are being perpetually interrupted and pestered by people out of +other books. Within his narrower limits, Trollope was a more strict and +masterly realist than Thackeray, and even those who would call his +personages "types" would admit that they are as vivid as characters. It +was a bustling but a quiet world that he described: politics before the +coming of the Irish and the Socialists; the Church in the lull between +the Oxford Movement and the modern High Anglican energy. And it is +notable in the Victorian spirit once more that though his clergymen are +all of them real men and many of them good men, it never really occurs +to us to think of them as the priests of a religion. + +Charles Reade may be said to go along with these; and Disraeli and even +Kingsley; not because these three very different persons had anything +particular in common, but because they all fell short of the first rank +in about the same degree. Charles Reade had a kind of cold coarseness +about him, not morally but artistically, which keeps him out of the best +literature as such: but he is of importance to the Victorian development +in another way; because he has the harsher and more tragic note that has +come later in the study of our social problems. He is the first of the +angry realists. Kingsley's best books may be called boys' books. There +is a real though a juvenile poetry in _Westward Ho!_ and though that +narrative, historically considered, is very much of a lie, it is a good, +thundering honest lie. There are also genuinely eloquent things in +_Hypatia_, and a certain electric atmosphere of sectarian excitement +that Kingsley kept himself in, and did know how to convey. He said he +wrote the book in his heart's blood. This is an exaggeration, but there +is a truth in it; and one does feel that he may have relieved his +feelings by writing it in red ink. As for Disraeli, his novels are able +and interesting considered as everything except novels, and are an +important contribution precisely because they are written by an alien +who did not take our politics so seriously as Trollope did. They are +important again as showing those later Victorian changes which men like +Thackeray missed. Disraeli did do something towards revealing the +dishonesty of our politics--even if he had done a good deal towards +bringing it about. + +Between this group and the next there hovers a figure very hard to +place; not higher in letters than these, yet not easy to class with +them; I mean Bulwer Lytton. He was no greater than they were; yet +somehow he seems to take up more space. He did not, in the ultimate +reckoning, do anything in particular: but he was a figure; rather as +Oscar Wilde was later a figure. You could not have the Victorian Age +without him. And this was not due to wholly superficial things like his +dandyism, his dark, sinister good looks and a great deal of the mere +polished melodrama that he wrote. There was something in his all-round +interests; in the variety of things he tried; in his half-aristocratic +swagger as poet and politician, that made him in some ways a real +touchstone of the time. It is noticeable about him that he is always +turning up everywhere and that he brings other people out, generally in +a hostile spirit. His Byronic and almost Oriental ostentation was used +by the young Thackeray as something on which to sharpen his new razor of +Victorian common sense. His pose as a dilettante satirist inflamed the +execrable temper of Tennyson, and led to those lively comparisons to a +bandbox and a lion in curlpapers. He interposed the glove of warning and +the tear of sensibility between us and the proper ending of _Great +Expectations_. Of his own books, by far the best are the really charming +comedies about _The Caxtons_ and _Kenelm Chillingly_; none of his other +works have a high literary importance now, with the possible exception +of _A Strange Story_; but his _Coming Race_ is historically interesting +as foreshadowing those novels of the future which were afterwards such a +weapon of the Socialists. Lastly, there was an element indefinable about +Lytton, which often is in adventurers; which amounts to a suspicion that +there was something in him after all. It rang out of him when he said to +the hesitating Crimean Parliament: "Destroy your Government and save +your army." + +With the next phase of Victorian fiction we enter a new world; the +later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways +weaker world in which we live to-day. The subtle and sad change that +was passing like twilight across the English brain at this time is very +well expressed in the fact that men have come to mention the great name +of Meredith in the same breath as Mr. Thomas Hardy. Both writers, +doubtless, disagreed with the orthodox religion of the ordinary English +village. Most of us have disagreed with that religion until we made the +simple discovery that it does not exist. But in any age where ideas +could be even feebly disentangled from each other, it would have been +evident at once that Meredith and Hardy were, intellectually speaking, +mortal enemies. They were much more opposed to each other than Newman +was to Kingsley; or than Abelard was to St. Bernard. But then they +collided in a sceptical age, which is like colliding in a London fog. +There can never be any clear controversy in a sceptical age. + +Nevertheless both Hardy and Meredith did mean something; and they did +mean diametrically opposite things. Meredith was perhaps the only man +in the modern world who has almost had the high honour of rising out of +the low estate of a Pantheist into the high estate of a Pagan. A Pagan +is a person who can do what hardly any person for the last two thousand +years could do: a person who can take Nature naturally. It is due to +Meredith to say that no one outside a few of the great Greeks has ever +taken Nature so naturally as he did. And it is also due to him to say +that no one outside Colney Hatch ever took Nature so unnaturally as it +was taken in what Mr. Hardy has had the blasphemy to call Wessex Tales. +This division between the two points of view is vital; because the turn +of the nineteenth century was a very sharp one; by it we have reached +the rapids in which we find ourselves to-day. + +Meredith really is a Pantheist. You can express it by saying that God is +the great All: you can express it much more intelligently by saying that +Pan is the great god. But there is some sense in it, and the sense is +this: that some people believe that this world is sufficiently good at +bottom for us to trust ourselves to it without very much knowing why. It +is the whole point in most of Meredith's tales that there is something +behind us that often saves us when we understand neither it nor +ourselves. He sometimes talked mere intellectualism about women: but +that is because the most brilliant brains can get tired. Meredith's +brain was quite tired when it wrote some of its most quoted and least +interesting epigrams: like that about passing Seraglio Point, but not +doubling Cape Turk. Those who can see Meredith's mind in that are with +those who can see Dickens' mind in Little Nell. Both were chivalrous +pronouncements on behalf of oppressed females: neither has any earthly +meaning as ideas. + +But what Meredith did do for women was not to emancipate them (which +means nothing) but to express them, which means a great deal. And he +often expressed them right, even when he expressed himself wrong. Take, +for instance, that phrase so often quoted: "Woman will be the last thing +civilised by man." Intellectually it is something worse than false; it +is the opposite of what he was always attempting to say. So far from +admitting any equality in the sexes, it logically admits that a man may +use against a woman any chains or whips he has been in the habit of +using against a tiger or a bear. He stood as the special champion of +female dignity: but I cannot remember any author, Eastern or Western, +who has so calmly assumed that man is the master and woman merely the +material, as Meredith really does in this phrase. Any one who knows a +free woman (she is generally a married woman) will immediately be +inclined to ask two simple and catastrophic questions, first: "Why +should woman be civilised?" and, second: "Why, if she is to be +civilised, should she be civilised by man?" In the mere intellectualism +of the matter, Meredith seems to be talking the most brutal sex +mastery: he, at any rate, has not doubled Cape Turk, nor even passed +Seraglio Point. Now why is it that we all really feel that this +Meredithian passage is not so insolently masculine as in mere logic it +would seem? I think it is for this simple reason: that there is +something about Meredith making us feel that it is not woman he +disbelieves in, but civilisation. It is a dark undemonstrated feeling +that Meredith would really be rather sorry if woman were civilised by +man--or by anything else. When we have got that, we have got the real +Pagan--the man that does believe in Pan. + +It is proper to put this philosophic matter first, before the aesthetic +appreciation of Meredith, because with Meredith a sort of passing bell +has rung and the Victorian orthodoxy is certainly no longer safe. +Dickens and Carlyle, as we have said, rebelled against the orthodox +compromise: but Meredith has escaped from it. Cosmopolitanism, +Socialism, Feminism are already in the air; and Queen Victoria has +begun to look like Mrs. Grundy. But to escape from a city is one thing: +to choose a road is another. The free-thinker who found himself outside +the Victorian city, found himself also in the fork of two very different +naturalistic paths. One of them went upwards through a tangled but +living forest to lonely but healthy hills: the other went down to a +swamp. Hardy went down to botanise in the swamp, while Meredith climbed +towards the sun. Meredith became, at his best, a sort of daintily +dressed Walt Whitman: Hardy became a sort of village atheist brooding +and blaspheming over the village idiot. It is largely because the +free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they +want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their +small but sincere movement has failed. + +For the duel is deadly; and any agnostic who wishes to be anything more +than a Nihilist must sympathise with one version of nature or the +other. The God of Meredith is impersonal; but he is often more healthy +and kindly than any of the persons. That of Thomas Hardy is almost made +personal by the intense feeling that he is poisonous. Nature is always +coming in to save Meredith's women; Nature is always coming in to betray +and ruin Hardy's. It has been said that if God had not existed it would +have been necessary to invent Him. But it is not often, as in Mr. +Hardy's case, that it is necessary to invent Him in order to prove how +unnecessary (and undesirable) He is. But Mr. Hardy is anthropomorphic +out of sheer atheism. He personifies the universe in order to give it a +piece of his mind. But the fight is unequal for the old philosophical +reason: that the universe had already given Mr. Hardy a piece of _its_ +mind to fight with. One curious result of this divergence in the two +types of sceptic is this: that when these two brilliant novelists break +down or blow up or otherwise lose for a moment their artistic +self-command, they are both equally wild, but wild in opposite +directions. Meredith shows an extravagance in comedy which, if it were +not so complicated, every one would call broad farce. But Mr. Hardy has +the honour of inventing a new sort of game, which may be called the +extravagance of depression. The placing of the weak lover and his new +love in such a place that they actually see the black flag announcing +that Tess has been hanged is utterly inexcusable in art and probability; +it is a cruel practical joke. But it is a practical joke at which even +its author cannot brighten up enough to laugh. + +But it is when we consider the great artistic power of these two +writers, with all their eccentricities, that we see even more clearly +that free-thought was, as it were, a fight between finger-posts. For it +is the remarkable fact that it was the man who had the healthy and manly +outlook who had the crabbed and perverse style; it was the man who had +the crabbed and perverse outlook who had the healthy and manly style. +The reader may well have complained of paradox when I observed above +that Meredith, unlike most neo-Pagans, did in his way take Nature +naturally. It may be suggested, in tones of some remonstrance, that +things like "though pierced by the cruel acerb," or "thy fleetingness is +bigger in the ghost," or "her gabbling grey she eyes askant," or "sheer +film of the surface awag" are not taking Nature naturally. And this is +true of Meredith's style, but it is not true of his spirit; nor even, +apparently, of his serious opinions. In one of the poems I have quoted +he actually says of those who live nearest to that Nature he was always +praising-- + + "Have they but held her laws and nature dear, + They mouth no sentence of inverted wit"; + +which certainly was what Meredith himself was doing most of the time. +But a similar paradox of the combination of plain tastes with twisted +phrases can also be seen in Browning. Something of the same can be seen +in many of the cavalier poets. I do not understand it: it may be that +the fertility of a cheerful mind crowds everything, so that the tree is +entangled in its own branches; or it may be that the cheerful mind cares +less whether it is understood or not; as a man is less articulate when +he is humming than when he is calling for help. + +Certainly Meredith suffers from applying a complex method to men and +things he does not mean to be complex; nay, honestly admires for being +simple. The conversations between Diana and Redworth fail of their full +contrast because Meredith can afford the twopence for Diana coloured, +but cannot afford the penny for Redworth plain. Meredith's ideals were +neither sceptical nor finicky: but they can be called insufficient. He +had, perhaps, over and above his honest Pantheism two convictions +profound enough to be called prejudices. He was probably of Welsh +blood, certainly of Celtic sympathies, and he set himself more swiftly +though more subtly than Ruskin or Swinburne to undermining the enormous +complacency of John Bull. He also had a sincere hope in the strength of +womanhood, and may be said, almost without hyperbole, to have begotten +gigantic daughters. He may yet suffer for his chivalric interference as +many champions do. I have little doubt that when St. George had killed +the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess. But certainly neither +of these two vital enthusiasms touched the Victorian trouble. The +disaster of the modern English is not that they are not Celtic, but that +they are not English. The tragedy of the modern woman is not that she is +not allowed to follow man, but that she follows him far too slavishly. +This conscious and theorising Meredith did not get very near his problem +and is certainly miles away from ours. But the other Meredith was a +creator; which means a god. That is true of him which is true of so +different a man as Dickens, that all one can say of him is that he is +full of good things. A reader opening one of his books feels like a +schoolboy opening a hamper which he knows to have somehow cost a hundred +pounds. He may be more bewildered by it than by an ordinary hamper; but +he gets the impression of a real richness of thought; and that is what +one really gets from such riots of felicity as _Evan Harrington_ or +_Harry Richmond_. His philosophy may be barren, but he was not. And the +chief feeling among those that enjoy him is a mere wish that more people +could enjoy him too. + +I end here upon Hardy and Meredith; because this parting of the ways to +open optimism and open pessimism really was the end of the Victorian +peace. There are many other men, very nearly as great, on whom I might +delight to linger: on Shorthouse, for instance, who in one way goes with +Mrs. Browning or Coventry Patmore. I mean that he has a wide culture, +which is called by some a narrow religion. When we think what even the +best novels about cavaliers have been (written by men like Scott or +Stevenson) it is a wonderful thing that the author of _John Inglesant_ +could write a cavalier romance in which he forgot Cromwell but +remembered Hobbes. But Shorthouse is outside the period in fiction in +the same sort of way in which Francis Thompson is outside it in poetry. +He did not accept the Victorian basis. He knew too much. + +There is one more matter that may best be considered here, though +briefly: it illustrates the extreme difficulty of dealing with the +Victorian English in a book like this, because of their eccentricity; +not of opinions, but of character and artistic form. There are several +great Victorians who will not fit into any of the obvious categories I +employ; because they will not fit into anything, hardly into the world +itself. Where Germany or Italy would relieve the monotony of mankind by +paying serious respect to an artist, or a scholar, or a patriotic +warrior, or a priest--it was always the instinct of the English to do it +by pointing out a Character. Dr. Johnson has faded as a poet or a +critic, but he survives as a Character. Cobbett is neglected +(unfortunately) as a publicist and pamphleteer, but he is remembered as +a Character. Now these people continued to crop up through the Victorian +time; and each stands so much by himself that I shall end these pages +with a profound suspicion that I have forgotten to mention a Character +of gigantic dimensions. Perhaps the best example of such eccentrics is +George Borrow; who sympathised with unsuccessful nomads like the gipsies +while every one else sympathised with successful nomads like the Jews; +who had a genius like the west wind for the awakening of wild and casual +friendships and the drag and attraction of the roads. But whether George +Borrow ought to go into the section devoted to philosophers, or the +section devoted to novelists, or the section devoted to liars, nobody +else has ever known, even if he did. + +But the strongest case of this Victorian power of being abruptly +original in a corner can be found in two things: the literature meant +merely for children and the literature meant merely for fun. It is true +that these two very Victorian things often melted into each other (as +was the way of Victorian things), but not sufficiently to make it safe +to mass them together without distinction. Thus there was George +Macdonald, a Scot of genius as genuine as Carlyle's; he could write +fairy-tales that made all experience a fairy-tale. He could give the +real sense that every one had the end of an elfin thread that must at +last lead them into Paradise. It was a sort of optimist Calvinism. But +such really significant fairy-tales were accidents of genius. Of the +Victorian Age as a whole it is true to say that it did discover a new +thing; a thing called Nonsense. It may be doubted whether this thing was +really invented to please children. Rather it was invented by old +people trying to prove their first childhood, and sometimes succeeding +only in proving their second. But whatever else the thing was, it was +English and it was individual. Lewis Carroll gave mathematics a holiday: +he carried logic into the wild lands of illogicality. Edward Lear, a +richer, more romantic and therefore more truly Victorian buffoon, +improved the experiment. But the more we study it, the more we shall, I +think, conclude that it reposed on something more real and profound in +the Victorians than even their just and exquisite appreciation of +children. It came from the deep Victorian sense of humour. + +It may appear, because I have used from time to time the only possible +phrases for the case, that I mean the Victorian Englishman to appear as +a blockhead, which means an unconscious buffoon. To all this there is a +final answer: that he was also a conscious buffoon--and a successful +one. He was a humorist; and one of the best humorists in Europe. That +which Goethe had never taught the Germans, Byron did manage to teach the +English--the duty of not taking him seriously. The strong and shrewd +Victorian humour appears in every slash of the pencil of Charles Keene; +in every undergraduate inspiration of Calverley or "Q." or J. K. S. They +had largely forgotten both art and arms: but the gods had left them +laughter. + +But the final proof that the Victorians were alive by this laughter, can +be found in the fact they could manage and master for a moment even the +cosmopolitan modern theatre. They could contrive to put "The Bab +Ballads" on the stage. To turn a private name into a public epithet is a +thing given to few: but the word "Gilbertian" will probably last longer +than the name Gilbert. + +It meant a real Victorian talent; that of exploding unexpectedly and +almost, as it seemed, unintentionally. Gilbert made good jokes by the +thousand; but he never (in his best days) made the joke that could +possibly have been expected of him. This is the last essential of the +Victorian. Laugh at him as a limited man, a moralist, conventionalist, +an opportunist, a formalist. But remember also that he was really a +humorist; and may still be laughing at you. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS + + +What was really unsatisfactory in Victorian literature is something much +easier to feel than to state. It was not so much a superiority in the +men of other ages to the Victorian men. It was a superiority of +Victorian men to themselves. The individual was unequal. Perhaps that is +why the society became unequal: I cannot say. They were lame giants; the +strongest of them walked on one leg a little shorter than the other. A +great man in any age must be a common man, and also an uncommon man. +Those that are only uncommon men are perverts and sowers of pestilence. +But somehow the great Victorian man was more and less than this. He was +at once a giant and a dwarf. When he has been sweeping the sky in +circles infinitely great, he suddenly shrivels into something +indescribably small. There is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from +a high creative mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when +George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There are also +moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without even the excuse of +sex. But in all these cases the alteration comes as a thing quite abrupt +and unreasonable. We do not feel this acute angle anywhere in Homer or +in Virgil or in Chaucer or in Shakespeare or in Dryden; such things as +they knew they knew. It is no disgrace to Homer that he had not +discovered Britain; or to Virgil that he had not discovered America; or +to Chaucer that he had not discovered the solar system; or to Dryden +that he had not discovered the steam-engine. But we do most frequently +feel, with the Victorians, that the very vastness of the number of +things they know illustrates the abrupt abyss of the things they do not +know. We feel, in a sort of way, that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Carlyle when he asks the Irish why they do not bestir themselves and +re-forest their country: saying not a word about the soaking up of every +sort of profit by the landlords which made that and every other Irish +improvement impossible. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Ruskin when he says, with a solemn visage, that building in iron is ugly +and unreal, but that the weightiest objection is that there is no +mention of it in the Bible; we feel as if he had just said he could find +no hair-brushes in Habakkuk. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man +like Thackeray when he proposes that people should be forcibly prevented +from being nuns, merely because he has no fixed intention of becoming a +nun himself. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like Tennyson, +when he talks of the French revolutions, the huge crusades that had +recreated the whole of his civilisation, as being "no graver than a +schoolboy's barring out." We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Browning to make spluttering and spiteful puns about the names Newman, +Wiseman, and Manning. We feel that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Newman when he confesses that for some time he felt as if he couldn't +come in to the Catholic Church, because of that dreadful Mr. Daniel +O'Connell, who had the vulgarity to fight for his own country. We feel +that it _is_ a disgrace to a man like Dickens, when he makes a blind +brute and savage out of a man like St. Dunstan; it sounds as if it were +not Dickens talking but Dombey. We feel it _is_ a disgrace to a man like +Swinburne, when he has a Jingo fit and calls the Boer children in the +concentration camps "Whelps of treacherous dams whom none save we have +spared to starve and slay": we feel that Swinburne, for the first time, +really has become an immoral and indecent writer. All this is a certain +odd provincialism peculiar to the English in that great century: they +were in a kind of pocket; they appealed to too narrow a public opinion; +I am certain that no French or German men of the same genius made such +remarks. Renan was the enemy of the Catholic Church; but who can imagine +Renan writing of it as Kingsley or Dickens did? Taine was the enemy of +the French Revolution; but who can imagine Taine talking about it as +Tennyson or Newman talked? Even Matthew Arnold, though he saw this peril +and prided himself on escaping it, did not altogether escape it. There +must be (to use an Irishism) something shallow in the depths of any man +who talks about the _Zeitgeist_ as if it were a living thing. + +But this defect is very specially the key to the case of the two great +Victorian poets, Tennyson and Browning; the two spirited or beautiful +tunes, so to speak, to which the other events marched or danced. It was +especially so of Tennyson, for a reason which raises some of the most +real problems about his poetry. Tennyson, of course, owed a great deal +to Virgil. There is no question of plagiarism here; a debt to Virgil is +like a debt to Nature. But Tennyson was a provincial Virgil. In such +passages as that about the schoolboy's barring out he might be called a +suburban Virgil. I mean that he tried to have the universal balance of +all the ideas at which the great Roman had aimed: but he hadn't got hold +of all the ideas to balance. Hence his work was not a balance of truths, +like the universe. It was a balance of whims; like the British +Constitution. It is intensely typical of Tennyson's philosophical temper +that he was almost the only Poet Laureate who was not ludicrous. It is +not absurd to think of Tennyson as tuning his harp in praise of Queen +Victoria: that is, it is not absurd in the same sense as Chaucer's harp +hallowed by dedication to Richard II or Wordsworth's harp hallowed by +dedication to George IV is absurd. Richard's court could not properly +appreciate either Chaucer's daisies or his "devotion." George IV would +not have gone pottering about Helvellyn in search of purity and the +simple annals of the poor. But Tennyson did sincerely believe in the +Victorian compromise; and sincerity is never undignified. He really did +hold a great many of the same views as Queen Victoria, though he was +gifted with a more fortunate literary style. If Dickens is Cobbett's +democracy stirring in its grave, Tennyson is the exquisitely ornamental +extinguisher on the flame of the first revolutionary poets. England has +settled down; England has become Victorian. The compromise was +interesting, it was national and for a long time it was successful: +there is still a great deal to be said for it. But it was as freakish +and unphilosophic, as arbitrary and untranslatable, as a beggar's +patched coat or a child's secret language. Now it is here that Browning +had a certain odd advantage over Tennyson; which has, perhaps, somewhat +exaggerated his intellectual superiority to him. Browning's eccentric +style was more suitable to the poetry of a nation of eccentrics; of +people for the time being removed far from the centre of intellectual +interests. The hearty and pleasant task of expressing one's intense +dislike of something one doesn't understand is much more poetically +achieved by saying, in a general way "Grrr--you swine!" than it is by +laboured lines such as "the red fool-fury of the Seine." We all feel +that there is more of the man in Browning here; more of Dr. Johnson or +Cobbett. Browning is the Englishman taking himself wilfully, following +his nose like a bull-dog, going by his own likes and dislikes. We cannot +help feeling that Tennyson is the Englishman taking himself +seriously--an awful sight. One's memory flutters unhappily over a +certain letter about the Papal Guards written by Sir Willoughby +Patterne. It is here chiefly that Tennyson suffers by that very +Virgilian loveliness and dignity of diction which he put to the service +of such a small and anomalous national scheme. Virgil had the best news +to tell as well as the best words to tell it in. His world might be +sad; but it was the largest world one could live in before the coming of +Christianity. If he told the Romans to spare the vanquished and to war +down the mighty, at least he was more or less well informed about who +_were_ mighty and who _were_ vanquished. But when Tennyson wrote verses +like-- + + "Of freedom in her regal seat, + Of England; not the schoolboy heat, + The blind hysterics of the Celt" + +he quite literally did not know one word of what he was talking about; +he did not know what Celts are, or what hysterics are, or what freedom +was, or what regal was or even of what England was--in the living Europe +of that time. + +His religious range was very much wider and wiser than his political; +but here also he suffered from treating as true universality a thing +that was only a sort of lukewarm local patriotism. Here also he +suffered by the very splendour and perfection of his poetical powers. He +was quite the opposite of the man who cannot express himself; the +inarticulate singer who dies with all his music in him. He had a great +deal to say; but he had much more power of expression than was wanted +for anything he had to express. He could not think up to the height of +his own towering style. + +For whatever else Tennyson was, he was a great poet; no mind that feels +itself free, that is, above the ebb and flow of fashion, can feel +anything but contempt for the later effort to discredit him in that +respect. It is true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian +poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in +his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more +or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the +mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"--"Flits by +the sea-blue bird of March"--"Leafless ribs and iron horns"--"When the +long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"--in all these cases one word is the +keystone of an arch which would fall into ruin without it. But there are +other strong phrases that recall not Stevenson but rather their common +master, Virgil--"Tears from the depths of some divine despair"--"There +is fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate"--"Was a +great water; and the moon was full"--"God made Himself an awful rose of +dawn." These do not depend on a word but on an idea: they might even be +translated. It is also true, I think, that he was first and last a lyric +poet. He was always best when he expressed himself shortly. In long +poems he had an unfortunate habit of eventually saying very nearly the +opposite of what he meant to say. I will take only two instances of what +I mean. In the _Idylls of the King_, and in _In Memoriam_ (his two +sustained and ambitious efforts), particular phrases are always flashing +out the whole fire of the truth; the truth that Tennyson meant. But +owing to his English indolence, his English aristocratic +irresponsibility, his English vagueness in thought, he always managed to +make the main poem mean exactly what he did not mean. Thus, these two +lines which simply say that + + "Lancelot was the first in tournament, + But Arthur mightiest in the battle-field" + +do really express what he meant to express about Arthur being after all +"the highest, yet most human too; not Lancelot, nor another." But as his +hero is actually developed, we have exactly the opposite impression; +that poor old Lancelot, with all his faults, was much more of a man than +Arthur. He was a Victorian in the bad as well as the good sense; he +could not keep priggishness out of long poems. Or again, take the case +of _In Memoriam_. I will quote one verse (probably incorrectly) which +has always seemed to me splendid, and which does express what the whole +poem should express--but hardly does. + + "That we may lift from out the dust, + A voice as unto him that hears + A cry above the conquered years + Of one that ever works, and trust." + +The poem should have been a cry above the conquered years. It might well +have been that if the poet could have said sharply at the end of it, as +a pure piece of dogma, "I've forgotten every feature of the man's face: +I know God holds him alive." But under the influence of the mere +leisurely length of the thing, the reader _does_ rather receive the +impression that the wound has been healed only by time; and that the +victor hours _can_ boast that this is the man that loved and lost, but +all he was is overworn. This is not the truth; and Tennyson did not +intend it for the truth. It is simply the result of the lack of +something militant, dogmatic and structural in him: whereby he could not +be trusted with the trail of a very long literary process without +entangling himself like a kitten playing cat's-cradle. + +Browning, as above suggested, got on much better with eccentric and +secluded England because he treated it as eccentric and secluded; a +place where one could do what one liked. To a considerable extent he did +do what he liked; arousing not a few complaints; and many doubts and +conjectures as to why on earth he liked it. Many comparatively +sympathetic persons pondered upon what pleasure it could give any man to +write _Sordello_ or rhyme "end-knot" to "offend not." Nevertheless he +was no anarchist and no mystagogue; and even where he was defective, his +defect has commonly been stated wrongly. The two chief charges against +him were a contempt for form unworthy of an artist, and a poor pride in +obscurity. The obscurity is true, though not, I think, the pride in it; +but the truth about this charge rather rises out of the truth about the +other. The other charge is not true. Browning cared very much for form; +he cared very much for style. You may not happen to like his style; but +he did. To say that he had not enough mastery over form to express +himself perfectly like Tennyson or Swinburne is like criticising the +griffin of a mediaeval gargoyle without even knowing that it is a +griffin; treating it as an infantile and unsuccessful attempt at a +classical angel. A poet indifferent to form ought to mean a poet who did +not care what form he used as long as he expressed his thoughts. He +might be a rather entertaining sort of poet; telling a smoking-room +story in blank verse or writing a hunting-song in the Spenserian stanza; +giving a realistic analysis of infanticide in a series of triolets; or +proving the truth of Immortality in a long string of limericks. Browning +certainly had no such indifference. Almost every poem of Browning, +especially the shortest and most successful ones, was moulded or graven +in some special style, generally grotesque, but invariably deliberate. +In most cases whenever he wrote a new song he wrote a new kind of song. +The new lyric is not only of a different metre, but of a different +shape. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as +that horrible one beginning "John, Master of the Temple of God," with +its weird choruses and creepy prose directions. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _Pisgah-sights_. No +one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _Time's +Revenges_. No one, not even Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same +style as _Meeting at Night_ and _Parting at Morning_. No one, not even +Browning, ever wrote a poem in the same style as _The Flight of the +Duchess_, or in the same style as _The Grammarian's Funeral_, or in the +same style as _A Star_, or in the same style as that astounding lyric +which begins abruptly "Some people hang pictures up." These metres and +manners were not accidental; they really do suit the sort of spiritual +experiment Browning was making in each case. Browning, then, was not +chaotic; he was deliberately grotesque. But there certainly was, over +and above this grotesqueness, a perversity and irrationality about the +man which led him to play the fool in the middle of his own poems; to +leave off carving gargoyles and simply begin throwing stones. His +curious complicated puns are an example of this: Hood had used the pun +to make a sentence or a sentiment especially pointed and clear. In +Browning the word with two meanings seems to mean rather less, if +anything, than the word with one. It also applies to his trick of +setting himself to cope with impossible rhymes. It may be fun, though it +is not poetry, to try rhyming to ranunculus; but even the fun +presupposes that you _do_ rhyme to it; and I will affirm, and hold under +persecution, that "Tommy-make-room-for-your-uncle-us" does not rhyme to +it. + +The obscurity, to which he must in a large degree plead guilty, was, +curiously enough, the result rather of the gay artist in him than the +deep thinker. It is patience in the Browning students; in Browning it +was only impatience. He wanted to say something comic and energetic and +he wanted to say it quick. And, between his artistic skill in the +fantastic and his temperamental turn for the abrupt, the idea sometimes +flashed past unseen. But it is quite an error to suppose that these are +the dark mines containing his treasure. The two or three great and true +things he really had to say he generally managed to say quite simply. +Thus he really did want to say that God had indeed made man and woman +one flesh; that the sex relation was religious in this real sense that +even in our sin and despair we take it for granted and expect a sort of +virtue in it. The feelings of the bad husband about the good wife, for +instance, are about as subtle and entangled as any matter on this earth; +and Browning really had something to say about them. But he said it in +some of the plainest and most unmistakable words in all literature; as +lucid as a flash of lightning. "Pompilia, will you let them murder me?" +Or again, he did really want to say that death and such moral terrors +were best taken in a military spirit; he could not have said it more +simply than: "I was ever a fighter; one fight more, the best and the +last." He did really wish to say that human life was unworkable unless +immortality were implied in it every other moment; he could not have +said it more simply: "leave now to dogs and apes; Man has for ever." The +obscurities were not merely superficial, but often covered quite +superficial ideas. He was as likely as not to be most unintelligible of +all in writing a compliment in a lady's album. I remember in my boyhood +(when Browning kept us awake like coffee) a friend reading out the poem +about the portrait to which I have already referred, reading it in that +rapid dramatic way in which this poet must be read. And I was profoundly +puzzled at the passage where it seemed to say that the cousin +disparaged the picture, "while John scorns ale." I could not think what +this sudden teetotalism on the part of John had to do with the affair, +but I forgot to ask at the time and it was only years afterwards that, +looking at the book, I found it was "John's corns ail," a very +Browningesque way of saying he winced. Most of Browning's obscurity is +of that sort--the mistakes are almost as quaint as misprints--and the +Browning student, in that sense, is more a proof reader than a disciple. +For the rest his real religion was of the most manly, even the most +boyish sort. He is called an optimist; but the word suggests a +calculated contentment which was not in the least one of his vices. What +he really was was a romantic. He offered the cosmos as an adventure +rather than a scheme. He did not explain evil, far less explain it away; +he enjoyed defying it. He was a troubadour even in theology and +metaphysics: like the _Jongleurs de Dieu_ of St. Francis. He may be said +to have serenaded heaven with a guitar, and even, so to speak, tried to +climb there with a rope ladder. Thus his most vivid things are the +red-hot little love lyrics, or rather, little love dramas. He did one +really original and admirable thing: he managed the real details of +modern love affairs in verse, and love is the most realistic thing in +the world. He substituted the street with the green blind for the faded +garden of Watteau, and the "blue spirt of a lighted match" for the +monotony of the evening star. + +Before leaving him it should be added that he was fitted to deepen the +Victorian mind, but not to broaden it. With all his Italian sympathies +and Italian residence, he was not the man to get Victorian England out +of its provincial rut: on many things Kingsley himself was not so +narrow. His celebrated wife was wider and wiser than he in this sense; +for she was, however one-sidedly, involved in the emotions of central +European politics. She defended Louis Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel; and +intelligently, as one conscious of the case against them both. As to +why it now seems simple to defend the first Italian King, but absurd to +defend the last French Emperor--well, the reason is sad and simple. It +is concerned with certain curious things called success and failure, and +I ought to have considered it under the heading of _The Book of Snobs_. +But Elizabeth Barrett, at least, was no snob: her political poems have +rather an impatient air, as if they were written, and even published, +rather prematurely--just before the fall of her idol. These old +political poems of hers are too little read to-day; they are amongst the +most sincere documents on the history of the times, and many modern +blunders could be corrected by the reading of them. And Elizabeth +Barrett had a strength really rare among women poets; the strength of +the phrase. She excelled in her sex, in epigram, almost as much as +Voltaire in his. Pointed phrases like: "Martyrs by the pang without the +palm"--or "Incense to sweeten a crime and myrrh to embitter a curse," +these expressions, which are witty after the old fashion of the conceit, +came quite freshly and spontaneously to her quite modern mind. But the +first fact is this, that these epigrams of hers were never so true as +when they turned on one of the two or three pivots on which contemporary +Europe was really turning. She is by far the most European of all the +English poets of that age; all of them, even her own much greater +husband, look local beside her. Tennyson and the rest are nowhere. Take +any positive political fact, such as the final fall of Napoleon. +Tennyson wrote these profoundly foolish lines-- + + "He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak + Madman!" + +as if the defeat of an English regiment were a violation of the laws of +Nature. Mrs. Browning knew no more facts about Napoleon, perhaps, than +Tennyson did; but she knew the truth. Her epigram on Napoleon's fall is +in one line + + "And kings crept out again to feel the sun." + +Talleyrand would have clapped his horrible old hands at that. Her +instinct about the statesman and the soldier was very like Jane Austen's +instinct for the gentleman and the man. It is not unnoticeable that as +Miss Austen spent most of her life in a village, Miss Barrett spent most +of her life on a sofa. The godlike power of guessing seems (for some +reason I do not understand) to grow under such conditions. Unfortunately +Mrs. Browning was like all the other Victorians in going a little lame, +as I have roughly called it, having one leg shorter than the other. But +her case was, in one sense, extreme. She exaggerated both ways. She was +too strong and too weak, or (as a false sex philosophy would express it) +too masculine and too feminine. I mean that she hit the centre of +weakness with almost the same emphatic precision with which she hit the +centre of strength. She could write finally of the factory wheels +"grinding life down from its mark," a strong and strictly true +observation. Unfortunately she could also write of Euripides "with his +droppings of warm tears." She could write in _A Drama of Exile_, a +really fine exposition, touching the later relation of Adam and the +animals: unfortunately the tears were again turned on at the wrong +moment at the main; and the stage direction commands a silence, only +broken by the dropping of angel's tears. How much noise is made by +angel's tears? Is it a sound of emptied buckets, or of garden hose, or +of mountain cataracts? That is the sort of question which Elizabeth +Barrett's extreme love of the extreme was always tempting people to ask. +Yet the question, as asked, does her a heavy historical injustice; we +remember all the lines in her work which were weak enough to be called +"womanly," we forget the multitude of strong lines that are strong +enough to be called "manly"; lines that Kingsley or Henley would have +jumped for joy to print in proof of their manliness. She had one of the +peculiar talents of true rhetoric, that of a powerful concentration. As +to the critic who thinks her poetry owed anything to the great poet who +was her husband, he can go and live in the same hotel with the man who +can believe that George Eliot owed anything to the extravagant +imagination of Mr. George Henry Lewes. So far from Browning inspiring or +interfering, he did not in one sense interfere enough. Her real +inferiority to him in literature is that he was consciously while she +was unconsciously absurd. + +It is natural, in the matter of Victorian moral change, to take +Swinburne as the next name here. He is the only poet who was also, in +the European sense, on the spot; even if, in the sense of the Gilbertian +song, the spot was barred. He also knew that something rather crucial +was happening to Christendom; he thought it was getting unchristened. It +is even a little amusing, indeed, that these two Pro-Italian poets +almost conducted a political correspondence in rhyme. Mrs. Browning +sternly reproached those who had ever doubted the good faith of the King +of Sardinia, whom she acclaimed as being truly a king. Swinburne, +lyrically alluding to her as "Sea-eagle of English feather," broadly +hinted that the chief blunder of that wild fowl had been her support of +an autocratic adventurer: "calling a crowned man royal, that was no more +than a king." But it is not fair, even in this important connection, to +judge Swinburne by _Songs Before Sunrise_. They were songs before a +sunrise that has never turned up. Their dogmatic assertions have for a +long time past stared starkly at us as nonsense. As, for instance, the +phrase "Glory to Man in the Highest, for man is the master of things"; +after which there is evidently nothing to be said, except that it is +not true. But even where Swinburne had his greater grip, as in that +grave and partly just poem _Before a Crucifix_, Swinburne, the most +Latin, the most learned, the most largely travelled of the Victorians, +still knows far less of the facts than even Mrs. Browning. The whole of +the poem, _Before a Crucifix_, breaks down by one mere mistake. It +imagines that the French or Italian peasants who fell on their knees +before the Crucifix did so because they were slaves. They fell on their +knees because they were free men, probably owning their own farms. +Swinburne could have found round about Putney plenty of slaves who had +no crucifixes: but only crucifixions. + +When we come to ethics and philosophy, doubtless we find Swinburne in +full revolt, not only against the temperate idealism of Tennyson, but +against the genuine piety and moral enthusiasm of people like Mrs. +Browning. But here again Swinburne is very English, nay, he is very +Victorian, for his revolt is illogical. For the purposes of intelligent +insurrection against priests and kings, Swinburne ought to have +described the natural life of man, free and beautiful, and proved from +this both the noxiousness and the needlessness of such chains. +Unfortunately Swinburne rebelled against Nature first and then tried to +rebel against religion for doing exactly the same thing that he had +done. His songs of joy are not really immoral; but his songs of sorrow +are. But when he merely hurls at the priest the assertion that flesh is +grass and life is sorrow, he really lays himself open to the restrained +answer, "So I have ventured, on various occasions, to remark." When he +went forth, as it were, as the champion of pagan change and pleasure, he +heard uplifted the grand choruses of his own _Atalanta_, in his rear, +refusing hope. + +The splendid diction that blazes through the whole of that drama, that +still dances exquisitely in the more lyrical _Poems and Ballads_, makes +some marvellous appearances in _Songs Before Sunrise_, and then mainly +falters and fades away, is, of course, the chief thing about Swinburne. +The style is the man; and some will add that it does not, thus +unsupported, amount to much of a man. But the style itself suffers some +injustice from those who would speak thus. The views expressed are often +quite foolish and often quite insincere; but the style itself is a +manlier and more natural thing than is commonly made out. It is not in +the least languorous or luxurious or merely musical and sensuous, as one +would gather from both the eulogies and the satires, from the conscious +and the unconscious imitations. On the contrary, it is a sort of +fighting and profane parody of the Old Testament; and its lines are made +of short English words like the short Roman swords. The first line of +one of his finest poems, for instance, runs, "I have lived long enough +to have seen one thing, that love hath an end." In that sentence only +one small "e" gets outside the monosyllable. Through all his +interminable tragedies, he was fondest of lines like-- + + "If ever I leave off to honour you + God give me shame; I were the worst churl born." + +The dramas were far from being short and dramatic; but the words really +were. Nor was his verse merely smooth; except his very bad verse, like +"the lilies and languors of virtue, to the raptures and roses of vice," +which both, in cheapness of form and foolishness of sentiment, may be +called the worst couplet in the world's literature. In his real poetry +(even in the same poem) his rhythm and rhyme are as original and +ambitious as Browning; and the only difference between him and Browning +is, not that he is smooth and without ridges, but that he always crests +the ridge triumphantly and Browning often does not-- + + "On thy bosom though many a kiss be, + There are none such as knew it of old. + Was it Alciphron once or Arisbe, + Male ringlets or feminine gold, + That thy lips met with under the statue + Whence a look shot out sharp after thieves + From the eyes of the garden-god at you + Across the fig-leaves." + +Look at the rhymes in that verse, and you will see they are as stiff a +task as Browning's: only they are successful. That is the real strength +of Swinburne--a style. It was a style that nobody could really imitate; +and least of all Swinburne himself, though he made the attempt all +through his later years. He was, if ever there was one, an inspired +poet. I do not think it the highest sort of poet. And you never discover +who is an inspired poet until the inspiration goes. + +With Swinburne we step into the circle of that later Victorian influence +which was very vaguely called AEsthetic. Like all human things, but +especially Victorian things, it was not only complex but confused. +Things in it that were at one on the emotional side were flatly at war +on the intellectual. In the section of the painters, it was the allies +or pupils of Ruskin, pious, almost painfully exact, and copying mediaeval +details rather for their truth than their beauty. In the section of the +poets it was pretty loose, Swinburne being the leader of the revels. But +there was one great man who was in both sections, a painter and a poet, +who may be said to bestride the chasm like a giant. It is in an odd and +literal sense true that the name of Rossetti is important here, for the +name implies the nationality. I have loosely called Carlyle and the +Brontes the romance from the North; the nearest to a general definition +of the AEsthetic movement is to call it the romance from the South. It is +that warm wind that had never blown so strong since Chaucer, standing in +his cold English April, had smelt the spring in Provence. The Englishman +has always found it easier to get inspiration from the Italians than +from the French; they call to each other across that unconquered castle +of reason. Browning's _Englishman in Italy_, Browning's _Italian in +England_, were both happier than either would have been in France. +Rossetti was the Italian in England, as Browning was the Englishman in +Italy; and the first broad fact about the artistic revolution Rossetti +wrought is written when we have written his name. But if the South lets +in warmth or heat, it also lets in hardness. The more the orange tree is +luxuriant in growth, the less it is loose in outline. And it is exactly +where the sea is slightly warmer than marble that it looks slightly +harder. This, I think, is the one universal power behind the AEsthetic +and Pre-Raphaelite movements, which all agreed in two things at least: +strictness in the line and strength, nay violence, in the colour. + +Rossetti was a remarkable man in more ways than one; he did not succeed +in any art; if he had he would probably never have been heard of. It was +his happy knack of half failing in both the arts that has made him a +success. If he had been as good a poet as Tennyson, he would have been a +poet who painted pictures. If he had been as good a painter as +Burne-Jones, he would have been a painter who wrote poems. It is odd to +note on the very threshold of the extreme art movement that this great +artist largely succeeded by not defining his art. His poems were too +pictorial. His pictures were too poetical. That is why they really +conquered the cold satisfaction of the Victorians, because they did mean +something, even if it was a small artistic thing. + +Rossetti was one with Ruskin, on the one hand, and Swinburne on the +other, in reviving the decorative instinct of the Middle Ages. While +Ruskin, in letters only, praised that decoration Rossetti and his +friends repeated it. They almost made patterns of their poems. That +frequent return of the refrain which was foolishly discussed by +Professor Nordau was, in Rossetti's case, of such sadness as sometimes +to amount to sameness. The criticism on him, from a mediaeval point of +view, is not that he insisted on a chorus, but that he could not insist +on a jolly chorus. Many of his poems were truly mediaeval, but they would +have been even more mediaeval if he could ever have written such a +refrain as "Tally Ho!" or even "Tooral-ooral" instead of "Tall Troy's on +fire." With Rossetti goes, of course, his sister, a real poet, though +she also illustrated that Pre-Raphaelite's conflict of views that +covered their coincidence of taste. Both used the angular outlines, the +burning transparencies, the fixed but still unfathomable symbols of the +great mediaeval civilisation; but Rossetti used the religious imagery (on +the whole) irreligiously, Christina Rossetti used it religiously but (on +the whole) so to make it seem a narrower religion. + +One poet, or, to speak more strictly, one poem, belongs to the same +general atmosphere and impulse as Swinburne; the free but languid +atmosphere of later Victorian art. But this time the wind blew from +hotter and heavier gardens than the gardens of Italy. Edward +Fitzgerald, a cultured eccentric, a friend of Tennyson, produced what +professed to be a translation of the Persian poet Omar, who wrote +quatrains about wine and roses and things in general. Whether the +Persian original, in its own Persian way, was greater or less than this +version I must not discuss here, and could not discuss anywhere. But it +is quite clear that Fitzgerald's work is much too good to be a good +translation. It is as personal and creative a thing as ever was written; +and the best expression of a bad mood, a mood that may, for all I know, +be permanent in Persia, but was certainly at this time particularly +fashionable in England. In the technical sense of literature it is one +of the most remarkable achievements of that age; as poetical as +Swinburne and far more perfect. In this verbal sense its most arresting +quality is a combination of something haunting and harmonious that flows +by like a river or a song, with something else that is compact and +pregnant like a pithy saying picked out in rock by the chisel of some +pagan philosopher. It is at once a tune that escapes and an inscription +that remains. Thus, alone among the reckless and romantic verses that +first rose in Coleridge or Keats, it preserves something also of the wit +and civilisation of the eighteenth century. Lines like "a Muezzin from +the tower of darkness cries," or "Their mouths are stopped with dust" +are successful in the same sense as "Pinnacled dim in the intense inane" +or "Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways." But-- + + "Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before + I swore; but was I sober when I swore?" + +is equally successful in the same sense as-- + + "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer + And without sneering teach the rest to sneer." + +It thus earned a right to be considered the complete expression of that +scepticism and sensual sadness into which later Victorian literature was +more and more falling away: a sort of bible of unbelief. For a cold fit +had followed the hot fit of Swinburne, which was of a feverish sort: he +had set out to break down without having, or even thinking he had, the +rudiments of rebuilding in him; and he effected nothing national even in +the way of destruction. The Tennysonians still walked past him as primly +as a young ladies' school--the Browningites still inked their eyebrows +and minds in looking for the lost syntax of Browning; while Browning +himself was away looking for God, rather in the spirit of a truant boy +from their school looking for birds' nests. The nineteenth-century +sceptics did not really shake the respectable world and alter it, as the +eighteenth-century sceptics had done; but that was because the +eighteenth-century sceptics were something more than sceptics, and +believed in Greek tragedies, in Roman laws, in the Republic. The +Swinburnian sceptics had nothing to fight for but a frame of mind; and +when ordinary English people listened to it, they came to the conclusion +that it was a frame of mind they would rather hear about than +experience. But these later poets did, so to speak, spread their soul in +all the empty spaces; weaker brethren, disappointed artists, unattached +individuals, very young people, were sapped or swept away by these +songs; which, so far as any particular sense in them goes, were almost +songs without words. It is because there is something which is after all +indescribably manly, intellectual, firm about Fitzgerald's way of +phrasing the pessimism that he towers above the slope that was tumbling +down to the decadents. But it is still pessimism, a thing unfit for a +white man; a thing like opium, that may often be a poison and sometimes +a medicine, but never a food for us, who are driven by an inner command +not only to think but to live, not only to live but to grow, and not +only to grow but to build. + +And, indeed, we see the insufficiency of such sad extremes even in the +next name among the major poets; we see the Swinburnian parody of +mediaevalism, the inverted Catholicism of the decadents, struggling to +get back somehow on its feet. The aesthetic school had, not quite +unjustly, the name of mere dilettanti. But it is fair to say that in the +next of them, a workman and a tradesman, we already feel something of +that return to real issues leading up to the real revolts that broke up +Victorianism at last. In the mere art of words, indeed, William Morris +carried much further than Swinburne or Rossetti the mere imitation of +stiff mediaeval ornament. The other mediaevalists had their modern +moments; which were (if they had only known it) much more mediaeval than +their mediaeval moments. Swinburne could write-- + + "We shall see Buonaparte the bastard + Kick heels with his throat in a rope." + +One has an uneasy feeling that William Morris would have written +something like-- + + "And the kin of the ill king Bonaparte + Hath a high gallows for all his part." + +Rossetti could, for once in a way, write poetry about a real woman and +call her "Jenny." One has a disturbed suspicion that Morris would have +called her "Jehanne." + +But all that seems at first more archaic and decorative about Morris +really arose from the fact that he was more virile and real than either +Swinburne or Rossetti. It arose from the fact that he really was, what +he so often called himself, a craftsman. He had enough masculine +strength to be tidy: that is, after the masculine manner, tidy about his +own trade. If his poems were too like wallpapers, it was because he +really could make wallpapers. He knew that lines of poetry ought to be +in a row, as palings ought to be in a row; and he knew that neither +palings nor poetry looks any the worse for being simple or even severe. +In a sense Morris was all the more creative because he felt the hard +limits of creation as he would have felt them if he were not working in +words but in wood; and if he was unduly dominated by the mere +conventions of the mediaevals, it was largely because they were (whatever +else they were) the very finest fraternity of free workmen the world is +ever likely to see. + +The very things that were urged against Morris are in this sense part of +his ethical importance; part of the more promising and wholesome turn he +was half unconsciously giving to the movement of modern art. His hazier +fellow-Socialists blamed him because he made money; but this was at +least in some degree because he made other things to make money: it was +part of the real and refreshing fact that at last an aesthete had +appeared who could make something. If he was a capitalist, at least he +was what later capitalists cannot or will not be--something higher than +a capitalist, a tradesman. As compared with aristocrats like Swinburne +or aliens like Rossetti, he was vitally English and vitally Victorian. +He inherits some of that paradoxical glory which Napoleon gave +reluctantly to a nation of shopkeepers. He was the last of that nation; +he did not go out golfing: like that founder of the artistic shopman, +Samuel Richardson, "he kept his shop, and his shop kept him." The +importance of his Socialism can easily be exaggerated. Among other +lesser points, he was not a Socialist; he was a sort of Dickensian +anarchist. His instinct for titles was always exquisite. It is part of +his instinct of decoration: for on a page the title always looks +important and the printed mass of matter a mere dado under it. And no +one had ever nobler titles than _The Roots of the Mountains_ or _The +Wood at the End of the World_. The reader feels he hardly need read the +fairy-tale because the title is so suggestive. But, when all is said, he +never chose a better title than that of his social Utopia, _News from +Nowhere_. He wrote it while the last Victorians were already embarked on +their bold task of fixing the future--of narrating to-day what has +happened to-morrow. They named their books by cold titles suggesting +straight corridors of marble--titles like _Looking Backward_. But Morris +was an artist as well as an anarchist. _News from Nowhere_ is an +irresponsible title; and it is an irresponsible book. It does not +describe the problem solved; it does not describe wealth either wielded +by the State or divided equally among the citizens. It simply describes +an undiscovered country where every one feels good-natured all day. That +he could even dream so is his true dignity as a poet. He was the first +of the AEsthetes to smell mediaevalism as a smell of the morning; and not +as a mere scent of decay. + +With him the poetry that had been peculiarly Victorian practically +ends; and, on the whole, it is a happy ending. There are many other +minor names of major importance; but for one reason or other they do not +derive from the schools that had dominated this epoch as such. Thus +Thompson, the author of _The City of Dreadful Night_, was a fine poet; +but his pessimism combined with a close pugnacity does not follow any of +the large but loose lines of the Swinburnian age. But he was a great +person--he knew how to be democratic in the dark. Thus Coventry Patmore +was a much greater person. He was bursting with ideas, like +Browning--and truer ideas as a rule. He was as eccentric and florid and +Elizabethan as Browning; and often in moods and metres that even +Browning was never wild enough to think of. No one will ever forget the +first time he read Patmore's hint that the cosmos is a thing that God +made huge only "to make dirt cheap"; just as nobody will ever forget the +sudden shout he uttered when he first heard Mrs. Todgers asked for the +rough outline of a wooden leg. These things are not jokes, but +discoveries. But the very fact that Patmore was, as it were, the +Catholic Browning, keeps him out of the Victorian atmosphere as such. +The Victorian English simply thought him an indecent sentimentalist, as +they did all the hot and humble religious diarists of Italy or Spain. +Something of the same fate followed the most powerful of that last +Victorian group who were called "Minor Poets." They numbered many other +fine artists: notably Mr. William Watson, who is truly Victorian in that +he made a manly attempt to tread down the decadents and return to the +right reason of Wordsworth-- + + "I have not paid the world + The evil and the insolent courtesy + Of offering it my baseness as a gift." + +But none of them were able even to understand Francis Thompson; his +sky-scraping humility, his mountains of mystical detail, his occasional +and unashamed weakness, his sudden and sacred blasphemies. Perhaps the +shortest definition of the Victorian Age is that he stood outside it. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE + + +If it be curiously and carefully considered it will, I think, appear +more and more true that the struggle between the old spiritual theory +and the new material theory in England ended simply in a deadlock; and a +deadlock that has endured. It is still impossible to say absolutely that +England is a Christian country or a heathen country; almost exactly as +it was impossible when Herbert Spencer began to write. Separate elements +of both sorts are alive, and even increasingly alive. But neither the +believer nor the unbeliever has the impudence to call himself the +Englishman. Certainly the great Victorian rationalism has succeeded in +doing a damage to religion. It has done what is perhaps the worst of all +damages to religion. It has driven it entirely into the power of the +religious people. Men like Newman, men like Coventry Patmore, men who +would have been mystics in any case, were driven back upon being much +more extravagantly religious than they would have been in a religious +country. Men like Huxley, men like Kingsley, men like most Victorian +men, were equally driven back on being irreligious; that is, on doubting +things which men's normal imagination does not necessarily doubt. But +certainly the most final and forcible fact is that this war ended like +the battle of Sheriffmuir, as the poet says; they both did fight, and +both did beat, and both did run away. They have left to their +descendants a treaty that has become a dull torture. Men may believe in +immortality, and none of the men know why. Men may not believe in +miracles, and none of the men know why. The Christian Church had been +just strong enough to check the conquest of her chief citadels. The +rationalist movement had been just strong enough to conquer some of her +outposts, as it seemed, for ever. Neither was strong enough to expel the +other; and Victorian England was in a state which some call liberty and +some call lockjaw. + +But the situation can be stated another way. There came a time, roughly +somewhere about 1880, when the two great positive enthusiasms of Western +Europe had for the time exhausted each other--Christianity and the +French Revolution. About that time there used to be a sad and not +unsympathetic jest going about to the effect that Queen Victoria might +very well live longer than the Prince of Wales. Somewhat in the same +way, though the republican impulse was hardly a hundred years old and +the religious impulse nearly two thousand, yet as far as England was +concerned, the old wave and the new seemed to be spent at the same time. +On the one hand Darwin, especially through the strong journalistic +genius of Huxley, had won a very wide spread though an exceedingly +vague victory. I do not mean that Darwin's own doctrine was vague; his +was merely one particular hypothesis about how animal variety might have +arisen; and that particular hypothesis, though it will always be +interesting, is now very much the reverse of secure. But it is only in +the strictly scientific world and among strictly scientific men that +Darwin's detailed suggestion has largely broken down. The general public +impression that he had entirely proved his case (whatever it was) was +early arrived at, and still remains. It was and is hazily associated +with the negation of religion. But (and this is the important point) it +was also associated with the negation of democracy. The same +Mid-Victorian muddle-headedness that made people think that "evolution" +meant that we need not admit the supremacy of God, also made them think +that "survival" meant that we must admit the supremacy of men. Huxley +had no hand in spreading these fallacies; he was a fair fighter; and he +told his own followers, who spoke thus, most emphatically not to play +the fool. He said most strongly that his or any theory of evolution left +the old philosophical arguments for a creator, right or wrong, exactly +where they were before. He also said most emphatically that any one who +used the argument of Nature against the ideal of justice or an equal +law, was as senseless as a gardener who should fight on the side of the +ill weeds merely because they grew apace. I wish, indeed, that in such a +rude summary as this, I had space to do justice to Huxley as a literary +man and a moralist. He had a live taste and talent for the English +tongue, which he devoted to the task of keeping Victorian rationalism +rational. He did not succeed. As so often happens when a rather +unhealthy doubt is in the atmosphere, the strongest words of their great +captain could not keep the growing crowds of agnostics back from the +most hopeless and inhuman extremes of destructive thought. Nonsense not +yet quite dead about the folly of allowing the unfit to survive began +to be more and more wildly whispered. Such helpless specimens of +"advanced thought" are, of course, quite as inconsistent with Darwinism +as they are with democracy or with any other intelligent proposition +ever offered. But these unintelligent propositions were offered; and the +ultimate result was this rather important one: that the harshness of +Utilitarianism began to turn into downright tyranny. That beautiful +faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air +of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had +redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay--all that seemed slowly and +sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in +the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was +bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation +evaporated; the mean calculation remained. One could still calculate in +clear statistical tables, how many men lived, how many men died. One +must not ask how they lived; for that is politics. One must not ask how +they died; for that is religion. And religion and politics were ruled +out of all the Later Victorian debating clubs; even including the +debating club at Westminster. What third thing they were discussing, +which was neither religion nor politics, I do not know. I have tried the +experiment of reading solidly through a vast number of their records and +reviews and discussions; and still I do not know. The only third thing I +can think of to balance religion and politics is art; and no one well +acquainted with the debates at St. Stephen's will imagine that the art +of extreme eloquence was the cause of the confusion. None will maintain +that our political masters are removed from us by an infinite artistic +superiority in the choice of words. The politicians know nothing of +politics, which is their own affair: they know nothing of religion, +which is certainly not their affair: it may legitimately be said that +they have to do with nothing; they have reached that low and last level +where a man knows as little about his own claim, as he does about his +enemies'. In any case there can be no doubt about the effect of this +particular situation on the problem of ethics and science. The duty of +dragging truth out by the tail or the hind leg or any other corner one +can possibly get hold of, a perfectly sound duty in itself, had somehow +come into collision with the older and larger duty of knowing something +about the organism and ends of a creature; or, in the everyday phrase, +being able to make head or tail of it. This paradox pursued and +tormented the Victorians. They could not or would not see that humanity +repels or welcomes the railway-train, simply according to what people +come by it. They could not see that one welcomes or smashes the +telephone, according to what words one hears in it. They really seem to +have felt that the train could be a substitute for its own passengers; +or the telephone a substitute for its own voice. + +In any case it is clear that a change had begun to pass over scientific +inquiry, of which we have seen the culmination in our own day. There had +begun that easy automatic habit, of science as an oiled and +smooth-running machine, that habit of treating things as obviously +unquestionable, when, indeed, they are obviously questionable. This +began with vaccination in the Early Victorian Age; it extended to the +early licence of vivisection in its later age; it has found a sort of +fitting foolscap, or crown of crime and folly, in the thing called +Eugenics. In all three cases the point was not so much that the pioneers +had not proved their case; it was rather that, by an unexpressed rule of +respectability, they were not required to prove it. This rather abrupt +twist of the rationalistic mind in the direction of arbitrary power, +certainly weakened the Liberal movement from within. And meanwhile it +was being weakened by heavy blows from without. + +There is a week that is the turn of the year; there was a year that was +the turn of the century. About 1870 the force of the French Revolution +faltered and fell: the year that was everywhere the death of Liberal +ideas: the year when Paris fell: the year when Dickens died. While the +new foes of freedom, the sceptics and scientists, were damaging +democracy in ideas, the old foes of freedom, the emperors and the kings, +were damaging her more heavily in arms. For a moment it almost seemed +that the old Tory ring of iron, the Holy Alliance, had recombined +against France. But there was just this difference: that the Holy +Alliance was now not arguably, but almost avowedly, an Unholy Alliance. +It was an alliance between those who still thought they could deny the +dignity of man and those who had recently begun to have a bright hope of +denying even the dignity of God. Eighteenth-century Prussia was +Protestant and probably religious. Nineteenth-century Prussia was almost +utterly atheist. Thus the old spirit of liberty felt itself shut up at +both ends, that which was called progressive and that which was called +reactionary: barricaded by Bismarck with blood and iron and by Darwin by +blood and bones. The enormous depression which infects many excellent +people born about this time, probably has this cause. + +It was a great calamity that the freedom of Wilkes and the faith of Dr. +Johnson fought each other. But it was an even worse calamity that they +practically killed each other. They killed each other almost +simultaneously, like Herminius and Mamilius. Liberalism (in Newman's +sense) really did strike Christianity through headpiece and through +head; that is, it did daze and stun the ignorant and ill-prepared +intellect of the English Christian. And Christianity did smite +Liberalism through breastplate and through breast; that is, it did +succeed, through arms and all sorts of awful accidents, in piercing more +or less to the heart of the Utilitarian--and finding that he had none. +Victorian Protestantism had not head enough for the business; Victorian +Radicalism had not heart enough for the business. Down fell they dead +together, exactly as Macaulay's Lay says, and still stood all who saw +them fall almost until the hour at which I write. + +This coincident collapse of both religious and political idealism +produced a curious cold air of emptiness and real subconscious +agnosticism such as is extremely unusual in the history of mankind. It +is what Mr. Wells, with his usual verbal delicacy and accuracy, spoke of +as that ironical silence that follows a great controversy. It is what +people less intelligent than Mr. Wells meant by calling themselves _fin +de siecle_; though, of course, rationally speaking, there is no more +reason for being sad towards the end of a hundred years than towards the +end of five hundred fortnights. There was no arithmetical autumn, but +there was a spiritual one. And it came from the fact suggested in the +paragraphs above; the sense that man's two great inspirations had +failed him together. The Christian religion was much more dead in the +eighteenth century than it was in the nineteenth century. But the +republican enthusiasm was also much more alive. If their scepticism was +cold, and their faith even colder, their practical politics were wildly +idealistic; and if they doubted the kingdom of heaven, they were +gloriously credulous about the chances of it coming on earth. In the +same way the old pagan republican feeling was much more dead in the +feudal darkness of the eleventh or twelfth centuries, than it was even a +century later; but if creative politics were at their lowest, creative +theology was almost at its highest point of energy. + +The modern world, in fact, had fallen between two stools. It had fallen +between that austere old three-legged stool which was the tripod of the +cold priestess of Apollo; and that other mystical and mediaeval stool +that may well be called the Stool of Repentance. It kept neither of the +two values as intensely valuable. It could not believe in the bonds that +bound men; but, then, neither could it believe in the men they bound. It +was always restrained in its hatred of slavery by a half remembrance of +its yet greater hatred of liberty. They were almost alone, I think, in +thus carrying to its extreme the negative attitude already noted in Miss +Arabella Allen. Anselm would have despised a civic crown, but he would +not have despised a relic. Voltaire would have despised a relic; but he +would not have despised a vote. We hardly find them both despised till +we come to the age of Oscar Wilde. + +These years that followed on that double disillusionment were like one +long afternoon in a rich house on a rainy day. It was not merely that +everybody believed that nothing would happen; it was also that everybody +believed that anything happening was even duller than nothing happening. +It was in this stale atmosphere that a few flickers of the old +Swinburnian flame survived; and were called Art. The great men of the +older artistic movement did not live in this time; rather they lived +through it. But this time did produce an interregnum of art that had a +truth of its own; though that truth was near to being only a consistent +lie. + +The movement of those called AEsthetes (as satirised in _Patience_) and +the movement of those afterwards called Decadents (satirised in Mr. +Street's delightful _Autobiography of a Boy_) had the same captain; or +at any rate the same bandmaster. Oscar Wilde walked in front of the +first procession wearing a sunflower, and in front of the second +procession wearing a green carnation. With the aesthetic movement and its +more serious elements, I deal elsewhere; but the second appearance of +Wilde is also connected with real intellectual influences, largely +negative, indeed, but subtle and influential. The mark in most of the +arts of this time was a certain quality which those who like it would +call "uniqueness of aspect," and those who do not like it "not quite +coming off." I mean the thing meant something from one standpoint; but +its mark was that the _smallest_ change of standpoint made it unmeaning +and unthinkable--a foolish joke. A beggar painted by Rembrandt is as +solid as a statue, however roughly he is sketched in; the soul can walk +all round him like a public monument. We see he would have other +aspects; and that they would all be the aspects of a beggar. Even if one +did not admit the extraordinary qualities in the painting, one would +have to admit the ordinary qualities in the sitter. If it is not a +masterpiece it is a man. But a nocturne by Whistler of mist on the +Thames is either a masterpiece or it is nothing; it is either a nocturne +or a nightmare of childish nonsense. Made in a certain mood, viewed +through a certain temperament, conceived under certain conventions, it +may be, it often is, an unreplaceable poem, a vision that may never be +seen again. But the moment it ceases to be a splendid picture it ceases +to be a picture at all. Or, again, if _Hamlet_ is not a great tragedy it +is an uncommonly good tale. The people and the posture of affairs would +still be there even if one thought that Shakespeare's moral attitude was +wrong. Just as one could imagine all the other sides of Rembrandt's +beggar, so, with the mind's eye (Horatio), one can see all four sides of +the castle of Elsinore. One might tell the tale from the point of view +of Laertes or Claudius or Polonius or the gravedigger; and it would +still be a good tale and the same tale. But if we take a play like +_Pelleas and Melisande_, we shall find that unless we grasp the +particular fairy thread of thought the poet rather hazily flings to us, +we cannot grasp anything whatever. Except from one extreme poetic point +of view, the thing is not a play; it is not a bad play, it is a mass of +clotted nonsense. One whole act describes the lovers going to look for a +ring in a distant cave when they both know they have dropped it down a +well. Seen from some secret window on some special side of the soul's +turret, this might convey a sense of faerie futility in our human life. +But it is quite obvious that unless it called forth that one kind of +sympathy, it would call forth nothing but laughter and rotten eggs. In +the same play the husband chases his wife with a drawn sword, the wife +remarking at intervals "I am not gay." Now there may really be an idea +in this; the idea of human misfortune coming most cruelly upon the +optimism of innocence; that the lonely human heart says, like a child at +a party, "I am not enjoying myself as I thought I should." But it is +plain that unless one thinks of this idea (and of this idea only) the +expression is not in the least unsuccessful pathos; it is very broad and +highly successful farce. Maeterlinck and the decadents, in short, may +fairly boast of being subtle; but they must not mind if they are called +narrow. + +This is the spirit of Wilde's work and of most of the literary work done +in that time and fashion. It is, as Mr. Arthur Symons said, an attitude; +but it is an attitude in the flat, not in the round; not a statue, but +the cardboard king in a toy-theatre, which can only be looked at from +the front. In Wilde's own poetry we have particularly a perpetually +toppling possibility of the absurd; a sense of just falling too short or +just going too far. "Plant lilies at my head" has something wrong about +it; something silly that is not there in-- + + "And put a grey stone at my head" + +in the old ballad. But even where Wilde was right, he had a way of being +right with this excessive strain on the reader's sympathy (and gravity) +which was the mark of all these men with a "point of view." There is a +very sound sonnet of his in which he begins by lamenting mere anarchy, +as hostile to the art and civilisation that were his only gods; but ends +by saying-- + + "And yet + These Christs that die upon the barricades + God knows that I am with them--in some ways." + +Now that is really very true; that is the way a man of wide reading and +worldly experience, but not ungenerous impulses, does feel about the +mere fanatic, who is at once a nuisance to humanity and an honour to +human nature. Yet who can read that last line without feeling that Wilde +is poised on the edge of a precipice of bathos; that the phrase comes +very near to being quite startlingly silly. It is as in the case of +Maeterlinck, let the reader move his standpoint one inch nearer the +popular standpoint, and there is nothing for the thing but harsh, +hostile, unconquerable mirth. Somehow the image of Wilde lolling like an +elegant leviathan on a sofa, and saying between the whiffs of a scented +cigarette that martyrdom is martyrdom in some respects, has seized on +and mastered all more delicate considerations in the mind. It is unwise +in a poet to goad the sleeping lion of laughter. + +In less dexterous hands the decadent idea, what there was of it, went +entirely to pieces, which nobody has troubled to pick up. Oddly enough +(unless this be always the Nemesis of excess) it began to be +insupportable in the very ways in which it claimed specially to be +subtle and tactful; in the feeling for different art-forms, in the +welding of subject and style, in the appropriateness of the epithet and +the unity of the mood. Wilde himself wrote some things that were not +immorality, but merely bad taste; not the bad taste of the conservative +suburbs, which merely means anything violent or shocking, but real bad +taste; as in a stern subject treated in a florid style; an over-dressed +woman at a supper of old friends; or a bad joke that nobody had time to +laugh at. This mixture of sensibility and coarseness in the man was very +curious; and I for one cannot endure (for example) his sensual way of +speaking of dead substances, satin or marble or velvet, as if he were +stroking a lot of dogs and cats. But there was a sort of power--or at +least weight--in his coarseness. His lapses were those proper to the one +good thing he really was, an Irish swashbuckler--a fighter. Some of the +Roman Emperors might have had the same luxuriousness and yet the same +courage. But the later decadents were far worse, especially the decadent +critics, the decadent illustrators--there were even decadent publishers. +And they utterly lost the light and reason of their existence: they were +masters of the clumsy and the incongruous. I will take only one example. +Aubrey Beardsley may be admired as an artist or no; he does not enter +into the scope of this book. But it is true that there is a certain +brief mood, a certain narrow aspect of life, which he renders to the +imagination rightly. It is mostly felt under white, deathly lights in +Piccadilly, with the black hollow of heaven behind shiny hats or painted +faces: a horrible impression that all mankind are masks. This being the +thing Beardsley could express (and the only thing he could express), it +is the solemn and awful fact that he was set down to illustrate Malory's +_Morte d'Arthur_. There is no need to say more; taste, in the artist's +sense, must have been utterly dead. They might as well have employed +Burne-Jones to illustrate _Martin Chuzzlewit_. It would not have been +more ludicrous than putting this portrayer of evil puppets, with their +thin lines like wire and their small faces like perverted children's, to +trace against the grand barbaric forests the sin and the sorrow of +Lancelot. + +To return to the chief of the decadents, I will not speak of the end of +the individual story: there was horror and there was expiation. And, as +my conscience goes at least, no man should say one word that could +weaken the horror--or the pardon. But there is one literary consequence +of the thing which must be mentioned, because it bears us on to that +much breezier movement which first began to break in upon all this +ghastly idleness--I mean the Socialist Movement. I do not mean "_De +Profundis_"; I do not think he had got to the real depths when he wrote +that book. I mean the one real thing he ever wrote: _The Ballad of +Reading Gaol_; in which we hear a cry for common justice and brotherhood +very much deeper, more democratic and more true to the real trend of the +populace to-day, than anything the Socialists ever uttered even in the +boldest pages of Bernard Shaw. + +Before we pass on to the two expansive movements in which the Victorian +Age really ended, the accident of a distinguished artist is available +for estimating this somewhat cool and sad afternoon of the epoch at its +purest; not in lounging pessimism or luxurious aberrations, but in +earnest skill and a high devotion to letters. This change that had come, +like the change from a golden sunset to a grey twilight, can be very +adequately measured if we compare the insight and intricacy of Meredith +with the insight and intricacy of Mr. Henry James. The characters of +both are delicate and indisputable; but we must all have had a feeling +that the characters in Meredith are gods, but that the characters in +Henry James are ghosts. I do not mean that they are unreal: I believe in +ghosts. So does Mr. Henry James; he has written some of his very finest +literature about the little habits of these creatures. He is in the deep +sense of a dishonoured word, a Spiritualist if ever there was one. But +Meredith was a materialist as well. The difference is that a ghost is a +disembodied spirit; while a god (to be worth worrying about) must be an +embodied spirit. The presence of soul and substance together involves +one of the two or three things which most of the Victorians did not +understand--the thing called a sacrament. It is because he had a natural +affinity for this mystical materialism that Meredith, in spite of his +affectations, is a poet: and, in spite of his Victorian Agnosticism (or +ignorance) is a pious Pagan and not a mere Pantheist. Mr. Henry James is +at the other extreme. His thrill is not so much in symbol or mysterious +emblem as in the absence of interventions and protections between mind +and mind. It is not mystery: it is rather a sort of terror at knowing +too much. He lives in glass houses; he is akin to Maeterlinck in a +feeling of the nakedness of souls. None of the Meredithian things, wind +or wine or sex or stark nonsense, ever gets between Mr. James and his +prey. But the thing is a deficiency as well as a talent: we cannot but +admire the figures that walk about in his afternoon drawing-rooms; but +we have a certain sense that they are figures that have no faces. + +For the rest, he is most widely known, or perhaps only most widely +chaffed, because of a literary style that lends itself to parody and is +a glorious feast for Mr. Max Beerbohm. It may be called The Hampered, or +Obstacle Race Style, in which one continually trips over commas and +relative clauses; and where the sense has to be perpetually qualified +lest it should mean too much. But such satire, however friendly, is in +some sense unfair to him; because it leaves out his sense of general +artistic design, which is not only high, but bold. This appears, I +think, most strongly in his short stories; in his long novels the reader +(or at least one reader) does get rather tired of everybody treating +everybody else in a manner which in real life would be an impossible +intellectual strain. But in his short studies there is the unanswerable +thing called real originality; especially in the very shape and point of +the tale. It may sound odd to compare him to Mr. Rudyard Kipling: but he +is like Kipling and also like Wells in this practical sense: that no one +ever wrote a story at all like the _Mark of the Beast_; no one ever +wrote a story at all like _A Kink in Space_: and in the same sense no +one ever wrote a story like _The Great Good Place_. It is alone in order +and species; and it is masterly. He struck his deepest note in that +terrible story, _The Turn of the Screw_; and though there is in the +heart of that horror a truth of repentance and religion, it is again +notable of the Victorian writers that the only supernatural note they +can strike assuredly is the tragic and almost the diabolic. Only Mr. Max +Beerbohm has been able to imagine Mr. Henry James writing about +Christmas. + +Now upon this interregnum, this cold and brilliant waiting-room which +was Henry James at its highest and Wilde at its worst, there broke in +two positive movements, largely honest though essentially unhistoric and +profane, which were destined to crack up the old Victorian solidity past +repair. The first was Bernard Shaw and the Socialists: the second was +Rudyard Kipling and the Imperialists. I take the Socialists first not +because they necessarily came so in order of time, but because they were +less the note upon which the epoch actually ended. + +William Morris, of whom we have already spoken, may be said to +introduce the Socialists, but rather in a social sense than a +philosophical. He was their friend, and in a sort of political way, +their father; but he was not their founder, for he would not have +believed a word of what they ultimately came to say. Nor is this the +conventional notion of the old man not keeping pace with the audacity of +the young. Morris would have been disgusted not with the wildness, but +the tameness of our tidy Fabians. He was not a Socialist, but he was a +Revolutionist; he didn't know much more about what he was; but he knew +that. In this way, being a full-blooded fellow, he rather repeats the +genial sulkiness of Dickens. And if we take this fact about him first, +we shall find it a key to the whole movement of this time. For the one +dominating truth which overshadows everything else at this point is a +political and economic one. The Industrial System, run by a small class +of Capitalists on a theory of competitive contract, had been quite +honestly established by the early Victorians and was one of the primary +beliefs of Victorianism. The Industrial System, so run, had become +another name for hell. By Morris's time and ever since, England has been +divided into three classes: Knaves, Fools, and Revolutionists. + +History is full of forgotten controversies; and those who speak of +Socialism now have nearly all forgotten that for some time it was an +almost equal fight between Socialism and Anarchism for the leadership of +the exodus from Capitalism. It is here that Herbert Spencer comes in +logically, though not chronologically; also that much more interesting +man, Auberon Herbert. Spencer has no special place as a man of letters; +and a vastly exaggerated place as a philosopher. His real importance was +that he was very nearly an Anarchist. The indefinable greatness there is +about him after all, in spite of the silliest and smuggest limitations, +is in a certain consistency and completeness from his own point of +view. There is something mediaeval, and therefore manful, about writing a +book about everything in the world. Now this simplicity expressed itself +in politics in carrying the Victorian worship of liberty to the most +ridiculous lengths; almost to the length of voluntary taxes and +voluntary insurance against murder. He tried, in short, to solve the +problem of the State by eliminating the State from it. He was resisted +in this by the powerful good sense of Huxley; but his books became +sacred books for a rising generation of rather bewildered rebels, who +thought we might perhaps get out of the mess if everybody did as he +liked. + +Thus the Anarchists and Socialists fought a battle over the death-bed of +Victorian Industrialism; in which the Socialists (that is, those who +stood for increasing instead of diminishing the power of Government) won +a complete victory and have almost exterminated their enemy. The +Anarchist one meets here and there nowadays is a sad sight; he is +disappointed with the future, as well as with the past. + +This victory of the Socialists was largely a literary victory; because +it was effected and popularised not only by a wit, but by a sincere wit; +and one who had the same sort of militant lucidity that Huxley had shown +in the last generation and Voltaire in the last century. A young Irish +journalist, impatient of the impoverished Protestantism and Liberalism +to which he had been bred, came out as the champion of Socialism not as +a matter of sentiment, but as a matter of common sense. The primary +position of Bernard Shaw towards the Victorian Age may be roughly +summarised thus: the typical Victorian said coolly: "Our system may not +be a perfect system, but it works." Bernard Shaw replied, even more +coolly: "It may be a perfect system, for all I know or care. But it does +not work." He and a society called the Fabians, which once exercised +considerable influence, followed this shrewd and sound strategic hint +to avoid mere emotional attack on the cruelty of Capitalism; and to +concentrate on its clumsiness, its ludicrous incapacity to do its own +work. This campaign succeeded, in the sense that while (in the educated +world) it was the Socialist who looked the fool at the beginning of that +campaign, it is the Anti-Socialist who looks the fool at the end of it. +But while it won the educated classes it lost the populace for ever. It +dried up those springs of blood and tears out of which all revolt must +come if it is to be anything but bureaucratic readjustment. We began +this book with the fires of the French Revolution still burning, but +burning low. Bernard Shaw was honestly in revolt in his own way: but it +was Bernard Shaw who trod out the last ember of the Great Revolution. +Bernard Shaw proceeded to apply to many other things the same sort of +hilarious realism which he thus successfully applied to the industrial +problem. He also enjoyed giving people a piece of his mind; but a piece +of his mind was a more appetising and less raw-looking object than a +piece of Hardy's. There were many modes of revolt growing all around +him; Shaw supported them--and supplanted them. Many were pitting the +realism of war against the romance of war: they succeeded in making the +fight dreary and repulsive, but the book dreary and repulsive too. Shaw, +in _Arms and the Man_, did manage to make war funny as well as +frightful. Many were questioning the right of revenge or punishment; but +they wrote their books in such a way that the reader was ready to +release all mankind if he might revenge himself on the author. Shaw, in +_Captain Brassbound's Conversion_, really showed at its best the merry +mercy of the pagan; that beautiful human nature that can neither rise to +penance nor sink to revenge. Many had proved that even the most +independent incomes drank blood out of the veins of the oppressed: but +they wrote it in such a style that their readers knew more about +depression than oppression. In _Widowers' Houses_ Shaw very nearly (but +not quite) succeeded in making a farce out of statistics. And the +ultimate utility of his brilliant interruption can best be expressed in +the very title of that play. When ages of essential European ethics have +said "widows' houses," it suddenly occurs to him to say "but what about +widowers' houses?" There is a sort of insane equity about it which was +what Bernard Shaw had the power to give, and gave. + +Out of the same social ferment arose a man of equally unquestionable +genius, Mr. H. G. Wells. His first importance was that he wrote great +adventure stories in the new world the men of science had discovered. He +walked on a round slippery world as boldly as Ulysses or Tom Jones had +worked on a flat one. Cyrano de Bergerac or Baron Munchausen, or other +typical men of science, had treated the moon as a mere flat silver +mirror in which Man saw his own image--the Man in the Moon. Wells +treated the moon as a globe, like our own; bringing forth monsters as +moonish as we are earthy. The exquisitely penetrating political and +social satire he afterwards wrote belongs to an age later than the +Victorian. But because, even from the beginning, his whole trend was +Socialist, it is right to place him here. + +While the old Victorian ideas were being disturbed by an increasing +torture at home, they were also intoxicated by a new romance from +abroad. It did not come from Italy with Rossetti and Browning, or from +Persia with Fitzgerald: but it came from countries as remote, countries +which were (as the simple phrase of that period ran) "painted red" on +the map. It was an attempt to reform England through the newer nations; +by the criticism of the forgotten colonies, rather than of the forgotten +classes. Both Socialism and Imperialism were utterly alien to the +Victorian idea. From the point of view of a Victorian aristocrat like +Palmerston, Socialism would be the cheek of gutter snipes; Imperialism +would be the intrusion of cads. But cads are not alone concerned. + +Broadly, the phase in which the Victorian epoch closed was what can only +be called the Imperialist phase. Between that and us stands a very +individual artist who must nevertheless be connected with that phase. As +I said at the beginning, Macaulay (or, rather, the mind Macaulay shared +with most of his powerful middle class) remains as a sort of pavement or +flat foundation under all the Victorians. They discussed the dogmas +rather than denied them. Now one of the dogmas of Macaulay was the dogma +of progress. A fair statement of the truth in it is not really so hard. +Investigation of anything naturally takes some little time. It takes +some time to sort letters so as to find a letter: it takes some time to +test a gas-bracket so as to find the leak; it takes some time to sift +evidence so as to find the truth. Now the curse that fell on the later +Victorians was this: that they began to value the time more than the +truth. One felt so secretarial when sorting letters that one never found +the letter; one felt so scientific in explaining gas that one never +found the leak; and one felt so judicial, so impartial, in weighing +evidence that one had to be bribed to come to any conclusion at all. +This was the last note of the Victorians: procrastination was called +progress. + +Now if we look for the worst fruits of this fallacy we shall find them +in historical criticism. There is a curious habit of treating any one +who comes before a strong movement as the "forerunner" of that movement. +That is, he is treated as a sort of slave running in advance of a great +army. Obviously, the analogy really arises from St. John the Baptist, +for whom the phrase "forerunner" was rather peculiarly invented. Equally +obviously, such a phrase only applies to an alleged or real divine +event: otherwise the forerunner would be a founder. Unless Jesus had +been the Baptist's God, He would simply have been his disciple. + +Nevertheless the fallacy of the "forerunner" has been largely used in +literature. Thus men will call a universal satirist like Langland a +"morning star of the Reformation," or some such rubbish; whereas the +Reformation was not larger, but much smaller than Langland. It was +simply the victory of one class of his foes, the greedy merchants, over +another class of his foes, the lazy abbots. In real history this +constantly occurs; that some small movement happens to favour one of the +million things suggested by some great man; whereupon the great man is +turned into the running slave of the small movement. Thus certain +sectarian movements borrowed the sensationalism without the +sacramentalism of Wesley. Thus certain groups of decadents found it +easier to imitate De Quincey's opium than his eloquence. Unless we grasp +this plain common sense (that you or I are not responsible for what some +ridiculous sect a hundred years hence may choose to do with what we say) +the peculiar position of Stevenson in later Victorian letters cannot +begin to be understood. For he was a very universal man; and talked some +sense not only on every subject, but, so far as it is logically +possible, in every sense. But the glaring deficiencies of the Victorian +compromise had by that time begun to gape so wide that he was forced, by +mere freedom of philosophy and fancy, to urge the neglected things. And +yet this very urgency certainly brought on an opposite fever, which he +would not have liked if he had lived to understand it. He liked Kipling, +though with many healthy hesitations; but he would not have liked the +triumph of Kipling: which was the success of the politician and the +failure of the poet. Yet when we look back up the false perspective of +time, Stevenson does seem in a sense to have prepared that imperial and +downward path. + +I shall not talk here, any more than anywhere else in this book, about +the "sedulous ape" business. No man ever wrote as well as Stevenson who +cared only about writing. Yet there is a sense, though a misleading one, +in which his original inspirations were artistic rather than purely +philosophical. To put the point in that curt covenanting way which he +himself could sometimes command, he thought it immoral to neglect +romance. The whole of his real position was expressed in that phrase of +one of his letters "our civilisation is a dingy ungentlemanly business: +it drops so much out of a man." On the whole he concluded that what had +been dropped out of the man was the boy. He pursued pirates as Defoe +would have fled from them; and summed up his simplest emotions in that +touching _cri de coeur_ "shall we never shed blood?" He did for the +penny dreadful what Coleridge had done for the penny ballad. He proved +that, because it was really human, it could really rise as near to +heaven as human nature could take it. If Thackeray is our youth, +Stevenson is our boyhood: and though this is not the most artistic +thing in him, it is the most important thing in the history of Victorian +art. All the other fine things he did were, for curious reasons, remote +from the current of his age. For instance, he had the good as well as +the bad of coming from a Scotch Calvinist's house. No man in that age +had so healthy an instinct for the actuality of positive evil. In _The +Master of Ballantrae_ he did prove with a pen of steel, that the Devil +is a gentleman--but is none the less the Devil. It is also +characteristic of him (and of the revolt from Victorian respectability +in general) that his most blood-and-thunder sensational tale is also +that which contains his most intimate and bitter truth. _Dr. Jekyll and +Mr. Hyde_ is a double triumph; it has the outside excitement that +belongs to Conan Doyle with the inside excitement that belongs to Henry +James. Alas, it is equally characteristic of the Victorian time that +while nearly every Englishman has enjoyed the anecdote, hardly one +Englishman has seen the joke--I mean the point. You will find twenty +allusions to Jekyll and Hyde in a day's newspaper reading. You will also +find that all such allusions suppose the two personalities to be equal, +neither caring for the other. Or more roughly, they think the book means +that man can be cloven into two creatures, good and evil. The whole stab +of the story is that man _can't_: because while evil does not care for +good, good must care for evil. Or, in other words, man cannot escape +from God, because good is the God in man; and insists on omniscience. +This point, which is good psychology and also good theology and also +good art, has missed its main intention merely because it was also good +story-telling. + +If the rather vague Victorian public did not appreciate the deep and +even tragic ethics with which Stevenson was concerned, still less were +they of a sort to appreciate the French finish and fastidiousness of his +style; in which he seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his +pen, like a man playing spillikins. But that style also had a quality +that could be felt; it had a military edge to it, an _acies_; and there +was a kind of swordsmanship about it. Thus all the circumstances led, +not so much to the narrowing of Stevenson to the romance of the fighting +spirit; but the narrowing of his influence to that romance. He had a +great many other things to say; but this was what we were willing to +hear: a reaction against the gross contempt for soldiering which had +really given a certain Chinese deadness to the Victorians. Yet another +circumstance thrust him down the same path; and in a manner not wholly +fortunate. The fact that he was a sick man immeasurably increases the +credit to his manhood in preaching a sane levity and pugnacious +optimism. But it also forbade him full familiarity with the actualities +of sport, war, or comradeship: and here and there his note is false in +these matters, and reminds one (though very remotely) of the mere +provincial bully that Henley sometimes sank to be. + +For Stevenson had at his elbow a friend, an invalid like himself, a man +of courage and stoicism like himself; but a man in whom everything that +Stevenson made delicate and rational became unbalanced and blind. The +difference is, moreover, that Stevenson was quite right in claiming that +he could treat his limitation as an accident; that his medicines "did +not colour his life." His life was really coloured out of a shilling +paint-box, like his toy-theatre: such high spirits as he had are the key +to him: his sufferings are not the key to him. But Henley's sufferings +are the key to Henley; much must be excused him, and there is much to be +excused. The result was that while there was always a certain dainty +equity about Stevenson's judgments, even when he was wrong, Henley +seemed to think that on the right side the wronger you were the better. +There was much that was feminine in him; and he is most understandable +when surprised in those little solitary poems which speak of emotions +mellowed, of sunset and a quiet end. Henley hurled himself into the new +fashion of praising Colonial adventure at the expense both of the +Christian and the republican traditions; but the sentiment did not +spread widely until the note was struck outside England in one of the +conquered countries; and a writer of Anglo-Indian short stories showed +the stamp of the thing called genius; that indefinable, dangerous and +often temporary thing. + +For it is really impossible to criticise Rudyard Kipling as part of +Victorian literature, because he is the end of such literature. He has +many other powerful elements; an Indian element, which makes him +exquisitely sympathetic with the Indian; a vague Jingo influence which +makes him sympathetic with the man that crushes the Indian; a vague +journalistic sympathy with the men that misrepresent everything that has +happened to the Indian; but of the Victorian virtues, nothing. + +All that was right or wrong in Kipling was expressed in the final +convulsion that he almost in person managed to achieve. The nearest that +any honest man can come to the thing called "impartiality" is to confess +that he is partial. I therefore confess that I think this last turn of +the Victorian Age was an unfortunate turn; much on the other side can be +said, and I hope will be said. But about the facts there can be no +question. The Imperialism of Kipling was equally remote from the +Victorian caution and the Victorian idealism: and our subject does quite +seriously end here. The world was full of the trampling of totally new +forces, gold was sighted from far in a sort of cynical romanticism: the +guns opened across Africa; and the great queen died. + + * * * * * + +Of what will now be the future of so separate and almost secretive an +adventure of the English, the present writer will not permit himself, +even for an instant, to prophesy. The Victorian Age made one or two +mistakes, but they were mistakes that were really useful; that is, +mistakes that were really mistaken. They thought that commerce outside a +country must extend peace: it has certainly often extended war. They +thought that commerce inside a country must certainly promote +prosperity; it has largely promoted poverty. But for them these were +experiments; for us they ought to be lessons. If _we_ continue the +capitalist use of the populace--if _we_ continue the capitalist use of +external arms, it will lie heavy on the living. The dishonour will not +be on the dead. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE + + +After having surveyed the immense field presented in such a volume as +Mr. George Mair's _Modern English Literature_ in this series, or, more +fully, in the _Cambridge History of Modern Literature_, the later volume +of Chambers' _English Literature_, Mr. Gosse's _History of Modern +English Literature_, or Henry Morley's _English Literature in the Reign +of Victoria_, the wise reader will choose some portion for closer study, +and will go straight to the originals before he has any further traffic +with critics or commentators, however able. + +He will then need the aid of fuller biographies. Some Victorian _Lives_ +are already classic, or nearly so, among them Sir G. Trevelyan's +_Macaulay_, Forster's _Dickens_, Mrs. Gaskell's _Charlotte Bronte_, +Froude's _Carlyle_, and Sir E. T. Cook's _Ruskin_. With these may be +ranged the great _Dictionary of National Biography_. The "English Men of +Letters" Series includes H. D. Traill's _Coleridge_, Ainger's _Lamb_, +Trollope's _Thackeray_, Leslie Stephen's _George Eliot_, Herbert Paul's +_Matthew Arnold_, Sir A. Lyall's _Tennyson_, G. K. Chesterton's _Robert +Browning_, and A. C. Benson's _Fitzgerald_. At least two autobiographies +must be named, those of Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and, as +antidote to Newman's _Apologia_, the gay self-revelations of Borrow, and +Jefferies' _Story of My Heart_. Other considerable volumes are W. J. +Cross's _George Eliot_, Lionel Johnson's _Art of Thomas Hardy_, Mr. W. M. +Rossetti's _Dante G. Rossetti_, Colvin's _R. L. Stevenson_, J. W. +Mackail's _William Morris_, Holman Hunt's _Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood_, +Sir Leslie Stephen's _The Utilitarians_, Buxton Forman's _Our Living +Poets_, Edward Thomas's _Swinburne_, Monypenny's _Disraeli_, Dawson's +_Victorian Novelists_, and Stedman's _Victorian Poets_. The "Everyman" +_Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature_ is useful for +dates. + +The latter half of the second volume of Mr. F. A. Mumby's _Letters of +Literary Men_ is devoted to the Victorian Age. There are fuller +collections of the _Letters_ of Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Dickens, the +Brownings, Fitzgerald, Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, and more +recently the _Letters of George Meredith_, edited by his son. + +Among the important critical writers of the period, Matthew Arnold +(_Essays in Criticism_, _Study of Celtic Literature_, etc.) stands +easily first. Others are John, now Lord, Morley (_Studies in +Literature_, etc.), Augustine Birrell (_Obiter Dicta_, _Essays_), W. E. +Henley (_Views and Reviews_), J. Addington Symonds (_Essays_), J. +Churton Collins, Richard Garnett, Stopford A. Brooke, George E. B. +Saintsbury (_History of Criticism_), R. H. Hutton (_Contemporary +Thought_), J. M. Robertson (_Modern Humanists_, _Buckle_, etc.), Frederic +Harrison (_The Choice of Books_, etc.), Andrew Lang, Walter Bagehot, +Edmund Gosse, Prof. Dowden, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir A. T. Quiller +Couch. + + + + +INDEX + + +AEsthetes, the, and Decadents, 218-27 +Arnold, Matthew, 73-79, 87 +Austen, Jane, 92, 105, 109 + +Bentham, 36 +Blake, 20 +Borrow, 151 +Bronte, Charlotte, 92, 105, 110-14 +----, Emily, 113 +Browning, Elizabeth B., 176-82 +----, R., 40-41, 159, 162-63 +Byron, 22 + +Carlyle, 40, 49-62, 158 +Carroll, Lewis, 153 +Cobbett, 16-17, 88, 151 +Coleridge, 20 +Collins, Wilkie, 130, 132 + +Darwin, 38, 206-7, 209 +De Quincey, 23-25, 65 +Dickens, 40, 79-89, 100, 106, 119-23, 129, 131 +Disraeli, 42, 135 + +Eliot, George, 92, 103-9, 157 + +Faber, 46 +Fitzgerald, 192-95 +French Revolution, Influence of, 18-21 +Froude, 60, 62 + +Gaskell, Mrs., 94 +Gilbert, 154 + +Hardy, Thomas, 138-39, 143-45 +Hazlitt, 23 +Henley, W. E., 247-48 +Hood, Thomas, 25-27 +Hughes, Tom, 73 +Humour, Victorian, 152-55 +Hunt, Leigh, 23 +Huxley, 39-40, 205 + +Imperialism, 60, 239 + +James, Henry, 228-31 + +Keats, 20 +Keble, 45 +Kingsley, 40, 59, 64, 72, 134-35 +Kipling, R., 60, 249-50 + +Lamb, 23 +Landor, 23 +Lear, Edward, 153 +Literary temperament, the English, 13-16 +Lytton, Bulwer, 135-37 + +Macaulay, 28-36, 55 +Macdonald, George, 152 +Maurice, F. D., 40, 73 +Melbourne, Lord, 42 +Meredith, George, 138-49, 228 +Mill, J. S., 36-37, 55 +Morris, Wm., 196-200, 232 + +Newman, 38, 40, 45-48, 78, 159 +Novel, The Modern, 90-99 + +Oliphant, Mrs., 116-17 +"Ouida," 117 +Oxford Movement, 42-45 + +Pater, Walter, 69-71 +Patmore, 48, 201-2 +Pre-Raphaelite School, 68, 72 + +Reade, Charles, 134 +Rossetti, D. G. and C., 71, 188-91 +Ruskin, 40, 62-8, 70, 158 + +Science, Victorian, 208-12 +Shaw, G. B., 60, 235-38 +Shelley, 22-23 +Shorthouse, 149-50 +Socialism, 60, 67, 122, 198, 227, 231-39 +Spencer, Herbert, 75, 233-34 +Stevenson, R. L., 243-49 +Swinburne, 69, 159, 181-88 + +Tennyson, 40, 64, 160-69 +Thackeray, 100, 110, 123-30, 158 +Thompson, Francis, 48, 201, 202 +Trollope, Anthony, 130, 132-33 + +Watson, Wm., 202 +Wells, H. G., 238-39 +Wilde, Oscar, 218-23 +Women, Victorian, 91, 99, 104, 115-16, 140 + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Victorian Age in Literature, by +G. K. 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